By common agreement the group drove back to a group of buildings halfway between our starting point and the Market. While we could have stayed at the market, that would have cost credits that nobody wanted to spend. There was also the worry that someone would come to the same entrance we had used and steal our transportation if we left it sitting around, as Donnie had seen a couple other groups leaving and eyeing the vehicle during the time he had been waiting for us. None of them actually interacted, though, so nothing really came of it. Well, nothing other than them having to spend another hour trying find someplace to camp out for the night.

Part of me hoped that everyone would get tired and go to sleep, but unfortunately we were all a bunch of nerds and night owls. The group was mostly quiet and I wasn't sure how to bring things up in such an oppressive environment. There we sat, all sitting around a small fire near an abandoned street, in complete silence. Finally, after some not so subtle hints from Donnie, I decided to just bite the bullet before my friend decided to do something drastic.

"Look, guys, I killed that leader lady. You all seem to have been acting weird about it but what was I supposed to do? She had some sort of mind control powers and was obviously unhappy about what was going on. If she had sent three or four of those warriors at us than I don't know that any of us would have survived. So I did what I needed to do to keep us alive." I tried to keep an even voice but a bit of annoyance might have filtered through. This all seemed pretty straightforward and I didn't see why I should need to explain myself.

Veronica spoke up first. She sounded upset but in a way that spoke of exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep. "You went in there ready to kill her; expecting to kill her, even. You knew! Don't act like you didn't!"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I knew that might happen! I knew it from the moment I saw she was in charge! There was no way the Chief of the isolationist aliens would put her in charge if she didn't do something fishy to make it happen."

"No," she corrected indelicately, "you knew that she was going around mind controlling people. You told me to watch out for Clark, you told me how to avoid it; so you knew all along and didn't tell us! Why didn't you say anything to us? Why didn't you trust us?"

I held myself back from a sigh but only barely. "I didn't trust you to be able to hide that you knew anything, not when you had to look her straight in the eye. I think what happened near the end pretty well proved my point."

"That wasn't your decision to make. You should have told us everything! Instead you lied and told us nothing!"

I was getting more than a little annoyed by her insistence that I 'should' have done anything. She was just using her feelings to throw out her own little hypocrisy onto me. So I decided to call her on it with a tone of voice a bit darker than I usually take. "Like you're one to talk little miss 'magical girl'. You talk about withholding relevant information but then you pretend to be a Mage when really you are a Super."

"What? No, but I?" She stammered, but I continued without giving in to her panicked face.

"The difference between the two is big. As a Mage with some sort of light manipulation you could have created decoys or possibly hard light to help with defense, but instead all you could do was blast things. And don't bother denying it. You never once used your light for anything but sparkly explosions and sparkles that were likely explosions waiting to happen. Mages also have variable output and get tired after using their ability too many times, neither of which was true for you. The biggest tip off? Your looks. A LOT of the Supers look like idealized versions of themselves, almost too perfect to exist, and that holds true for you too."

She glared at me then hunched over, pulling into herself and more into the darkness.

Clark took this moment to speak up. "Look, I know things are rough, but she does have a bit of a point. It isn't like you needed to keep that from us. We could have handled it."

This time I did roll my eyes and sigh. "You really aren't one to talk either. I looked up spells to see what I could get for healing. Mostly as a kind of backup. Turns out that there isn't a generic 'healing' magic, at least not once you get past the first couple tiers of Magic Skills. Either you transition into some type of Support magic or you just can't upgrade your ability normally." I took a moment to let my words sink in as he opened and closed his mouth as if to retort but without any actual sound, but then decided to just finish my thought. "And no, for the record you couldn't handle it. That was why we had to kidnap you from the base."

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There were a few more seconds before he spoke up. "How did you know I hadn't just taken secondary skills and Super abilities to upgrade my weak healing? Different power amplifiers should give a better result than sticking with one upgrade line exclusively." The way he spoke, it wasn't a denial but a question that he actually wanted to know.

My first thought was: 'Uh, what?' I mean, I understand what he is trying to say: Multiple bonuses from different places should stack multiplicatively vs the presumably additive bonus from one set of upgrades held exclusively. Except that adding points in a single specialized line increased multiple aspects of the skill or whatever vs what the broader upgrades could do. I just wasn't expecting him to recognize the difference between additive and multiplicative bonuses, even if his understanding was generally misguided. Then I remembered there had been a question somewhere in what he said, something about how I knew he hadn't just gotten super specialized in healing but was actually a support? "Uh, right." I stammered out. "I saw how Veronica was by the end of the big fight. She was throwing out sparkles left and right and hadn't hit exhaustion. Dimitri, on the other hand, despite taking some breaks, was still tired by the end. Supers have almost limitless stamina with their abilities, but only almost."

There were a few moments of silence as we all thought through what had been said.

Donnie finally spoke up, this time looking over at Dimitri. "What about you? Are you mad about not being told what was going on?"

He gave a noncommittal grunt before answering. "I knew something weird was going on from the beginning, when he first suggested that Jeong be in charge. At first I thought the plan was to get us all trapped as part of the group, at least when everything happened just inside of town happened, but then I found everyone trying to carry off Clark and realized we were ditching Jeong into whatever craziness was going on here. That was something I would have absolutely voted for, had I known it was an option at the time. I'm happy with the result."

There was a stunned silence, finally broken by Donnie asking the one thing we were all thinking. "How did you figure it out, that there was something going on?"

"Besides the obvious fact that nobody should trust Jeong to be in charge of anything? Jeong is South Korean, Celestia was Chinese, and you said that Jeong should talk because they would get along better because of their shared race. Those two nationalities hate each other, and it only got worse once the aliens got involved."

I looked at him, momentarily dumbfounded by the new information. Look, in my defense I play video games for a living; I do not, nor do I want to, keep up with international gossip news about who hates who in what part of the world.

Dimitri just nodded sadly at the look on my face. "Or you are another dumb American who doesn't know a thing about international politics." I thought about disagreeing, but I wasn't sure he was actually wrong. Thankfully he continued before I could think of a response "It doesn't matter, all's well that ends well."

There were a few more moments before Clark spoke up again. "I know I should have said something earlier. You all are my friends but I was scared. My abilities can boost myself or others, but then they have that boost /and/ whatever they had before. I was afraid what would happen if anyone realized what I could do."

I almost replied with a crack about how some mind controller could try to abduct him but I held myself back to something slightly more diplomatic. "Look, you don't have to convince me. We might be friendly but we aren't really friends. I've barely spoken to you half a dozen times, and that was as part of a group." I shrugged in a 'what are you going to do?' gesture. "Besides. I can't exactly blame you on fearing the support discrimination. I've been there and know how it is." Considering my normal team position, that was likely an understatement.

There were a few moments of silence before Veronica blurted out: "I didn't want to be a Super. I wanted to be a mage. Magic is magical and you have to work at it and earn it. Superpowers just are. You aren't any better or worse for having them or using them. I want my power to mean something."

"I don't think it is as simple as you think to just 'have power'," Dimitri cut in, being the sole willing Superpower specialist in the group. "But to each their own, I guess."

Our resident 'magical girl' tried apologizing but Earthmolding Super just waved her off as though it was nothing.

"So," said Clark to Donnie, "any dark secrets you want to get off your chest?"

He looked at the group, then glanced at me nervously. "I actually knew about Celestia before we went into the town. Johnny told me and that was how he convinced me to put Jeong in charge to keep her from mind controlling anyone we might care about loosing."

There was some back and forth complaining from the group, mostly Veronica with some from Clark.

"He is my friend. Like an actual friend, not an acquaintance." I answered back, loudly enough to cut through the arguments. This quieted everyone down.

Clark finally broke this new silence with a declaration of his own. "Lets fix that." He looked at the rest of us; but mostly Donnie, Dimitri, and I. "My name is Clark Morton. I just finished my Doctorate in Biological Systems before getting sponsored to enter The Game, but growing up I wanted to be a medical doctor. The idea behind being a doctor and the reality are so different, though, so that is why...

We continued talking late into the night.