Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1.1 Raid Prep

“Time difference is...our world gets a femtosecond per the other’s subjective…big number of seconds, comes out to about two months.”

“…femtosecond. Seriously. I don’t even know how many zeros come after that decimal point, but is that even a perceivable length of time?”

“Maybe, with Int, Wis and Dex all at 800-something. And I know, seriously too convenient for comfort. I know my power doesn’t lie, but there has to be a catch somewhere.”

One green eyebrow was skeptically raised. “You’ve checked?”

A sigh. “I’ve tried, everything I can think of.”

An approving nod. “You’ve gotten better about that lately.”

A pair of unamused brown eyes said, kinda had to.

Sun-Il chuckled, then let his face fall and his brow crease. “Of course, I’ll go with you, but something like this…I guess if taking a real heavy hitter was an option, we’d be having this conversation with my Grandfather?”

Jee-Han made an annoyed noise in his sinuses. “Of course. The Server Change feature only works with people within 10 levels of me in the party, you overachieving bastard.”

“Who are you, the God of Grinding, calling an overachiever?”

“You. I was very explicit. Like my power was explicit when it described the limits of this newly unlocked function.”

Over a year later, there was still a faint note of incredulity in Jee-Han’s voice whenever a new, bizarre facet of The Gamer came to light. Sun-Il had learned to roll with it.

“Right, so who’s that among the people who’d be willing to risk their lives to restore dimensional stability?”

Jee-Han took a breath and leaned back in his chair, looking up in contemplation. “I’m level 113 right now. You’re at level 109, Shi-Yun is 107, Sung-Ah scrapes in at 103…and that’s it. Everyone else who I could ask is either too strong or too weak.”

Sun-Il blinked. “Sung-Ah…that’s…over 90 levels in 5 months.”

The two young men shivered in unison at the kind of psychotic training schedule that implied. Jee-Han had done her one better there, fair enough, but he’d done it by nearly getting killed a lot.

“Yeah, she has a serious EXP gain buff right now…actually, she’s got a lot of buffs right now, but it’s still nuts.”

“Just how much was that illness hampering her potential? Anyway, that’s not a lot, but it’s a pretty well-made group in terms of abilities.”

“Nice qualifier, jackass. Still can’t stand Shi-Yun, huh?”

A green eyebrow twitched. “…I’m getting better about that and so is she. We can be…functional.”

Another sigh. “That’ll have to do. Can’t afford to leave either of you behind; we’re shorthanded as is.”

“…you already asked both of them and they said yes.”

“Like I would ask you, jerk!”

“Right, right, silly to get upset about you going to a pair of girls you only met this year about a world-saving mission and not your best friend. No call to be hurt there.”

A derisive snort. “Cut the crap. There was no version of this where you weren’t involved.”

Sun-Il and Jee-Han glared for five full seconds before Sun-Il made a face and they both dissolved into laughter. After they calmed down, Sun-Il put on his serious face again.

“When and where?”

“This time tomorrow, right here. Can’t afford to delay; might get attacked again and level away from being able to bring Sung-Ah.”

“You’re close to a level up?”

“87% of the way.”

“…how often-?! Gah, nevermind. Not like I can do anything about it now. I’ll be here.”

“Never doubted it.”

“What’s our destination look like, anyway?”

“From the preview text, it’s a rundown, crime-ridden, ability-user-filled American port town that doesn’t exist on our Earth. Brockton Bay, it’s called.”

“…a real wretched hive, huh?”

“Shut up. Only I get to make stupid Star Wars references.”

“Sure, sure…Lord Gamer.”

And that was when Han Jee-Han, the Gamer, up and comer in the Abyss, master min-maxer and perennial universal chew-toy, chased his laughing best friend out his house waving a spear made of fire.

Chapter Text

1.2 Party Composition

“Observe.”

Lv.103

Hwan Sung-Ah

Class: Black Demon Invader

Title: Conqueror of Death

STR: 20 

DEX: 20 

VIT: 40 

INT: 160 

WIS: 275 

LUK: 335

Jee-Han gave an impressed whistle. “You’ve definitely made a full recovery and then some. Hit the Vitality cap on Int, just kept going on Wisdom…and that’s some serious Luck. I’ve been wondering how to raise that stat without leveling.”

Sung-Ah smiled, an increasingly common occurrence that never failed to feel special to Jee-Han. “My innate connection to demonic power is boosting its growth. ‘The devil’s own luck’ is a cliché for a reason; those with the powers of Hell can often find fate smiling on them even when the gods frown.”

“Huh.” Jee-Han filed that away for future reference. He’d be more concerned about the quiet, sweet girl having demon powers, but his usual barometers for ‘is this normal in the Abyss’ seemed unruffled. Speaking of…

“Observe.”

Lv.107

Kwon Shi-Yun

Class: Yuhon Spirit Technique User

Title: Spirited Inferno

STR: 207

DEX: 209

VIT: 213

INT: 23

WIS: 21

LUK: 19

Jee-Han nodded along the stat list. “As expected; very well-balanced physical stats. Have you been studying extra hard lately, or did you put in more Wis and Int when you leveled up in that dungeon run last week? Math says both?”

Shi-Yun nodded, looking stern and focused; nothing new there. “Your power identified an area in which I was lacking; I would be a fool not to take advantage of this knowledge.”

“And yet you found time to boost your primary stats up to the low 200s as well…is a grind mentality contagious?” Jee-Han chuckled at his own not-really-a-joke. “Anyway, Observe.”

Lv.109

Shin Sun-Il

Class: Chunbumoon’s Heir

Title: One Who Endeavors

STR: 201

DEX: 206

VIT: 257

INT: 25

WIS: 25

LUK: 25

Jee-Han paused, eyes lingering on the VIT stat. “Hey, do you have some kind of passive buff that might increase Vitality gain? It’s always been your highest stat, but now it’s over 40 points higher than Shi-Yun’s and the math doesn’t really work out there; your other stats are much closer together.”

Sun-Il shrugged, smirking. “I don’t know if I’ve got anything exclusive to me, but Grandfather read an article about American football and had the idea of training in Illusion Barriers that simulate high altitudes.”

Shi-Yun brightened. “That sounds like a fine idea! Of course, I would be at a disadvantage in a low-oxygen environment, but if it’s just for training vitality it should be fine.”

Sun-Il’s eyes opened in surprise, then he managed a smile. “Ah, it’s a simple trick. I can show you when I get the chance?”

Jee-Han smirked his own smirk, then clapped his hands for attention. “On that note, we need to discuss field effects. I’ve got good news and bad news on that front. Good news is, we probably won’t have to worry about the Interference Law. From the preview blurb, we’re essentially heading into an American comic book; ability users are everywhere, open, and organized. The local terms seem to be ‘parahuman’ or ‘cape,’ so super heroics or villainy are pretty much an accepted fact of life.”

Sun-Il frowned. “That means, if Gaia or the local equivalent even exists, they must not care too much or at all about keeping those beyond human hidden from the public…”

Jee-Han nodded grimly. “…which probably means no subsidizing Illusion Barriers. That’s the bad news. We’ll have to test out whether they work at all when we get there, but it’s almost certainly going to be a lot harder.”

Shi-Yun grimaced. “That would limit our movement and ability to contain damage severely.”

Sung-Ah nodded sadly. “You never really appreciate something that ubiquitous until you know what it’s like to not have it.”

Everyone took a second to look at Sung-Ah, a girl that could have killed a kitten from hypothermia by holding it not too long ago.

“We’ll manage,” came out of three mouths in perfect synch. Sung-Ah smiled again.

Jee-Han breathed in through his nose, then exhaled sharply from his mouth. “One last thing. You’ll all need something from me.”

That got a few raised eyebrows. They had all come prepared, of course. They had a very limited idea of what was on the other side, so there was no call for being incautious. Sun-Il was wearing a harness that held a sheathed sword, a spear that unscrewed into two parts, a mace, a small round shield covered in runes (a gift from the Grand Warrior for an event that still made Jee-Han laugh), and two recovery potions. Shi-Yun had shown up in what Jee-Han recognized as the gauntlets from the Grand Labyrinth’s sea floor, along with matching greaves he was going to have to ask about later, and if the gem on her hair tie wasn’t magical, it soon would be. Sung-Ah had gotten her father to lend her a magic ring for each finger, as well as two bracelets on each wrist, each certainly enchanted to the gills; Jee-Han himself had given her a spare staff. The Gamer himself was clearly wearing his suite of mana regen gear, pentacle earrings and all, and he had been stocking up on armor and equipment at the Abyss Auction all week.

So what more did they all need?

“The fashion there is for parahumans to hide their identity. You know, like in comic books. I mean, the biggest reason for that doesn’t really apply to us…”

Sun-Il picked up on the drift. “…but if we do it too, it gives us more options. So, you made disguises? What am I saying, of course you did. You’re going to jump headfirst into the genre cliché deep end and drag us all along for the ride, aren’t you?”

Jee-Han’s response was a face-splitting grin and pulling a quartet of masks from his inventory.

Sun-Il sighed. “Can you tell I know the man?”, came the plaintive phrase, prompting a soft laugh from Sung-Ah and Shi-Yun to turn away to hide a smile.

He took his mask the same as the other two, of course. Jee-Han had been practicing his Crafting, and it showed; his own mask was a bright blue affair, meant to cover the top half of his face, with one-way lenses over the eyes. The other masks were similar, with the main difference being accommodation for hair and differing color, Sung-Ah’s being black, Shi-Yun’s red, and Sun-Il’s dark green.

“How did you manage the lenses?”, Sun-Il asked. “I can’t see your eyes, but I can see through mine nearly perfectly.”

Jee-Han might have well designed the masks specifically not to hamper his own ability to smile smugly. “Gnome and Salamander working together can make diamond out of anything that’ll leave carbon behind when it burns, then Gnome on her own can shape it however I want her to. It took a few tries to get the composition, thickness and tinting right, but I’m really proud of the design.”

“Geeze, your power is still the most broken thing…tell me this isn’t the only thing you used that for.”

“Everything else is prototypes right now, but yeah, I’m gonna be exploiting that exploit hard, once I get a better feel for how it holds together in different shapes and reacts to magic. Minecraft lied; pure diamond makes crappy armor and weapons.”

“Gamer problems,” Sun-Il said, deadpan.

Jee-Han nodded ruefully. “Remember when I worried about tests like a normal person? Anyway, Create Party. Parallel World Protectors. Invite three nearest friends.”

Everyone pushed yes.

“Okay…Server Change: Earth Bet.”

A pause.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Another pause. Jee-Han began to visibly sweat.

“…never a good sign…but yes, I’m sure.”

There was a flash of blue light, and the room was empty, to remain so for a measurable number of femtoseconds.

Chapter Text

1.3 Field Effects

As the flash faded from their eyes, Jee-Han took in his surroundings.

High ceiling. Catwalks. Shipping containers. Discarded needles, all over an improvised living room of discarded furniture. What could only be a workbench, covered in complex tools covered in rust. Altogether, it spelled ‘abandoned warehouse being used by a criminal gang as a hideout’ in big print.

“…yeah, this is definitely a comic book world. Glad I made the masks.”

DING!

A Quest has been created!

Merchant Marina

Clear the Merchant gang out of the Brockton Bay Dockyard, making the city a marginally safer place to live and giving yourself a base of operations.

0/12 Merchant Strongholds taken

0/5 Merchant Capes defeated

Success: 30,000 EXP

$5,000

Increased Closeness with ????? ??????

Increased Closeness with ???????

Unlock Guild System

Failure: 3,000 EXP

Guild System Locked


“Wow.” Sun-Il looked at the quest window incredulously. “Your power doesn’t waste any time throwing us right in the middle of things, does it?”

Jee-Han sighed. “Most games start in medias res, I guess. That does give us a clear goal and a real tone setter, though. I mean, we were always going to be making waves, but this gives us a lot of options going forward on how.”

“You don’t seem worried. This seems a bit soon to be fighting local ability users in their own strongholds…”

Sung-Ah looked mildly concerned, but Jee-Han just waved it off, dismissive of the threat.

“Look at the numbers. We’re all severely over-leveled for this quest; that’s not enough for even 5% of a level up for you and it’s the freaking quest completion award. Still, if you don’t pay attention during the tutorial, you’ll suffer in the early game; this should be a good chance to get used to fighting capes.”

Sung-Ah nodded, fears assuaged. Shi-Yun surveyed the hideout with a frown. “’Secure a base of operations’…I would prefer to simply use Illusion Barriers rather than places like this for such a thing. We should check to see if they’re still available to us.”

Jee-Han nodded, raising one hand in the air. “I’ve got the most mana, so if any of us can do it, it’s me. ID Create!”

There was a familiar ripple in the air, followed by the unique texture of silence that came from being inside a realm where you were the only living things. Shi-Yun sighed in relief, but the relief died when she saw Jee-Han’s seriously peeved face.

“Half. My. Mana. Double our next highest person’s entire store. If any of you had tried it, it would have knocked you out at best, and then not even worked afterward.”

The other three blinked in surprise. Then Sun-Il snorted. “I guess that makes the reality-overlapping pocket dimensions your unique power then, huh? If we’re taking on pseudonyms, that would make you Dungeon Master.”

“Huh.” Jee-Han tilted his head, considering, then grinned like a kid in a candy store. “I love it!”

His smile was infectious, dispelling the worry in the group over having such limited access to such a valuable tool and setting off a discussion of hero names for the PWP (nobody, despite Jee-Han finding a Language setting when he found out they’d be going to America, had the context to be embarrassed by the acronym).

“I’m not an Int monster like some of us, so I’ll just use my old Phantom-rank name. Call me Cloud.”

“Well, if you’re taking a name so closely linked to Chunbumoon, I’ll take one representing Yuhonmoon. Hm…Soulburn! That’s perfect!”

“It’s a near-direct translation of ‘yuhon,’ is what it is…then again, it sounds cool, so it doesn’t really matter. How about you, Sung-Ah?”

“Hmm. I want something cute, to balance out your intimidating and cool names…but I also want something that reflects my powers. I worked hard for them.”

“Ah, how about a portmanteau? Like…Devilcat?”

Sung-Ah’s smile was wider than usual. “That would be amazing. Thank you, Jee-Han.”

Jee-Han’s heart sped up slightly, and he cleared his throat, aware of Shi-Yun’s narrowed eyes and glad he wasn’t detecting Bloodlust or Danger. “Well, that’s all of us. Dungeon Master, Cloud, Soulburn and Devilcat. Now, my mana’s up to 80%, so I’m going to drop the dungeon.”

Sun-Il sighed. “…that’s all you’ll be calling them from now on, isn’t it?”

Another smug smile. “ID Escape.”

The air cracked, and sound returned…and with it the panicked, angry shouts of a group of unwashed men armed with pipes, knives and the occasional gun, who had apparently been weighing and tabulating quite a lot of what looked like meth when four masked strangers (one of whom was unknowingly cosplaying as their boss) appeared from nowhere.

“Well. That’s a step skipped.”

Chapter Text

1.4 Trash Mobs

Jee-Han swept his eyes above the heads of the agitated, swearing, shouting group.

“Nobody above 17, some of them are…pretty sure that icon means ‘high as a kite.’ Who wants this one?”

A few of the smarter ones had done the math and were scrambling for the exit, but to their bad luck, Sun-Il raised his hand first.

“I need to get a sense of how fragile normal people are here, maybe shake off the rust; been a while since I fought humans.”

By this point even the slower ones had started to realize that ‘unconcerned about being surrounded by hostile gangbangers + in masks + appeared out of nowhere = capes that you are unprepared to fight,’ but it was too late.

Sun-Il was already moving, had already moved.

SLAM, went the chins of the five smart ones as they hit the cement floor and were sent to dreamland. SNAP, went the wrists of the seven that had their hands on their guns, and THUMP . “HORGHH!,” went the other dozen armed members from body blows that hit so close together it looked like an invisible tree branch had flung them all in the same direction, each hitting the ground on their backs, insensible from the pain.

Sun-Il hadn’t been lying when he’d said he was rusty. He hadn’t meant to break that one’s rib. Something for Kwon or Jee-Han to take care of after he was done. 

He stopped, suddenly visible to the one Merchant that remained on his feet, despite shaking knees and a visible stain on the inseam of his ratty jeans. Chunbumoon’s Heir turned to look at the young man, who was holding a baseball bat in white-knuckled hands. He walked over to him, as slowly as one might approach a strange dog, and calmly took the bat from his unresisting fingers.

“Sit down in the corner, please. We’re going to be dismantling your gang this afternoon, and you seem a bit young to be caught in the crossfire.”

The young man blinked twice, then fainted dead away. Sun-Il caught him before he hit the ground, laying him with care on the concrete floor.

“He’s definitely new. I broke the third one on the left’s rib; get that real quick while we canvas the place?”

Shi-Yun nodded, sober-faced. “I would be happy to undo your mistake, Phantom Cloud.”

Sun-Il winced, but shrugged it off; it was fair. “It was just supposed to be Cloud, I’m Ren rank now…eh, Phantom Cloud makes for a better super name, I guess. Thanks.”

Shi-Yun did not smirk. Her face remained as impassive as ever. But the way she carried herself, as she knelt down to heal the rib a Chunbumoon martial artist had unintentionally broken, communicated her smugness quite well.

It only heightened when it turned out that the man had been both conscious and hiding a gun (Sun-Il would later say in his defense, “you could have hidden a greyhound in pants that baggy, let alone a pistol!”) He held it to her head, wheezing out a demand that got about halfway into the first of several planned “bitches” in the split second it took a bolt of what looked like black smoke to slam into his forehead, actually knocking him out this time.

Shi-Yun nodded respectfully to Sung-Ah, gave another perfectly blank look to an increasingly annoyed ‘Phantom Cloud’ and placed her hands on the injured man to heal him of a broken rib and a concussion.

And, to her surprise, a curse. No, wait, it was just a weak ‘increased karma’ curse that made bad things more likely to happen if he did bad things; she could leave that where it was.

“You’ve really made this power your own, Devilcat,” said Soulburn approvingly, directing the energy of her soul as both the elder and the Gamer had shown her. “That should keep him out of trouble for a while after this is done.”

“Observe…hah! Nice one. Now, speaking of keeping this lot out of trouble, Gnome!”

A cute girl wearing a yellow dress, brown-haired and perhaps 14, appeared in an implosion of conjured stone and perked up, awaiting instructions.

“Take the drugs as deep underground as the summoning reaches, and bury these bozos up to their necks, okay?”

Nodding brightly, Gnome, Jee-Han’s oldest and most reliable summon, did just that. The concrete swallowed the meth without a visible trace, and then the Merchants but for their heads.

Jee-Han patted her on the head. “Good work, Gnome! Very smooth. Now, follow behind us and warn me if there’s anything coming from below.”

Smiling like an adorable diamond necklace, Gnome saluted as she sank into the ground.

“We should meet your summons, Dungeon Master. All of them.”

Devilcat was staring at where Gnome had vanished, a look of mild loss on her masked face. Dungeon Master rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, Sae-Yung had the same reaction. Shame we couldn’t bring her, she’d be having a ball.”

Sun-Il rejoined the group after checking the warehouse top to bottom. “Was she too weak or too strong? By the way, these containers are all full of random scrap and engine parts; could be useful for Crafting but nothing we need right now.”

“Duly noted. And she was just under the required level, 102. I wondered about that; she was higher level than you until recently. What happened there?”

Sun-Il shuddered. “Probably because I’ve been doubling down on training lately and she’s been…a bit distracted.”

Among his select group of faults, Jee-Han was an incorrigible gossip hound. “Oho, what by? Got a boyfriend?”

Sun-Il looked surprised for a second, then grinned. “Girlfriend. Shouldn’t have been surprised you didn’t notice, Class Rep is much better at being discreet than her.”

That revelation got Jee-Han’s jaw to drop and his higher brain functions to shut down for the full second it took Gamer’s Mind to calm him down and get him back on task.

“Going to be asking about that when we get back-ANYWAY. Map.”

DING!

For the map to be available, you must first exit the building and observe your surroundings. 

“Huh. Guess that makes sense. I already knew the basic area wherever I used the map before. Off we go, everyone.”

“…shouldn’t we call the police?”

Dungeon Master waved it off. “It’ll be better if we finish things up first. Don’t want them getting underfoot while we’re working. This shouldn’t take long enough for anyone to get more than uncomfortable, don’t worry.”

Devilcat nodded, fears assuaged. The PWP exited the warehouse.


Silence reigned.


Then, one of the Merchants came to.


“…the fuck?!”

Chapter Text

1.5 Unique Enemies

DING!

Quest Update!

Merchant Marina

Clear the Merchant gang out of the Brockton Bay Dockyard, making the city a marginally safer place to live and giving yourself a base of operations.

10/12 Merchant Strongholds taken

0/5 Merchant Capes defeated

“Hm.”

Jee-Han frowned up at the alert window, sitting on a workbench, surrounded by a field of bewildered and/or irate Merchants planted in the ground like cabbage. “Haven’t run into anyone with powers yet, and there’s only 2 more storehouses left. I would have preferred to fight the first one alone; we don’t know-damnit, why don’t I just ask? Why haven’t I been asking?”

Jee-Han put his face in his hands. “Over 400 Int and I still don’t think of this until now. Aaaand I’m talking to myself in public. Great.”

Sighing into his palms, he then looked down at the Merchant that looked the most likely to give him what he wanted, i.e., youngest and the most scared.

“Observe.”

Lv.12

Harold Marcus

Class: Henchman

Title: None

STR: 28

DEX: 27

VIT: 10 (20-50%)

INT: 17

WIS: 16

LUK: 5

Bio: A lifelong Brockton Bay native and year-long member of the Merchants gang, Harold fell in with this particular wrong crowd when his brother was hooked on meth and pressured him into joining. Considering their parents were killed by ??? ??? for not paying ??? protection money, he had nowhere else to go, and soon found himself struggling with his own drug habit. A classic case of a fundamentally decent person trapped in an unworkable situation.

Condition: Early Withdrawal (-50% VIT), Trapped, Terrified


Jee-Han sighed. Just one more problem to fix. Such is the Gamer’s life.

“Hey. You, in the knit cap.”

Harold jerked his head up, looking at Dungeon Master with what was trying so hard to be defiance, really, just heartbreaking, and said nothing.

“How would you like a steady, honest job after this? And/or some serious, no-strings medical help getting clean?”

‘Defiance’ became slackjawed shock.

“Can’t say everyone will get the same offer, have to be a bit careful about that, but you actually seem like a talented, hardworking young man who just fell in with the wrong crowd and made some mistakes.”

Jee-Han wasn’t lying; some (superhumanly) quick math told him that Harold had definitely done some serious, if irregular, work improving himself, and Jee-Han liked to help people and expected to need a lot of hands attached to actual human brains around in the near future.

Condition: Early Withdrawal (-50% VIT), Trapped, Cautiously Hopeful

Ah, it was working. Sometimes the direct approach didn’t, and there wasn’t a diplomacy skill…yet.

“W-what d-do you want?,” Harold stammered out, suspicious.

“Weeeell, if you feel like sharing an overview of what the capes in the gang we’re currently disassembling can do, that would be great! Anything would help.”

Harold swallowed. This guy, who was wearing his boss’s mask but clean and with mirrored lenses to hide his eyes, was a serious Shaker/Mover. He’d just popped up out of the ground and sunk everyone else into it in the space of less than a second, and Harold was seriously starting to suspect he also had a Thinker power because that…that was exactly what he’d been wanting to hear since he’d realized that, no, Skidmark didn’t give a flying fuck about him.

Davy was dead, from an overdose from trying to fit in with the Boss by doing as much meth as he was and underestimating the tolerance of a man who ran a gang while usually on enough crystal to start a jewelry store. Skidmark didn’t even notice until an hour later, and then he laughed.

His eyes hardened. He didn’t owe that fucker shit. 

“Boss is Skidmark, he’s a Shaker, got a mask like yours but bargain basement and teeth that’ll make you sick; he can make a field on a surface that’s like a conveyer belt, pushes whatever’s on or a bit over it from one end to the other. One is just, like, a strong wind, but he can stack them if you give him a chance and they get stronger pretty quick. Squealer, real skanky looking white chick, she’s a Tinker; she makes Mad Max shit, pimped-out murder wagons. Mush, he’s a literal pile of garbage, Changer, absorbs junk and crap to make himself bigger and stronger. Trainwreck, he’s like some kinda steampunk dwarf, just a guy in a junky battlesuit that hits like a dump truck. Whirligig, looks like the girl from the Ring, she can make shit spin in a circle around her really fast, maybe about three feet out? Didn’t have a fucking ruler.”

Condition: Early Withdrawal (-50% VIT), Trapped, Filled With Vengeful Rage

Jee-Han blinked, not that anyone could see. Where had that come from?

DING!

Through finding exactly the right person to say exactly the right thing to at exactly the right time, your LUK has increased by 1!

DING!

Through cunning action, a skill has been created!

Diplomacy Lv1 (40.2%)

The art of trading, negotiating and persuading. Scales with LUK and WIS. 

Well. Best to leave equine dentistry to the professionals.

“Huh. Thanks, that helps a lot. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go act on that information. See you after all this is done, okay?”

Surprisingly to the be-cabbaged Merchants, Dungeon Master used the door to leave like a normal person. When they were done thinking about that, they all glared at Harold, but some of them were clearly more impressed than angry.

“I wanted out, he offered me out. Eat me.”

More impressed glares, and Jerry looked like he wanted to laugh. Harold was counting today as a win.

Chapter Text

Contessa did not pause. Contessa did not hesitate. She never needed to. Hesitation was for people who didn’t know precisely, down to the most minute muscle movement, how to achieve their goals.  

She didn’t even flinch when the current path evaporated from her mind like morning dew. It was instantly replaced with a new one, after all, and horrible guilt about what she was about to do or a sudden deep uncertainty that she’d previously been doing the right thing was a small price to pay to avert the end of the world.

With no sign of the turmoil in her heart, no impediment from the questions left unanswered in her mind, Contessa said, “Door to Doctor Mother,” and stepped through the resulting hole in the air.

The first thing out of her mouth when she saw the woman who had been giving her a purpose for most of her life, who had always been there to ask the right questions when she was rudderless, was something she knew would destroy her.

“The path has changed. The experimentation needs to stop. You’re not the leader Cauldron needs because you lack the empathy needed to make the final few steps. I’m sorry. Door to Danny Hebert.”

Away she went, leaving Doctor Mother stunned, working through the implications of those uninflected words, and about ten minutes from suicide.

Apologizing was also part of the path. It gave her the bit of closure needed keep her sane enough to do the rest.

The next major step was to link up with the person who just came in from another world.

A person, with the complementary power to hers.

A person who knew what the goal should be.

A person with a strong moral compass and a power that gave him quests.

-----------------------------

Up in the thermosphere.

If the Simurgh could speak words out loud, she would have whispered softly:

“…the fuck?”

Chapter Text

2.1 Class Change

“So…there are four of you?”

Sung-Ah nodded. A pair of bewildered green eyes blinked behind glasses.

“And…you’re from a parallel world. Not Earth Aleph, but a different one. And…you just came here, and you want to improve things…in preparation for saving both our worlds and then some in from an event your Thinker leader-”

“-Dungeon Master.”

“-Dungeon Master, yes, said had a serious chance of permanently screwing up the multiverse, would take place here…and had no other details at all?”

“That power shows his goal, not how to get there.”

“Right.”

Danny Hebert, Head of Hiring for the Dockworker’s Association, looked at Devilcat, who was wearing what looked like a prep-school uniform, a lot of jewelry, and a mask straight out of an old Zorro movie, open at the back for long, ash-brown hair pulled into a ponytail. He’d kiss Skidmark if she was old enough to drink. He was a beanpole and he still must have weighed two of her. She was quiet, had explained the situation in terse, formal language, and overall seemed like an awkward, shy teenager dressed as a vigilante.

Then he looked at Whirligig and Mush, lying on the ground insensible, and ran how that had happened though his head.

-------------------

Three minutes previous.

Mush’s cobbled and congealed form loomed over Danny, Whirligig slowly spinning a fist-sized rock around her head at his side. Danny tried not to show his fear, briefly regretting not having a cell phone.

“Come on now, Herbert. This is the Bay, we all know how it works. You do business in our territory, you pay for our protection.”

“It’s Hebert. Mr. Hebert to you. And no. We’re a union, you’re a pack of thugs. Go to hell.”

That was surprising, not least of all to Danny himself. No one had expected him to instantly cave, but the vehemence and outright insult had come out of nowhere.

No. It had come from him. Danny Hebert just…he was done. He didn’t have the energy to care that they would hurt him, to care enough what that would do to his daughter. He was tired of a lot of things; working a dying dockyard, living without Anne, not being able to connect with Taylor, his own irrational fear of mobile phones. Right now, he was tired of the Merchants circling the crumbling docks like vultures and thinking they owned him because they had a few capes.

Fear was for people who gave a shit. Faced with Mush raising a scrap metal and plywood fist, seeing Whirligig spin up the debris and rope of the pier they had cornered him on, he found that he didn’t, even though he knew he should have.

That was when a ball of black smoke hit Mush in the arm he’d raised to hit him.

The arm…crumbled away, into sawdust and rust, leaving Mush’s natural arm exposed and comically small. Mush whirled, just in time to catch another smokeball to the chest. His entire piecemeal form was suddenly dust on the wind, and his natural, goblin-like, rapidly-shrinking body hit the wood slats of the pier back-first. He stared up at the sky, unable to process how he had been beaten so quickly.

Whirligig spun her body, peering out from behind her bangs and through her spinning shield of rope, wood, and metal hooks, trying to find the source of the smoke.

What she got instead was a tornado of the same stuff erupting around her, ignoring her defense entirely. When it calmed, vanished as swiftly as it had come, she was unconscious.

Mush came to his senses and leapt to his feet, lunging for the scraps of rope and detritus left around his fellow Merchant’s body, only to take yet another smokeball right between his shoulder blades, slamming him down to the dock and knocking him out.

Danny blinked, went over his previous thoughts, firmly decided to somehow find the money to get therapy, then looked up to see a girl in a mask floating down from the sky.

“I am Devilcat. Are you hurt?”

-------------

“Alright, alright. That’s…not the craziest thing I know of, I guess. Thanks for saving me.”

Damnit. He couldn’t put his heart into the gratitude, and from her frown she had noticed. He really needed that therapy, and the despair mounted as he ran through his family finances in his head trying to find how...

It was here that a woman dressed as a film noir detective stepped out of thin air, grabbed him by the shoulders, and said, “Door to Winslow High, first floor hallway.”

Then she shoved him, and he fell through the air, barely seeing Devilcat reflexively jump through after him. As his chin hit the linoleum floor of what he recognized as his daughter’s school, as he saw Devilcat’s shoes land next to his head and take a defensive stance, his mind focused on the oddest detail.

Did that woman just throw a rat in with them?

Then he noticed a feeble cry for help from one of the lockers.

Then he recognized his daughter’s voice, and smelled the rot, and saw the flies-

Destination.

Set.

Acti-ERRORERROR-

Override complete! Copying…editing…upgrade complete!

Activate!

The rat was enveloped in smoke, zooming though the air to the locker and ripping the hinges off with its rodent teeth.

As Taylor spilled out of the locker into her frantic father’s arms, barely conscious from dehydration and terror, as the janitor rounded the corner, took one look and immediately went to call an ambulance, Devilcat stood there awkwardly and noted that the rat had stopped smoking, but was still hovering.

Then it perched on top of Danny’s shoulder and made itself comfortable. Flies landed on its back, and Devilcat would later swear they made a heart shape.

Chapter Text

2.2 Wolfpack Boss

There were three ways to look at this.

Sun-Il would say, he was holding off three unfamiliar capes, one of which had a power that countered most close-ranged anything and who worked surprisingly well together, considering they clearly didn’t fight as a group that often.

Shi-Yun would say, if she ever found out, he had been caught off guard (note for later; capes thus far felt like anyone else of their health and build to ki sense) by the parahumans they were supposed to retreat from and fight together and was now on the back foot because they’d seen him move and were going all out right off the bat.

Skidmark would say, and was, in fact, currently saying, “Hold still, you shitsucking, cumspitting weaselfag!”

Which, well. Everyone has an opinion.

Sun-Il wasn’t that worried; the fight, or rather his semi-areal matadoring around what looked like a tank made out of a Hummer, half a scrapyard and truly frightening amounts of duct tape, and a bearded cyborg whose whiffed punch had put a hole in a warehouse’s outside wall, both of whom were far more prepared to exploit whatever kinetic manipulation Mr. Methmouth was doing to the ground rather than get tripped up, was nothing he couldn’t handle for the time it took someone on his team to notice he wasn’t talking anymore. It was a bit embarrassing to be forced into their rhythm like this, though. He was lucky Dungeon Master had at least gotten him a little warning over voicechat.

He’d just fly, but…well, none of his actual combat training involved having to split his concentration like that. He wasn’t Jee-Han. Until he had some serious experience fighting in the air he wasn’t going to risk takeoff under three-way attack. 

Still. He had a good double handful of enhancment techniques, from Chunbumoon standards, to minor spells his best friend had taught him, to his own little variation on both; so many hours training them for things just like this.

“Piss-snorting assbaby! I’m gonna shit down your fucking ear! Fucking catch this spunk-faced cockjerk!”

…physically just like this. It really wasn’t the best way for the first day of communicating mainly in English to go, meeting a man with such a creatively toxic vocabulary.

Still. There was an easy way to take back the pace of the fight. It would hurt, a bit, but nothing he couldn’t handle even without that damn Yuhonmoon/cheaty Gamer healing spell. 

It was the work of a breath to bring up the Outer Ki Technique, a gesture to call up a combined buff that Jee-Han had engineered to be a bargain version of all his favorite standbys at once, and a thought to blend the two seamlessly in his skin, enhancing and concealing both. The overall effect was, he had just gotten about four times as…everything, and there was no telltale green glow to hint at that to his foul-mouthed foe and his dancing monkeys.

He’d pay later, in muscle soreness and, if he got unlucky and this took a bit too long, mana exhaustion; pretty awful for anyone not named Han Jee-Han (so of course he was one of the least likely people in the world for it to happen to, the cheating dick), but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was resolving this-

-he was a blur on the ground, zigzagging around in the weaker sections of the moving fields, his sword slashing both left-side tires to shreds and an open hand blow to the hood flipping the tank on its side, then a quick side kick to flip it fully on its back as it skidded to a stop far down the street-

-before Kwon Shi-Yun-

-a single mace blow crushed Trainwreck’s iron left knee, the follow-up spearhaft to the solar plexus put him flat on his back, and the finishing double-footed stomp crushed his right elbow and made sure he couldn’t maneuver his metal bulk enough to get back on his feet-

-had the chance-

-his shield was in front to deflect the rusty nails the frantic Skidmark was flinging downfield at him at speeds high enough he didn’t like the idea of them hitting home (bad habit to get into, assuming you can just tank things), and his free hand finally hot a hold on him and then he was on the ground in a submission hold-

-to not smirk at him again!

Phantom Cloud huffed in relief, then released his buff, side-eying his unobtrusive HUD that had taken ten minutes of fiddling to get just right.

Half his ‘mana,’ for him some abstraction of his stamina and available mystic juice that scaled with VIT and INT, for about 10 seconds in that state. Not very efficient. He could feel it; 257 VIT wasn’t good enough to use that to its full potential. Still. Nothing practice wouldn’t solve.

Skidmark, squirming beneath him, was just howling one long stream of profanity. Phantom Cloud tuned him out and opened voicechat again.

“I got three of them, including the boss. Sitting on this prick until you guys get here. Phantom Cloud out.”

By some spectacular fortune, Skidmark’s tirade came through with a coherent, perfectly timed “BITCH!”

It was enough to bring a tear to your eye, really. He could have been a great hype man, but nooo, he had to be an actual gangster. And not even the classy kind.

Sun-Il blinked behind his mask. Side effect number two of As-Of-Yet-Unamed-Self-Buff; slight ramble to the thoughts.

Chapter Text

2.3 Re-Spec

“So, Mr. Marcus. We’re new at this. Where do we go from here?”

Harold, technically free but surrounded by capes (the green one and the red one were either eyefucking or about to punch each other, he couldn’t tell, but he’d seen Greeny move) looked at Dungeon Master in shock. One blue half mask was staring down at another, half-listening to a steady stream of-

“-taintbiting Ziz-fucking jizzgargler! I’ll fuck you in the eye with Leviathan’s salty dick! I’ll-“

-evocative language coming from underneath it, lip curled as he appeared to read something only he could see.

“…you’re…you’re new. You’re new, and you took out an entire cape gang in an hour.”

“63.48 minutes. And, well, new to heroics, not to fighting.”

Harold stiffened. Former villains? Not former villains with some kind of game running? No…no, vigilantes trying to go legit made more sense. Hell, a villain would probably know how this went a lot better someone who left a body instead of a-

“-SO FAR UP BEHEMOTH’S COCKHOLE YOU’LL STRIKE OIL AND DROWN, THEN I’LL SELL THE OIL TO-“         

-live villain that needed processing. Whatever change of heart that lead to this, Harold wasn’t going to dig too deep. He was out, one way or another, and he owed these guys for that.

“Well, you gotta call the PRT, report that you’re a new hero and that you got…all of the Merchants. Should have been a burner or two in the stuff you grabbed, and I know the number.”

Dungeon Master nodded, then tilted his head in thought, even as a hole opened in the ground and a cheap cellphone popped into the air. He caught it, then handed it to Harold.

“Mind dialing? Don’t call yet, I want to try something.”

Harold watched, apprehensive, as DM approached Skidmark’s swearing head, muttered something under his breath, then pulled a pair of thick dishwashing gloves and an oven mitt out of literal goddamn nowhere, covered his right hand with first one then the other -

“-TILL NOT EVEN PANACEA COULD EVER GET IT TO PUCKER AGAwhaagaURF!?-”

-and shoved his covered hand into Skidmark’s mouth, right after the ground had lifted him up to eye level while keeping him entombed.

“You know…you’d have a fine mind if you hadn’t burnt it away for cheap thrills. You don’t deserve this, but I do need to see if I can cure addictions going forward, so…better a guinea pig I don’t care about disappointing.”

He reached into thin air again and pulled out some kind of purple crystal the size of a lemon with his free hand.

“Are you sure about this?”

Green and Red were paying attention now, and they looked like maybe they didn’t approve.

“Worst case scenarios, it either doesn’t work, or it does work and he comes after us with about three times as much intelligence and in much better shape. We could still handle that. I’m not worried.”

Red sighed, as Green nodded slowly. He was actually doing this.

The fuck?

“[Yu-Hon Soul Recovery!]”

…and he was shouting a thing in…what was that, Korean?

The crystal vanished in a burst of light, and Skidmark glowed blue for a second.

Then he slumped, knocked out.

“…huh. Never done that before. [Observe.]”

DM did that thing where he looked like he was reading something again, then grinned like a doofus.

“It worked! Healed the damage, no more physical dependence. He’s just…processing; he was so used to all those dead or crippled bits of his brain that he needs some time to get his head in order.”

Harold’s mouth was dry. He tried to swallow. When DM hand said, ‘medical help,’ he’d thought, like, addiction counseling or something, and he’d been pathetically grateful for that. This was fucking nuts.

…right, he still had to call the PRT. He dialed, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.

Panacea didn’t even do brains! Who had he signed on with?!

Chapter Text

2.4 Conversation Systems

Condition: Advanced Kidney Damage (-60% VIT, -20% STR and DEX), Crippled Legs (-10% DEX, -80% movement speed), Chronic Annoyance.

“Are you sure you don’t want-“

“Explain to me the exact, biological process by which the healing occurs and convince me that won’t have long-term negative consequences. With actual, visible proof.”

That’s an impossible standard, Dungeon Master didn’t say. Her profile made it pretty clear that that was intentional, and it was basically her job to be the mundane center of a lot of superhuman egos; maybe a bit of contempt wasn’t a bad thing.

“…okay then, I guess you have to be extra careful about such things. Should I have waited to heal Skidmark?”

Piggot shrugged.

“Technically, but that could be the textbook case for why the PRT needs discretion in enforcement. You’re a hero, he’s a villain, you just took care of a lingering stink in the city in the time it takes to watch a cop drama; I’m not planning on making a big deal out of it, but you should get whatever you used verified with a healer we trust ASAP.”

…you have a healer ‘we’ trust, but demand more precautions than can be given to heal you, Dungeon Master didn’t say. A lot of contempt probably wasn’t a good thing. Jee-Han idly swiped away a quest popup entitled Forgiveness > Permission, after seeing it had no time limit and tapping Y.

Had to wait for an opportunity on that one. Right now, he was here to establish the proper whos, whats and whys, learn the official procedure and save the whole party a lot of future headaches by working with the local power rather than around it. And, perhaps, to find out why the armored hero flanking the Director, well….

Lv.50

????? ??????/Armsmaster

Class: The Efficiency and Miniaturization Tinker 

Title: Protectorate Veteran 

STR: 100 (50+50)

DEX: 100 (50+50)

VIT: 40 (50-20%)

INT: 180 

WIS: 8 (10-20%)

LUK: 4 (5-20%)

Bio: The head of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, Armsmaster is a veteran hero with a distinct image, one of the poster-boys for the larger Protectorate organization. His power centers around making technology that is naturally efficient and small as well as altering and adapting existing technology, especially from other Tinkers, to be more streamlined and multipurpose. He has applied this design philosophy to his entire life, resulting in a wide set of useful skills but also in an utter lack of interpersonal ability, an obsession with being both concretely and abstractly “better,” and just plain overwork. Experience, fairness, and personal prowess as a crime-fighter aside, he’s painfully unsuited for a leadership role, and uncomfortably aware of his shortcomings, even as he makes either technology to get around them or excuses not to reveal them. Still, he’s objectively a very effective hero, and his (only) close relationship with ?????? is good for both of them.

Condition: Workaholic (-20% VIT, WIS, LUK), Conflict Seeker, Highly Interested. 

Aspect: Extradimensional, Technological.

…he had a few important questions.

Chapter Text

2.5  Elements of Design

Armsmaster’s eyes, hidden behind his visor, were glued to the young masked man seated in front of the Director’s desk. He was writing the first page of Dungeon Master’s dossier in his head:

5’7”, athletic build. 18-25; most common age indicators hidden under mask, but no signs of aging (or hand-to-hand combat training) on exposed hands. No visible scars or marks. Very slight accent, most likely Korean. Seems focused, observant and intelligent, if somewhat impulsive; is not only willingly cooperating with the PRT, but insisted that we be informed of both his capabilities and of the exact reason he and his team (currently known as the Parallel World Protectors) have traveled to this Earth.

And wasn’t that fascinating? A non-Aleph world, divorced far further from their own, where, as the test Dungeon Master had willingly undergone (showing something very much like but unmistakably not a Corona Polentia) showed, powers worked very differently. Armsmaster could almost feel his tongue itching with questions, but right now he had to be patient and loom.

Dungeon Master began to speak.

“Right. So, the power I took the name from is creating pocket dimensions that overlap with the real world. Everything’s the same in the radius, which can be anywhere from a block to about half a city, except it’s just me and whoever I decide to let in; nothing else alive, no contact in or out. They can be collapsed without consequence, and travel within is conserved; you don’t wind up where you were when I made it if you move while you’re in it.”

TRUTH.

That had…serious applications. It could, just as the most obvious use, reduce the possibility of civilian casualties in any (note: remember to tell him about the Endbringers) parahuman conflict to near-zero. It meant risking not being able to get backup, but there were situations where that was acceptable-

“-But that’s not the core of my powers. Heck, everybody with a scrap of power could do that back home.”

TRUTH.

Armsmaster, were he not already still, would have frozen. He saw that Piggot had very subtly tightened her grip on her pen.

“I’m just the only one who can pull it off here on Bet. Physics quirk, probably.”

PARTIAL LIE.

Armsmaster was glad of the nuance he’d programed into his lie detector.

Has a much better idea of what makes him able to make these pocket dimensions where his team can’t. Physics part of it, not the whole story.

“No,” he continued, “the actual core of my powers is…hang on, do you have MMORPGs here on Bet? I’ve noticed the tech is a bit different…”

Armsmaster blinked. There was clearly a connection, but he wasn’t seeing it. It took him a second longer than “awkward silence” to realize Piggot hadn’t understood the acronym; for once he felt grateful to regularly converse with the Wards.

“We have a few. Aleph imported, mostly; native video game development was set back a lot when Kyushu sunk and Nintendo with it.”

That was clearly the first he’d heard of that; he gave every indication of horror-

-then, very abruptly, calmed down.

Hm.

“Tabling that for now…but my power...I’m pretty sure I’d be a Breaker/Trump; I live my life as if I were a character in a very freeform multiplayer role-playing game, with all the attending benefits and drawbacks.”

TRUTH.

The silence was almost a physical object.

Dungeon Master sighed.

“I know. Sounds silly. But think about what games have to be, at the most fundamental level, to be good games.”

Piggot realized the implication an instant before Armsmater, and both of them breathed in sharply.

“Fun…”

Dungeon Master nodded. “Every effort, rewarded with at least more information. Every action within the rules, possible with enough time, skill and effort. Otherwise, it’s no fun.”

He elaborated. “I have a user interface, that only I and those I let can see. I have a set of numerical stats outlining my fundamental capabilities, how strong, fast, smart, even lucky I am compared to anyone else. And I have Skills, gained through repeated, strenuous, specific actions, that make me better at things or qualify as outright superhuman.”

TRUTH.

Armsmaster did not grit his teeth. He wanted to, but he refused to let his envy (another Dauntless!) show.

“A full list of my Skills would take all day; I’ll send a comprehensive list later, but the ones I find myself using most often are Gamer’s Body, Gamer’s Mind, Observe, I.D. Create, Craft, Flight, Summon Elemental, Bind, and Infinite Spinning Magic Arrow. Should I go over them now, or wait for the full list?”

Piggot stared for two breaths, eyes narrowed.

“Normally, capes not planning on joining the Protectorate don’t feel the need to outline their powers in detail. Why the full disclosure?”

 “Because I need you to trust me. And the most efficient way of doing that is to trust you first.”

TRUTH.

That was…understandable. Commendable, even, but highly unusual. 

“There are just too many stories about the bad guys getting away with things that happened because the good guys didn’t communicate, didn’t trust each other with vital intel or aid and wound up at cross-purposes. I’m heading that off ASAP; neither of us can afford to get bogged down second-guessing each other.”

TRUTH.

Armsmaster felt his blood run cold, envy buried under ice.

They came here for a reason.

Dungeon Master shook his head. “One of the fundamental aspects of my power is Quests. I guess it qualifies as a Thinker power, but it’s totally out of my control; goals will pop up for me, quantifications of what I need to get done with little to no indication of how.”

TRUTH.

And annoyance. Definitely a recurring issue.

“I got a quest entitled ‘Crisis on Parallel Earths.’ The goal was, ‘end the threat to multiverse stability found in Earth Bet’. Reward: an amount of XP, the measure of my baseline power gained from risking my life and defeating challenges, that would require scientific notation to fit on standard paper. Failure penalty: destruction of all habitable instances of the planet Earth.”

TRUTH.

A pin would have echoed. Armsmaster hoped to God Dungeon Master couldn’t read minds, because he could barely stand to be in the brain that that had first thought, ‘well at least he has to work for it.;

Note: Consider therapy, if time can be found.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

3.1 Level Cap

With as high as Jee-Han’s INT score was at this point, math held no surprises. It could, however, still disappoint him.

“So, in summary…you can’t fight powerful capes directly because you might get too powerful, and thus lose your allies?”

Director Piggot was clearly having a hard time understanding…no, not understanding, accepting this limitation. She was going to have to.

“Can’t take the risk. My power has a bad habit of springing things on me that seem intuitive after the fact. Almost killed me once, that was fun…in hindsight.”

Dungeon Master couldn’t actually see Armsmaster raise one eyebrow, but the impression came through. He elaborated; he could tell that would come up eventually, might as well explain now.

“Part of my power involves…it’s fastest to say ‘magic,’ but you guy’s have studied powers in greater detail and wider scale, so call it what you want.”

Hadn’t that been fun, finding out he had a super brain tumor. He was looking into the published lit on the subject ASAP.

“The upshot is, I focused my training and power hard into that aspect of it, mostly because it got quick, effective results and physical abilities are easier to just train up without my power helping much. Then my ‘magic’ power got too strong without my bodily integrity rising to levels that could handle it. Started cooking myself from the inside before a round of frantic grinding and some serious workarounds got my body up to snuff; still haven’t made back the hit point loss.”

The Director was the one to raise her eyebrow on ‘grinding,’ look into that later.

“So your power will alert you to mistakes…after you’ve made them and suffered the consequences?”

Jee-Han sighed. “Pretty much. Like I said, I could have figured it out beforehand, and I’m not willing to bet on that not being what I just did. Until my teammates level up, I don’t, which means it’s mooks or nothing for me.”

The Director’s frown deepened slightly, but she nodded. “I assume sensible caveats apply.”

Like he was going to let anyone die over that! Dungeon Master just nodded.

“Good. So, on to other business, the incident with Devilcat at Winslow High.”

Jee-Han grimaced. That was a can of worms nobody had seen coming…is what he would say if it wasn’t clearly engineered by a third party. There had been no luck catching Doorwoman, to no-one’s surprise; long-range teleportation was still something that made Jee-Han’s greedy gamer palms itch.

“She’s been keeping me posted. Apparently, Taylor is going to be fine…eventually, but neither Hebert wants anything to do with the Protectorate and won’t say why.”

It was Piggot’s turn to grimace, while Armsmaster’s grip tightened slightly. There were three tense heartbeats while the unspoken question hung in the air, then the Director sighed and bit the bullet.

“One of the Wards put her in that locker, and then, upon somehow finding out she’d triggered, had to see it for herself and wound up running afoul of Mr. Hebert and letting that fact slip. Shadow Stalker has officially violated her probation and will be sent to juvenile hall until she is a legal adult.”

Dungeon Master sighed. It was a thorny situation, to be sure; the Hebert’s were a pair of freshly-triggered, out-to-the-PRT capes, and while their powers weren’t known in great detail, they were definitely scary Masters. It wasn’t totally the PRT/Protectorate’s fault that Shadow Stalker turned out to be a violent maniac, but it was enough their fault that Jee-Han was on the Hebert’s side here; there was simply no way they would trust the organization that should have prevented this, and no reasonable way of asking them to. Still, left to their own devices, there were no good options; either they would get snapped up by a gang, killed to prevent that from happening, or just self-destruct in a matter of months with no support structure that could handle what they needed.

…time to push and see what gave way.

“…I have an idea. I don’t actually need your permission for this, but I’d like it.”

Piggot’s eyes narrowed. Yeah, she’d figured it out.