“The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel.” -William Gibson, Neuromancer-

_____

“So you just have to think about it, and you get a sword?” Morgan asked, feeling a little silly as he said the words. “I mean, that sounds cool, I guess.”

The other teenager gave a shrug that didn’t do much to cover up a boastful smile. “It is cool.” Liam admitted. “But it’s not just thinking about it. We have to focus on the spell for a while, and then it sticks into a slot in our… uh… souls, I guess? And then we can use it.” He shut up as the two teens went up to the counter of the convenience store they’d walked to, and paid for their snacks under the suspicious leer of the older woman behind the counter.

Morgan waited until they’d left before speaking up again. “So, like D&D wizards, huh?” He asked.

“Not my thing.” Liam admitted. “Linc’s more into the game stuff. I just like the action. I guess that’s why I’m good at the sword one. Emma’s better at the defensive stuff, and Linc just… I guess he’s good at whatever else. Mistellanious?”

“Okay, well, it’s like wizards.” Morgan said, forgoing a long winded explanation both of D&D, and of correcting Liam’s grammar. He *could* have gone into extensive detail, but he’d been recalcitrant to actually talk about his new hobby with anyone. “Still cool.”

The other boy wore an even more entrenched self-satisfied grin as he popped open a bag of chips and started eating as they crossed the street and started the half mile walk back toward the Lair. “So, what’s your mutant power?” Liam asked.

“What?” Morgan gave a confused look, mouth half full of a candy bar that was novel by the fact that it was actually manufactured on Earth’s surface.

“You know, your magic or whatever. What can you do?”

Morgan gave a drawn out and awkward ‘uh’, before saying, “I store breath as some kind of mana? That’s mostly on accident, because I didn’t die in a snowstorm. Oh, and I’m mostly immune to cancer!”

Liam laughed. “Wait, I thought everyone at this place was a wizard or something?”

“That’s mostly just James. And Momo, I guess. And, like, a lot of people have something they’ve picked up or are good at. But, like, Mars is just a really good engineer who has access to magic items, you know?” Morgan shrugged. “I just live there.”

“Wait, you *live* there?” Liam looked incredulous. “Are you being held prisoner or something? Do we need to rescue you?” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

A car drove by on the street. The concrete of the sidewalk darkened as a grim cloud overtook the thin breach the sun was coming through. The late December wind shoved against their coats, trying its best to convince them to stop snacking and put their hands back in their pockets.

Morgan looked around at the outside that they were currently standing in, a half mile from the Lair, all on their own. “No?” He said. “What? No.”

“But… where do you *stay*?” Liam asked incredulously.

“In one of the rooms? I have my own room.” Morgan got defensive, before he paused and started to add, “Well, technically I guess Color-Of-Dawn and I share a-“

“The rooms are tiny! It’s like sleeping in a prison!” Liam burst out. “You can’t *live* there! What, do your parents just not care about you?”

Briefly, Morgan considered if his ongoing martial arts and strength training would let him punch *through* the other teenager. But then, he remembered the attitude everyone around him had shown when *he’d* been an asshole, and just let Liam’s dumbass words wash off.

“Well, my mom’s dead.” He said casually, weaponizing an awkward aura like it was nuclear fallout. “My dad literally forgot she existed, and became an abusive alcoholic. So, you’re not *wrong*.” He shot Liam a look, noting the horrified expression on his walking companion’s face. “But also shut the fuck up.” Morgan added.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry!” Liam backtracked. Sort of. “Wait, shouldn’t you, like, be living with family or something? That still doesn’t explain the tiny room.”

What Morgan wanted to explain, but couldn’t be sure he’d be be able to say without sounding excessively defensive and… small, really, was that the room he had now was bigger than where he’d been living before. So instead, he replied to a different part of the sentence. “I have a family.” He told Liam. “I *do* live with them.”

“No, like, your *real* family.”

“Wow, that’s such a shitty thing to say!” The words came out without Morgan thinking about them, he was just so shocked. “Why would you say that?”

It was weird. Morgan had never been a very social person, he’d practically been terrified of talking to other kids at school, avoided conversations whenever possible. He’d had one friend, basically. And then, when he’d first come to the Order, he’d… made one friend, and kind of been fine with that, too. But every single part of his daily life was a learning moment, in some way. And, someone wiser than Morgan had once said, if no one makes you do it, learning counts as fun. So he’d learned, bit by bit, to fit into a local culture where everyone put a ton of effort into being earnest with each other, apologizing with sincerity, and acting with trust. And those social walls he’d built for himself, he dismantled bit by bit, simply by getting straight answers on why people acted the way they did.

And now, here he was, seeing someone be kind of an enormous asshole to him, and the only thing he could think was that from a broader perspective, Liam was getting *really* defensive for no reason. He wasn’t even listening to the words anymore as the other kid tried to explain himself. He was just sort of marveling, partly at what it felt like to suddenly realize that he had all the tools to pick apart the details of a sentence without getting angry about it, and partly at just how *committed* to looking like he was right Liam was.

“Dude.” Morgan jumped in during a pause in Liam’s ramble. “I live with people who make sure I’m not hungry, and I have a really good bed. It’s fine, okay? I’m fine with it. I like it. Also, there’s movie nights and stuff. Okay?”

“Alright…” Liam said. “But like, what are you gonna do for college? Like, if your parents can’t cover it.”

As much as Morgan felt like Liam was from a completely alien culture, that was actually a good question. “I dunno.” He said. “I mean, I don’t know what I want to do, I guess. I’ll ask James about the college thing later.”

“Wait, so, is *James* kind of like your dad?” Liam said, trying to put things into his own context.

“Please no!” Morgan said with a long sigh. “He’s just… uh…” Morgan stopped and thought about it. “Wait, fuck.” He muttered. “Okay, I don’t have a good answer for that.” Morgan felt like he owed whoever taught him that he could just say that some kind of life debt. “But no, anyway.” The two of them took a corner and the Lair came into sight, the flat box of a building looking pretty inauspicious, just another normal flex space warehouse in a line of the things, the magic inside utterly hidden. “You guys are sticking around for a bit, right?” Morgan asked.

Liam groaned dramatically. “Yeah, no one wants us to go back until they can make sure that the Alchemists won’t murder us or something. Not that I can’t take ‘em!” He boasted inaccurately. “But we’re here for a couple more days.”

“Cool.” Morgan nodded. “Wanna hang out with Color-Of-Dawn and me and play Street Fighter?”

“…Yeah, okay.” Liam said slowly.

Morgan had another one of those moments, where he could almost instantly put together that this potential new friend was trying not to seem too eager because he was afraid of looking dumb in front of someone. And suddenly, he *got it*. He got why James liked the way the Order did things so much better. Because he’d talked to a dozen people in the last week, and never once been *afraid of them*. Liam was being defensive and holding back because he didn’t trust the *whole conversation*. Not that he didn’t trust Morgan, he probably hadn’t thought of that. But he was actually worried about being himself.

That was… kinda depressing. Had Morgan been like that? He couldn’t really remember. Even with weekly therapy sessions, a lot of his life over the last four years blurred into a haze of foggy uncertainty. But he was pretty sure he’d been like that.

He didn’t say any of that. He didn’t feel like he needed to. Instead, he just gave a reassuring nod, said “Cool”, and led the way back into the Lair.

Small steps.

_____

“It’s been three days.” Alanna told James from the door to his office that he was inexplicably in again. “And still no problems. And it’s Office Day, and I really want to do that.”

“Oh god, Office Day.” James groaned, throwing his arms back over his head and tilting his chair back. “I forgot!”

“How in the hell have you gotten to a point where exploring the magical extradimensional world full of arcane pens is the thing you forget?” Alanna demanded of him, folding her arms judgmentally.

“I’ve been busy!” James said. “With… lots of stuff, I guess. I spent all of yesterday with Bill, because he dragged Arrush and I out to run experiments with the heat transfer spell, and holy shit was that exhausting.” He paused, idly tapping a pen on the table while he formed a thought. “Also, can I just say, Bill is a really impressive dude?”

“How so?” Alanna asked. “I mean, yeah, he is. But how specifically?”

James framed an empty space in front of him with his hands. “What, exactly, would you classify Arrush as?”

“Adorably gay.” Alanna said instantly. “No, wait, you mean to a random person. Uh… kind of terrifying, probably? With the extra arms and the acid drippy thing and the… is it pronounced chitin? I’ve never gotten a clear answer on… wait, there wasn't a problem with that, was there?”

“There was not. That’s my point.” James nodded. “Bill is so aggressively meritocratic it’s almost painful. I think he likes Arrush more than me, just because Arrush can carry more at once.” He rubbed at the ache in his shoulders, a reminder of yesterday’s labor. “I dunno, he’s kinda the closest thing we have to an outside perspective around here right now, alongside our lawyer, and I get that that’ll keep on fading over time, but it’s just nice to have a ‘normal’ person who has no problem with nonhuman life.” He concluded.

“Okay, yeah, that’s a start.” Alanna conceded. “He’s not doing the ‘your dad’ thing, is he?”

“My dad continues to be missing, Alanna.” James said slowly. “I’m not sure… oh, you mean the really unpleasant version of pseudo-tolerance, don’t you? Dammit.” James pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, he’s not doing that. He actually did acknowledge it, too, sort of. Of course, then he had us generate a test flow system for a small building’s internal temperature control, which he was obviously more interested in.”

Alanna nodded sagely. “I have this running theory. That everyone is secretly a massive nerd, once you get them interested in something.”

“Sure, makes sense. I’ve met sports fans.” James agreed. “Anyway. I’m tired, but I’m up for Office things, if you’re going.”

“I am going.” Alanna confirmed. “If it’s on the table, obviously.”

James rolled his eyes. “You know I’m not the one to make that decision.” He cocked an eyebrow at Alanna’s responding snort. “Really.” James said. “I’m fine making decisions that are the things I’m good at, but security is Nate’s department. And the people he’s training. Just like how I’m leaving ‘buy an office building’ to Karen, to secure the Office. Sure, I know it’s a good *idea*, but how the heck am I supposed to go about doing that? I shouldn’t be in charge of that project!”

There was a metal *chunk* noise from out in the main office space they still had a lease on, here in the LA skyline, that made Alanna jump slightly. James didn’t react, because he knew it was just someone using the vending machine, but he did give his partner a worried look. He was about to say something to her, when Momo poked her head around the door, wedging herself between the frame and Alanna’s torso.

“Hey boss.” She declared, getting James to glare at her. “Can I have the list?”

Alanna’s brief panic washed away. “What list?” She asked. “We don’t do lists here.”

“That’s a lie at best.” James laughed. “You know Research has a massive spreadsheet of skills and stuff from the dungeon, right? Oh! Did you know someone just has ‘operations - blender’ as a skill?”

“Hey, don’t joke about that.” Momo said, starting to lose her balance. “I’ve been a barista. Blenders are serious shit.” She twisted her neck in a way that James was reasonably sure wasn’t physically possible for a baseline human to look up at Alanna. “Also the list of the new kids’ skills.”

James held up the notebook he was tapping at with his pen, and passed it across the desk as Momo scurried in to grab it from his hand. “I need that back later.” He said. “And they call them spells.”

“Sure.” Momo agreed. “Anything good?”

“They work like D&D wizards.” James said. “I don’t see any obvious synergies with anything we have, really. The spells they were using were Protective Intercept for blocking - oh, they bought those shields off eBay, by the way - Tether Together for the dome shield thing…”

“Is that the one super gram said was a fate thingy?” Momo interjected.

“Yes.” James said before continuing, ticking off on his fingers as he went, “And then they had Manifest Blade for the swords. Research apparently got one of them to try that, they’re actually worse than the sword JP carries everywhere.” He shrugged. “Then they have a handful of things that I have categorized as ‘why’. Seize Seat makes a chair. Dire Prune seems to actually remove matter, but only dead matter that’s on plants and is harmful to the plant. And Saint’s Wrap lets them make a towel.”

Alanna coughed into her fist. “Sorry, a towel? Like… a hand towel?”

“I mean, a shower towel. A me-sized shower towel, not a you-sized shower towel. It’s not a great towel.” James said with a shrug. “Their magic… I hate to say this, but it sucks. I feel like they *must* have missed something in their dungeon.”

“I mean, they did trap you in a dome of fog or something.” Momo said. “And anything with the term ‘fate’ applied just cannot be good. Right?”

“Yeah, I figure… oh, ‘scuse me.” James paused as there was a skittering noise, and then an upside down Rufus scurried into his office with the same energy Momo had earlier, only doing so on a rope of paperclips that was hanging from James’ ceiling. James reached up and took the manilla folder that Rufus passed him with outstretched pen legs. “Thanks buddy.” He said. “Hey, we’re going to the Office tonight, want to come along and explore a bit?”

Rufus stared at James with a disbelieving, unblinking eye, before slowly raising his forelegs to cross in front of his face, dangling from the paperclips like a spider.

“Alright, alright.” James said. “Just thought I’d ask.” He added the folder to his desk while Rufus scuttled out again.

“Is that why those are there?” Alanna asked with a bemused expression.

“He doesn’t wanna get stepped on, and honestly, this is a perfectly reasonable compromise.” James said. “Because no one wants to step on Rufus anyway. I’m gonna have Bill rig up something more permanent, before I let him drag me out to be a human HVAC again. Assuming this isn’t a strider superpower to hang from paperclips specifically.” James paused. “I should ask on that. Hey Rufus!” He called. No response. “Okay, I’ll ask later. Anyway, where were we?”

“*I* was gonna ask if you wanted to go for a jog before tonight, and you were complaining about… buying a building?” Alanna said. “Momo was interrupting me.”

“I was not!”

“Oh, right. Momo. I think they’re missing magic items somehow. Or missing how they can actually use the books and spell slots they got. Can you talk to them sometime? But, like… be sneaky about it.”

“Sneaky how and why?” Momo asked with narrowed eyes.

“They’re teenagers.” James said. “And they’re not… they’re not bad people, but they are *exactly* who we should be thinking of when we say someone isn’t ready for power.” He shrugged. “But we’re still willing to trade quite a bit for their dungeon’s information. So that’s your job. Make friends.”

“You’re sending Momo to be a diplomat?” Alanna raised her eyebrows incredulously.

“Yeah, what she said.” Momo pointed behind herself at Alanna. “I don’t make friends.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You literally do.” James stared at her. “You were on Sarah’s podcast literally yesterday discussing infomorph inception methods.”

“I thought you didn’t listen to that!”

“I don’t, Texture-Of-Barkdust gave me a .mem file.” James said, tapping his skulljack. “Anyway. Get out of my office, you gremlin.”

Momo slipped under where Alanna was leaning on the doorframe again, opting to not simply go around her, muttering all the while about how she was gonna set off a totem under the kids just so they’d avoid her. James doubted that’d work the way she expected.

“Well that was… Momo.” Alanna said, clearing her throat.

“Doesn’t make friends my ass.” James grumbled. He looked up at Alanna, still shaking his head. “A jog, really? Here?”

“Outside, you dumbass.” Alanna smirked at him. “It’ll be good for you. Also we’ve got a ton of exercise potion so you won’t even be sore.”

“Oh my god I could just take one now.” James slapped his head. “My poor shoulders!”

Alanna held up the thin glass vial, full of red liquid, and waggled it back and forth in her hand. “I’ll give you this if you come running with me.”

“God dammit we’ve upgraded to running.” James groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. “Okay. But I’m getting a drink first.”

His partner waited patiently while he picked a random drink, blindly covered the label, cracked it open, and took a sip. And then made a horrified noise at the flavor of drinking a pancake. Alanna watched on as James’ face twisted in concern, and then he took another sip. “Stop drinking it!” She exclaimed after the third sip and groan.

“I can’t. I’ve committed to this.” James said, before gulping down the last of the can.

And feeling something hit the back of his throat, making him choke slightly, before a small burst of pressure formed in his mouth, and a thought ran through his head, even as a squawk left his mouth.

[Shell Upgraded : Breathing - Exhalation Force - PSI - +14.8]

“Ooh, orb?” Alanna asked, giving the vending machine an unreturned high-five that was really more of a pat on the side.

“Aaah, my tongue.” James poked at his mouth. “Also what a useless orb.”

“Great! No need to feel guilty for not copying it!” Alanna told him. “Now let’s go! I’ve been standing around for half an hour and I wanna move!”

James chuckled, and followed her, the two of them both looking forward to that evening.

_____

“Okay. So.” Chevoy held up a paperweight as an example. Not *the* paperweight, just one that was lying around. It wasn’t actually a paperweight, except in the technical sense; it was just a polished rock. But it was the thought that counted, and it was flat. “The Paperweight is incapable of moving in a single direction relative to its own orientation, but it can be rotated to change this axis. If it’s entirely upright, the plane of movement is limited to the horizontal plane. If you tilt it slightly, it will now act as if on a slope and will thus move down and sideways due to gravity. If you then push the paperweight towards the "upward" part of the slope, it will likewise get a higher position. You can think of this something like a wing.”

Next to her, Mars nodded like an enthusiastic puppy, a massive grin on his face. “The interesting part comes when you have *more than one* paperweight! If you have two of them at an angle compared to the ground, but one goes "uphill" in the north direction, while the other goes "uphill" south, you can now rise in elevation by pushing them apart with no contact with the ground. Of course, there is a limit on how far you can practically push to objects apart with a piston or piston-esque object, but that’s not the point.”

Anesh stared at the two of them. Then looked around the Research floor, wondering why no one would meet his questioning look. Even the pod of domesticated shellaxies, snug in their pen in the middle of the floor, looked like they were trying to avoid this conversation. This was, clearly, something they had already inflicted on everyone here. Multiple times, probably. “Okay, first off.” Anesh cleared his throat. “I was lured down here because Reed said he had a couple questions about infusing blue orbs? Also while that is cool, and I am all about getting us to space don’t get me wrong, I am here for a reason. And… wait, wouldn’t that setup not work once you get too far out of a gravity well anyway? That seems… Hm.” Anesh realized what was happening. He was getting trapped. But this was kind of neat anyway.

“We aren’t finished yet!” Chevoy declared, tossing their example rock onto her desk and settling a hand on her hip as she chastised Anesh.

“Of course you aren’t.” Anesh sighed.

Mars kept going like he hadn’t ever stopped talking and all the momentum was driving him forward like some kind of rocket engine. “So, what’s *really* important, is that the paperweight can *rotate*.” He was rapping his knuckles together for emphasis as he spoke, the pattern one of a rehearsed speech. “If placed on a track of some sort, it should be able to move as long as the plane of allowed movement is tangential to the trajectory of the paperweight through space at all points! Do you see?”

“He sees.” Chevoy nodded.

Anesh did see. He saw a world where their greatest enemy became OSHA, more than anyone else. He rubbed a hand across his face. “So, you’re suggesting, and correct me if I’m wrong here, that we make several copies of the magical paperweight, link them in some kind of… wheel… and essentially build the world’s least safe helicopter.”

“Alanna *did* recently ask for a helicopter…” Chevoy ran a hand over her mouth as she thought about it. “But no, don’t be silly. This wouldn’t be able to easily operate on a multi-axis system without serious, *serious* resource investment.”

“Yeah, we’ve built the world’s least safe *elevator*.” Mars corrected.

“We actually have a small prototype.” Chevoy added. “Not here, obviously, because no one wanted to risk… us.”

Anesh snorted. “Fair.” He interjected briefly.

The engineers were undeterred though, and Mars kept going. “It’s actually not that unsafe! The locking mechanism works fine, we’ve tested it to two hundred feet, it *appears* to constantly keep itself geostationary, so building a large scale one with things like ‘safety features’ and… uh… security? I guess? That would be pretty easy, is my point.”

“Anyway, we built you a space elevator that can technically reach orbit with a bike pedal and a metal platform!” Chevoy added gleefully. “Happy birthday! You work for NASA, right?”

There were no words for this situation, Anesh realized. He wasn’t… *mad* at them, obviously. But normally, when people got him gifts, he politely thanked them and then hid for the rest of the day because the act of receiving a gift was harrowing. This… this was untenable. He could not hide from a space elevator.

One of the shellaxies noticed his mild confusion masquerading as distress, and waddled over on its cable tendrils to butt itself against the little fence that kept them all in, chiming at him softly. Anesh blinked once, focused on what he was doing, and stooped down to pet the boxy creature.

‘Gingerbread Cookie’ read the nametag piece of electrical tape on the shell. Anesh chuckled. The Research department was having to dig deep to find new names for these little friends. He looked up at Mars and Chevoy. “Okay.” He said calmly. “So, to be clear on this. At one point, James and I mentioned the future of humanity in space travel in passing, and you then designed a space elevator?”

“Yes!” They said at the same time.

“This is like… we asked you for some ketchup, and you went out and pulled a heist on a McDonald’s cargo ship.” Anesh patted the shellaxy one more time and stood up, dusting his hands off and trying to ignore his knee popping. “Okay. Cool. I love it. I really do. But, mates, I came down here to ask about the blue orb thing? I really don’t have time to talk about how… I mean… this revolutionizes launches, at least, in terms of cost… we could probably rent out… hm. No, no!” He shook a finger at them accusingly like they were the problem. “The orbs!”

Reed, sensing the threat of being caught in another engineering explanation was mostly past, walked by lugging a deep cardboard box full of pens. “They’re infusions, like life for every other orb color.” He called to Anesh as he walked by, Anesh waving to the engineers to break off and trail in Reed’s wake as he made his way over to a shelf against the wall of an overcrowded corridor and slammed the box down on an empty spot. “Whooof. Yeah, they’re life. Alex was right. But you can’t make them like normal life, it doesn’t work. They’re just a tiny bit of intelligent decision making, not an actual person.”

“Ethically shaky, determining what is and isn’t a person.” Anesh hummed as he pursed his lips at Reed, face contorting in concern.

The curly haired head of Research waved him off with one hand while he rearranged something in his box. “Look, we have a lot of weird shit down here. Let me tell you that we’ve run a *bunch* of different tests for communication or emotion off of the various blue items, before we even started trying to make them.”

Anesh wasn’t sure he believed that, but he was on a time limit. “Just… tell me what I need to know so I can pass it along.”

“The basics? Dungeontech items are slightly alive, not people, and are really, *really* rigid in focus. Ethically, if you *really* want to measure it, and I don’t, it’s probably more okay to make a magic item than to, like, eat chicken? Anyway. Your best bet is making things that add one strange function to something that already does a thing. Like, no trying to turn a stick into headphones, you know? Turn headphones into slightly better headphones.” He shrugged. “We’re working on more stuff. Oh! Someone made a paper dragon that’s kind of like what you said Pendragon was as a baby. Can you ask Dave to come by sometime and make sure we’re not screwing anything up?”

“Reed, how much life are you making down here?”

“Not… too much!” Reed flushed red, not meeting Anesh’s eyes. “Anyway, I have to go check on some stuff. We can catch up later, right?”

“Sure.” Anesh didn’t know if he should groan or laugh. James would laugh, probably, but James wasn’t here. “Hey, quick thing though. What happened to your lab coat?”

“What?” Reed blinked at him, embarrassment temporarily forgotten. “What lab coat?”

“Well, you’re just in pants and teeshirt today. Where’s the white coat?” Anesh clarified.

Reed shook his head slowly, mouth slightly open, eyes narrowed. “I have never once worn a lab coat, dude.”

“Huh. Weird. I always think of you as being in a lab coat.”

“Get out of my basement.” Reed grumbled, stalking off with a fresh red tinge on his neck.

_____

The Alchemists called them, while James was in a van traveling to an office building he’d long since stopped actually working at.

Not him, personally. Karen. Recovery, really. Her department. They were handling it. No one had specifically kept him up to date, but he was following the conversation on their discussion server.

The Alchemists had a problem. There was some kind of internal schism going on with them. A problem that had been brewing for a long time - James had gotten flat looks from the others in the vehicle when he’d said that out loud - and had only just started to boil over. Euphrates, who had made the independent decision to sell out his colleagues, was confirmed dead, but they weren’t talking about any other losses. But it looked pretty dire for them.

From information the Order’s rogues could piece together, based on the new contact from the Alchemists, they had made hidden enemies of a few specific CIA operatives. The kind that looked unrealistic when they got Hollywood movies made about them. They’d been in some way coerced to resume work on the puppet potion, failed miserably, *realized what they were doing*, and had started tearing each other apart trying to find someone to blame or fight or bribe or anything.

“If they’re gonna self-destruct… uh… let em?” Alanna suggested from the driver’s seat.

“Did try to kill you.” Arrush hissed at James from the back of the van. “Twice.”

“*Technically*, it was only… oh, wait, no. Twice.” James winced. “Okay, fine.”

El shifted in her seat, the thin blue line of fins from her infomorph companion spiraling around her shoulder as she moved to look over the center console at James. “You seriously have too many enemies.”

“I do not! They aren’t even my enemies!” He protested.

“They tried to kill you!” El shouted. “Twice, apparently!”

“So did you!” James retaliated. “You *shot me*!”

Before the two of them could start arguing more, Arrush leaned forward slightly, chitin creaking under the pressure of his seatbelt, and pressed a pair of rough hands against their faces, pushing the two of them apart and back into their seats. “Hush.” He rasped out at El.

“Okay, El’s crap aside-“ Alanna started.

“Hey!”

She continued unabated. “-is there any reason not to just let ‘em burn out?”

“Do you want the tactical or the strategic reason?” James asked, shifting to a more serious tone.

“Hit me.” She said with a grin.

He smiled out the windshield, watching the streetlights flash by as they rode down the highway toward the dungeon. He missed the orange lights of his childhood, but there was something harshly pure about the bright white bulbs that had been installed in the last few years. They went well with the freezing rain pattering on the windshield. “Okay.” He said. “Tactically, we cannot let their tree of life or whatever fall into the hands of someone who might be worse than them. Also we just want it, in general. So, you know, base greed.”

“I like that one!” El perked up, and Arrush nodded with her. He understood the value of a material advantage.

James rolled his eyes. “Strategically… guys, they’re still people. They’ve fucked up, and hurt a lot of people, and they’re assholes. But who gives a shit? They aren’t monsters, they’re just wrong about a few things. They don’t deserve to die. And, yeah, we could probably spend our resources helping people who need it more. But they’re here, now, in our sights. And we can help. So we should help.”

“That’s not a ‘strategy’.” El made air quotes at him from the back seat. “That’s just you wanting to feel good!”

“Mmh.” Arrush nodded next to her, triangular head bobbing subconsciously in time with Alanna’s music. That was probably a bad sign. The agreeing with El part, not the part about music appreciation.

“Also!” El added, buoyed by her backseat companion’s agreement. “We know about a *bunch* of problems that aren’t rich old guys having dug their own rich old guy graves! Let’s solve those!”

The van lurched slightly as Alanna pivoted them around a slow moving truck, making lane changes like she couldn’t die. “I mean… El’s got a point. Your strategy isn’t exactly a strategy.” She told James with a sympathetic look.

“Alright, you want a game theory version?” James rolled his eyes.

“Psh. Sure!” El chimed in.

“Oh El. Dear sweet Eleanor.” Alanna shook her head.

“Don’t call me that.”

James started talking, ignoring their snark. “Okay, you wanna know why? Here’s why. We live in a world where one person can acquire a kind of *horrifying* amount of power.” He paused briefly for effect. “I’m not just talking about us here, either, with dungeons and magic and stuff. But that *is* a problem, and it’s only going to get worse. Bigger. But even mundane people can stockpile wealth, weapons, influence, anything. Hell, even just owning a car makes you a potential mass murderer.” He pointed at El. And then, trying not to let her notice, also slyly pointed out Alanna to the two passengers watching him from the back. Arrush hissed out a laugh that ended up a strangled noise as Alanna accelerated the van again slightly. “The *good* news is,” James continued, “no one really wants to be a mass murderer. People are only motivated to take extreme action, in general, by two things. Hate, or love. If someone hates strongly enough, they start looking for ways to destroy what they hate. If someone loves enough, they’ll do the same to protect. Every other motivation tends to be kinda fragile. The optimal strategy in this game… this whole *life* thing we’ve got ourselves tangled up in… is to maximize love. Not because it’s sappy and warm and fuzzy and nice, but it *is* all those things. But so that all the eventual superpowered nightmares in our society have a vested interest in keeping us all alive.”

Everyone went quiet as they processed that.

And then Arrush spoke. “Like you.” He rasped out.

“Like me.” James said softly. “Like Alanna. Like you,” he pointed at El, “and eventually, like *you too*.” He turned to point at Arrush. “We’re ahead. Not of everyone, no,” he preempted Alanna’s grim reminder, “but we’re ahead of a lot of people in terms of magic. And with how the dungeons work, we’re only going to get stronger. More dangerous.”

“Yeah, so, that brings us back to the Old Guys.” El said, leaning forward against her seatbelt, elbows on her knees. “Man, they’ve had all that ‘dangerous stockpiled power’ stuff for, what, twenty years? More? They’re probably older than I am! And they did shit with it! Like, okay, you want the tree. That’s cool, I’m good with extorting the shit out of them. But we don’t need to be nice to them.”

“It’s not about them.” James said with a shrug, feeling not a small bit of disappointment that El didn’t quite get it.

Arrush snapped his head up, eyes glittering with the reflected streetlights. “Ah.” He hissed. “It’s us.”

“Huh?”

“Wh… we.” The ratroach still struggled to talk, and James felt a pang in his chest that they hadn’t gotten him to just accept a skulljack yet, or figured out how to safely use the Shaper Substance. But Arrush took a massive breath, and pushed on. “We need practice. With love.” He looked over at El. “With being… different. Than I have been. With… protecting. They need… practice… being… protected.”

“They… the old guys?” El asked, rustling through her backpack and passing Arrush a bottle of water without even thinking about it. “They don’t need shit, though! They’ve got their own… oh.” She looked forward, meeting James’ eyes in the rear view mirror. “You want them on your team.” She said. “Like, not just vaguely, huh? You want them, specifically.”

Alanna started laughing. Barking a heavy, loud laugh that had a hard edge of respect behind it. “Holy shit.” She said with a shark’s smile on her face, wiping a tear out of her eye while she stayed focused on the road. “They’re a bunch of people with massive stockpiled power, in a few different forms, and none of it has kept them safe! They’re at their absolutely lowest point right now, and you want to swoop in and save their asses! Holy shit!”

“I mean, yeah.” James said. “Isn’t that the point? We want *everyone* on our team. And that means… well, that means we need to help everyone. We need to prove to them that our team isn’t just viable, but that we’re *the winners*. That at the end of this, *we walk out of here*, and that they can come with us.” He shrugged. “And yeah, we need to be able to forgive some of the shittier things people have done before. And that won’t be easy always. Because some of these guys are really, really awful.” He chuckled. “But I believe in us. We can’t just keep finding reasons why it’s okay to hurt each other. We’ve gotta make it stop somewhere.”

“Shit, now I believe in us too.” El threw herself back against the van’s padded seat hard enough that the old plastic frame creaked. “I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

“I already believed.” Arrush said, handing her back her empty water bottle with one of his smaller limbs.

“Of course you did, you’re basically proof of concept.” El snorted.

The ratroach froze slightly, tilting his head to look down at the girl next to him. “I don’t… know what…” He started to hiss out, chest heaving.

El, to her credit, *instantly* realized she’d upset him somehow. “Oh! It means, like, you’re an example of the strategy working! It’s not bad!” She backtracked rapidly. “I think? James help, you know words!”

“No, yeah, that’s it.” James said with an unseen nod.

“Also, good timing.” Alanna said as she took them off the highway. “We’re here.” She pointed out the windshield at the multi-story office building, visible from the raised road they had just turned onto over the tops of the trees, a tiny portion of its lights still on. James just started double checking his pockets, while El made sure her backpack was zipped up everywhere. But Arrush had never seen it before; hell, Arrush had barely seen a lot of the outside before at all that wasn’t one small town in Tennessee.

The tall ratroach leaned across El to watch the building in the distance as the road led them on a looping half circle of right turns toward the parking lot’s entrance. All five of his eyes held open as he took in the building.

Part of his brain, the part that couldn’t escape where he’d come from, was sizing up an enemy. Ways in, ways out, how many foes or victims could a building of that size hold, if he’d have to break bones to fit through any of the passageways. That kind of thing.

But the new part of him was looking at something else. A solid, unyielding concrete spire with a few glittering points of light arrayed across it. And more than that, this was where his… where the people he was learning to call friends… came to find their power. Where they had traveled and fought and bled to secure the strength they had used to break him free of his old cycle.

And now they shared it freely.

Arrush’s thoughts were broken as Alanna parked the van violently enough to toss him into the driver’s seat ahead of him. “Alright, kids! Let’s get moving!” She declared. “Ty’s holding the door for us, let’s move!”

Everyone grinned as they piled out. More philosophy could wait for the trip home. For now, they had adventure and action ahead of them.

James shattered the drama of the moment. “Christ it’s cold. Who allowed it to get this December?”

“Time?” Alanna said. “Oh hey, are we doing a Christmas party this year?”

“Something like that!” He cheerfully said as he took the steps up to his former work. “Come on! I’m not sitting around out here! There’s a dungeon waiting on us!” James called back.

For different reasons, each of them smiled, and followed.