The hole spat them out unceremoniously. With the help of his armor, Jarvick landed on upright, but James and Ivy landed with bodily thuds.
“Ow.” Ivy pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around. “Where are we?”
“A safehouse,” Jarvick supplied, to which Ivy and James looked to where he pointed. “Ascenders, first generation if I remember correctly. Good for using as a hidden teleportation location. Well then, we need to get a move on. Lots to do, little time.”
"I’d like to address something first! You said something about giving me power armor?" Ivy demanded.
"We'll get you set up with everything you need," Jarvick of Ascension promised. “I’m not sure I caught your names."
"Ivy. This is my brother James."
"Just to be clear, I haven't promised to do anything for anyone," James pointed out aggressively. "I'm here to make sure she's safe, not to get caught up in playing power games."
"James, come onnnnn, power games are fun! Especially competitive ones."
"If you want competitive games, doesn't that mean I should join a different faction? Having us both on the same team is practically cheating.”
Ivy’s eyes lit up with competitive fire. “Aha! Yes, perfect. You may have a flawless victory record in rock-paper-scissors, but in Tower Faction Conflict, I will find a way to bring you down!”
"Hold on, you're supposed to be a package deal," Jarvick said, glancing between them. "I don't think we can convince the higher-ups to authorize full outfitting for an Uncommon without something more to bring to the table."
"One day." James held up a single finger. "I will work with whoever you want me to and let you use me as a shield or whatever for one day, as long as you outfit Ivy properly and keep her safe." His voice dropped to something lifeless and so cold it made Ivy reconsider her assessment of her big brother. "If anything happens to her while she’s in your care, I will burn your entire faction off the face of this world, whatever it costs me to do so. Understand me?"
Jarvick trembled beneath the fierceness of his conviction. "I understand," he whispered. "L-legendary."
James smiled cheerfully. "Good! Then let's get the boring stuff over with. I have places to go and shopping to do, and I'd rather get to it before we get ambushed and trapped into another fight."
"What're your levels?" Jarvick asked. "We may need to pick a few more fights if your sister isn't strong enough to jump floors."
"What's that, jumping floors?"
"You can use a lobby to switch between any floor in a tier, up to and including the entry and exit floors. To get from floor one to floor ten can be as simple as moving from one to two if you have the right unlocks."
They reached the exit to the lobby then, and Jarvick led them in without pause. It looked indistinguishable from the previous lobby, though the leaderboards were lit up with a different colored light now and listed different names. Golden text read ASCENSION. Jarvick’s name wasn’t on the top or bottom hundred, assuming he hadn’t lied about who he was. She did notice Merek’s flash by on the central scroll of everyone in between top and bottom, at somewhere around 48,000 of 224,000.
Even as she watched, the text shifted to green and the header to EXPANSION, and a new set of names appeared. Bron Del’s name was listed at ninety-first.
“What’s your highest unlock?” Jarvick asked, diverting her attention away from the leaderboards.
"I've never been beyond floor two," Ivy said. "How do you unlock the higher floors?"
"Either you visit the floors or reach the floor tier cap. This one is capped at level 20." He glanced at James. "You were planning to rush her through?"
"Kind of." James rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "We had a guide and damage dealer and a healer with us, but we were separated."
"I still need to know your levels.” Jarvick ignored the collection of people lined up along the wall and headed to a blank wall. "Through here."
James shook his head. "I don't see anything." There was a door just before the one they'd emerged from labeled 1 and another one after it labeled 3 but nothing beyond that.
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"What's the furthest you can reach?"
"Three."
Jarvick hissed softly. The glow on his armor pulsed and shifted in hue. "That's going to be a problem. I'm not set up for escort duty, and while we're in this tier, I'm out of contact with the rest. I need to head back up to report." He glanced around at the collection of beggars, lurkers, would-be salespersons, and other rabble pressing in around the gates. “I don’t want to send you into floor three alone, but I wouldn’t be much use. If I’m there, you’ll level slower, which means you won’t be able to skip floors. But there’s plenty of chance others will come in at floor ten and jump down to chase you.”
“We could wait here?”
“That’s the last thing you want.” Jarvick lowered his voice. “The lobbies suppress card activation, making it ‘safe’, but that means you’ve got no protection when someone shoves a blade into you or blasts your lungs out. Especially you with your dedicated Totem. You’ve a much better chance of surviving the tower than the lobby.”
“Noted,” James said uneasily.
“I think the best option is going to be you two clearing floor three as fast as you can while I run up to base and collect reinforcements. If you get pinned down again, prioritize survival. You can do that with your Totem.”
James nodded.
“How high are you going?” Ivy demanded. She held out her handful of monster cards, the ones Merek had said she shouldn’t use. “We were going to get these sharded to trade with.”
Jarvick glanced between the pile and the Ivy’s face. “You’ve remarkably good fortune to have gotten so many whole cards from such a low floor. I’ve never seen so many unbroken from a floor 1 run.”
“If you’re implying we did something underhanded or are lying..."
Jarvick shook his head. "No, nothing like that. The tower must like you, is all. If it's favoring you already, it must anticipate you bringing a lot of chaos with you."
"We are good at chaos!" Ivy agreed brightly.
"And there's no way I can convince you to join?" he asked James.
James shrugged. “Nothing comes to mind. Unless you can come up with an idea that’s more fun than grinding. I’ve had enough of that for a long time. It’ll be several lifetimes before I’m at all willing to do something so tedious.”
Jarvick glanced between them, a contemplative look growing in his eyes. “I’ll see what kind of offers I can get for you.” He pointed to the floor 3 portal. “Go through there, get across, level up if you can. If I’m not back by the time you reach floor four, keep going."
"And we shouldn't just leave the tower?" James asked. He sounded tired at the thought of clearing another several floors. "I really want to go trade in some of these for better cards." He flicked out Magebolt dismissively, but the card turned to smoke as soon as it manifested. He frowned and did it again. "Huh, this place really does prevent activating them."
Jarvick was already shaking his head. "Nothing you have right now is going to be worth anything properly good. The base floors are always swarming with Expansionist recruiters, and they don't play nice. You'd be much better off getting out on an Ascender floor, preferably with a full deck optimized for survival while you're at it."
"And power armor," Ivy reminded him.
"Yes, power armor. Why do I feel like I'm going to regret that promise?"
Ivy gave him her best innocent smile. "I'm sure I have no idea."
Jarvick gave them one last look, then disappeared through the empty wall where his floor ten door apparently resided.
Ivy started for the door to floor three, but James caught her sleeve. “I know everyone around here is all caught up in their power games and faction conflict, but I’d really prefer to have a better deck before we tackle another floor. Neither of us is high damage, and if we’re supposed to be moving fast, wouldn’t a quick trip out to the shop be a better use of time than spending half an hour in a long drawn-out fight?”
She crossed her arms. “I told you, I’m not going to cheat. I’ll do this properly.”
“And I’m in full support of you doing so. For myself, though, this… isn’t fun. Shooting the same tiny spell a hundred times in a row.”
She considered this a moment, then reluctantly nodded. “But if we have so many people out for us… would it really be safe?”
“You still have that fake cell-phone block thing, right? We can use the transit doors and get back here before anyone knows we’ve left. The shop was right around the corner from one of them, even if we didn’t know it at the time.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I read the map while you two were playing around with that block thing.”
“So you want to ignore everyone’s advice and go do our own thing?”
“They have ulterior motives. I don’t trust them yet. Plus, we can come back and play their games, sure. Just as soon as I’m properly equipped. I love video games as much as the next guy, but as much as this seems like one, it’s our lives on the line here, Ivy.” Seeing the look on her face, he sighed. “I’d love to clear one of these floors properly, but I don’t feel very protagonist-y at the moment. I’d rather be something more than your backup shield.”
Ivy laughed at him and punched his shoulder. “You’re doing most of the damage, silly. Just ask the shop to change your magebolt to something flashy and zappy and you’ll be perfectly happy with it.”
He fully intended on doing a lot more than that. “You might be right, but either way, we can’t do that from here.”
“Then let’s head back quickly so we can be back here before anybody notices,” she said as she gave the energy blade a whirl. “This thing is so cool. I wonder what the power armor will be like.”
James refrained from suggesting she could find out at the shop and led the way into the floor one doorway instead. “I’m sure it’ll be awesome,” he said diplomatically. “I can’t wait to see it.”
“Then let’s hurry!”
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