I blearily looked around, feeling the fading remnants of the worst headache clearing. "Are you awake? Is everything ok?" It took me a few seconds to connect the voice with Donnie who was standing next to the open door of the small room. The world seemed like it had been spinning and was only now coming to a stop.

"Uh, what is..." I began, but paused as the entire world shot into focus. I could see everything that wasn't physically hidden behind something else. Even those things I could catch hints of, as light reflected off of everything and my eyes were now capable of making certain guesses about what certain reflections off of nonreflective objects might say about what was around them. Also there were people talking, the only conversation of actual interest to me was a couple people talking about their upgrade options, and I could listen in on them without difficulty. Then there were the smells; chemical signals of such breadth and specificity that I was only beginning to categorize them. Truth be told, it was somewhat overwhelming but not nearly as much as it probably should have been.

If this is what a 16 point upgrade can do, than what must the higher levels be capable of?

Donnie gave me a concerned look, "Is everything ok, you seem pretty out of it."

I glanced around to get my bearings. I was no longer outside but had been brought into one of the rooms of the base. It was extremely sparce, a metal door and brick walls with someone else's bedding; mine was stuck in my Hammer Space. Donnie was next the door and seemed to be keeping watch till I woke up. Updating my character had apparently taken longer and been more debilitating than I thought. My guess is that all the time I spent asking questions and such had been intended for this type of knockout. The questions I had asked the robot were nice, but I would have rather had a few less hours of interrogation if it came with more levels and more stuff. I turned back toward Donnie to answer. "Yeah, I'm fine. The upgrade is just a bit overwhelming. I feel like I have actual superpowers now." The door was open into a larger room that had a hallway I could see down despite there being no light in the hallway and the otherwise dim lighting of the outside.

"Oh really? Did you get something good?" he asked. I looked over, at him and was momentarily overwhelmed by everything. His clothes were back in order and he looked healthy but he sounded hesitant. My senses latched onto things that seemed inconsequential before but now slotted into possible meanings that themselves may or may not be meaningful. His slightly tanned skin and darker highlights in his brown hair made me think he might have some Native American ancestry, though not pure. His clothes, not including the shiny bits that had been added on, made me think he might have been from the central or southern central US. It was just something about his sturdy but light jeans combined with his light shirt and shoes with good breathability and a familiar style; something about it just called out that he came from a warmer non-coastal climate within the United States. His generic American accent only served to confirm my suppositions.

I realized that in looking at him I had focused things down and gotten more from him specifically while feeling less overwhelmed with everything else. In fact there was something about the wind currents in the air and the heat of the room, or something else unexplainable, that gave me a sense for everything around me. I could easily get carried away but instead decided to answer his question. "I got super senses. It is super trippy."

He looked a bit surprised. "I wouldn't have thought that your class would give you something like that."

I shook my head, reigning in my senses to only the most interesting things. Of course the people in one of the nearby rooms talking about their own upgrades was one of those things that caught my focus. Apparently they were both mages and were comparing their relative skills and the other upgrades they had access to. Their magic senses skills were the same but their elemental skills differed. They also had differing body upgrades to do more magic, one increased magic capacity while the other increased magical power, and they had nearly identical body upgrades to protect them from their own skills. All this occupied a background place in my perception but it was hard for me to focus on both it and my current conversation at the same time. It took me a moment to remember the question so I could replied. "It didn't come from my class; I'm pretty sure it came from the boss. There is a real genetic feel to a lot of the Super abilities, one even referring to it directly, so I've got a pretty good idea that has to do with how I got access." I said, answering the obvious question on his face.

He continued to look surprised, or more like his surprise was renewed. "I mean, I wasn't going to ask. I didn't think you would tell me anyways. Ways to get extra options seems like it would be pretty valuable." His voice was questioning, even incredulous.

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I shrugged, still listening to the others talking in the other room, and tried to focus on the person right here with me. "We are buddies, right? So why not help out?"

He seemed to get a bit uncomfortable at that. "I mean, I just didn't..." he paused, visibly getting more uncomfortable as the moment passed. I waited, a trick I had learned from some anime or something: let silence do its work. A few more seconds went by and he only got more uncomfortable. Finally he spoke. "I saw what happened at the end of the battle. How you rallied people to attack; deceiving them into thinking you were going to work with them when you had a completely different plan. How you jumped away to save yourself at the end, not even thinking about any of them." There was another pregnant pause. I could hear his heartbeat slightly quicken when I really focused, though all I could figure it meant was that he was that he was uncomfortable and deciding if he was going to say something. So, instead of interrupting, I waited.

Finally, after the silence had become too uncomfortable, he spoke up. "All of us in this group. We dress up like our heroes from fiction. We want to be heroes. What you did wasn't very heroic."

Thinking back, his words made a lot of sense. The way our group got along despite our vastly different backgrounds, remembering the fact that most everyone in the group was at least a little socially awkward, meant that there had to be something unifying everyone. This was only made more extreme by the fact that everyone here was either rich or a prodigy in some specific field, as the only way to get in the game was by having money or by getting a sponsorship. As such we were not naturally the type of people who would be without our own egos. And yet we all agreed to try to protect a bunch of primitive aliens and their children, even at the cost of putting ourselves on the front line. My excuse was that I was weak and needed to catch up with everyone else, and that kept me from having the resources or the clout to change things, but I was the only one with that limitation. Even afterwards, nobody spoke out against our decision to protect the other group despite the fact that we were essentially carrying them through the Tutorial. It changed my entire perspective on the group.

Finally, I answered. "I'm not a hero. I'm a gamer. I play to win. Mostly I'm pretty chill up until I find my challenge to beat. Even when I do find my challenge, I'm a team player and a support main at that; so I tend to work well with others. But even when others are being arseholes and trolls, I still win. I'm not sure where that puts me on your little morality spectrum." I shrugged and raised my hands in a 'what are you going to do' type gesture. "I'm not really a villain or a hero. Not an anti-hero or a psychopath. I can be a troll and work around disruptive teammates in my goal to win, even when that means treating people like a bunch of idiots that deserve what happens to them. But I also give a leg up to new players and regularly sacrifice my game stats for the sake of the team. I try not to be too evil but don't really manage to be a beacon of 'hope and goodness' either. But I win."

I leaned forward to look him in his eyes and saw fear. His eyes dilatated and his heartrate raced as I brought my full attention on him. When I was sure I had his full attention, I spoke: "And we did win. A battle that we should have lost. I saved a fifth of the people we were protecting, people who would have died; who should have died. Me. My tactics. An old-timer has-been like me was able to find a way to do the impossible. Maybe I would have been more concerned with those other people if they were my allies. But they weren't; they were only my teammates. Tomorrow or the day after we might be teamed up differently, in fact I'm fairly certain that will absolutely happen from what I know of the rest of The Game. I won the game for those people I tricked into supporting me. And, even if I hadn't recognized that the boss was disabling those who fought and only killing the weak or cowardly, they agreed to stand on the line knowing that it could cost them an early end to their Tutorial run."

I sat up straight, giving him some space and taking much of the pressure off of him. He visibly relaxed at my attempt to give him space but stiffened again as my next words hit him. "So the question is, can you accept that about me?"

Time passed as various emotions passed over his face. Eventually he calmed. "Your still an asshole."

I shrugged.

"And I still say what you did wasn't very heroic."

I shrugged again.

"And even if it worked, how you did it wasn't the best."

I repeated my expressions of nonchalant disinterest in the depths of those moral quandaries through a raising and lowering of my shoulders.

"And, fuck man. Can't you do something other than shrug at me over and over?"

I looked him straight in the eyes, gave him a smug smirk, and shrugged.

He just gaped at me, mouth hanging open and everything. "You weren't always this much of a jerk," he grumbled.

I shrugged again, for good measure. Then I declared to him in my most magnanimous voice: "I'm an enlightened troll, my trolling is laser guided and..."

"Shut up," he laughed, tension draining out of him. "That settles it, I'm the hero now and you are the sidekick."

"Aren't I the more battle capable one of us two?"

"That's what you think. But seriously, how did you get extra upgrade options again?"

I smiled with anticipation. "Oh, yeah. I've got some ideas."