Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

Getting back to Valen was shockingly easy. We had the money to just hire an air shuttle back at this point, not to mention our positions as the winners of the freshman treasure hunt had everyone hoping to get in good with us. We avoided using the Unity's in house shuttles, and as such avoided Midknight and Annie. There were a lot of options, but in the end we got a ride from Callie's uncle, who decided to come back for a visit once he heard we were going and offered us use of his personal air shuttle for the trip.

I expected Callie to shut that down fast, but apparently their calls had been going well, because she seemed fine with it, and was even excited to have him along. And she was in a good mood for the whole day until we finally met up with Alexander at his air shuttle. As we arrived at the landing site, I was forced to stop and stare at the conveyance we were going to be using to get back home. "Okay." I said, pointing at the thing. "Why the hell is that thing so...that." Words failed me as I gestured at the air shuttle dismissively.

Alexander, who was out of costume like the rest of us, just snickered. "Well, I have something of a reputation to maintain after all. Besides, it's not THAT bad." He cast a contemplative gaze to the air shuttle, which in defense wasn't BAD, so much as just...a lot. The whole thing was made of pitch black metal, and despite being a similar shape to the last one that was where the similarities ended.

The black metal was jagged and dramatic looking, and scrolled through with traceries of gold the made the dramatic design choices all the more striking. The inside was plush and lined with red velvet and it had dark, thick, red curtains blocking off the empty spaces on the sides, also velvet, with gold pull ropes that made it obvious how those would be opened and closed. It was basically the most over the top thing I'd ever seen in my life, and that was a pretty big list considering all the places I'd been as an Ascendant.

Callie snickered. "Sorry Uncle Alex. It's just kind of much. But it's fine, we know that your people are more likely to get something like this for you to use. We just appreciate not having to spend chits to get back. We have cash on hand, but trips like this are damn expensive and it's better to save the money when we can." She looked him over with amusement. "So, you seem a bit dressed up for a trip back home. Looking forward to seeing anyone special?"

Alexander cleared his throat. "Not at all, it's just been years since I've seen Amelia. I don't want her to think I've become some kind of layabout." Callie and I did our best not to snicker at the obvious crush he had on her mother. I wasn't sure exactly how that would work out given his identical features to her cheating ex-husband, but she'd known them both for years so maybe it wouldn't be a problem for her.

We turned to see the others approaching to climb inside. Benny, Jessie, Zeke, Cark, Cass, and Celine, and six wolves. We'd brought Cark and his sister along because Callie had mentioned the little girl to her mother who apparently insisted. I'd have been down to invite them either way. Cark was a great guy and Cass was a blast to have around. Plus having the kid around was a breath of fresh air. Kept us all a little more human.

Celine waved slightly, seemingly shy about riding home with all of us, or just being her normal taciturn self. Benny looked over the moon she'd agreed to come with. He put an arm over her shoulder. "Hey guys, hope we aren't late. Had to grab some things. So what kind of time are we looking at for travel here? I remember it was crazy fast last time. Like two hours or so. Will this one be as fast?" He sounded excited for the trip, which I got. It had been pretty intense last time. I wondered if the drapes would make it better or worse?

We all climbed in, and as usual the space inside wasn't cramped at all. This thing was swanky, it had all the same spatial expansions as the elevator compartments in the WCP, even better ones than most of the cars we'd been in. We all took seats on the plush black sofas. Alexander gave an expansive gesture. "Sit wherever you like. Anyone who wants to can open the curtains, there are barriers to prevent windburn and stop falling, but honestly past the first ride watching countryside blur past too quickly to see gets pretty old."

I slumped into the comfortable couch and smiled at Alexander, who'd chosen to sit nearby. Callie had gone to talk with Jessie, so it was just us. He cleared his throat again, lowering his voice before speaking. "Shane. I'd like to thank you. Calliope mentioned you were the one who suggested she give me a call. Getting to know her has been...nice. I never got to spend time with her as a girl, my relationship with my brother being what it was. I never thought I would have the chance to spend time with her like this." We both knew that lowering his voice did nothing, but all of our Focus was decent enough that we could avoid just constantly hearing everything with supernatural levels of fidelity.

"It's fine." I assured him, my smile turning wry. "If it makes you feel better, you don't owe me anything for it. I did it for Callie. I was pretty sure she would regret not getting to know you just because of her dad. She hates letting him control her, and that's what it would have been. She deserved to make her own choice, and you deserved a chance to prove your intentions. Seems like it worked out well for everyone. I should be thanking you for training her. She's mentioned you've been giving her some exercises to do and they've been helping her polish her shadow combat skills."

He just shook his head. "That isn't training. Just offering advice. It's quite literally the least I could do. She's been improving rapidly from what I saw when I arrived though. You both have. I'd heard some rumors floating around E-district about you, but I hadn't believed them. It seems they were accurate after all. Still, it's not just stat gain. You both walk like completely different people. You must be working hard."

Gesturing over at Callie, who saw me and raised an eyebrow, I smiled. "She's the one whose been working the hardest. I've just been trying to keep up. She's absolutely brilliant in battle. Her instincts are fantastic, and she seems to be able to pick up when I'm in trouble like a sixth sense." We'd been doing so much work, it was nice to finally have a chance to brag a bit, even if I wasn't bragging about me. Callie and her uncle were still getting acquainted, it would nice for me to talk her up a bit, and I really was insanely proud of her.

She, as it turned out, felt the same way. "Oh none of that." I heard her say as she stepped up behind me. She fell sideways over the couch arm, flopping over into my lap without any sort of warning or hesitation. I grinned at her and kissed the top of her head as she told her uncle. "He's being modest. Like...to a stupid degree. We've both improved a ton, but he started literal years after I did. Stat wise we're about even, and in terms of combat skill I'm probably a bit ahead because of my Skills and build, but that is pretty fucking amazing on its own."

I just shrugged. "It's not the same." I was kind of cheating. Sure, Callie was getting her stats boosted, but she had made as much progress as I did, and I'd been using the overlay during training for the last few weeks. She hadn't managed to get DS Mastery past Minor. That wasn't a shock really, it was a unique Skill no one else had ever managed to get that I knew of. She could have wished for it, but decided against it, saying she already had too much to work on, and had another Skill to synergize next rank already anyway.

She just rolled her eyes. "I appreciate the hype, but I'm not going to let you pretend you're not turning into a total beast yourself." She paused, shouting over to Rellia. "No offense Rel." The wolf just ignored her, which I took to be a dismissal. "Anyway, your combat senses have been growing dramatically. I almost never worried about getting hit anymore." I tried to protest but she leaned up to kiss me to shut me up. "Ok, that's enough, my uncle doesn't need to hear us argue about which one of us is a better fighter." She cut her eyes at him mischievously. "He needs to tell me more about that bottle of wine I noticed stashed in one of the cupboards with a bow on it."

That drew a loud sigh from Alexander. "Damn. I thought it was hidden well enough not to draw attention. It's nothing. Just a hostess gift. It's good manners to bring a bottle of wine when someone allows you into their home." He showed absolutely no sign of distress or discomfort when saying that, which would have been much more impressive if I didn't know how absolutely monstrous his Perception had to be. He could have been openly weeping on the inside and not shown even a hint of it as far as we could tell.

Callie looked dubious, but let it go in the end. She didn't want to make him uncomfortable, even if I imagined she was kind of protective about her mother. Alexander seemed to have made a good impression on his niece. The guy was just so damned polite and formal though. Callie and I weren't formal people, so we tried our hardest to get him to loosen up as we talked, to little success. Still, it was a nice way to kill the time, enjoying the conversation as we sped through the air. Occasionally one of the others would come over to chat, but they mostly kept to themselves, with Cass excitedly watching the passing countryside as we flew once Cark was reassured about the barriers being secure.

In what felt like no time at all we began our final approach. Everyone stood up to watch the descent, pushing aside the curtains as we slowed down to land on the roof of the guild building. I felt lighter than I had in months as we landed, and I saw Stella, Ian, Lindsey, and to my surprise, Maria, all waiting for us on the rooftop. Once we had stopped and the barriers dropped I grinned and bolted out of the shuttle. I headed for Maria first, scooping up my annoying surrogate sister in a huge hug and spinning her in a circle.

She squeaked in outrage. "Shane, you beast! Put me down! Did you get taller somehow? This is ridiculous, why are you and Benny so damn big. I demand you stop growing and possibly drop an inch or two." Her voice was rough with happiness as I put her down, only for her to get snatched up and put through the same thing by Benny as she groaned in annoyance and gave him a similar speech. In the old days I might have been annoyed, but this time I wasn't upset at all. I was finally home, and that was all that mattered. It was good to be back.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Benny headed home to see his parents, taking Celine with him, and made plans to meet up with the rest of us later while we all headed into Valen proper. We were all staying with Callie's mom during thew visit, and I was a bit worried she wouldn't have the space for us until Callie reassured me that her mom had gotten the house in the divorce when her dad left town, and the place was absurdly big compared to most single family homes. Amelia apparently lived alone at the moment, though she had several dogs.

Arriving at the house, I had to admit that I saw what Callie meant about the absurdity. Callie's mom didn't live in a mansion, she lived in a fucking compound. It was extremely pretty, but also very defensible. Despite being huge in terms of surface area, all the buildings were single story. The house was laid out in an interesting style I hadn't seen before. Short, reddish brown walls made of sandy stone were topped with sloped rooftops of terracotta tiles and lined with pretty stained glass windows that were tall and thin enough that they wouldn't provide an entrance even if broken.

Ivy grew along the walls, especially near the tops, and I could see roses blooming within the climbing vines, so subtly entwined they looked like they were the same plant unless you paid attention. The mosaic tiled courtyard at the entrance had a single large clay fountain inset with opals that shimmered in the sunlight, the light playing over the clear water as it poured forth from the spouts. It was pretty much the homiest and most welcoming fortress I had ever seen in my life.

I turned to Callie, my jaw dropping. "You grew up HERE?" Despite being a potential heir to a universal syndicate I hadn't really had access to much more than a comfortable level of wealth as a kid. Benny's family was incredibly well off however, and even he would have been a bit blown away by this place. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me after all I had seen, but Callie's mom was a mortal. Her scale for wealth should be closer to Benny's than ours. I mean, we could have a house like this built with our current funds, but we were REALLY rich for G-rankers after the ransoms.

She shrugged. "My father had it built for her when they got married. I think he wanted to make sure she stayed out of his hair. She adores this place. Spends almost all her time cleaning and maintaining it. There's a built in greenhouse in the center that acts as a sort of courtyard where she keeps her garden. It's a pretty place, I admit, but I have mixed feelings about it. I'd be fine if she just moved, but she has a lot of good memories of me growing up here and she's attached." Her voice lowered as she looked away. "She got a bit clingy with my childhood stuff when I ran away. That's on me so I can't really complain about it."

I could hear the shame and discomfort in her voice when she said that, but it was subtle enough that even with my Perception I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't known her so well. Her expression melted into one of joy however, as she glanced over at the gate, which I saw was now opening to reveal a gorgeous dark haired woman with bright blue eyes that were same shade as Callie's. The woman, presumably Amelia, looked about thirty as opposed to the early forties I expected from someone with a daughter who was nearly twenty.

"Baby girl!" She squealed happily, her arms flung wide for her daughter, who bolted across the courtyard and threw herself at Amelia, wrapping her up in a tight hug. Amelia was taller than Callie, which wasn't hard, especially since Cal had traded me an inch of height and gone down to four foot ten. "Look at you. You look wonderful." She pushed her back, gripping her shoulders as she raked her eyes over her daughter critically. "A bit smaller though. Did you lose weight..." She paused. "Or height somehow?" She shook off the thought after a moment. "Not important, how was the trip?"

Callie smiled at her mother, and the expression was beautiful for how relaxed and joyful it was. "It was fine mom. Uncle Alex gave us a lift. He came with us for the visit actually." She raised an eyebrow. "Speaking of Uncle Alex, we should have a talk later about keeping important information from your daughter. I can't believe you never told me I had an Uncle on dad's side of the family. Any other secrets you're keeping?"

Most people would have wilted under Callie's glare, my girlfriend had a formidable presence, but Amelia just raised a nearly identical eyebrow at her daughter. "Darling, I was married to a Unity Guild Master for over a decade. I know more secrets than you can imagine. As for Alexander...we hadn't spoken to him in a long time. I suspected he wanted to distance himself from Paul and I, and I respected that." She shifted her gaze over to where the man himself stood. "Though it appears his desire for distance has eroded with time. How have you been Alex?"

Alexander looked...flustered. Which was fucking weird to think about an E-ranker. "I've been well Amy. You look good. Haven't aged a day since I last saw you." There was some weird subtext in that statement that I couldn't and didn't really want to parse, but Amelia blushed slightly when he said it. Callie gave the two of them a suspicious look, and Alexander changed the subject quickly, striding across the courtyard to present the wine. "I brought this by the way. Claren Fal 4683. I know it's your favorite. A gift for my generous hostess." He smiled warmly, offering her the bottle with both hands, one around the base and one cradling the neck.

She gave him a wry smile, along with that same raised eyebrow that looked so much like Callie it was almost eerie. "Yes." She said dryly as she took the gift. "This one bottle of wine is definitely enough to make up for your nearly two decades of avoiding me. I'm glad you're treating your actions with the gravity that they deserve." Her voice was as icy and poisonous as a cyanide popsicle, and just as sweet. Alexander paled slightly under her glare.

For a second it looked like she would glare him into a puddle, but then, as suddenly as it came, the icy rage melted into a sunny smile as she turned to me. "Now then, this must be the boy my daughter can't stop gushing about." She completely ignored Callie's mortified 'Mom!' in the background as she took my arm and dragged me toward the entrance to the house. "I want to hear all about your relationship. Dates, social outings, embarrassing stories I may have missed while she was away, spare no details. I assure you, I have plenty of stories to trade."

Callie's expression was no longer a raised eyebrow, her face had taken on the same petrified expression Alexander was wearing as I looked back at her, shrugging as her mother dragged me away. Amelia was pretty scary for a mortal, I was lucky she seemed to like me. As she dragged me inside I did my due diligence as a guest. "You have a lovely home by the way ma'am."

She patted me on the arm with amusement. "Yes dear, I know, I designed it. But thank you for the kind words. And please, call me Amy, I insist. My daughter has mentioned how close you two are, and how far out of your way you go to take care of her." She smirked at me. "She's also mentioned that you're a better cook than I am, which I hope I'll get to see for myself while you're here. Not tonight of course, you've only just arrived so I'll be preparing dinner this evening."

I chuckled at that. Something about Amy put me at ease. Probably the similarity to my girlfriend. Her mannerisms were all extremely close to her daughter's, and I could see how big of an impact she had on raising Callie. It shouldn't have been a surprise. I somehow doubted Midknight had been a hands on parent even before he left, so she must have been basically raising Callie on her own.

Smiling down at her, I gave a nod. "I'd be happy to cook for you sometime. As for taking care of her...well, I'd be dead a hundred times over without Callie. It would be more accurate to say I returned the favor. She means the world to me. She also THINKS the world of you. She was really nervous about us meeting, though also really excited. I can see why. She's a lot like you, you two must be close for her to have picked up so many of your mannerisms."

That got a smile. "Good catch. Yes, we have a close relationship. We've always had a very special bond. Well except..." She trailed off, her smile growing brittle for a moment. "Anyway, yes, we're very close. I'm glad to see you're so invested in her feelings on the matter. Most boys your age would have just assumed this was a meet the parents thing and put in a token effort. Or been too nervous to talk properly. It's good to see you're made of sterner stuff than that." She gave me a smirk and poked my side. "Quite a bit of it by the looks of things. What do they feed you kids these days?"

There was no logical reason for me to blush, but I did anyway, which got a giggle from Amelia. She dragged me through the house, showing me various rooms and hallways, commenting on the places Callie had liked to spend time as a kid, and the others caught up with us, following along. She showed me the greenhouse, which was gorgeous, and Jessie excitedly began asking her questions about nitrate levels in her fertilizers or some other gardening shit (no pun intended) that I zoned out.

Jessie loved plants and gardening, but she spent all her time with Ascendants now, and they tended to go more for the super than the natural aspect of supernatural plant growth. It was easy to forget my blonde teammate had grown up working with flowers before she ever got her ability. As soon as Amelia got distracted with Jessie, Callie swooped in and dragged me away, effectively putting herself between her mother and I to prevent any embarrassing stories from being told. Like she could physically stop me from hearing her dirty laundry by standing in front of me. It was unspeakably cute.

After a few hours, in which we were shown our rooms (mine was the guest room right next to Callie's childhood bedroom where she was staying, and Amelia's wink when she mentioned that made my girlfriend turn a shade of red I suspected to be unhealthy) we all headed into the kitchen, and Amelia made us all dinner. She had one of those flat grill surfaces you see in some restaurants, and she cooked us meat and vegetables and fried rice as we watched. Her knife work was actually pretty impressive for a mortal.

All in all, it was a fantastic day, and exactly what we needed. The feeling of relaxing without needing to worry about anything was just amazing. After dinner we arranged to meet up with Benny, Celine, and Maria the next day, which Jessie seemed excited about, and explore the city. Our elf friend and the Cark siblings had never been to Valen, and we wanted to show them all the sights, as well as possibly throw our weight around a bit since G-rankers were rare here, and there were only a few people higher than that in the whole city. I feel asleep smiling. This vacation had been a great idea.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Waking up the next morning was so relaxing. We slept in, which should have been routine since we'd been doing it for a while, but there was something different about a day when you had training later and a day when you were just doing whatever you wanted. I rolled over, and was greeted with a grunt of annoyance and a hand shoving my face away sleepily. I sputtered a bit, and then started laughing, sitting up to look down at my girlfriend, who was never in a good mood when someone woke her up.

She opened one eye, glaring at me balefully. "S'bright. N' Cold. Lay down." She'd somehow managed to slip in here after I went to bed and burrow under me like I was a giant blanket. The sleepy, squinting annoyance of someone who wished they were still sleeping was adorable on her.

I raised an eyebrow. "I'm pretty sure we need to go down for breakfast. I smell bacon. I bet your mom made us some food. We can't just stay up here forever. Also how did you even get in here without waking me up. My Perception is pretty high. Did you use stealth or something?" I didn't try to hide the humor in my voice that she wasn't comfortable staying in separate rooms for even a day. Or the happiness. It made me smile.

The other eye creaked open as she glared hared. "Ugh." She said, clearly forcing her vocal chords to warm up and actually function. "My bed is too big. And cold. It was annoying. I WAS perfectly warm here until you got up like a jerk. But fine. If bacon is more important to you than your beloved girlfriend I see how it is." She turned her head away, too lazy to get up and roll over to shun me. "You can just leave me here to freeze."

I grinned and hopped out of bed pulling on a shirt to go with the sweats I'd been sleeping in. "Oh, ok. Glad you understand. Can't expect a man not to prioritize his bacon. Well...if there's any left once I'm finished with it. I love me some bacon." I turned to leave with a snicker, planning to wait outside for her since I knew that we would definitely be out in a second.

I apparently underestimated her as I felt a slipper smack into the back of my head. I turned in shock to glare at her, but barely managed to catch sight of her as she pushed her ridiculously high Might to blitz past me and make it to the door before I could. "You asshole!" I yelped, turning to bolt after her. She wasn't going all out since she didn't want to shatter the floors or anything. Fantasy could warp the world a bit to allow us to use our power without some of the inconveniences, but hers wasn't as high as her Might.

Little things like that were part of the training we'd gotten over the last few weeks. Learning to harness our abilities better and use our stats to the fullest. At the beginning of the last month I wouldn't have been able to bolt down the hall after her at top speed without breaking anything. I'd have shattered the floor or run into a wall, but both of us were so much more than we had been.

She got to the kitchen a second before me, and I scooped her up by the waist and spun her around, dropping her outside the doorway as I bolted for the plate with the bacon on it. She gave an offended squawk and made to follow but we both stopped when we heard a loud throat clearing noise from one side. Frozen at being caught, I slowly turned to regard an amused looking Alexander, sitting next to an annoyed seeming Amelia. Our hostess smiled archly. "You two seem spirited."

Turning to Callie, I was shocked to see my usually unflappable girlfriend looking like she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. We were so used to our mornings together we'd gotten a bit lost on what would happen if I chased her down the stairs and into the kitchen. She cleared her throat, looking just like Alexander for a second. "Ah. Hello. Fancy seeing you all here. Lovely morning isn't it?"

It was probably the most blatant attempt to ignore reality I'd ever seen, and Callie could literally make fake copies of herself from pure darkness. Amelia smirked. "Yes, fancy seeing me in my own kitchen." She stared for a minute, before sighing and rolling her eyes, breaking eye contact before she looked back to her plate. "And yes Calliope, it is a lovely morning. Or what's left of it. It's almost noon." Her smirk became sly. "The two of you must have been comfortable."

Callie's expression became semi-panicked. She stalked over and grabbed a plate from the cabinet, slammed it down on the counter and started shoveling food onto it. Proclaiming loudly. "SO, what are everyone's plans for today!? Are you all coming with us to show the Cark siblings around town and meet up with Benny?" Her obvious change of subject wasn't commented on, though there were more than a few muffled snickers from around the table. Mostly Cark and Jessie.

Zeke shook his head. "Nah, I've seen the whole town. Amy said I could relax in the garden, and I'm getting some of my favorite lager delivered. It's a local microbrew you can't get in Rajak. Damn brewer won't export it. Says it's meant to bolster the local economy or some nonsense. A beer maker who won't sell beer. What is the world coming to I ask you?" He looked to the other two older members of the breakfast group. "Amy, Alex, are you two going to tag along with the kids? I imagine it'll be nice spending time with Callie at the very least."

I was pretty sure he just wanted the house to himself to get drunk. Though I had become less sure he could actually GET drunk from anything he could find here, as much as he liked to act sloppy and ridiculous when drinking. I was pretty sure his Vitality had to be high enough to make that nearly impossible. Amelia smiled at him. "I might just do that Ezekial, thank you. Alex, do you want to join me?" She gave him an oddly bashful smile, like she was talking about a date, and Alexander swallowed hard before replying with a smile that he would love to.

My uncle clicked his tongue, surprising me by saying. "In that case, it might be bad form to get the beer delivered. I can just go pick it up myself. I can stock up. I didn't bother last time I was in town because we left in a hurry and I didn't know they wouldn't ship." He smiled nostalgically. "Maybe I'll bring someone to Stella as a peace offering. She might be willing to actually speak to me since I've been gone for a while. Maybe she's finally figured out that she misses me."

Jessie shrugged. "I'll tag along. I want to visit with Maria. She broke up with her boyfriend and I think she's feeling down about it, but she doesn't feel comfortable sharing that with Shane or Benny because she knows they both hated him." I shrugged at that. It was true. Her smile became softer. "Plus we haven't had time to talk as much since we've all been busy." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Speaking of that. I don't suppose you're planning to offer her the same choice you're giving Amelia?"

That...hadn't really occurred to me. Maria was like a little sister to me, but she was still sixteen. Only two years younger than us, sure, but I'd seen what that kind of attention had to Callie so early. It was a ton of pressure. On the other hand the earlier she got her ability the more sought after she would be when she managed to get to higher ranks. G-rankers under twenty got poached for the Academy for a reason. Younger people who reached higher ranks experienced a much faster swell in reputation. Everyone loved hearing about prodigies, after all.

She'd ALSO see a massive bump in lifespan. Impact reduced aging to one physical year for however many chronological years you had of Impact. That meant if you had another eighty physical years to age, you would enjoy potentially hundreds of extra years of living. There were good and bad aspects of it, and in the end Jessie was right. Maria was the only one who could make that call for herself.

I nodded. "I'll make the offer. You aren't wrong, I probably should have considered that, it's just not something that popped into my head until you mentioned it." I gave her a grateful smile, before turning to Amelia. "Speaking of that. Is there a specific time you'd like to talk that over? I'm sure Callie mentioned it to you, and I'm happy to make the time whenever."

For the first time since I'd met her, Amelia looked...uncertain. I knew from talking to Callie that this was a tougher decision for her than it seemed. 'Do you want superpowers?' might seem like a no brainer at first glance, but Amelia had been married to an Ascendant for years, and had serious and justified issues with the culture. She wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, if only because her daughter was the one pushing for it and the lifespan it promised would let her stay with her child for much longer, but still it wasn't a simple question.

I'd known that when I asked it of course, but just because someone doesn't know the answer doesn't mean you don't still have to ask. She needed to think this through, and her indecision just made it clear she'd been putting it off. Still, I held up my hands placatingly. "No rush or anything. It's something you need to think about and I get that, but I wanted to at least put the thought in your head, just let me know when you're ready to at least discuss it."

Callie didn't look happy at that, but she was more upset at the situation than anything. She wasn't angry at me for giving her mom time, or her mom for taking it, she just didn't want to wait. It was understandable. Amelia noticed and reached out to take her daughters hand. "No." She said after some hesitation. "No I don't need time. I'll take you up on that. We can do it later tonight if you like." She offered Callie a strained smile.

My girlfriend bolted out of her seat and threw her arms around her mother, smiling brightly. "Oh, thank you mom! I promise you're going to love it. You don't need to rush or anything. We can push you up to G-rank before we leave and you can take your time from there. No need to go to Rajak or involve yourself in politics. I just...I want you around for as long as possible? We could have so many more years together this way!" She completely ignored Alexander, who didn't seem surprised anyway. I wasn't sure if that was stoicism or really good information gathering but either way he knew the truth now. With Zeke here he wasn't a threat, and I doubted he would screw up Amelia's chances of living longer.

After Callie released her mother and sat back down, she turned to address the table. "Well, seems like we all have our plans for the day lined up. Let's enjoy this delicious breakfast mom made and we can all head out. I'm sure Benny is excited to show Celine around town. There's definitely plenty to see." She flashed us all a wild grin. "I personally want to drop in on some old friends if we have time. It'll be so good to see them." From her smile, I was guessing friend was a strong word, and I wasn't sure they were going to feel the same about seeing her.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

It felt weird to be walking around out of costume for extended periods of time. It felt even weirder knowing that we didn't need to WORRY about walking around in costume for extended periods of time. With three F-rankers and probably less than a dozen or two G-rankers around here, there weren't many things that could threaten us. We weren't equipped to punch up ranks, but we were probably just barely Titan Twenty level on our own now. Which meant basically no G-ranker in the city should be a real threat, even if we didn't have Alexander with us.

We had our costumes with us of course, since Callie was planning some kind of vengeance spree later after we all hung out, but honestly I wasn't too worried about that. I was interested to see some more of the local criminal element from this side of things, and I knew Callie well enough to trust she wasn't planning something too over the top. She wasn't the 'kill em' all and let the gods sort them out' type. For now though, we were sticking with the civilian side of things since we had her mom and uncle with us, not to mention Cass.

By the time we met up with Benny, Celine, and Maria it was about two PM. My best friend looked more relaxed and at peace than I had seen him in a long time. I hardly recognized him when I spotted him sitting on a bench next to Celine, and it took me a minute to figure out why. He didn't look visibly different that I could see, but something about him had changed. It took me a minute to figure out that my Perception was picking up things like body language and microexpressions subconsciously and my Focus was processing them.

I waved when he looked up, and he grinned at us, popping to his feet. "Hey guys, you made it. And you brought Callie's uncle and...her sister?" He looked semi-confused, and I realized that we hadn't mentioned Amelia would be coming. The older woman looked good for her age, probably early to mid twenties. She didn't look out of place next to Alexander, who only looked a bit older than the rest of us.

Amelia giggled a bit, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "Calliope, your friends are so sweet. I like this one." She held out a hand to shake Benny's with a smile. "Amelia Reynolds, I'm Callie's mother. It's nice to meet another of her team members. You must be Benicio. She didn't mention how tall you were. What DO they feed you boys? You're all practically giants." Her eyes shone with good humor as she made the comment, so not one had the heart to point out that she and Callie were mostly just really short.

I was surprised at the introduction though. Amelia hadn't given her last name in the time we had been staying with her, and I hadn't expected her to keep her married name. I supposed she wanted to keep it for Callie's sake. Benny's eyes had gone wide when she spoke, and he held out his hand on reflex, looking shocked. "You're...her mother? I thought her mother was mortal? You look so young."

Amelia laughed at that, and Benny grunted as Maria elbowed him in the ribs as she went past. Not hard thankfully, though I saw her rubbing her elbow a bit as she smiled welcomingly at Amelia. "Sorry about my brother." She said sincerely. "He can be a bit prone to foot in mouth. It's really nice to meet you. I'm Maria Cortez. This is my brother's girlfriend, who is way out of his league, Celine."

The elf girl gave a graceful wave I was sure she had practiced in the mirror. Maria turned to the rest of us. "Most of you I know since I saw you in passing when everyone arrived, it's nice to see you all." Her eyes locked on Cass as they went by and she strolled over to offer a hands. "Hi there, I'm Maria. Sorry to say you're the youngest now. It can be a pain dealing with all these older types, but I'm glad it's not me anymore." She winked at the younger girl.

Cass, for her part, just giggled in amusement and took her hand. "Cassidy. You're still pretty old, but I guess you're not as bad as the rest of them. I can put up with the adults for you if you need me too. I'm used to dealing with it from my big brother." She shot Cark an annoyed glance that was softened with a fond smile. "He's always trying to act like he knows better than me and I should just shut and listen."

That got a surprised laugh from Maria. "Trust me I know." She shot her own annoyed glance at Benny and I. "I have my own big brothers, and they always think they know better. It's not all bad though, it helps me keep them in line. They can be kind of dumb sometimes, so they really need it." The two of them shared a commiserating nod that should probably have worried me somewhat before Benny cut in.

"As much fun as this little pow-wow ISN'T." He said with exasperation. "I was pretty sure we were going to show everyone around the city? Any of you guys have any ideas for a first stop? The Night Market is a no go for a family trip, not that it's even open this early, and WCP doesn't exactly seem like the best place to take them. Vengiollo's might work, but I don't really think Cass would enjoy it."

Callie bit her lip. "We could go to the Druid's Grove? Mom loves that place, and it's gorgeous. Have you guys ever been?" Benny and I shook our heads, but Jessie looked excited. Callie just chuckled. "Yeah, I figured it would be your scene Jess. The Druid's Grove is the local Ascendant Farmer's Market. It's mostly H-rankers there, though the owner is a Unity executive. They sell mortal fruit too, but they grow most of it there and it's absolutely beautiful."

I'd never heard of it, but then, I hadn't really interacted much with Ascendant culture here when I'd lived in town, and it was a big city. I was only eighteen, so there was no reason to expect I'd seen it all here. It sounded like fun to me, and I was looking forward to picking up some ingredients, so there was no reason to refuse. "Well, I'm in." I said with a shrug. "I don't know about everyone else, but weird fruit and veggies sounds entertaining to me."

Jessie snickered. "It's not just fruit and veggies. They have flowers there too, and other interesting plants. Nothing as impressive or powerful as Melinda's garden, but plenty of things that are pretty to look at, plus I know the owner. I used to work there sometimes before I got my ability. My mom was friendly with Harvest, the executive Callie mentioned, and she was kind of my mentor in flower arranging when I was a kid." She smiled sadly. "I haven't seen her in years though. Once mom and dad died we stopped going. Reminded us of them too much."

Maria put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. I was honestly just surprised. Jessie never talked about her parents, I knew they'd died when she was young, and Alan had basically raised her. Other than that I realized I'd never heard her say much of anything about them. This was the first time I heard her imply that they might have been Ascendants, even indirectly, but it would explain how her brother and she both got powers. I knew because of my own parents that Ascendant traits could carry over slightly, though not much until you hit the higher ranks.

Seeing our friend lost in her own thoughts Callie cleared her throat. "Anyway, Druid's Grove it is. I haven't been in a while either. I really love the apples there. " She nodded to Amelia. "Mom used to take me all the time as a kid, she and Harvest are friends." She got an odd look on her face, glancing to Jessie and then her mother. "Actually, I don't think it's ever come up, but did you know Jessie's mom? I didn't realize you guys were both friends of Aunt Alyssa until just now."

Amelia smiled softly. "Not really. I think I knew her in passing though. If she's who I'm thinking of she was always a kind woman. I hadn't realized Jessica was her daughter until you mentioned it, but I see the resemblance. Piper had black hair, but there's a lot of similarity in the eyes." She gave Jessie a warm smile. "I didn't know her well, but Alyssa and she were very close and I heard nothing but wonderful things. She spoke about you and your brother often on the few occasions I did meet her. She was very proud of your talent for flower arranging."

My teammate swallowed hard, her emerald eyes swimming for a second with emotion, before she pushed it all down. Jessie was much better at controlling her emotions than her generally happy demeanor would let on. With everything decided though, we headed out, deciding to take the bus to our destination. There was a stop near where we met up (it was the same park Benny and I had met at back when I first found out about my power) and Benny and I knew the schedule by heart.

Being back on a Valen bus with my best friend was a bit surreal. It felt like it had been so long since we'd done thing, and being with so many new faces made it all the stranger. We all chatted back and forth, Amelia asking about the Academy, Rajak in general, and our adventures in the capital. Maria caught us up on how things had been back home, her break up with Zack, and how things had been around here since M-Jack left. It had been both more and less peaceful, with no lunatic shenanigans, but plenty of turf wars, even if the Unity mostly kept it from affecting the mortals.

Finally, we arrived at the Druid's Grove. We climbed out of the bus at the stop Callie indicated and walked for about two miles before we came to the right place. Jessie stopped first, having run ahead a bit, and took a deep, happy breath. "Oh wow, I forgot how much I love the smell of this place. Like earth and fresh fruit and growing things." She spun around a few times, eyes closed, and just luxuriated in the atmosphere. Then she stopped and gave us an embarrassed grin. "Sorry, bit distracted. Welcome to the Druid's Grove."

She gestured around us, and I could see why they wanted to come here. The place was a park in its own right, but where the rest of them were green and lush, this one was shades of red, orange, and yellow. It was Autumn here somehow, and the ground was thick with leaves that crunched underfoot. Among the trees were wooden tables that had an almost box like top, each holding different fruits, vegetables, and some even being packed with dirt which grew beautiful plants.

I chuckled a bit as Callie grabbed my hand, dragging me along with her as she set off toward the tables. She seemed so excited to be here, and Amelia's smile told me that she loved seeing her daughter so happy just as much as I did. As Callie began to drag me toward a table packed with dark red juicy looking apples, I began to understand where my girlfriend's appetite came from. If I'd grown up coming here I'd be hungry all the time too. I was definitely going to try one of those apples. They looked delicious.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I never got to grab an apple. I tried to head in that direction but was tugged insistently away by my girlfriend. We walked past most of the tables, ignoring them, as Callie lead us into the deeper portions park, where the yellow and orange trees were crowded closer together. We walked around several copses of trees before finally coming to a small wood cabin tucked back out of sight. It was a homey looking place made of lightly colored wooden beams that had seasoned to a golden color that reminded me of sunlight in the last minutes of the day.

On the porch of the cabin sat a woman elbow deep in mud, seated in front of a pottery wheel as she worked on what looked like a huge vase. Her hands pressed forcefully into the clay as she worked it, and I watched the porch buckle slightly under the wheel before she eased up. Whatever that clay was, it was clearly much harder to work than one would
expect. It was G-ranked material at least, and the woman working it was the same.

She had a wide smile on her red lips as she molded the clay, obviously lost in her joy in creating something, and she didn't seem to hear us at all, implying she was throwing all her Focus into whatever crafting she was doing. We stood to the side and waited as she worked, no one daring to interrupt, and I got my first look at the woman I could only assume was Harvest, the executive who owned the Grove.

Her hair was green. Not emerald, but more of a seaweed. A darker green that somehow seemed more natural, and it fell in wild curls down her shoulders. Her face was delicate, almost fragile looking, with high cheek bones, and bright golden eyes that set off her dark mocha skin almost as much as her brilliant smile. She was tall for a woman, six feet if I had to guess, I couldn't tell perfectly with her sitting, but she had long graceful limbs and thin artistic fingers that she was using to shape the clay.

We watched for about thirty minutes as she molded the clay, pushing and pulling and slapping the material, tracing fingers over it in runes I recognized as Enchantments, though I didn't recognize what kind. She was using another Skill alongside Enchanting, probably some kind of pottery Skill, and I wasn't familiar enough with the technique to figure out how one affected the other.

Eventually though, she finished the last of the work, and lowered her hands with a happy sigh. Her golden eyes rose from the pot and she jumped slightly in surprise, hand going to her chest in a gesture of shock. "Oh! Guests. Sorry about that. I was a bit focused." Her eyes fell on Callie, standing next to me, and her smile widened into an affectionate grin. "Calliope!" She was up in a flash, blurring over to sweep my girlfriend up into a crushing hug. "Darling girl. It's so good to see you back." She put Callie down, hands clasping her shoulders before she looked conspiratorially around, leaning in to stage whisper. "You poor mother has been going spare worrying about you up in the big city."

Amelia cleared her throat, glaring at her friend. "Oh, are we telling secrets Aly? Is that what we're doing? Because I seem to remember a certain someone having a rather strong reaction to a batch of hard cider she made a few years ago. If we're sharing maybe I should tell everyone what happened. It's such an entertaining story." Her eyebrow was arched in threatening annoyance, but the small smirk pulling at her lips gave lie to the threat.

Harvest, or Alyssa, from what was said earlier. Raised her hands in surrender. "Don't shoot. Down girl. No need to get nasty. Your daughter knows you missed her. She's hardl-" She stopped talking, and her eyes froze where they had been raking over the group. Locked onto the pale face of my teammate, who looked almost afraid of how her childhood mentor was going to react to seeing her.

If Alyssa's hug rush toward Callie had been a blur, she practically teleported to Jessie. My blonde teammate started to flinch back, but barely had time before she was captured in a hug so tight it looked like she might snap in half. Alyssa buried her head in the green cloak of our healer, squeezing for all she was worth. "Jessica." She murmured, voice muffled against Jessie's shoulder. "Sweetie I am so glad to see you? Are you alright? I tried to come see you when I heard what happened, but you weren't taking visitors except for Lindsey and then you were gone."

Her voice was thick with unshed tears, raw and painful and vulnerable in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable to hear from a complete stranger. Finally she put Jessie down, and I only noticed then that my friend's feet had left the ground when she was pulled against the much taller woman. Jessie's eyes looked about to overflow with tears, shimmering green like the sun through a glass bottle in the ocean's depths.

She took a long, slow breath, calming down as she forced a smile onto her face. "I'm fine, Aunt Alyssa. Really. I've..." She looked over at us. "I've made good friends. They've been helping me a lot. It's been hard sometimes, a lot of times even, but I'm getting through it. I don't feel like I can't get out of bed in the morning's anymore. Some days are worse than others, but my friends are there with me, and it's good for me. I've met so many interesting people and seen so many amazing things. I...I don't think I would be anywhere near this stable if I'd stayed. Coming back has felt strange, but it's let me see how much good my time away did, if that makes sense."

Jessie was talking fast and without breath as she filled her mother's friend in on how things had been, but she didn't seem to have any trouble getting through it. Alyssa looked at her with a conflicted expression on her face and stepped back, offering a caring smile. "That...that sounds nice. Gods you look so much like Piper now. I haven't seen you since you were a gap toothed little pipsqueak. Those eyes though. Look at you." She shook off her daze. "Sorry, sorry, all of you come inside, please."

Walking over to the door, she kicked it twice at the base and then bumped the middle with her elbow. It popped open, and when she saw some of us looking confused she grinned, holding up her hands. "I got sick of cleaning my door knob, so I set up a catch plate in the door I could hit to open it. The lock shifts it out of place, so it only works when the door is already open, but it's been a massive times saver for me." She nodded us in. "Here, let me clean up first, and then I'll get everyone some drinks. I have a new honey apple cider if you'd like?" She smirked at Amelia. "No booze in this one."

She headed over to a small sink to wash up as we looked around the inside of the cabin, taking in the small but homey space. The whole living room area was full of furniture, two couches, three chairs, all squeezed into a small space and showing that Alyssa loved having guests even if she didn't have much room for them. The kitchen had a small round wooden table with four chairs around it by comparison, a much less open place where we wouldn't be able to crowd in, and somewhere I pegged as being for close friends.

The floor was a much darker wood, but there were brightly colored yellow, orange, and red throw rugs at various spots that reminded me of the leaves outside, almost creating a canopy effect on the floor of the house. The windows let golden light spill in from multiple spots, giving a nice cross illumination effect, even if I could see drapes held back from the all and knew it could be blocked off without much effort. The house smelled like mulled cider too, and I smiled and closed my eyes, taking a deep whiff.

Alyssa headed for the kitchen, where a small sink sat unobtrusively to one side of a wood burning stove. "Let me wash my hands and I'll get anyone who wants one a mug. Amy? Jessie? Callie? Anything for you all? How about-" She stopped, frozen again, and turned to narrow her eyes at Alexander. "See,,,I got so distracted by Jessica I didn't even notice someone else was here. I'm assuming that's you Alex, because Paul isn't stupid enough to walk into my house after that stunt he pulled."

With a grimace, Alexander waved. "Hello Aly. Been a few years." She glared at him. "I...like what you've done with the place?" More glaring. Son of glaring. Glaring returns. "You look fantastic by the way." He offered weekly. She just turned and stalked into the kitchen, summarily ignoring the now cringing E-ranker.

That was a surprise, but it also kind of made sense. Amelia seemed to be an old friend of Alyssa, and the G-ranker would naturally have known Midknight, so it made sense she'd grown up with the twins too, at at least been aware of them. I hadn't really taken that far enough to figure out they might have grown up together. Amelia didn't LOOK like she was in her forties, even for a mortal, and naturally the rest of them all looked early to mid twenties, given their Impact. They'd aged four or five years max.

She took her time cleaning her hands, seeming very focused on getting all the clay off, making sure to get it out from under her nail beds especially, and she didn't acknowledge anyone as she did it. Once she was done, she started taking incredibly delicate pottery mugs with very smooth glazes from the cabinet above the stove and set them all in the table, before pulling a clay jug from the same cabinet (which shouldn't have had the room, I was guessing spatial expansion) and pouring a health dose into each glass.

When she finished that, she picked one up, walked over to Alexander, and held out the cup. When he reached for it, she then proceeded to throw the whole mug full of apple cider right into his face. Then she placed the empty cup in his hand and turned to go back to the table, picking up a few more and giving them to each of us in turn. Amelia was trying her hardest not to smirk.

Once she passed out all the cups, she walked back to the cabinet, pulled out a towel, and threw it to Alexander, who began to clean himself and then the floor. Then she sat down on one of the couches, took a long sip of cider, and smiled dazzlingly. "Well. I feel better." Callie looked like she was having almost as hard a time not laughing as Amelia. Alyssa gestured us all over to sit on the couch. "Please, have a seat." Her eyes locked on Alexander. "Not you, Alex. I don't want my couches to get wet."

Then she turned back to Jessie. "Now, Jessica. I insist you tell me all about your adventures. I knew you had gone to Rajak, but I never realized you were part of Callie's party. I should have introduced you two years ago, but I just never thought of it. I'm glad you became friends though, you're both such special girls." Her golden eyes shifted to me. "Oh, and speaking of how special Callie is, this must be the boyfriend." She patted the couch right next to her, smile turning wolfish. "How about you come sit over here. I have so many questions." I looked over at the soaking wet E-ranker mopping up spilled cider on the floor as it dripped off his face. Gulp.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the day passed in a blur. We spent the time talking to Alyssa, who told us stories about her time growing up with Amelia, Alexander, and (though she rarely mentioned him at length) Paul, Callie's dad. She avoided mentioning Midknight as much as possible, though she talked enough about his twin that he came up incidentally a few times.

She also talked at length about Piper, Jessie's mom, and how they knew each other. It turned out that Alyssa's family were old Valen money, as were Piper's. The two of them grew up going to the same social functions and had become fast friends. She'd met Amelia and the twins fairly young as well, but she'd gotten to know them through the Unity, rather than the older families I hadn't even known existed in Valen.

Piper hadn't really been interested in joining the Unity as a hero, and had gone through intake and gone into the private sector, and option that had been mentioned when I'd tested my own powers so long ago, but one I'd never considered. Despite their different paths the two had remained friends for most of their lives, even if Alyssa kept her two social circles mostly separate.

By the time night fell Jessie was enjoying talking to her old mentor so much that she'd decided to stick around, and most of the others did the same, wanting to see the Druid's Grove at night, but Callie and I decided to go our own way, since my girlfriend had somewhere she was planning to be tonight. We said our goodbye's to the others and then suited up, taking the bus downtown.

"So." I said as we lounged on the bus bench. "Where is this mysterious destination, and exactly why are we heading there? Are you going to let me in on the plan? Or am I just following along? Not that I mind in either case. I did tell you that you should do more selfish stuff that you wanted to do, and this feels like it might qualify." I kept my tone teasing so she didn't take my probing as some kind of complaint, I was sure I'd be amused by whatever she had planned, based on the grin from the day before.

Luckily, she didn't take it that way at all, simply grinning at me. "Oh, definitely selfish. We're heading to the Shuffle Masquerade. I don't think you'd ever been. It's the Queen of Hearts' biggest earner. A dance club run by her most influential lieutenants. A couple of triplets named Calamity, Disaster, and Despair. They're all G-rankers, and they've been a constant annoyance for pretty much the entire time I've been an Ascendant."

I chuckled darkly. "So we're going to start some trouble then? I'm figuring attacking without provocation is a no-go, but it should be easy enough to act up a bit and bait them into a fight. Assuming the Queen isn't going to get involved? We have literally no shot at beating an F-ranker, especially not one with probably decades of experience under her belt." I was down for a little mayhem, assuming we didn't take it too far, that was the nature of the relationship between heroes and villains, but I wasn't going to get my ass kicked just to amuse Callie.

The shake of her head was a relief. "We won't need to.. As long as we don't take it too far she won't get involved. The Queen is tough, but she doesn't cross Stella lightly, not to mention we're members of the main branch. The mortals may be cut off, but you can bet your ass that the bigger gangs here have connections in the capital, and there's no way they didn't clock us showing up. It's going to be just us and them, especially since it'll be two on three. If mommy has to save their bony asses it'll ruin their rep, and you know how much that means to an Ascendant."

I had to concede that. Strength was a big deal for people like us. Losing was fine, but getting humiliated could seriously fuck up your future. Things like the tournament were opportunities, but also dangers, and picking the fight in their center of power would make that even more effective. I shrugged, as long as we had a legit reason I didn't mind starting a bar fight. From the sound of it these girls hated Callie, so I wasn't too worried that they wouldn't be willing to oblige our need for them to mess with us.

"Alright." I said. "I'm down for a night out with a few punches thrown. I could use some more info though. What exactly did these three do to you, and what are their powers. You said they're the Queen's daughters? They don't have her ability do they?" The Queen might not be at Stella's level, but she was a genuinely terrifying person for anyone below F-rank. Her ability leaned more toward quantity than quality in that way, but from the research I'd done, she was the kind of person who would have conquered this whole fucking city if this wasn't a Unity planet.

Callie just laughed. "Gods no. They wish. They have can imbue other people with powerful energy. Calamity can imbue strength, Disaster grace, and Despair induces a sort of crazy battle confidence that increases the efficiency of Skills. They wouldn't be quite so dangerous, but they're glued to each other almost all the time, and when they get into fights they all stack their powers across all three of them. It's an annoying combination, especially since as triplets they're freakishly good at communicating in combat."

That I wasn't worried about. However good their natural rapport was, I was sure that we were better after our training. I had to ask the obvious though. "Are they heart touched? I know she only gets a certain amount, but they're her daughters, so I figure there's a solid chance they were selected." The Queen's ability was terrifying, known and feared throughout the whole damn city. We'd avoided her when I was here last. We didn't need to be scared of the heart touched now, even if they were, but still, it would be nice to know. The chosen of the Queen of Hearts were known and feared for a reason.

The Queen's ability wasn't a secret, though most people who were lower ranked didn't know it for the simple reason that the Unity didn't want to cause a panic. Her power was called Touch of the Heart. The Queen could literally reach into a willing target's chest and touch their heart. When the Queen touched a person's heart, they became stronger, slightly upgrading their ability at the cost of allowing the Queen influence over them. She left a mark on them that allowed her access at any time.

Heart touched were the eyes and ears of the Queen of Hearts, as well as being her hands in the world. She could alter their thoughts and goals and sense them at all times, some people even claimed she could draw power from them. Last I'd heard she could make a hundred of them at F-rank, so the spots were exclusive, but I had no doubt that her daughters would be on the list if there were any available slots.

Callie grimaced. "Yeah. All three of them. The upgrade makes their abilities much more effective, and since each of them gets it the stacking effect amplifies the difference. They aren't at a level we'll have trouble with though. They have a lot of raw power, and I've never been able to take them head on, but that was back when I lived here. Some of the people we've seen in Rajak could turn them inside out, and we can beat most of those by now. This shouldn't be a problem."

She bit her lip, seeming to be talking herself out of the plan more than me into it. Her eyes swam with indecision. "I...I guess it is a bit reckless. If you don't want to do this that's fine. We can do a patrol or something. The more I think about it the less of a good idea this sounds like." She nodded after a second. "Yeah, let's ju-" I cut her off with a kiss, the bottom of my mask opening the same way it did when I needed to eat. I made a not of that trick for later.

When I pulled back, I left the mask open so she could see me grinning. "Nope." I said firmly. She raised an eyebrow in confusion. "No dice. This sounds like fun, and I insist we go. If things go wrong we can figure it out. The Queen won't kill us anyway, so the stakes aren't that high. We can escape a few suped up G-rankers if needed. You want to do this, I can tell, and if you want it I'm going to make it happen. If it's stupid all the better. You're making me look bad with all your maturity and forward thinking." I put on a faux reprimanding tone. "I'm sick of it."

She giggled at my absurdity, narrowing her eyes a bit in contemplation as she decided whether or not to fight me on this. Finally she just sighed and leaned against me. "Ok, you're right. There isn't too much room for real trouble. And I really hate those three. Especially Disaster. She's been a pain in my ass for literal years. The triplets got their ability around the same time I did, and Disaster decided she was going to be my nemesis. She's sent more than a few of her goon squads after me."

I just shrugged. "Just tell me what to do. Like I said, I'm not really down to attack someone for no reason or anything, but since you said they're bound to start shit if piss them off I have no problem running my mouth a bit." She smiled up at me softly, and we both jumped a bit as the bus pulled to a stop, too distracted by each other to notice we were coming to our destination.

As we climbed off the bus, I looked around at the neighborhood we were in, trying to get a feel for the place. It was nice. Upscale in a downtown hotspot kind of way. The Shuffle Masquerade was a gorgeous black paneled building that looked more like an opera house than a nightclub. There was a line outside, a bouncer, and I could hear music thumping from inside though. Not to mention the lights strobing through the cracks and crevices. Between panels and through thin slits of unobscured windows I saw multicolored neon strobing piercing out into the evening air.

Callie saw me staring and smiled. "Ah, wow I guess this is your first nightclub huh? I didn't even consider that. You going to be ok?" I nodded decisively and she pulled me into a hug. "Now how did I know you would say that? Just stick close, I'll help you navigate, and if you start to get overwhelmed tell me. We can always leave if you're uncomfortable." She winked up at me. "I want my guy to be happy, call me selfish."

I squeezed her back with a chuckle. "I'm fine. This isn't my scene, but being basically invincible in Valen helps. At least aside from a few threats. Whatever you need, I'm down for." I stepped away from her, formally offering my elbow. "Now, if you might accompany me inside milady. I believe we have some trouble to start. We should scope out the club to see how we can get some attention without being dicks about it."

That got a laugh from Callie. "Fair enough. We aren't just going to punch a civvie or something, we'll need to come up with a place." She took my arm, and we headed for the door. As we got in line, I took a deep breath. Going in here was going to be more stressful than I was letting on, but I was happy to do it. This was Callie's night, and I'd make sure she had fun. Besides, this sounded like it might be a good fight, so I was probably going to enjoy myself too.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I expected to be stopped at the door of the Shuffle Masquerade, given Callie was with me and apparently the triplets hated her, but to my surprise the bouncer just waved us both through. Once we got inside, I stuck close to her so we didn't get separated. It was...a lot. I wasn't overly fond of places like this. It wasn't just the crowds, I'd dealt with those before, it was more that the sensation of churning bodies packed into a small building like this made me feel like I was in a pressure cooker.

Callie knew me well enough to know I'd be uncomfortable here, hence her offer to back out, but I was able to ignore the feeling by leaning a bit harder on my Focus than was normal. In the state of logic processing that was Focus, it was easy to hyperconcentrate on just one thing and let the rest of it fall away. I focused on Callie, making sure she was safe and nearby, and it wasn't as hard to block everything out.

It certainly helped that it was so much fun to watch her like this. She was practically buzzing with excitement, and constantly looking around like she expected to get caught with her hand in the cookie jar any moment now. She didn't seem anxious though. Just energized. This was a bad idea. She knew it, I knew it, but neither of us cared. She wanted to do it, and I wanted her to make a couple mistakes. She spent so much time focused on others, on being the perfect leader. She deserved to do something dumb just because she felt like it.

Despite watching her with all my Focus, I wasn't able to completely block out everything else. My Perception still mapped the room around us, even as a second thought, so I was able to both avoid tripping over my own feet and get an idea of what this place was like. The masquerade was, in a word, strange. The theme here seemed to be black and white marble with splashes of red. The tiles were all different sizes, the furniture of different designs, and even the layout looked chaotic and haphazard in a way that somehow gave the impression of being intentional.

While the Masquerade was a gestalt of chaos and variety, it was clear each aspect had been carefully placed, and that the sheer chaos of the nature of this place created an almost homogenous impression. The people certainly seemed to enjoy it, and I could see dozens of dozens of people in a combination of cape outfits and formal party clothes dancing and writhing around us all, with a few small areas of calm amidst the tumult. A table with ropes around it, a bar, a door seeming to lead up to a second level of the club that overlooked the entire dance floor.

We, of course, were heading for the latter. The door leading up to the second level seemed to be where the triplets were most likely to be spending time, and Callie wanted to bait the three of them. I probably should have been nervous about that part, but between the churning cauldron of discomfort I was avoiding with my Focus and the excitement of a fight, not to mention happiness that Callie was doing something for herself, I almost didn't have room to think or worry about the possible negative ramifications of my actions.

Plus, and I couldn't stress this enough. I was NOT scared of these people. If spending three weeks in daily sparring with Abel did one thing, it was normalize power. I was so used to brawling with someone who might as well be an F-ranker, that nothing short of that was going to actually scare me anymore. It was like spending almost a month being chased around by a terrifying monsters. Jump scares kind of lose their effect in comparison to the real deal. That might be presumptuous and a bit cocky, and it might be proven wrong soon enough, but somehow I doubted the triplets would be the ones to do it, they were basically our age from what I could tell.

It took less time than I'd expected to make it through the crowd. The man standing guard at the door was colossal, even by my standards, probably a full seven feet tall. He was only H-rank, which muted most of the impression that would have made, but still, big guy. When he saw us, he crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at us menacingly. Or rather, at Callie. "Nightstrike." He said, in a voice that was much higher pitched than expected from such a huge man. "Do you have an invitation?"

Callie just gave him a wide smile. "Nope. I've been out of town so I didn't have a chance to set up this little visit. Tell Disaster I'm here to see her." Once she was finished talking she just turned back to me, effectively ignoring the big man. He looked annoyed, but also wary, and turned around to stalk upstairs, presumably to inform his boss of who was asking for her.

I cocked my head at Callie and she grinned, twining her arms around me as we waited. "The triplets outnumber me three to one. If I show up and ask to come in and they say no, I can just leave, but it tells everyone else that they're too scared to face me, even with a numbers advantage. Granted, he'll have noticed you too. But even two on three, not letting us in sends the message that they're worried about us, which they really can't afford." She smirked at me. "You didn't think I'd come here just to get chased off did you?"

"I have no clue." I said with a small shrug. "I'm just following your lead. The details are all you, just tell me where to stand." The mouth of my mask opened, large enough for me to press a kiss to her forehead. "This is your show." I pulled back out of her embrace regretfully. "And speaking of shows, seems this one is set to continue. That guy is coming back, we'd better get ready for the big rvent."

Sure enough, less than a minute later the towering form of the bouncer returned, glowering down at us. "Disaster says I should let you in." He grimaced. "Your...friend, can come too." The glower seemed even more extreme when aimed at me, presumably because Callie was perceived as a legitimate threat after her years in the spotlight and I was just a big dude in a mask. Still, I WAS G-rank, so the guy didn't actually say anything to me. The chances of this random bounced being able to punch up ranks were minimal. Hell, I doubted anyone in the city could manage it, and even if they could, they wouldn't be able to do it with Callie and I. We weren't your average G-rankers.

Turning and gesturing for us to follow, the large man led us up the steps and into the second floor of the club. To my complete lack of surprise, the second floor, which looked like a small balcony from downstairs, was much bigger on the inside. Entering the top level, we emerged out onto a huge dance floor, easily equal in size to the bottom layer of the building, albeit much less fancy and refined.

The top floor was much more stereotypical night club in terms of design, at least from what I'd come to expect from movies and books. The dance floor in the middle was a series of glowing blue cubes pressed together to create a square grid. Around the edges were railings and decks made from some sort of opaque dark blue gemstone, with strange zaps of electricity arcing through the material at irregular intervals that seemed to somehow line up with the music.

Much like the lower floor this place had plenty of people, though it wasn't quite as packed. I noticed several suited forms wearing the masks that denoted the Queen's people, though not the usual ones I saw in the streets. Most of the hearts masks I saw on random thugs were ten masks, with the number signifying their place in the organization. The people here, however, were mostly sixes and sevens from what I could see, with the sole exception of the three women sitting at the large table in the back corner.

The three of them, all wearing what looked like corseted dresses with wavy skirts, each a different color, all had heart masks with the letter A on them, something I'd never seen before. Aces, I supposed, which made sense since the Ace was simultaneously the highest and lowest value card in the deck. If these were the Queen's daughters the Ace designation was probably how she marked them as second in command and also reminded everyone they were actually fairly low on the chain of command.

As I drew closer, I was able to see them more clearly. A brunette, a blonde, and a redhead, all with long, nearly identical haircuts. We made our way straight for the table, Callie dragging me by the hand to approach the three women. I didn't think we were going to fight so soon, they wouldn't be stupid enough to get baited into attacking within seconds of our arrival, right? As we got closer, I could see the identical green eyes behind the masks fixed on us. "Nightstrike." They said in unison as we got closer. "To what do we owe the pleasure."

I winced. That was really creepy. They almost had to practice that. Callie's grimace showed she didn't like it either, but she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of admitting it. She just raised en eyebrow, her eyes fixed on the redhead. "Disaster. Thanks for the invite. Always nice to see you. Hope your mother is well, I haven't seen her is quite a while."

Politics made my head hurt. Everything Callie had just said was pleasant and polite, but I could tell from her tone she'd been taking some sort of potshot at the trio and the Queen herself. I personally preferred the direct approach. What ever happened to just calling someone an asshole to their face? On the upside, it seemed to break them out of their weird unison talking thing, because the redhead, Disaster, looked over to me in interest. "And who is your friend? I didn't realize we were in such esteemed company? A G-ranker from the capital I take it?"

I was kind of bummed she didn't recognize, me if only because I'd thought my reputation in Valen had been pretty good since beating Stricture. Still, it was kind of cool to be taken seriously. Callie didn't seem to share that impression, and I winced a bit as her hand tightened around mine in annoyance. Not hard enough to crush my fingers or anything, but tight enough to be momentarily uncomfortable. "You know very well who he is." She said, in a calm, measured voice. "This is my boyfriend Solomon."

Ah, it had just been more political bullshit. Fair enough. I raised my none crushed hand and waved. "Hi." All three of them looked at me intently, and Callie glared. I slowly put my hand down. Right, I was clearly missing some of the not so subtle undertones here. "Hey, Nightstrike, why don't we go get something to drink." I said as cheerfully as possible. Fighting I was fine with, but this was just uncomfortable, I wanted to leave.

That seemed to be the right thing to say, because Callie smiled brightly. "That's a great idea!" She turned to the other girls with an extremely fake grin on her face. "We're going to go enjoy the festivities, thanks again for the invite. We'll see you all later." Then she dragged me away, off toward the small bar that the second floor had available. I breathed a sigh of relief as soon as we were clear. That had been so awkward. I hoped the rest of the night would be much more non-confrontational. I was just here to support my girlfriend and punch things. Why did people have to be so aggressive?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Callie was still fuming when we made to the bar. I, as an experienced boyfriend, did NOT bug her about what was making her angry until she decided to talk about it herself. We just ordered out drinks (I got a smoothie with blueberries and banana) and found a table to sit down at. Once we made it to the table I took my seat and waited patiently for her to process, letting the bottom my mask open into a mouth so I could take a long pull of my delicious drink.

Taking a sip of her own drink (some kind of weird oversized blue concoction with an umbrella that based on the small taste I'd stolen had surprisingly little alcohol by volume) she finally sighed and let her head slam down on the table in annoyance. "Ugh! I hate her so much." She looked up at me sadly. "I'm sorry. That was shitty. Putting you in the middle of that. I should have figured she would try to get a rise out of me by drooling over you. I swear I'm not all insecure about that kind of thing, she just brings out that side of me."

I just shrugged. "It's fine Cal, I didn't even notice really. Besides, I know you aren't all crazy jealous. Saffron was way more in your face about flirting and you only reacted a little bit." I paused in contemplation. "I'm still missing the actual flirting though. Are you sure she wasn't just making small talk? I wasn't picking up any kind of a vibe. With my Perception I'd have expected to at least notice."

"No sweetie." She said with a smile. "She was NOT just making small talk. I've known her for years. She was trying to piss me off by leering. As for Perception, aside from the Focus you've been employing to block out everything except for me, all the Perception in the world can't let you pick up something you don't know to look for. I love you to pieces Shane, but you aren't exactly a people person. Not that I dislike that, it's sweet how straightforward you are, but you tend to miss out on some subtler undertones."

That was fair. "I've never really been too social." I said with a shrug. "I spent most of my time with Benny and Maria growing up. Aside from video games like DS, I didn't interact with a lot of strangers. Especially not women, so it makes sense I'd miss out on certain signals. I'm not a moron, so overt flirting like Saffron was doing is obvious enough, but it's easy not to get the context behind certain looks or tones, especially from people I don't know."

She held up both hands. "Whoa there. I wasn't saying you're dense or anything. Just that you tend to leave more nuanced communication to me. Outside of a weirdly sneaky streak when it comes to contracts I mean. Still, that's hardly a bad thing. It's why we make such a great team. You tend to just come out and say what needs saying, leaving me to wade around in the murky waters of interpersonal politics."

I chuckled, sipping my smoothie. I didn't hate that idea. It wasn't like I couldn't have tried harder to understand people or work on my political savvy. I just had no real interest in it. It was much simpler and more relaxing to just say what I meant all the time. Not that I used it as an excuse to be an asshole, but subtext and double speak sounded exhausting. I'd leave that shit to Callie.

That thought gave me the sudden insight that I had based a large portion of my world view off of Zeke, who seemed to follow the same train of thought, and I tried not to have a negative kneejerk reaction to that. I loved my Uncle, and I was glad to have him, but having grown up with him I was more than aware of his many flaws as a person. Once I got past the initial resistance though, I kind of liked the concept.

Zeke was a badass, and clearly his personality was conducive to being a powerful Ascendant since he was a fucking B-ranker. I wasn't going to turn into him anytime soon, but picking up a few of his habits wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I must have trailed off for a bit because I felt a plink on my forehead, and looked up to see my girlfriend smirking at me. "A credit for your thoughts? I'd love to know where your head goes when you do that."

With an embarrassed chuckle, I shrugged again. "I just drift off sometimes. I thought it was a Perception overload thing, but I think it's partly just how my brain works. I like to think I'm getting better at least. I think having so much more Focus makes my tangents shorter because I can run through them more quickly. As for this one, I was just thinking about how much like Zeke I'm becoming, and how that's not exactly a bad thing."

Grimacing, Callie recoiled a bit. "Ew! No thank you. If you start coming home smelling like a brewery I'm making you sleep on the couch. Zeke's drinking isn't too inconvenient since we don't need him to do much, but I don't want my boyfriend constantly guzzling liquor."

I snickered at that. "Oh, I see how it is, it's only a problem if it impacts you? Don't worry though, I don't have any interest in drinking. The idea of being drunk is weird to me. I don't like the lack of control. Then again, Zeke is too high ranked to really get buzzed off the stuff he drinks I think. Maybe he just enjoys the taste." I cocked my head in faux thought. "Maybe I should start drinking after all."

"On. The. Couch." Callie poked her finger into my chest with each word. "I don't mean your bed either. The couch. In the living room." Her eyes were narrowed in an imitation of annoyance, but I could see the twitch of her lips making it clear she was kind of amused. I held both hands up in surrender and she gave a pleased nod that was way too stuck up to be anything but a joke before we both burst out laughing.

"Alright." I said as we stopped laughing. "As much fun as this is, I think we need to figure out how to start that fight you were itching for. I don't know enough about this place or how they work to have a decent idea how to piss people off. So what are we supposed to do to get them riled?" This had been Callie's idea, so I was sure she had some kind of plan in mind. I didn't know anything much about the Queen's organization. We'd mostly avoided it when I'd been here, focusing on the Jerks, who were the far more outspoken and attention grabbing target.

Callie just shrugged. "Easiest way I can think of is to just start bad mouthing them. Disaster in particular has a nasty temper. I'll just start telling stories, maybe exaggerate a few of her more embarrassing moments, and I doubt it'll take her more than a few minutes to start something. In case you missed it she knows how to push my buttons, and I'm just as good at making her angry. It comes from being someone's archenemy for years." She shot me a wink when she said archenemy, clearly knowing how silly and dramatic it sounded, even if it was also a weirdly appropriate term from what I could see.

Picking up her drink, she gestured for me to follow, and the two of use made our way to one of the bigger tables off to one side of the dance floor. The big tables seemed to be a place for groups to mingle and socialize outside of the small collections of people who had come here together, and we slid into the booth easily, dropping in to listen to a pair of bickering Ascendants, who were apparently just back from a trip into the deeper parts of the wilderness.

The big man with bright yellow hair and dark skin, was glaring accusingly at his smaller female companion, whose freckled face was beat red. "And all I'm saying is that you clearly knew that I misheard you Candle! I was under the impression that you said those goats SPAT fire. You had to have figured that out when I announced that plan was to sneak up behind them!"

Candle, whose red hair was every bit as bright as her name suggested, just shrugged helplessly. "Well I'm sorry you don't listen when I talk Volt. I assumed that sneaking up behind them was only PART of the plan. Besides, it's not like anyone was hurt. They were only H-rank goats, and our armor wasn't too badly burned. The smell will probably even wash out after a few years."

Callie and I gave each other wide eyed looks and slightly scooted down the bench away from the pair, and we definitely weren't the only ones to do so. The red haired girl seemed to notice that and snapped her mouth closed, her face flushing as the yellow haired guy pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Callie, half to save them the embarrassment and half to get the attention on us. Cleared her throat. "Well, that sounds dramatic. Glad you're both safe though." It was impressive how she managed to say that while sounding sympathetic but avoiding coming across as condescending. I was pretty sure I couldn't have managed it.

Everyone turned to her and she smiled disarmingly. "Hi there, I'm Nightstrike, and this is my boyfriend Solomon." No one looked surprised, which wasn't a shock. Callie was one of the most famous members of the younger generation in Valen. "It's nice to meet everyone. I've heard of most of you of course." I wasn't sure that was true. There were a few G-rankers mixed in here and every G-ranker in Valen was well known enough to be recognized on sight. There weren't that many of them around. But there were H-rankers among them too, and it would be odd for her to know them all.

Still, nobody called her on it as she continued in a friendly tone. "Are we telling stories? Because I have a few good ones."
She then proceeded to launch into a series of carefully chosen anecdotes. The early ones were about her adventures when she first got her abilities, some embarrassing moments, but mostly cute embarrassing rather than genuinely reputation damaging. As she went on she started to transition into subtle bragging, and then slowly started to work Disaster into her stories. Just a mention here or there, until she was finally telling stories exclusively about the two of them.

I was blown away. Callie was shifting the topic of conversation so subtly I'd barely noticed and I was actively looking for it. Her stories were just the right mix of funny, sympathetic, and mildly embarrassing to suck people in as quickly as possible. By the time she got to the Disaster stories everyone was completely hooked, laughing along with her narrative and hanging on her every word. She was an absolute genius at controlling the crowd, and I finally started to get an idea about how Callie had become one of the youngest G-rankers in the whole city.

Finally, when Callie was halfway through a story where Disaster had accidentally ended up in the sewer after a particularly long chase, I heard glass shatter on the other side of the room. Everyone looked over at the same time, to see the redhead in the Ace of Hearts mask holding a shattered champagne flute and stalking over to where we were sitting. "Bullshit!" She screamed at Callie. "You tricked me into taking that turn! You think you can tell lies about me in my own club?" Huh. Callie had been right. That actually was pretty easy. Now for the fun part.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Disaster, unsurprisingly, was quickly followed by her sisters, and the rest of the people at our table were clear within seconds. From what Callie told me, Ascendant clubs tended to be incredibly dramatic by nature. Random brawls weren't unusual at places like this, and everyone knew exactly what to do in the event of a fight. They couldn't have been gone faster if they had teleported. The triplets stalked across the intervening space, eyes glued to Callie, who was smiling quizzically at them, head cocked in a textbook expression of puzzled confusion.

We got out of the table, since having it in the way wasn't likely to help much, and stepped out to face them in the empty space between the table and the dance floor. I didn't really feel like bickering, so I just stood behind Callie and crossed my arms, trying to look menacing, which was admittedly not hard when you're six foot four and made of solid muscle covered in expensive powerful armor.

Stopping a few feet short of us, Disaster glared at Callie. "I am so fucking glad you took your boy toy and fucked off to the capital you holier than thou bitch. Do you know how nice it's been not having to deal with your constant show boating and cries for attention?" She put on a high pitched voice. " 'Oh, I'm Nightstrike and people fear me because I'm such a badass, they definitely don't pay attention to me because of my ridiculous oversized ass and skimpy leotard. I'm the strongest heroine in the city.' Fucking gag me, Calliope! We were all so relieved you were gone and you had to ruin it by showing your snooty face again."

Callie's puzzled frown melted into an angry sneer. Using real names was considered terrible form. Callie's identity wasn't really a secret considering her parentage, but it was still an asshole thing to do. "Oh, how shocking, the perpetual second place doesn't like how much attention I get. Grow up Ashley. We're Ascendants. We're all trying to get attention. And I'm not even going to dignify that costume remark with a response. Maybe if you spent half the time you waste throwing tantrums about how people should care more about you actually trying to improve you wouldn't be so far behind."

I was starting to really dislike this girl. The insistence that Callie was coasting on her looks was insulting as hell, especially to someone like me who trained with her constantly. No one put in as much effort as my girlfriend, she was the most driven person I knew. The two sisters stood back, watching carefully but not actually moving. The redhead jerked her eyes to me. "Oh, and how about the arm candy. You do know she's only with you for the glory right? How convenient that you got together right after you got famous and got a ride out of this dump. Or did you think she actually liked you?"

My mask was convenient in this case because it hid the barely contained laughter on my face, which probably would have made things worse. Callie could have gone to Rajak any time she wanted. She was furious about needing to give in to her dads pressure, and had only gone because she cared about the team. If Disaster wanted to sew dissent, she had picked the exact wrong string to pull on. It was actually kind of funny seeing her misread the situation so badly.

Despite the wild inaccuracy though, Callie seemed to be furious at the accusation, and I saw the shadows around us start
to literally bubble as her ability reached out to take hold of them. My eyes widened and I put a warning hand on her shoulder. "Honey. I think maybe using our abilities on them directly is a bit overkill. We're not here to hurt anyone, and that seems like it might be a step too far."

It was the subtlest way I could say 'what are you doing, we don't want to kill them'. After weeks of training against Abel, we could take the three of them with barely any Skill use and a bit of elbow grease. Using Callie's shadows directly was like swatting a fly by collapsing a building on it. These were incredibly low tier G-rankers who couldn't have been in that level more than a year at most. Without our advantages in training and stats I doubted any of them even had a specialized stat that equaled one of my evenly distributed ones.

Releasing a deep breath, Callie relaxed, and the shadows pacified. She'd definitely done that on purpose, but I wasn't sure if she was showing off to make a point or was genuinely so angry she'd been about to hurt them. Disaster, for her part, didn't seem to care. She snarled at the pretension of my comment and Callie's concession and blurred forward toward us without a second of warning.

Unfortunately for her, 'without a second of warning' from someone at her level, might as well have come with an engraved invitation to a fight with a time and datestamp attached. Disaster was glowing with green energy, shot through with the blue glow surrounding the dark haired one, and the red glow surrounding the blonde. Calamity and Despair, though I didn't know which was which.

Whatever the order was, they had clearly juiced her up already, and while it didn't bridge the gap between us stat wise, it gave her enough of a bump that I could see her doing alright against some of the lower level Pavilion members. Unfortunately, it was ONLY the lower level members, and I groaned in annoyance as I stepped back. Callie didn't need help with this. As much as I'd been itching for a fight I'd just be stepping on her moment.

I wasn't really sure what the beef between these two was, but Callie clearly hated Disaster enough to fight all three of them alone. She wanted to work out some aggression, and the point of this whole thing was for her to have fun and do something stupid and selfish for a change. I knew she would be aware of me backing up given our combat awareness of each other, and she was more than willing to step up based on the lunge she made at the other woman in response. I just shrugged and walked over to sit down at the table again, picking up my blueberry smoothie and taking a long sip as I watched the show. Seeing Callie fight was always amazing.

Disaster, for her part, was pretty impressive. Her hands came up and she lashed out with a pair of punches crackling with green flame, which made my eyebrows shoot up. Since I knew her ability, that was either a trick she managed through synergizing or she had an actual fucking fire fist Skill. I knew Skills like that existed, but they were insanely rare on Callus, Unique Skills like my DS mastery notwithstanding.

Callie was surprised too, but to her credit , she also had much higher Might and Perception than I did. Picking up and processing, then reacting, to that attack was childs play for her and she barely hesitated for an instant as Disaster came in at her dropping to a one legged crouch, Callie planted a hand flat on the floor and spun herself in a circle, using the circular momentum and her Balam skills to take Disaster's feet right out from under her.

She rolled to the side just fast enough to avoid Calamity's stomping attempt to smash her face in, went up onto her hands and arched into a graceful backbend to get back to her feet. I had to stifle a laugh because it was such a showy and obviously frivolous move that literally no one could mistake it for anything but blatant mockery. She was playing with them, and she wanted them all to know it.

With Disaster getting back to her feet, I saw them all take a moment to stop and re orient themselves before spreading out around her in a loose triangle formation. The next attack, when it came, was a perfectly synchronized assault from three angles that was much more difficult to dodge than any of the singular attacks would have been. I could see what Callie meant, the three of them had good synergy. If we hadn't been undergoing the training we had I'd probably have needed to help her out of this.

We had, however. These three rookies couldn't hold a candle to the coordination we saw sparring with Mel and Abel. They were probably about as good as we were after the first week of Abel beating our mistakes into us. Still, that wasn't good enough. Callie was easily able to identify the small gaps in their cooperative assault and slip through them. Even if she hadn't been more skilled she had a stat advantage they just weren't good enough to compensate for.

Disaster came at her from the front, aiming to lock her up, the one I suspected was Calamity(red) from behind on the left, aiming low, and Despair(blue) from behind on the right, driving a blazing kick at the back of her head. I watched with interest to see if the hits would land, with Callie's armor it wasn't like the attacks could do any real damage. Might hurt a bit, but she wasn't going to get injured.

It never even got that far. As Despair's foot swung at her head, my girlfriend spun in place. One hand lashed out, using the momentum of a full rotation to life the blue glowing Ascendant off her feet, as the other clamped down on her thigh, lifting her bodily off the ground and swinging her along the trajectory of the kick. Calamity, noticed the move too late and tried to pull out of her attack, but had already committed too much, and her low blow slammed into her sister as she was swung around along the ground, tangling the two of them up and sending her sprawling.

Callie, no longer in the same spot after the movement, avoided the direct assault by Disaster by putting the tangled forms of her sisters in her way with a quick yank, and the three of them ended up in a head on the floor, groaning at the impact. Callie casually strolled over to where I was sitting, plopping down in my lap and snatching up my smoothing to take a long sip as I yelped in protest.

Oh course, they weren't down and out or anything. She hadn't seriously hurt them, even if I doubted that had been much fun. She was just giving them time to sort themselves out and make a plan, or decide not to engage again. Her display just now had effectively proved that she was WAY out of their league. If they were smart they would back off. This had been their own idea anyway, at least from an outside perspective.

Disaster looked just about ready to explode, but her sisters were whispering to her hurriedly, clearly trying to avoid letting the whole mess escalate. She forced herself to take a breath, but once she did, she started to calm down a bit. She'd been outmaneuvered here, and so she needed something to help her save face, but she knew she couldn't win a direct fight. I couldn't hear what they were saying, so they must have been using some kind of Stealth Skill.

She strode forward, shoulders back, head high, and stalked up to point at Callie. "Ok, that was kind of impressive, but really, this isn't the place for combat anyway. We wouldn't be able to let loose for fear of damaging our business, you understand." That was a decent excuse, but they weren't going to leave it at that. I was sure of it. They needed a way to change the narrative. I considered dozens of scenarios, but in the end, I was absolutely floored when Disaster pointed directly at us and shouted. "We challenge you to a dance off!" Wait...what?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Apparently there were preparations necessary for the 'dance off' so I was able to steal Callie away before the competition actually started. I dragged her over to the table again, and she covered us with a film of shadow that cut off our words due to some stealth infusion. As soon as the bubble went up, she started cursing. "That bitch! She completely outmaneuvered me. How did I not see that coming?"

I just kind of...stared. Finally my brain started working enough for me to ask. "Ok, what the actual fuck? How was that even a viable challenge, much less a masterstroke that destroyed all your plans? She challenged you to a dance off. That's like...Jerk level stupid."

Callie growled in annoyance. "If you recall, the Jerks partially ran this town for years. But the stupidity is WHY it's genius. Ascendant interactions, politics specifically, are all about perception. Lower case P perception, as in the way people see you. The reason this whole plan was viable was because baiting them into attacking and kicking their asses in their own club made them look like incompetent morons. Being seen as a hero, or even as an evil bastard, these things all have value, being seen as a useless moron, less so."

I opened my mouth to mention the jerks again, and she held up a finger to cut me off. "The Jerks were morons, but they weren't useless. They got things done, so the stupidity got them more buzz, not less. Which is why THIS." She gestured over her shoulder with a thumb. "Is such a good move. Challenging me to a dance off effectively neutralizes any weight this had. It's turned the whole thing into a game. Win or lose, nothing we do now matters. We come out looking like squabbling kids either way."

"Ah." I said in realization. "If we try to fight them anyway we look like aggro assholes, which runs counter to our image and would hurt us more than help. We have to be careful about our reputation so we don't pile negative recursion on ourselves. Whereas if we accept this is just silly nonsense. They put us in a box." I groaned. "This kind of shit makes my head hurt. I just wanted to fight somebody. This is why I prefer the WCP. At least down there people just straight up try to murder you. Dealing with Unity bullshit is so complicated."

Callie just waved me off. "It's fine. You won't be participating. The initial challenge was a big sweeping declaration because it grabbed attention. She's going to realize it would be two to three, and needing an extra person to beat me makes her look bad, even if it is a joke. She'll tell her sisters to back off and the two of us will take each other on head to head. It's not like I don't know how to dance. I took like...four years of ballet when I was younger. It's not exactly the right style for this, but I have a few other moves."

I reached out to take her hand, giving it a squeeze. "Really? Yet another thing I didn't know about you. Will you ever stop surprising me?" I paused after I said that. "Although thinking back, the leotard probably would have been a decent clue if I'd thought about it. I admit, I mostly just got distracted by your legs though." She rolled her eyes at that, and I plopped back down on the booth. "Alright. Well go kick her ass...through dance. Nope, that just isn't getting less stupid. Weird, I thought I'd get used to it."

She just laughed as she got up and dismissed the bubble. Sure enough, Disaster was standing alone in the middle of the floor, and as Callie walked out to face her, she loudly announced that it would be one on one to make things fair. To my surprise though, Despair and Calamity plopped down on the other side of the booth, giving me a friendly nod. I cocked my head, the universal symbol for confused masked guy. "Um...hello? It's nice to meet you?"

The blonde one, Despair, I think, just chuckled. "You too. You and Callie seem close. I think it's nice she found someone. She always had trouble meeting guys, they were almost all asshole Ascendants who wanted to ride the fame train up to the next rank. You seem really sweet though. It's nice." At my stunned silence, she just laughed again. "Sorry. You must be confused. I'm Lauren. This is Amber. We've known Callie for years."

"Um...ok?" I said, completely thrown. "But doesn't she like...hate you guys? No offense, you seem nice enough so far, but you seem more at ease with this situation than I expected. I figured you would be shit talking her or trying to sew seeds of doubt or something..."

"Villainous?" Chimed in Amber, amused. "Not really. Most villains and heroes get along fine outside actual combat. Unless there's a personal grudge. We grew up in the same social circles as Callie. You have to remember that abilities don't manifest until usually late puberty. Sometimes a few years earlier like with Callie, but that means that Ascendant kids tend to mix and match before they figure out if they'll get abilities. Hell, half of us change sides when we do, because we'd rather not work for our parents."

That made a lot of sense actually. Except one thing. "So why didn't you do that then? Switch sides I mean. The three of you work for your mom right? Also if you grew up together why does Callie hate Disaster so much, and vice versa. There seems to be a lot of animosity for childhood friends." At least I assumed so. I didn't really have any childhood friends but Benny, but their dynamic seemed odd.

Lauren giggled. "Making a LOT of assumptions there. But mostly it's jealousy. Callie developed her powers early, and we got ours just slightly later. Unfortunately, augmentation is pretty shit at low ranks. The boost from our abilities scales with stats, like pretty much all abilities. So while Callie got to be the superstar with her dramatic shadow powers, we all had to grind our way up slow. We were still able to take her as a group of course, but we never had the same buzz as she did. The two of us didn't care too much, but Ash was mom's golden girl. It drove her nuts."

As I took in all the information, the music finally started. The whole dance off thing was silly, but I wasn't about to let Callie down by not showing support. When she started, I whooped and cheered, clapping in the loudest and most obnoxious way possible. I saw her stiffen up as she tried desperately not to burst into giggles. But when the song started to play in earnest, she began to move.

I'd expected something...flowery. Based on her ballet training. But I should have known better. My Callie wasn't one to lean on style over substance, outside the odd illusion. When she started moving, it took me a second to place what she was doing, and when I did, I had to hold back a booming laugh of my own. As she began to wind and twirl in complex rhythms, slowly shifting in circular movements, it was easy to recognize the forms of Balam, as they were executed in time to the music.

Callie had been training her ass off for months now to grasp her Beginner Skill in Balam, learning the moves, learning to integrate them into her combat style and her motions. She'd spent night after night training with me, with Abel, with Mel, and sometimes on her own when she had the free time. Callie's grasp on the Balam forms was absolutely flawless, and at Beginner level she was able to apply them in any way she saw fit. Even artistically.

I'd noted before how beautiful she looked doing the forms, how graceful and ethereal and deadly. Seeing them to music just amped that up to eleven. There's an effect of some songs, that you can do any repetitive motion to them and it looks like a dance. The forms were concise, fluid, and repetitive in the perfect way to fit to music, and between that and Callie's mastery over them it's staggering how amazing she looks performing them to the beat.

It isn't a club dance, or ballet, but it's thrilling and dangerous and powerful, and I can see everyone in the club as entranced as I am. I can see her plan here too. Demonstrating her combat ability withing the meta of the dance battle. She's going to come out of this looking badass even if she barely got to show off her fighting, and I couldn't have been prouder.

Amber whistled. "Well shit. That's definitely not a Minor Skill. I didn't know Callie was that into martial arts. Hell of an ace up her sleeve." She shot me a wink. "No pun intended." I had to roll my eyes at that, considering her mask. As I watched, the song ended and there was a thundering round of applause as every single person in the club let her know how impressive that had been

Disaster, for her part, didn't give up or anything. She started a new song and did her best to dance back. It looked pretty sad in comparison though, and I think even she knew that, because I got the impression she just wanted to get through it. When they finished, Disaster announced Callie was the winner through gritted teeth, and Amber got up to inform everyone that Callie's drinks would be on the house tonight, further decreasing the stakes of this and making sure anyone who heard this story would definitely forget it in minutes.

Callie walked over and plopped down in my lap as Disaster, or rather Ashley, slid in next to her sisters. A server came over and Callie ordered another fish bowl drink before turning to grin at Disaster. "Nice move there with the dance battle, but you ended up losing anyway. Ass." Her tone was malicious as she needled her rival, who literally growled in annoyance.

"I hate you so fucking much." Ashley hissed. "I hope you know that. If you weren't some kind of freak who obviously cheated to get stronger I would have kicked your ass. You're way too powerful compared to when you left." She didn't ask how that happened though. It was poor form to question how another Ascendant got their stats unless you were close. She probably just wrote it off as being in the capital though, which I doubt helped.

Amber just snickered. "Oh stop it you two. You take yourselves far too seriously when it comes to this little rivalry. This is officially over. So stop being assholes and let your boyfriend enjoy his night out Callie." Being alone in a group of people who knew the truth meant there was no problem with the whole secret identity thing. Still, I didnt know what to make of them so I didn't give out my own name. No need to expose myself to risk for no reason. They didn't seem to mind me keeping it to myself though.

I ordered another smoothie and we got to talking about Callie. Her childhood before her powers and shortly after, how they all knew each other (in a more specific sense than they'd mentioned so far) and just generally whatever we could think of. The triplets were actually pretty chill people.

The only real downside of the night was Ashley and Callie taking potshots at each other, but we eventually separated them and forbid them from speaking to each other directly, and after ten minutes of trying to get us to pass insulting messages we all knew they could both hear fine, the started ignoring each other. By the time we got up to leave, I was more grateful than ever that I'd convinced Callie to come out tonight like she'd planned, even if the way things had gone down was a huge shock. This had been really good for both of us. I couldn't wait to see what this vacation had in store next.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We headed home a few hours later, both in a surprisingly good mood. Lauren and Amber had actually gotten Callie to be pretty friendly once she and Ashley were banned from speaking and by the end of the night I think everyone had fun. I'd have expected the attempted ass kicking and reputation bomb to have stepped on toes, but everyone just kind of blew it off as the cost of doing business. Heroes vs villains. I really didn't get the way the Unity worked. But if it was good for them they were welcome to the weirdness.

When we got back to the house, Amelia was waiting up for us, though just her, and for a second I thought this might be a parent thing. I read moms did that after a long night sometime? I wasn't sure, I'd never really had a long night, and the very few things that might count Zeke hadn't cared much about. He wasn't the helicopter type. I quickly realized though, that this wasn't some curfew policing weirdness, she was waiting up to talk to me about her wish. She was finally ready to get powers.

She gestured for both of us to sit. "Hey you two. Good to see you. I wanted to talk to Shane, Cal, you're free to stay, but try not to weigh in too much. This is between me and him, ok?" Her tone was gentle, but very firm, and Callie nodded solemnly at the statement, just excited to have her mom step on the path. Amelia turned back to me. "So, how much control do I get here. Can I wish for a specific power?"

I gave a shrug. "All wishes depend on what you can pay. I can't really give much advice without compromising the process. I can say that I can do give you most Abilities at this point, I expect. Probably nothing like...clan specific, because of the perception of exclusivity, but if you want a specific power, as long as it's minor it should be fine. I can give you a shadow power, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, gods no!" Amelia said, with a loud snort. At Callie's hurt look, she winced at her own outburst. "Sweetie. I love you, you know that. But I'm perfectly aware of why your father left. Don't get me wrong, the man was miserable to live with, and I'm well past being bitter about it, but I have no desire to invite him back into my life by becoming a part of his twisted dynastic fantasies. I can't think of a faster way to make Paul show up at my door than to awaken a shadow ability. I literally want to get as far away from that as I possibly can."

Callie's hurt faded a bit into resignation. "That's...fair. He really has zero concern for other people, I could see him showing up to try to get you back if you got shadow abilities. I'm already getting stronger, in his mind, you developing abilities would make you even more suited to be the mother of his child. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. So, the opposite then? Maybe some kind of light based power?"

She seemed to be warming to the idea now that she knew it was about hating on her dad. I had to fight down a snicker as I saw them bonding over mutual dislike. I'd never met Midknight, and honestly at this point I hoped that streak continued. I didn't like him, but it seemed like everyone was just better off when he was avoided. It was pretty much a moot point right now anyway with him in Rajak. I was just glad we moved out of the Unity building. I didn't think Callie could have opened up like she had under her dad's thumb (or that's how she'd seen it).

Amelia was looking intrigued by her suggestion though. "Light based might be nice. I was kind of thinking about healing? I've always like caring for things, and I bet it would work on my garden. I'm guessing whatever power Jessie has is out. Even if I got her same starting ability and synergized the same Skills with it, if I didn't have the same stat distribution and knowledge base I'd end up with something else. Better to just aim for my own thing. What do you think?"

They were talking like I wasn't there, which was good, because for the purposes of this conversation I kind of wasn't. I just let Callie advise her. She knew more about my power than almost anyone except for me and like...Zeke. PLus like I'd said, I could grant basically any Minor ability they could think of. How useful any given ability was at Minor was a different story. Plus she had to be able to pay for it.

Callie had considered that too, because she bit her lip worriedly as she thought out loud. "Healing would be nice, healers are hard to come by, and I doubt even if you ever headed to the capital Uncle Alex would let the Peace Lord anywhere near you. It would probably be expensive to pay for though. What are you planning to offer for your power. A Minor ability has little value to Shane, so that'll bring down the cost, but Impact is a valuable commodity to anyone even if he can only do the partial point."

I'd expected worry, but Amelia didn't look bothered. "I considered that. I talked to Ezekial a bit about it, he's something of an expert, and I thought over what you told me about the ability. I think some kind of contract would be the best bet. Something like a promise of a safe haven here if it's ever needed for a certain number of years maybe? As long as I make sure Shane is always welcome in our home I feel like that's something of significant value given his feelings for you."

That...certainly had value to me. I was pretty sure it might work. Wishes on mortals tended to be cheaper since they were easier to effect in any case, and I'd been paid in credits for mortal wishes before which set a standard of value. Plus it really was important to me that Callie's mom liked me and was ok having me here. I couldn't comment of course, so I just waited as she formulated her wish.

She gave it substantial thought before finally putting it into words. "I wish that I had the best possible light based power for me that you have the power to grant at this moment." I grinned. She really had been listening to Callie. That was an excellent wish. "In return you will be welcome in my home at any time for the rest of my life, even if things don't work out between you and my daughter."

Wish detected. Grant wish? I didn't love the caveat but I saw the need for it. There was a possibility Callie and I would break up. It was nice of her to offer to shelter me even if that happened as much as I hoped it wouldn't come up. I confirmed. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 10 Impact, 100 Creation, 100 Vitality, 100 Might. I felt the familiar static begin to build in my body, though it was MUCH weaker than usual.

For a mortal wish this was actually pretty pricy, but the low Impact cost was what really told me how low level it was. When I was running up against the edge of my ability it used all my potential Impact to patch up any shorts I had in the required points. This one, despite costing a pretty large amount in terms of individual stats, only cost ten. I reached out my hand for Amelia to take, and she did. As per usual the electricity arced into her, and Callie appeared behind her mother to hold her up as the power coursed through her.

This was a much bigger change than Benny had, because I let his ability come to the surface on its own. This time I was literally molding a power, which had to be more invasive. Luckily I was also much higher ranked, and rank differences seemed to make everything easier. Kind of explained some of the things the current Wishmaster could do. It took about five minutes, which was a while for something like this, before Amelia was finished with her ascension. When it was done, she fell back onto the couch and groaned.

She looked...different. Younger. Not too much younger, since she had already looked pretty young for her age, but she definitely seemed more youthful. I remembered the original description I'd had of Vitality, that it kept you in increasingly good health for your age, while Impact was the deciding factor of how long you live. I was pretty sure Amelia was starting the clock on her Impact based aging late, but I was also sure that just becoming an Ascendant had made her much more youthful for the spot she was at.

Her eyes snapped open, taking a second to focus. "Oh...ok wow. That was pretty crazy. Oh! And I have three stats active. Might, Vitality, and Creation. Vitality is even at 2!" She sounded giddy. Almost childlike in a way, and I totally got it. I'd been just as excited about my abilities when I got them. For someone who spent her life seeing her loved ones use powers she thought she'd never have, this must be absolutely enthralling.

Callie laughed and pulled her mother into a tight hug, eyes swimming with unshed tears. "Gods mom, I'm so happy you're an Ascendant now! We'll get you up a few ranks and make sure you can live a nice long life. I don't want to turn around one day and find you gone. I couldn't stand it. What ability did you get anyway. You didn't say?"

"First of all." Said Amelia wheezily. "Ribs, dear." Callie blushed and let her go, getting a wide grin in return. Amelia might be Ascendant now, but she was also only I-rank, which barely counted. I was pretty sure that was why I was able to even do this. I wasn't giving a point of Impact (which I had tried with Benny and the others and couldn't do) I was pushing someone's natural partial point of Impact to a whole one.

Amelia stretched a bit to work out the soreness. "Secondly. I got a power called Minor Lay on Hands. It scans any living thing I touch and lets me mend small injuries. I suspect higher levels will let me do more, but for now it's mostly cuts and scrapes. Not a surprise, Minor abilities are pretty weak most of the time. Still, a combination scanning and healing ability is very useful. It also works on plants and animals which is pretty versatile." She stood up and walked over, pulling me into a tight hug. "I love it. Thank you so much Shane. As I said, you're always welcome here."

Callie crashed into her from the other side, her arms wrapping around us both and squeezing us in a bear hug as she buried her face in her mother's shoulder. Her voice came out muffled as she added. "Seriously Shane, you have no idea what this means to me. I can never thank you enough."

I just shook my head with a laugh. "Please. I love you. We don't need to keep score. If we did, you'd be way ahead just because of how grateful I am to have you in my life." She rolled her eyes at my sappiness, but I saw a big smile on her face as she pulled back. "Now. I still have four wishes today, so once you're feeling up to it, maybe we can get you up to H-rank. I could definitely use the scanning aspect of that ability. I have my own healing, but I can't really see what I'm doing." It was a good thing Amelia slipped out of the hold before I said that. I was pretty sure Callie cracked MY ribs that time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I could not, as it turned out, trade three points for an all out attack from an I-ranker, regardless of the utility or how much I valued it's usefulness. I managed to barely squeak by at one point per wish for the attacks, and she had to promise me ten attacks per wish to even justify that. It was annoying that this was when I found out the limits of how far I could push things, but I knew there had to be one. No matter how much I valued something, base value DID come into effect, and Minor attacks just couldn't make the jump as they were.

Still, with a contract to give me forty of her 'attacks' (read, healing scans) I managed to give her four points, one for each remaining wish today. She put two in Vitality and two in Perception, which she assumed would effect the scanning abilities of her power. With her original four points from her breakthrough, that put her at nine counting Impact. That was...frustrating. Still, it wasn't the end of the world, she would probably earn a point from the rep of ascending so late in life anyway, so she would be at H-rank soon enough.

Callie seemed completely unbothered, peppering my face with kisses as she told me how amazing I was, and I couldn't stop smiling all the way to bed as we headed to sleep. Amelia told us to be ready for a delicious breakfast, since it was the least she could do. I tried to tell her it wasn't necessary but she insisted, planning to make biscuits and gravy, which I couldn't have brought myself to turn down even if Callie wouldn't have shivved me in my sleep for denying her a delicious meal.

We both headed to our own rooms and passed out after a long night and I slept like a rock knowing that things were so good. Once again, I woke up with a face full of long black hair, and had to fight back a laugh as I realized Callie had snuck back into my room. I shifted slightly, apparently letting the light hit her face, which drew a groan from her as she grabbed a pillow and shoved it over her head. I pulled it away. "Nope. I'm awake now, and I refuse to allow you peace while I must suffer. Wake up."

She pawed at my hand a few times weakly trying to grab the pillow and then flopped back to throw her arm over her eyes. "Stop. It's too bright." Her voice was hoarse but the complete sentences were a good sign. I debated tickling her or something, but this early she was liable to throw me out of bed at the attempt. Size difference or not she was much stronger than me. Finally she groaned again and sat up. "Fine, I'm up. What time is it even? If you woke me up too long before breakfast I'm going to be pissed."

I looked at her flatly. "Yes, how dare I move in my own bed that I went to sleep in alone. What's next? Wearing my own clothes to bed instead of letting you use them?" I looked down meaningfully at the oversized t-shirt she'd stolen from me and worn to sleep. "I'm a lunatic. Who will end my reign of terror?"

She pouted up at me. "In case you're wondering, you're not cute when I'm tired. Also you didn't answer my question about what time it was? Avoidance is the first sign of a guilty conscience." She sighed theatrically and waved off the thought. "Oh well, you can make it up to me. You mentioned cooking for my mom while we were here. As restitution for disturbing my slumber, you can let me pick the meal. We can stop at the market today and pick up the stuff. I figure we can get some cheese, and bread and butter, maybe some tomato soup. I want you to make-"

"Grilled cheese." I cut in dryly. "Yeah, I cracked that code. But sure. I can make grilled cheese for dinner for my night cooking. We can do all your favorite cheeses. Some smoked gouda and maybe a little monterey jack." I leaned down to kiss her. "And we can pretend you didn't ask that to make the dinner thing easier on me because you know how simple grilled cheese is, if you want."

She snorted and looked away to hide her smirk. "Whatever, egomaniac. I just like friend cheese." She leaned over me to see the clock and then squealed in excitement. "Oh! Also breakfast should be ready soon. I'm going to go shower before we eat. Mom's biscuits and gravy are amazing. They might be almost as good as your food." With that she hopped out of bed and bolted for the bathroom. I just smiled, rolled my eyes and got up to get dressed. I preferred to shower at the end of the day rather than the beginning.

The food actually did smell amazing. I wondered if now that she had Impact, Amelia qualified for the Minor Cooking Mastery Skill. I'd never been sure how that worked. Most people broke through in their teens when they didn't have developed Skills yet, so it would be interesting to see how things worked out.

Knowing I might not get much to eat if Callie made it downstairs first, I decided to leave her to her shower and try to get my food before her. She might sulk, but she wouldn't be too mad as long as I didn't eat it all, and considering how much Amelia cooked last time I doubted it. As we headed downstairs, I tried to think through everything we needed to do while we were here.

We had the guild to visit, Maria and Benny to spend time with (as well as Maria to offer a wish to), and only four days or so left here to do all that in. It seemed like both plenty of time and not enough. At least Maria would have Amelia entering the world up capes at the same time, who already knew all about Ascendant life. Having a friend who could guide her would be a huge help to my surrogate little sister.

When I got to the kitchen, breakfast was just about ready, and Amelia was putting out plates. She was talking to Alexander, who was actually smiling noticeably. The normally taciturn and formal man looked absolutely ecstatic at the change in lifespan, and grinned brightly when he saw me. "Shane! Good morning. Amy was just catching me up on her evening. I can't thank you enough for everything you've done. I sent for a few of my F-rankers to come and help her with things around the house and ranking up. She doesn't want to relocate to Rajak for several reasons."

"I can speak for myself, thank you." Said Amelia with good humor. "But yes. I'd rather avoid my ex-husband's city. I'm more suited to the Unity, and if I went to the capital I'd be forced to interact with him quite a bit. Stella has a large amount of control over this branch, and I've known her for quite some time. I'm not entirely sold on the idea of a bunch of F-rankers coming to babysit me, but Alex is insistent, and I figure I can have them run errands if nothing else."

It made me smile to think of dangerous WCP assassins, and F-rankers at that, being forced to go buy groceries and water plants by an I-ranker. I knew from seeing them together that Alexander cared a lot about Amelia though, and I had no doubt he'd make sure his people were on their best behavior. "In that case, you might be able to help me out with something actually. If you wouldn't mind."

Amelia raised an eyebrow good naturedly. "I'm happy to hear you out. I won't promise you my firstborn or anything. Oh, no, wait, you've already got her." I stifled a groan at the terrible mom joke, but couldn't fight down a smile. "Jokes aside I'm sure I can help. What did you need?"

I composed myself before responding. "Maria, that's Benny's sister who I grew up with, is probably going to be getting an ability. If you're going to have F-rankers in town to power level you or even just keep an eye out, could you include her in your plans? Nothing crazy, just let her tag along when possible. It would be a huge leg up for her I think. Plus you know a ton about Ascendant life and she's a complete rookie. I trust Stella to help her out if not, I just figured I'd ask.

To my surprise, Amelia looked thrilled. "That sounds lovely! It's been too quiet since Calliope moved away. Having a new face around will really brighten my day. I'd love to show her the ropes, it'll make my own journey starting out so much less monotonous. Early Ascendant grinding can be fairly tedious even to watch after seeing it often enough."

That worked out really well for me. I gave her a grateful smile. "That would be awesome thank you. I'm not positive she's going to decide to unlock an ability, but if she does I feel a lot better knowing she has you looking out for her. Stella and Ian would help her for sure, but they have work and Unity business. Another rookie would be ideal. I owe you one."
Before she could protest I changed the subject. "Now I'd love to try some of these biscuits and gravy before your daughter shows up and devours most of them. Though I dont think she'd finish all of it before everyone else eats. Where is everyone else actually?"

Amelia smiled ruefully. "We stayed late at the Druid's Grove. Ezekial actually ended up staying after we left. He and Alyssa hit it off, shes an old friend of Stella, and she'd heard of him even though they officially met. Alyssa never really bothered with the WCP. Anyway, short answer is they're all asleep still. It's not actually that late. Still nine or so. I was planning to let the biscuits and gravy warm in the oven while I waited for everyone to wake up." She chuckled. "I should have figured Callie's boyfriend would have some sort of psychic food sense."

I laughed off the joke and sat down, eager to try the food. Thick, buttery biscuits with heavy sausage gravy were heaped onto the plate, as well as a side of homemade hashbrown casserole with cheese and bacon that I hadn't even noticed, but that smelled absolutely amazing. I shoveled a huge fork full of each into my mouth and almost groaned with appreciation. The biscuits were soft and springy and the casserole was perfectly cooked to bring out the underlying crispiness of the hash browns, which I was pretty sure she had fried first before making the dish.

"Hashbrowns, score!" Came Callie's shout of delight as she practically dove into the seat next to me, heaping a few biscuits and a generous spoon full of hashbrown casserole onto her plate. Without looking, she also stabbed her fork onto my plate to steel a bit of own hashbrowns, shooting me a grin as she stuffed them in her mouth. Her vengeance at me for coming down early satisfied she started digging in.

I snickered at that but got back to eating myself. I finished up in not too much time and learned back, satisfied. Amelia handed me a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice that smelled so good I physically couldn't turn it down so I sipped on that as I relaxed while Callie finished eating. As she are, I pieced out my vote for where we spent our day. She'd picked yesterday so I didnt think she'd mind a suggestion. Besides, I think she was as excited as I was to see what ability Maria ended up with.

 

[Verdthandi]

Besides, I think she was as excited as I was to see what ability Maria ended

Click to shrink...

This sentence needs to be finished (presumably "up with."); was that the intended stopping point?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

This sentence needs to be finished (presumably "up with."); was that the intended stopping point?

Click to shrink...

I believe so yeah. I thought I added that. Sorry.

 

[Revanandfriends]

What a coincidence, I am also curious on what ability Maria will ended up with XD. Curious if it will be similar to Benny's in any way.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We talked over meeting with Maria about the wish, but I realized no one had explained to her about how it worked it, and if I offered her one I couldn't tell her to wish for an ability without compromising it we decided to make that a tomorrow plan. Today we were going in to see Stella and Cap at the guild. Amelia was coming with us to do her Intake, but other than that it was just Jessie, Callie, Benny, Celine, and I. Cass and Cark decided to sit things out with Zeke and Alexander at home, since they weren't Unity.

Celine, as a member of the Academy, was welcome of course, and Benny seemed excited to see the Valen branch of the Unity as much as to show it to her. "This is going to be amazing!" He said as we all sat together on the bus. "I've never really spent time at the guild, except for that time you got kidnapped by a psychopath and we were waiting for you to wake up." He said to me cheerfully. "Understandably I didn't do much sightseeing there at the time."

I rolled my eyes. "Sorry my near death experience ruined your day trip. I'm sure this one will be better." I briefly worried Jessie might be upset at the flippant joke about Stricture, given what he'd done, but apparently a combination of the fact that he was dead now and the fact that we were planning to bring back her brother made it much less stressful to think about. Speaking of Jessie. "Oh hey, Agria, are we meeting Sparkdove here? I figured she'd want to spend time with you while we're in town."

Sparkdove was Jessie's brother's friend Lindsey, who had been on a team with him before his death. They'd been close, and after he'd died, Lindsey had taken it upon herself to look after Jessie as best she could. They'd kept in touch via scan ring after we headed to Rajak, as far as I knew, though Jessie didn't talk about their conversations much. I got the feeling she confided a lot of the things she liked to push down in her childhood friend. She'd been a lot better since we'd talked about bringing Alan back, but everyone had bad days.

Our blonde teammate lit up at the question. "She is! She's been taking a more active role in the guild since we left. I was so happy to see her when we touched down, but we didn't get to spend much time together, so this will be awesome. Cap is going to be meeting us there too, right?"

Callie answered this one with a grin. "Yup, and not just him. He's been spending all his time with Blue Fox since we left. I think those two are FINALLY dating. Honestly watching them dance around each other for years was getting frustrating for pretty much everyone. I was beginning to think Stella was going to have to assign him a mission to finally ask her out before he would get around to it."

Amelia just laughed. "Oh gods, I remember those two coming over to the house. It's nice to know they ended up together. Ian was always a good boy. I liked his mother quite a bit. I always thought picking her as successor was the only thing your father did right when he was in charge here. Paul was hopeless at paperwork. Stella did all of that for him anyway. She deserved to be recognized for her contributions to the guild."

It was weird to hear about Stella when she was younger, but thinking about it, despite her youthful appearance (especially now) Amelia was in her forties. She was part of the generation before Stella took over. Though that brought up another question I'd had. "Why didn't Harvest take over? She's G-rank, but I'm pretty sure she's at the higher end. I bet if she became Guild Master she could have broken through, and since she grew up with you she'd have had seniority right? Why did Stella get tapped?"

"Oh that." Amelia said dismissively. "Paul didn't ask because he knew Alyssa would say no. Hell, if she wanted, she could have taken over before he did. Alyssa has always been good with people, but she's also not an ambitious person. She likes her woods and interacting with people at the grove. She doesn't want to be in charge of anything. She just wants to enjoy her life."

Jessie nodded. "That's true. Alan mentioned a few times that he wished she'd be more active in the field. It just isn't her scene though. I think she partly bowed out because she didn't want to rank up. F-rank comes with a lot of attention in Valen. If she got there she would be forced to interact with the higher level factions whether she liked it or not. I got the impression catching up with her that she's more than happy to stay where she is."

That almost reminded me of Abel in some ways. It was interesting how many reasons some people seemed to find not to rank up. It was a good reminder that not everything in life was about progression. Finally, the bus made it to the guild hall, and we climbed out. I stopped outside, staring up at the building with a smile. It had only been a few months since I first stood here for my intake, and so many things had changed. I had new friends, a girlfriend, power, and I knew things about myself and my family I never could have imagined.

It looked so different now, having seen what I'd seen. Smaller and less impressive in some ways, but more special in others because this was where I came from. It still looked like a courthouse, with columns and a marble facade, but it didn't look nearly as large or imposing as it had the first time. Not with buildings like the Unity headquarters in Rajak to compare it to. We headed inside, Callie pointing things out to Benny and Celine since this was their first visit aside from the wait to find out if I was alive for Benny. She seemed just as excited to be back as I was.

Ian met us downstairs in costume, alongside Blue Fox, who I didn't know very wall. A tall, friendly girl with bright blue streaks in her blonde hair that matched her cerulean eyes, along with a wide infectious smile. She cheered in excitement as she saw us, or rather one of us in particular, as she slammed into Callie, sweeping my girlfriend up in a crushing hug. "Nightstrike! It's so good to have you back, we really missed you." While Blue Fox was pretty tall for a woman at five foot ten, Callie was on the short side for anyone, a full foot shorter than the energetic blonde.

It was amusing to see my kickass girlfriend who was on the high end of G-rank manhandled by an H-ranker, but Callie just smiled fondly and squeezed her back. "Nice to see you too, Fox." She nodded over to Ian. "Cap, I see the two of you are as close as ever. Did you actually bite the bullet and finally ask her out? I was almost positive, but it's hard to tell with you to so I figured I'd ask."

Ian just rolled his eyes, giving me a hand shake before getting an enthusiastic hug from Jessie, and then a more measured one from Amelia. "Yes. We're dating. We started going out last month, and not that it's any of your business, but SHE asked me."

Callie spat a curse. "Shit. I owe Stella five chits. I had you being the one to finally get up the guts to ask. Why must you always find new ways to hurt me." She shot Blue Fox a wide smile. "Not that I'm not happy for you guys, I'm glad one of you has a spine at least. I'm just annoyed at losing the money. So, why, don't we show Celine and Clockwork around. Actually..." She paused, turning to Celine. "Do you not have a codename? I just realized that."

Celine chuckled. "No. I don't use the heroic cultivation system. Where I'm from we don't really use them. I just go by my regular name, same as I don't use a mask. Still, I'm on good terms with the Unity branches on this planet, so a tour should be fine. I'm interested to see how things work here."

"Wait." Ian said, eyes widening. "Are you an elf? Like a real one? I saw the ears but I figured it was some kind of Skill or ability based change. Like some people have oddly colored hair. That's so cool!" We all looked at him in amusement and he flushed. "I've never met an elf before ok? Only low level fae like Suki. Elves are cool." He stood there awkwardly for a minute as we stared at him before huffing. "Oh shut up, let's just go."

Blue Fox, or rather, Clarissa, snickered and put an arm over his shoulder. "It's ok sweetie. I'm sure you aren't the first nerd Celine has met." She kissed him on the cheek, smiling sweetly at Ian as he gaped in betrayal, and then grabbed Callie and dragged her ahead of us into the building.

I stepped up next to my former team leader. "Oh, I like her. Just sorry I didn't get to meet her when I was in town the first time. How've you been boss man? You seem happy, mortification at being a 'nerd' notwithstanding. Things been going ok here? With the Jerks gone I bet the city has been quieter."

We started walking, Celine and Benny catching up with Callie, with Jessie trailing behind. Ian grimaced. "Less than you would think. Mr. Jack-tastic was a lunatic, but his whole brand was being MOSTLY nonthreatening. There were a few psychos like Ronnie mixed in there, but for the most part the jerks were more zany than actually threatening. With him gone, some of the other gangs in the city have been moving to hold some of that territory."

I hadn't been expecting that. "Can they even manage that? Without an F-ranker how would they be able to keep up with the Queen of Hearts or The Nobody Man. I'd have figured the bigger factions would be snatching up the free territory to split between them."

"Some of it." He admitted with a sigh. "But there are limits to what they can comfortably hold. They're fighting over the prime real estate, but that leaves turf wars popping up in the smaller and less important parts of open territory. Granted, the bigger gangs will probably just annex anything that gets taken later, but that's its own kind of benefit." He shook his head absently. "Not your problem, kid. You have stuff to worry about already. Leave that to us. Mom is excited to see you. Her little investment. She was over the moon when you won the freshman scavenger hunt at the Academy. Hasn't stopped bragging about it since."

With the F-rankers from the capital coming to support Amelia I doubted the political situation would stay too unsteady. I flushed a bit at the other comment though. "Wait, bragging? About me? I mean, that's really nice, but I didn't know she cared that much."

He just laughed and clapped me on the back. "Of course. You and Callie represent Valen on the world stage. Now she gets to tell everyone how she has such a good eye for talent because she got you into that contract early. Plus a not insubstantial amount of gratitude mixed in for catching Stricture, and a bit of guilt. She's definitely team Solomon though. She'll be glad to see you home." I smiled a bit under my mask at the words. Not just because Stella was proud of me, which felt...weird, but good. But also because he was right. I did feel like I was home.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Stella didn't come down to meet us, because she was busy and also in charge. She DID call us up to say hello, which was nice, and if was fun to see Celine and Benny awed by SOMETHING. Stella's office was impressive in it's own right. It occurred to me that as a Guild Master of one of the branches, she would have access to resources that an F-ranker in Valen might not. I'd only ever met with E-rankers in official faction headquarters, it was probable people like Alexander had crazy rooms like this squirreled away somewhere to meet with other big names.

The Guild Master looked the same as I remembered, no nonsense bun, well tailored suit, sitting at a huge wooden desk. Unlike the first time I'd seen her though she was smiling warmly when she saw us. "Hail the conquering heroes." She said with a chuckle. "My budget has nearly tripled because of you two, you know? Between your win and the nonsense Mr. Jack-tastic has been getting up to Velan's star is on the rise, so to speak." She gave a wink so subtle that I almost missed it when she dropped the pun.

"That was bad." Said Callie in a deadpan tone. "And you should feel bad for saying it. Is this what you do when I'm not here? Spend your time coming up with bad celestial puns? I need to visit more often I guess. I should have known nothing gets done around here without me."

Snorting, Stella looked over her glasses at my girlfriend. "Little girl, you've bulked up a decent amount in Rajak, but the day I need a G-ranked baby telling me my business is the day I retire. Especially a G-ranked baby who needed her Auntie to cover for her when she slept through a patrol rotation eight times in the first year she was on the job." The two of them had teasing smiles tugging at their lips as they bantered.

I gave a wave. "Nice to see you boss. Hope things have been quiet. Glad we could drop in and say hi." I leaned forward, lowering my voice. "Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, maybe you can tell me more about these missed rotations. I'm always looking for good material to keep her humble." Callie glared at me and elbowed me in the ribs pointedly, which didn't do much given she wasn't trying to hurt me and I was in F-ranked armor.

"I think." Said Stella with a smirk. "You are pretty much the worst possible influence on her humility. Or did someone forget asking me to partner him with Nightstrike when we were working up his contract?" My eyes widened because I HAD forgotten that. My Focus had been ridiculously low when that happened. I very carefully kept my eyes on Stella as I felt my cheeks burn.

Callie, smiled broadly like a shark scenting blood as she cooed. "Oh, sweetie. That's so cute. I was like your mortal crush. Did you collect my merchandise? I still have a full set of those Nightstrike novelty mugs lying around somewhere. Do you need any of the holiday run? Those can be hard to find." I could hear suppressed laughter in her voice as I did my best to completely ignore her comments.

"I was hardly the only person to have a crush on you." I said with faux dignity. "And no. I have them all." I mumbled. "But my two hundredth anniversary Unity mug is cracked. I wouldn't say no to swapping it out with one in mint condition." They both just stared at me, and I felt everyone who wasn't Benny swing around to look at me in disbelief. "They're a good investment!" I defended myself fervently. "Those mugs are worth forty six percent more than they were when I bought them! Plus Callie has been crushing it in Rajak. Jokes on you, when we hit S-rank I'll auction the damn things at the WCP headquarters."

Giggling musically, Callie buried her face in my shoulder as she pulled me into a hug. "It's ok sweetie. I know you're a huge nerd. I love you anyway. She's right though. You are the worst possible thing for my humility. Teasing not withstanding, you're the most supportive boyfriend I can imagine."

"Ok." I said, irrationally offended that I was being told I was a good boyfriend. "Can we get back to the meeting please? This is about catching up with Stella, not putting my collecting habits under a microscope. Amelia! Aren't you and Stella old friends? Don't you have things to tell her? It's been a pretty big week for you right? So much to fill her in on, don't you think?" I said almost desperately. Literally anything to change the damn subject.

Amelia just clucked her tongue. "Honestly Shane. Even I didn't buy the novelty mugs." She said judgmentally, ignoring my glare. "But yes, hello Stacy. wonderful to see you again. You look like you've fit into your role here wonderfully. I've had a certain former paramour of yours staying at my home recently. He talks about you when he isn't paying attention to guarding his tongue. We all do so love our masks don't we?" She gave a subtle wink of her own.

Unlike Stella's joke, Amelia's produced visible results as the Guild Master's face lit up tomato red as she squeaked. "Amy! Don't talk about my romantic history in front of the kids!" She averted her eyes and sniffed. "And I know he's here. If he wants to see me he can get off his lazy ass and come visit. I'm not his nanny. I don't need to go running every time he shows up in town."

"Well, if you're going to tease my daughter and my poor little future son-in-law." Amelia said, ignoring the wide eyed squawks of shock and yelps of mortification from Callie and I because that was moving WAY too fast. "I'm going to poke fun." She arched an eyebrow in challenge. "Now, why don't you climb out from behind that absurd desk and come with us to meet with Benjamin. I haven't seen the boy in years and I want to make sure he hasn't blown himself up in any permanent fashion."

Seeing the normally implacable Guild Master look like a chastised teenager made this entire thing worth it. As she climbed down, Amelia shot me a conspiratorial wink and I had to fight a smile. It was nice to know she liked me at least. As we met Stella at the other side of the desk (which had an entire set of stairs for descending) she smiled at the younger woman. "Jokes aside though, I'm here to register for intake. I've recently developed an ability of my own, much to everyone's surprise."

Stella actually tripped when she heard that, turning to stare in shock at Amelia. "I...what? At forty? That is...so rare. I mean, dear gods, I can count the number of times I've heard of that happening on one hand with fingers left over." She paused, looking suspicious. "Wait, you said Zeke was staying with you?"

She came to pretty much the exact wrong conclusion, but I decided to play into it. The WCP knew about my ability, and that would eventually spread to the Unity, but for now having an alibi might keep the information away from people like Midknight for just a bit longer. I raised my hand. "I asked Zeke to get a wish for her. He had some favors to call in, and he was drunk for my last like...eleven birthdays, so I figured he owed me one."

I felt a bit bad lying to Stella about this when she'd been so nice, but worst case I could apologize and offer her a wish or something later to make up for it. At the mention of Zeke's drinking she just rolled her eyes with a huff, clearly distracted by my uncle's alcohol intake and not thinking past the easy answer I'd given her. Callie twined her hand in mine and squeezed, which I knew was a thank you, but which fit with the story well enough anyway. I still felt a warmth in the pit of my stomach at the gesture.

We headed down the steps to Beaker's lab, Amelia telling Stella all about her new abilities as best she knew them. She didn't bother filling her in on stats since she had to do the intake anyway and we would all just see them. I snickered internally when I remembered how impressed Stella had been that I'd managed to hit H-rank before coming in. Amelia wasn't quite there, but she was damn close. I foresaw a pretty lucrative contract in her future.

We remounted the spiraling crystalline stairs, and when we got a certain part of the way down, Stella stopped and fished a key from her suit pocket. I recognized it as the one Stricture had used all those months ago. She slipped it into a spot mid air, that with my current Perception I could BARELY see shimmering, and turned it with a click, letting the same door we'd seen at my own intake swing open. She gestured us all in, and Amelia took the lead.

Entering with a sniff of disapproval, Amelia looked around and shook her head. "That boy. Functionally incapable of not making a mess." She looked around before calling out impatiently. "Benjamin! You have guests, dear. Be polite and come say hello." It occurred to me that Beaker, being F-rank himself, was probably older than he looked, and much closer to Stella's age than the twenty he looked. He'd probably just ranked up early.

Beaker came stumbling out of a side room, carrying a glass tube full of bubbling neon pink liquid, eyes bleary behind his glasses. He froze when he saw Amelia, and I saw the carefree attitude melt from him as he stood up straight, looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Miss. Amy! It's...so good to see you. What brings you to my study? I haven't seen you in quite some time."

Out of all the reactions I'd seen from other people, this was the first one that seemed more afraid than fond. Not in a genuine way you might see from someone who had been bullied, but in the sheepish way you'd see from someone talking to a strict mother. Stella's generation had been kids when Paul was active, so I guessed that made sense, but it was a weird thing to see from Beaker of all people. Especially knowing how things ended up. I remembered Callie saying that her mother spent most of her time at the house when she was growing up. I supposed Amelia had stopped coming around after Stella and Beaker's time, maybe when Callie was born.

Amelia gave him a fond smile. "It's nice to see you too Benjamin. I see, you've managed to confine your messes to an appropriate work area. That's excellent to see." She gestured down at herself. "As for why I'm here, well...I'll be needing one of your intake devices. I've recently developed an Ascendant ability of my own. I'm here to register my stats for the first time."

Rather than being shocked, Beaker looked excited. "Oh, really? That is FASCINATING. You hardly ever see older people awakening an Ability. I've never gotten to process one before." He turned to bustle off to one side of the room to look for the device, breaking off conversation without any acknowledgement as the same old manic energy reignited in the spectacled man. He paused after he got about five feet, looking over his shoulder. "Well...are you coming or not? I believe we have a test to run." We all followed him with a chuckle. It was nice to see Beaker had stayed the same. Visiting him was never boring, at least.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the visit home went by in a blur. Between finally getting Maria her ability (magnetism of all things), going out to hang out around town with Callie, spending time with Amelia, and catching up with Maria while she got to know Celine, the days just flew past. By the time we were ready to head home I had to basically force myself to leave. It had been so relaxing and peaceful since we got here that the thought of returning to Rajak to deal with the tournament nonsense almost wasn't worth it.

In the end though, I knew that none of us would be happy long term just lounging around. As nice as it was to decompress, we all really loved getting stronger and having adventures. We'd just been a bit burned out on training and this trip had certainly helped. Of course, I kept up my wishes, getting another nine clone charges from Callie and granting one last wish for Amelia to bump her to H-rank before we left (since she was I-rank and it was a single point she was able to get by paying me promises to cook us a bunch of snacks for the return trip). I still had today's wishes, but I'd deal with those later, for now we were on the road and heading back to the capital.

Callie sighed heavily as she looked through the curtains at the rapidly shrinking city. "I'm going to miss it. Being home. It was...fun. Hell, even seeing Ashley was kind of nice. Granted, mostly I just enjoyed rubbing my growth in her face. We've been at each other's throats since we were both twelve though. She's...like my nemesis. It's really kind of sad she isn't getting strong as fast as me." Her eyes snapped to mine. "Don't you dare tell anyone I said that."

I held up both hands placatingly. "Whoa, no sharing secrets, I've got it. I don't think it's that weird though. She's been on your heels for more than half a decade. That's an important relationship. Just because someone is kind of an asshole doesn't mean they aren't a big part of your life. Nobody likes leaving people they care about behind." I reached out to take her hand, squeezing it. "If it helps, we're not going anywhere. This team will be sticking together for the long haul, at least as long as everyone wants to stay."

Jessie, who was lying on a couch across from us with her feet up, cheered. "Hell yeah! You aren't getting rid of us that easy. Just watch, you'll be sick of us before long." She winked at her slightly teary friend, who chuckled at our healer's enthusiasm. "Anyway, I feel you. I'm going to miss it too. Honestly Shane I'm surprised you didn't bring Maria with us. She could totally keep up, especially with your help."

Benny cut in. "No." Jessie looked surprised at the vehemence in his voice. He just gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry Jess, but I don't want my sixteen year old sister in the fast lane. She's only a couple years younger sure, but so much of the shit we've gone through has been insane. We could have all died multiple times over." He looked at me. "I love you like a brother, man, and I'm happy to stick it out, but I don't want Maria in this shit. She can go slow and steady and work with Amelia."

Callie sighed. "Honestly. I get it. It's kind of condescending, but based on the things we've seen and done it isn't exactly crazy. She's in a better spot than I was at sixteen for sure. Mom will help her out, and she has those F-rankers Uncle Alex is sending to look after her. She's arguably in a better position to grow than we are. She doesn't have wishes, but she'll have powerful team members to boost her up, plus none of your enemies trying to murder her."

At my hurt look she leaned up to kiss me softly. I wasn't wearing my mask on the trip, but at the moment I wished I had. She gave me a soft smile. "Hey, we all know what we're doing. I'm not saying anything that has happened was on you. I'm just saying you tend to attract trouble, and while that's great for fast cultivation, it's less than ideal for slow and steady progress."

Zeke snorted from off to one side. "She's right kid. Any shortcut to the peak will draw ire. Her current advantages are good for the moment. If it helps you can always come back and give her a hand once you get higher ranked and can more easily protect people. It should be insanely easy to help her rank up with that kind of power. Speaking of easier rank ups. How are you feeling about this tournament?"

Blowing out a breath, I let myself relax into the seat. "I feel...good. The downtime definitely helped clear my head. I'm still a bit nervous but I think relaxing helped some of it sink in. I know that Abel is going to kick our asses for the next two weeks, but still, making it this far into the training gives me a serious sense of accomplishment. Especially seeing how Callie did in her dust up at the club."

"Dust up?" Callie snorted out a laugh. "Are you six hundred years old? Though admittedly it wasn't much of a fight. But yeah, comparing myself to other G-rankers definitely helped me realize how far we've come. We're nowhere close to done obviously, but it feels good. I can't wait to win and get that bump to Impact. Imagine being just that much tougher than any other person your rank." She paused. "Actually Zeke, have you ever gotten extra Impact?"

That surprised a laugh from my uncle. "Oh sure. Not many times, but I've gotten a few points. Comes in handy at higher ranks, and it sets a foundation. You'll learn about why later. Its definitely worth doing though. And it has compounding effects. The more you demonstrate capabilities beyond your rank, even slightly, the more you stand out. People who can buff Impact early tend to build up a lot of momentum. It's not universal but it happens more often than not."

I had figured that would be the case. Having that little bit of extra durability against others of your rank would mean the weaker ones wouldn't really be able to do much of anything and even middling Ascendants would have to put in effort. Not as good as a full rank difference, but also not nearly as obvious. Though that little tidbit about Zeke brought up a question I hadn't considered. "So wait, are you watching our training? I never bothered to ask. If so I'm curious about your feedback."

Zeke grinned widely at me. "That is a fantastic question. The answer is...kind of? I keep an eye on you most of the time but its vague. Just a general sense for anyone E-ranked or higher who might be nearby. If you're in proximity to someone strong enough to need my intervention I'll focus a bit harder. I try not to intrude too much since I cant help with lower ranked enemies either way. I did check out your training when you mentioned it though."

It made me feel a ton better that he wasn't just watching me all the time. The idea had only just occurred to me but it was creepy as hell. I looked at him expectantly. "Well? What did you think? Was it impressive? Mediocre? You've seen what things are like at the top so I'm damn curious what you think of the whole thing. How does Abel measure up to the big dogs in the universe? I think he's the strongest I've seen here level by level, though I'm not exactly an expert so some of the E-rankers might be better."

"Oh." Said Zeke in mild surprise. "That's what you wanted to know. Figured you were fishing for sympathy. He's decent. He's not the first battle nut to try to perfect his own heritage. His is pretty incomplete but its better than most of what you would find on this backwater. He's bit exactly the strongest for his level per se. But he's definitely powerful for his age. There are some E-rankers that could keep up if they were at the same level because of their rich experience, though not all of them by any means. In the wider universe I'd call him mediocre probably. For a world at this level he's a top tier talent though."

That kind of scared me honestly. The idea that Abel, who was damn near invincible as far as I was concerned, was mediocre in terms of combat standards. I had the feeling that Zeke was counting those huge forces with a heritage though, and that was definitely a factor to take into consideration. I shook off that thought though. We'd deal with what came as it came. For now we just needed to focus on the tournament. I had to trust anyone coming to an event at this level would be something we could deal with at least with Mel and Abel's help.

Not wanting to get sucked back into tournament prep before we got home and were forced into it, I turned to Benny, who had seemed quiet. He and Celine had been sitting to one side and he'd been staring into space for a bit. Aside from his comment about not wanting Maria to be on the team he'd been mostly silent, and it struck me now how out of character that was. I waved a hand to try to get his attention. "Hey man, you doing alright? You seem out of it."

He started a bit. "Huh? Oh, sorry. When you guys got back onto the tournament I sort of spaced out. I'm fine. Just weird seeing my parents. I spent so much time growing up in my dad's shadow. I didn't mind it even, it was comfortable and I wasn't really ambitious. I liked being able to relax and just let my family name help me coast. Then I started doing this and you guys all outpaced me so fast. I had to buckle down and work my ass off to catch up. Now I've been doing that so long I don't even recognize myself."

I got where he was coming from, but I also knew he wasn't done, so I just waited for him to continue venting. He stopped to think for a bit before he went on. "Now though...seeing my dad, who was this larger than life person, and comparing him to some of the people I've seen...it just kind of highlights the huge differences. Part of me envies him for being able to stay the same, but I know I couldn't go back to who I used to be with what I've seen." He sighed. "I don't know. I guess I'm just having an existential crisis."

Celine smiled and put a hand on his. "Introspection is hardly a flaw. Seeing one's roots can make a person rethink their path, or affirm it. It's not a bad thing that you're choosing to mull over where you are in life. Just know that no matter what conclusion you come to, I'll be hear to listen." We all turned and blinked at her in shock. That was...a lot of emotion for Celine.

The taciturn elf was intentionally closed off most of the time, a side effect of her upbringing. Hearing her express that level of fondness and support was jarring to say the least. I had to wonder though, if Benny wouldn't be a bit less down if he had something to focus on. I couldn't exactly find him a teacher, since he was kind of doing his own thing, but we could look into buying him some more inventing materials. Maybe an upgrade would help him find a bit of purpose. If not it might help him break stuff more effectively. That always made me feel better. Either way it was something to think about as we started to descend. We were finally back.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We headed straight for the Pavilion when we touched down. There was no rush getting home, at least not for the four of us. Zeke headed back with Cass and Cark, and Celine said goodbye to Benny and headed for the Academy to meet up with her team. When we got to the Pavilion, it was mostly empty. We'd gotten there around mid morning, and Abel and Mel were relaxing in the stands, sharing a cup of something hot and with Alden and chatting as they watched the Pavilion members train.

"When we walked in, their eyes all flicked to us, and I raised my hand in a wave. "Hey there!" I called over. "We just got back in, so we aren't here to train right now, but I wanted to stop in, check up on Pavilion business, see how everyone was." I held up a bag I'd been carrying for a while. "I also brought presents!" We'd discussed it and figured bringing even lame gifts would make Abel more likely to leave us alone the first day back.

Sure enough, at the mention of presents, the rabbit masked man's head perked up and he practically teleported to the space in front of us. Or literally teleported. It was hard to tell with Abel. Still, it made me smile to see my teacher so excited. "Presents? See, this is why you two are my favorite students. None of my other disciples bring me presents." He was practically bouncing in place as Mel laughed behind him, striding down the stands with wide steps that covered several benches at a time.

I rolled my eyes. "We're your only students, so that isn't saying much, but yes, we brought you presents." I reached into the bag, pulling out...a huge paper package full of meat. "We figured you might enjoy some new cuts to test out for the cart. We hit up Rantano's in the WCP over in Valen and got a sample of all their regularly accessible premium meats. We talked over some terms with Suki, and if you're interested she's willing to set up shipments of whichever ones you like best, for some...small considerations."

Which meant money, but buying in bulk she had assured us he would still be able to turn a nice profit. I'd expected derision or an eye roll, but to my surprise, Abel looked...touched. It was hard to tell through the mask, but I was pretty sure the man was completely dumbstruck. Mel, who had only gotten close as I explained it, gave me a warm smile. "That was very thoughtful, Solomon. Abel has been missing his sausage cart. He hasn't really had time to get a new one set up here with all the Pavilion business and the training, but it's been on his mind."

"Yeah." He said, his eyes fixed on the package in his hands. "I...thanks kid. That means a lot. Most people assumed I'd give up on the cart when I came back. Said it wasn't dignified for a powerful G-ranker to run a food stand." His voice was bitter and I was pretty sure I knew who that sounded like. Fucking Cicero, he was pretty much incapable of not being an unmitigated bastard.

Mel's jaw tightening up at the comment pretty much solidified that for me. I just rolled my eyes. "Fuck those guys. I love to cook." I put my arm around Callie's shoulders. "You think a giant thug like me gets a woman like this without serious culinary skills? If I didn't feed her there's no way she would stick around." I caught a sharp elbow in the ribs for that, but she was smirking a bit under the glare. She knew I was just trying to cheer Abel up.

The rabbit masked asshole nodded sagely. "We were wondering. You aren't good for much else." I flipped him off, and his serious expression melted into a snicker. "Seriously though, this is going to be great. I recognize a few of these meats, but I haven't had a chance to work with them much. After I left the circus I was on my own, and I didn't have much in the way of funds. The only skill I really had that I could market was fighting, which sort of defeated the purpose. I worked my way up the cuts I was able to afford now, but it wasn't anything this quality."

It made me think well of him that he put so much work into his passion, and I was glad I'd been able to help. I reached back into the bag. "Mel, I'm afraid this gift is slightly less meaningful, though no less heartfelt." I passed her a red sphere of crystal. "It's a focus crystal. The ruby was mixed with a drop of blood from an Ifrit. Not enough to make it higher than F-rank, but it amplifies the heat of flames by a quarter, and lowers the cost by a flat ten percent. We weren't sure if you had something better, but we figured it would be of some use as an offhand weapon either way."

She tossed it effortlessly into the air, catching it on a fingertip and setting it to spin. An Ascendant dropping an object that size and not being able to pick it out of the air was pretty much impossible at our rank, so no one batted an eye as she tested the balance and the weight. She focused and a candle flame bloomed in front of her, shifting shapes into a snake that wrapped her arm. She nodded. "This is fantastic. I'll need to do some training with it, but it should compliment my current weapon pretty well. Thanks, both of you."

Her warm tone was enough to convey her appreciation even through the mask. We passed Alden his present (a selection of Valen microbrews) before I turned to face Abel with the question that had been on my mind almost since we left. "So. What is in store for the last two weeks?" I asked with a forced casual tone. "I know we aren't training today, but I figure knowing what's coming will help us prepare."

To my surprise, the grin I got this time wasn't exactly entirely malicious. There was a hint of the usual sadism, but it was also part genuine excitement. "Well, I was planning to have it be a surprise, but we're going to take a trip down to one of the dark districts. It's one of the more out of the way ones, so we won't be running into anyone too powerful. No E-rankers will be in this one, and any F-rankers Mel and I should be able to handle between us. But it'll be a live combat situation that we aren't likely to be able to recreate."

I froze. That was...terrifying and amazing at the same time. Even an out of the way dark district seemed dangerous as hell, but the chance to experience that kind of environment was definitely exciting. "Wow. Really? But isn't the whole thing with the dark districts that anyone can show up there? What if we run into someone too strong for us?" I knew that they wouldn't be able to take every F-ranker, or even a bunch of them together. E-rankers I was less worried about with Zeke around.

Abel just shrugged. "It's unlikely this territory will have too many people with real potential. There's almost nothing valuable there. It's kind of an agreed on newbie spot. Not just G-rankers, or there would be no point, but anyone with real power and experience will be in one of the other districts. Plus the Beast Lord Garden should have people down there who can help you out. Hell, Sloane and the other two will probably be sent along with you."

Mel held up a hand. "Listen. This isn't going to be entirely safe. We'll do our best to watch out for you, but there will be real danger in these next two weeks of training. We won't force you to do this part. You can always say no and stick with sparring. We just thought live combat would help temper you guys some, and you've been learning quite a few things that you could use experience putting into practice."

"That does sound useful." Callie said uncertainly. " I definitely see why it would be helpful. Can we get back to you? I want to talk it over with our team first, if that's ok." I hadn't even really considered that. Leaving the others up here to go put ourselves in horrible danger would definitely suck for them, and no way was I ok taking them with us knowing what we knew. Talking it out was a smart plan, even if I really hoped we ended up doing it.

Abel just waved the question off. "Of course. Like you said, it's not a today problem. Think it over. Just know that you two are more than skilled enough for us to be comfortable taking you down there. Your teamwork is extremely refined, and both of you are dangerous in your own right after so much training. We wouldn't have suggested it if we didn't think you were ready."

"Doesn't matter." Mel cut in. "That's a problem for future you to worry about. For now, you're all home and it's good to see you." She turned to yell over the the Pavilion members training. "Hey, can you lunatics take a break for a bit. We haven't had a good party in weeks, might as well celebrate the kids homecoming." She turned to Alden, who was seated nearby, cracking into a microbrew that Zeke had mentioned was pretty decent. "Hey, old man. You have enough refreshments stocked around here for a spur of the moment bash?"

The bearded man, looked contemplative. "I...don't know. I'd have to check my stashes. I'm probably good on booze, but my soda stores have been running low. Someone keeps raiding them. I have no clue who, but probably someone with high Perception because I keep them stashed away pretty well. Anyway, give me a minute to grab what I've got." He turned to Abel. "What about food? You think you can handle that?"

My masked teacher grinned. "Obviously." He looked down at the meat in his hands. "I don't really want to waste the time making new sausages during a party, but even if I haven't had the time to open my shop I still have some stock on ice I can use." He grinned at Mel. "I'll take the money out of Pavilion funds, but don't worry, I'll only charge at cost since this is a party for me favorite disciples."

She rolled her eyes, waving him off, but didn't argue as the three of them scattered to get ready. As we watched them leave I turned to blink at Callie in surprise. That had escalated quickly. She just grinned and shrugged. "From our first night here, I can assume they like to throw parties. I guess we've kept them too busy to have time for them during training, so having one now seems like as good an idea as any. Besides, I think they want to make sure we end our vacation on a good note." She looked around in amusement. "I'd be shocked if it takes them more than an hour to get set up."

I turned and looked back over at Jessie and Benny. 'Think we have time to go pick up the puppies? I miss Jin." My big furry buddy might not be too insane by Rajak standards, but G-ranked wolves wandering Valen would have been enough to touch off a riot. Even though leaving them behind had been the right choice, it was still going to be nice to see my wolf. I hadn't even realized how used to having him around I'd gotten until he wasn't there. From her expression Callie felt the same, and we headed over to talk to Jessie. If we were going to party, we should have the whole team around.

 

[Smol Duck]

It was a huge leather bound tome, and when he opened it I saw it was hollowed out and had a wooden box about the size of a brick in it.

He pulled the boy out, popping it open and withdrawing a few sheaves of paper.

Click to shrink...

Funny typo

My opinions on the story so far (Chap 101). The LitRpg aspects feel disjointed especially considering that it's functionally a metric that exists only so that Shane can accrue power more simply via wishes. It doesn't feel diegetic even though it very much is meant to be.
This is further exacerbated especially with the how reliant Shane is on his Doom Sovereign Skill rather than his ability. This makes some sense considering that Wishing is best for accruing Skills and developing others, but Doom Sovereign has so little presence in the story it doesn't feel fitting. It'd be perfect if E-gaming actually had narrative influence in the story, but that isn't the case.

Also too much of the story is currently built around the status screens. LitRpg is expedited exposition but the story is currently built around training to get those numbers up. Meaning a lot of reoccurring exposition alongside other exposition. Very much tell rather than show. It's as if every scene is going for brevity to get us to the next scene quicker.

On the good notes I really enjoy the heroic cultivation and recursion aspects. And the best bits of combat was when Shane was first tasting the synergy between Doom Sovereign and Gymnastics.

If the elemental effects was from synergy between enchanted equipment or other skills, the discrepancy from having a video game playing skill resulting in what seems to be the most varied ability set wouldn't be as absurd.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I had assumed, based on prior experience, that the trip to the dark district would be accomplished through an elevator. I'd used my five wishes all on Sloane and the others yesterday, netting myself another fifteen points of Perception and getting that stat to an even one hundred fifty, and had plans to do the same today if I didn't need them in the dark district, as we were told to show up at the Pavilion pretty early.

To my surprise though, when we showed up the next day Abel and Mel had been dressed in sturdy, functional clothes, and had gestured us towards a car, telling us we would be driving to the entrance. At our surprise, Abel had smiled. "The dark districts are considered restricted to civilians, so making them accessible through the upper terminal was considered a bad decision. We'll be taking a series of tunnels, and will be walking most of the way." The biggest surprise of the morning had been Abel. My teacher had replaced his signature rabbit mask with a stylized silver mask that covered half his face. I assumed it was the mask he'd worn as Apollyon.

As we drove, Abel filled us in on more of the reasoning for this trip. "Alright, the dark district we're heading to is specifically known as Doomtown. It's a relatively out of the way spot that as I mentioned, is mostly aimed at newbies. Different forces send their youngsters there to get them some combat experience before dropping them in the deep end, though there are also several unique forces that have formed there over the years. Doomtown is, as the name implies, dangerous and cutthroat, aside from the basic courtesy of higher end F-rankers and E-rankers staying out of there, don't expect any rules or protection to be in place, which is why we had you leave behind Clockwork and Agria."

Benny and Jessie had been understanding if a bit annoyed at staying behind, but once we passed some cash to Benny and told him he should work on his Inventing, he'd perked up quite a bit. Jessie had headed for the Beast Lord Garden with most of the wolves to say hello to Melinda and get in some training, with only Rellia and Jin coming along for this particular trip.

"So." I asked with some trepidation. "Are we...supposed to just randomly kill people down here? Because I'm not really ok with that. Even if they're trying to kill us first, it just seems kind of wrong defaulting to murder. Is there some way we can avoid that? Because if we're expected to just wantonly slaughter anyone we meet I'd rather avoid the whole mess. We can just work on the normal training we've been doing."

Mel and Abel looked at each other, but my teacher finally just shrugged. "It's not really anyone's default down there. While there's definitely a 'what happens in Doomtown stays in Doomtown' mentality, it isn't unheard of for people to declare vendettas if someone they love is killed. Most of these people are younger generation members of bigger factions, so wanton slaughter is usually avoided. Not that someone won't murder you if they can get away with it out of sight, but most public brawls lack a killing edge. Most. There are some straight up psychos down there, so be aware we may not always have a choice."

I still wasn't ok with killing, but I could handle it if someone forced the issue, especially if they were some mass murdering lunatic, and I told him as such. He nodded in relief. "Fair. I wasn't sure where your line was on that. The Unity tends to be more inflexible about that than pretty much any other faction in the wider universe because of the nature of heroic cultivation. As Ascendants who grew up in the WCP we're a bit less persnickety about ending problems, but we aren't here to force you to do anything."

That was a whole can of worms I wasn't going to open. It wasn't my job to try to convince Abel and Mel killing was wrong. The whole live by the sword mentality was pretty common in the WCP and I figured you took your life into your own hands when you went down there, even if that might make me a bit of a hypocrite for refusing to actually kill anyone unless I had to. Callie, seeing my thoughtful silence, decided to pick up the conversation herself. "So, you implied there were other reasons to go down there. Is there some unique aspect of this place that's relevant to us right now?"

Clearly happy for a return to the subject at hand Abel cleared his throat. "Right. That. Anyway like I said, Doomtown is where most of the big wigs send their juniors. We're likely to run into several of our competitors down there. You'll get a chance to match yourselves against other people in the same general strength bracket and see how you stack up. We're G-rankers but we aren't exactly considered your average combatants, and while training against strong opponents is great, actually being able to WIN some training matches is also kind of necessary."

From anyone else that would have sounded like hubris, but thinking about how they'd spent the month before our vacation bouncing us off every surface in the Pavilion it was tough to argue. Also the idea of meeting up with some people more our strength was a lot of fun to consider. Without the worry about killing someone (past any accidents we would do our best to avoid obviously) it sounded like a ton of fun to see how we measured up before the big tournament.
Although..."Wait." I said. "Isn't the main difficulty in the tournament likely to come from outsiders coming over from other parts of the star cluster? I mean, I guess the Titan Twenty are a concern, but will those other forces send their people down there when it's such a disadvantage that they do so? Like their juniors could get hurt before the tournament and they they would be out of the running."

The look Abel and Mel shot me made me feel like a total idiot, though I didn't really know why until Abel spoke. "Yes, Shane. They WILL send them down to feel out the opponents. Anyone that they consider top tier will be strong enough not to worry about, and anyone who gets killed or injured fighting G-rankers from a backwater planet like this isn't worth their time. I forget sometimes how sheltered you guys are in the Unity."

Zeke had said similar things a time or two, though he'd also implied even the Unity wasn't as cuddly as it pretended to be for the most part. Still, it stung to have that condescending look shot my way. That must have been clear in my body language because Abel sighed. "Look, it won't be all of them. There's a spectrum out there. Some factions, like the Beast Lord Garden here, are more concerned with their juniors than others. Some do the law of the jungle thing. There will be a few scary outsiders running around I'm sure, though plenty we won't see until the tournament."

I sighed. "Yeah, I get it. It's just hard for me to think in terms of 'well if you're good enough you won't die in the first place' ." My experience with the WCP hadn't been GREAT, but they at least left me Zeke to watch my back against really high level people. Thinking it through though, the Black Sorrow Cult was probably more cutthroat than the WCP in that regard. I remained silent as we arrived at the tunnels we were taking to get to Doomtown and climbed out of the car to begin our walk.

It took a few hours to get down there, and we talked a bit, but mostly I just thought over what I knew, came to terms with how things worked, and chose to focus on my excitement. As we started to get closer though, I tuned back in to the conversation around me just in time to hear Callie asking something extremely relevant. "By the way, how common are attacks? Should we expect to be assaulted as soon as we get down there? Will they try to catch us somewhere secluded? What should we expect?"

Abel, who was walking ahead of us, turned around to walk backwards, still easily keeping pace with Mel, who was out in front. "Depends who we meet. Some of the factions native to the place are less restrained. Since they never leave they don't worry as much about politics. Those are the ones more likely to just attack when your back is turned. Larger factions usually try to make a pretense, but they're often bullshit. Bumping into you and accusing you of spilling their drink, shit like that. Best to just assume you're always in danger of an attack and act accordingly. Everyone else will."

I nodded, tightening my grip on my cane as we finally emerged from the tunnel, into...well. A town. Not a huge one, but not as run down and shitty as I expected from the name. The buildings were squat, made of sturdy dark stone, and the light was mostly shades of red. It gave the place a sinister, hellish vibe, and despite being unlike what I had thought I'd see, it was pretty fitting for a place called Doomtown. I turned to Abel, who was still walking backwards. "Ok, we're here. Where are heading to get some training in?"

That got a laugh from my teacher. "Where else? A bar. If you want to get into stupid fights, there's nowhere like a drinking spot to get them started. The Raving Baby is still around I think. I haven't been down here in years so I'm kind of behind the times. But if we can't find a fight there we can at least ask around. In either case, it's that way." He point off in a direction that looked the same as all the other directions, finally resuming a forward gait as we headed off down the road.

Before we had walked twenty feet though, a series of forms melted out of the shadows, all dressed in identical brown and black dog masks with bright red eyes. Their clothes were a variety of black leather articles covered in chains and studs of different kinds, and they surrounded us quickly and silently. Once they had us encircled, the leader spoke. "Well, well, well boys. What do we have here? Looks like fresh meat to me. And here I was getting hungry." He grinned nastily at us. "The question is which of you are snacks and which are trash for us to toss?"

Mel glared at him, taking a deep breath and reaching into a pocket to pull out a jingling bag that I was pretty sure contained chits. "You indescribable assholes. You couldn't have waited for the next group? This is my pocket money for the whole month." She turned and passed it to Abel, who deftly caught the bag and jingled it beside his ear with a happy sigh. "Don't gloat. It's unattractive." I could almost hear the sulk in her voice as she pretty much ignored the men standing around us.

Abel chuckled at her. "No one likes a sore loser dear heart." He shook his head derisively. "Betting we would make it to the bar before we got attacked. Honestly, it's like you WANTED to lose your money. I have to say though, getting surrounded by LITERAL rabid dogs is a bit on the nose. Good to see Doomtown doesn't disappoint after my time away." He turned to us, his grin taking on a brutal edge. "Well then kids, looks like were in for a practical lesson. Pick your dance partners fast, or all the good ones will be taken."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Funny typo

My opinions on the story so far (Chap 101). The LitRpg aspects feel disjointed especially considering that it's functionally a metric that exists only so that Shane can accrue power more simply via wishes. It doesn't feel diegetic even though it very much is meant to be.
This is further exacerbated especially with the how reliant Shane is on his Doom Sovereign Skill rather than his ability. This makes some sense considering that Wishing is best for accruing Skills and developing others, but Doom Sovereign has so little presence in the story it doesn't feel fitting. It'd be perfect if E-gaming actually had narrative influence in the story, but that isn't the case.

Also too much of the story is currently built around the status screens. LitRpg is expedited exposition but the story is currently built around training to get those numbers up. Meaning a lot of reoccurring exposition alongside other exposition. Very much tell rather than show. It's as if every scene is going for brevity to get us to the next scene quicker.

On the good notes I really enjoy the heroic cultivation and recursion aspects. And the best bits of combat was when Shane was first tasting the synergy between Doom Sovereign and Gymnastics.

If the elemental effects was from synergy between enchanted equipment or other skills, the discrepancy from having a video game playing skill resulting in what seems to be the most varied ability set wouldn't be as absurd.

Click to shrink...

The absurdity is kind of the point. DS Mastery shouldn't exist. It's a unique skill that would be nearly impossible to acquire without the ability to source intelligence from other players. Other Ascendants don't really play Doom Sovereign, because why would they? They have superpowers in real life. Since they don't play Doom Sovereign mostly, the ones who did end up getting to Minor at best, which as you may remember is peak mortal performance.

Nobody takes the time to train a Skill like Doom Sovereign Mastery to Lesser, which is where you start seeing any effects, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to reach Beginner with it without sourcing a bunch of experience from others like Shane or training their asses off for years. Doom Sovereign was every inch the lucky break for him because of his ability, and its existence is completely unique to him. Mostly because no one else would ever put in the time or effort needed to get it the normal way.

As for using it instead of his ability, that's absolutely true, mostly because the Wish ability, as you mentioned, is a support ability at its heart. Having another main Skillset is key, and focusing on his unique Skill is his best bet. As for the game not being popular, it IS popular, but only with mortals, because Ascendants have better things to do. Since Shane only interacts with Ascendants it's kind of faded into the background.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

There were ten of the dog masked men. I didn't even consciously count them, my Focus and Perception synergizing to grant me an innate sense of the number of enemies based on the various inputs. I wasn't sure if that was some kind of side effect of my training with Callie, or if it was just a factor of surpassing some threshold of either stat, but regardless, I could tell without even looking how many men were around us and where they were standing.

Abel and Mel were letting us take priority, since they were much more experienced and would have an easy time working themselves into our cooperation, so Callie and I shifted into our teamwork trance and blitzed forward, instinctively knowing we were going to take the four directly in front of us and leave the rest to the others. Rellia and Jin each jumped one, leaving two each for Mel and Abel as well, and it was nice to be able to trust our team enough to just ignore our backs as we attacked, knowing they had us covered.

The four men in front of us barely seemed surprised by our attack. I considered using some of my stored attacks on them, but when I gamed it out I decided to stick with my DS Skills. These were random G-rankers attacking newcomers, they wouldn't be too strong. Callie and I both had the same thought, which wasn't unusual, and we closed the distance , ready to work together as we'd been taught. As we got near them, I layered a Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame on my cane, and then let my left leg drop out as I fell into a shoulder roll toward Callie.

Being able to sense me and instinctually react to my moves, Callie stepped off my shoulder mid roll, splitting into a trio of clones as her body was cloaked in darkness. The two who she'd been approaching froze at the sight of a foot and a half more Ascendant than they had been expecting swinging a green flaming cane at them, and I was able to stack a Mercy Kill and Flurry of Blows to tag both of them several times. One in the ribs, knee and shoulder, and one in the hip, elbow, and collarbone.

As soon as I landed the blows I turned to swing overhand at full extension, smashing an ice attack aimed at Callie's temple out of the air even as one of the clones slipped out of my own shadow to tank a burst of lightning from one of my two. Callie, who had been backing away after landing a series of light cuts on the legs of her opponents, hit my back and we switched places.

I choked up on my cane and swung it like a bat, unleashing the force stored so far along with a mercy kill to smash what looked like a ball of super heated rock straight at the ice user, who squeaked and dove out of the way of the attack, not having expected it. The meteor (basically) attack had been aimed at Callie's head, which considering her height meant it had been coming right up the middle for me, perfect for a proper swing.

As soon as I made the hit I used Sucking Mud, then switched with Callie again, taking advantage of a shadowy smokescreen she had put up to attack lightning guy, hitting his other knee and dropping him before changing directions and attacking the other guy, who was trying to use a wall of water to protect himself from all sides. I could see why those two worked beside each other, water and lightning was a good combo, but unfortunately for him, whereas MY mask had a filtration function, his didn't, and the steam that came off my cane as the posion fire hit the wall of liquid was definitely not healthy to inhale.

I tapped a sharp series of beats on the ground with my cane to let Callie know the situation as I changed targets to meteor guy, since lightning guy and water guy were submerged in a cloud of poisoned steam that they inhaled even as they tried to scream. It wouldn't kill them, but burned, poisoned lungs had to fucking suck. Callie was engaging ice guy with her clones, leaving meteor guy to me aside from a quick deflection of an ice spear aimed at her back from one of the puddles water guy had left behind. Another solid bit of synergy.

Meteor guy had tanked quite a few hits and seemed sturdier for G-rank than most, probably an ability, so as I got close, I stopped, letting him notice his feet currently beginning to submerge in mud. The distraction was enough time to use my improved Stone Limb (only took a second to cast now), and another consecration of flame on my leg, then I did something I had decided against and stacked on a triple strength density shifted blow and tossed on a Mercy Kill, before spinning off my leg other and smashing into his side with a super dense triple stacked Mercy Kill empowered magma spin kick.

My head spun a bit as the soul weight of that much mid combat fuckery slammed into my brain, but not nearly as hard as my suped up kick slammed into that guy's ribs, which I could literally hear crack under the blow, even if they didn't break. He went sailing off on the opposite direction, smashing into the wall behind him hard enough to leave a crater, and only the groaning made me sure I hadn't accidentally killed him. That fucking Magma Leg combo was nuts, and I made a mental note to add it to my permanent loadout against opponents with defensive abilities.

Turning to deal with ice guy, I realized Callie had already dropped him, and was leaning against a wall petting Rellia because the wolves (one of whom looked a bit singed) had taken down their two and Mel and Abel had made short work of the other four. Abel, who was walking over, whistled as he looked at the broken wall where meteor guy had landed. "Holy shit kid, that was a rough one. I think even I would have trouble tanking that. Of course, it would never hit me, way too slow, but still, hell of a finisher."

I groaned, putting a hand to my head. "Yeah, but I'm going to need to practice it some more to get used to the strain. That kind of soul weight is no joke. I was doing way too much at once during that attack." I paused, letting the pain slightly recede. "Although if I can get used to it, a Flurry of Blows tacked on would take care of the speed issue. That move would be even scarier at a faster speed. Remind me to give that a shot."

"You will do no such thing." Snapped Callie. "Especially not mid combat. Are you insane? You don't test theoretical move combos with unknown costs to your soul mid battle. What is wrong with you?" She marched up to me, yanking my head down to look into my eyes as if checking for a concussion. "You seem like you're ok, but you need to be more careful Solomon. I know it's been a while since you were able to really cut loose with Skills like this, but doing things like that is dangerous without testing. Promise me you won't do that again."

I winced at the tone, but nodded. She was right. I'd been sidelined in Valen, and we hadn't been using Skills in training with Abel and Mel, so I'd been antsy and done something stupid. I held up both hands with a sigh. "Sorry. You're right. Got a bit excited and took a stupid risk. It won't happen again, I promise."

Her shoulders relaxed and she stepped up to wrap her arms around me, resting her head on my chest. "Good. Sorry, I just saw you start to wobble like that and kind of freaked out. It wasn't that big of a deal. You made sure it was your last opponent at least. Still not smart, but you put some thought into it." She stepped back, clearing her throat as she turned to the others. "Speaking of putting thought into things, you couldn't have warned us about a potential attack? You clearly though it was likely enough to bet on it."

Abel just shrugged. "We did warn you. What part of 'be ready to be attacked at all times' was unclear? Besides, you're all fine. Jin looks a little toasty, but he's been picking up more from your training sessions than I thought. He and Rellia were acting in perfect sync, it was impressive. Some of that was probably just wolf instinct, but I'm pretty sure they've been learning from some of the lessons, which is kind of crazy. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?"

I turned at a sudden realization to see Sloane and the other G-rankers from the Beast Lord Garden stepping out of an alley. Callie shot them a 'what the fuck?' look, and Sloane just shrugged. "Sorry, we were behind all of you a ways, but the time we showed up they had already surrounded you, we figured we would jump in if you needed it, but that clearly wasn't necessary."

Come to think of it I hadn't seen them during the last portion of the walk down, but I'd been too distracted to notice it. Maybe they had stopped for a break or something? Whatever the case, they didn't really ow us backup, and the chance to make our reps here was appreciated. I noticed a few windows closing along the street, and I was pretty sure we had been noticed during our little spat.

Abel seemed to think nothing of it, so we just shrugged it off, with him telling them to keep up because things were going to get a bit dicier here soon enough, and we resumed our walk. With a full fifteen people we weren't stopped again, and Mel looked kind of annoyed that Sloane and the others hadn't show up earlier and saved her some money, though she didn't say anything to them. The Beast Lord Garden initiates were along for the ride as an allied force, but they weren't Pavilion. Mel wasn't in charge of them, and while I kind of was, she couldn't really use that authority.

Finally, we made it to an old run down black stone building . There was a sign out front with a picture of a cigar smoking baby in a spiky black leather jacket and a mohawk that read 'The Raving Baby', which I thought was awesome. When he saw it Abel gave a whoop of joy. "It's still here! Fantastic! I wonder who's running the place. No way Taggert hasn't outleveled this place by now. Maybe his nephew Owen?" He shrugged. "Oh well, doesn't matter, lets head in and see if we can get the lay of the land."

I made to follow after him, but he stopped after a few steps, turning to look at us. "Oh, one more thing. Alliances down here get complicated. Don't make waves immediately until we can figure out who stands where in terms of local powers. Not to say bar fights aren't fine, but try to keep things one on one until we get some answers. Once we know who is who we can pick our targets, maybe get you acquainted with some of the Titan Twenty." He shot me a wink to let me know he meant violence, then turned to head inside.

I looked at Callie and shrugged, stepping close enough that I felt like I could help her if someone attacked and vice versa, and then we trailed Mel and Abel into the bar, the Beast Lord Garden crew behind us and our wolves padding along beside us. We were going to be down here for the next few weeks. Time to go learn exactly what we would be dealing with, and how to best use it to our advantage.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Raving Baby was pretty much exactly what you would expect a dive bar to be. Low light, smoky air, pool table, old worn chairs and tables. It looked like someone had written up a 'seedy dive bar' checklist and gone down the list one item a time just to make sure it was as authentic as possible. Abel was scanning the room, but rather than serious worry or any sort of scan for danger his eyes were wide and excited. "It hasn't changed a bit! And that smell! I missed that smell so bad."

Mel sighed dramatically. "Oh gods, I forgot about the enchiladas." At our confused looks she rolled her eyes and pointed across the room. On the opposite wall from the entrance was a huge wall of hanging pictures, above which was written 'Enchilada Avalanche Challenge' each picture had a paper star with a number on it hanging from the bottom, and all the way at the top was a photo of a clearly recognizable Abel, in the same silver mask he wore now, with the number eighty seven pinned to it.

I froze, blinking in shock at the number. "Ok, we can come back to everything else in a minute, but I have to ask, is that label implying that Abel ate EIGHTY SEVEN enchiladas in one sitting? How is that even possible? Like, I know Ascendants tend to eat heavy, but stomachs still have limited space in them, that's what higher ranking food is for. How do you physically FIT eighty seven enchiladas in a human body?"

Ignoring me completely, Abel bolted for the bar. "Rudy!" He crowed happily. "You're still here! I figured Taggert would be gone, but I'm glad at least you're still around. How's my favorite bartender?" Abel managed to cross the crowded bad without actually bumping into anyone, the space around him warping to allow him to slip between other people and around tables so quickly and seamlessly it was almost hard to see it happening.

He appeared in front of a seven foot tall man with maroon hair and a goatee who was cleaning a glass, but when his eyes, which had jerked up at the sound of his name, found Abel, they widened. For a second I thought it was surprise, but it only took me a second to register the expression existential DREAD on the face of the huge bartender as he looked down at my teacher. "Sweet Revenant NO! You can't be here! You're dead! Everyone said so!"

Abel frowned sulkily. "Hey now, that's not nice. I was one of your best customers. I spent tons of money here when I used to visit, if you'll remember. Did anyone else ever buy as many enchiladas as I did?" He sounded genuinely offended by the clear distress the other man was showing, but the big bartender was too busy having a small panic attack at the sight of him to acknowledge it.

"Yes, but we SPENT about twice that much on repairs whenever you showed up." Rudy almost wailed. "Taggert only let you come back because he was too scared to ban you. We threw a party the day we heard you weren't coming back. The stone here is so expensive, do you know how much effort it is to repair buildings in Doomtown? And you literally never failed to break SOMETHING."

A new voice cut in. "Enough, Rudy." The bartender turned to see another man, much shorter and with seaweed green hair. He shot the man a wry smile. "Go work on inventory in the back for a while and collect yourself. I'll handle the bar." Watching the massive form of the red haired man blur out from behind the bar and into a door in the back, the man shook his head with a chuckle before turning to Abel. "Must you make a ruckus every time you go anywhere Pol?"

Despite his words, he held out a hand with a grin and he and Abel clasped wrists, pulling each other into a quick one armed hug as they smacked each other on the back. My mentor looked thrilled once again as he pulled back. "Owen, good to see you. I figured Taggert would leave the place to you. He was already early F-rank when I stopped coming. How long since you took over?"

The green haired man gestured us to take a seat at the bar as he slipped behind it, filling up glasses for each of us with some local beer. "Oh it's been a few years now. For the record, I never thought you were dead, and neither did my Uncle. It's why he insisted on keeping the insurance policy he took out on the bar for you active. Still can't believe they made him pay for you as a separate policy. To be fair though, the premiums have gone WAY down since you vanished."

Mel clicked her tongue as she took the offered beer, along with the rest of us. I was NOT a beer guy, but it seemed rude to refuse so I decided to just nurse it (which, spoiler alert, makes beer SO much worse). She raised an eyebrow at the green haired man. "I'm surprised he got you to retire and take over. Taurus was almost as famous as the two of us back in the day. You were responsible for half the trouble my idiot got into when we were younger, though granted, he probably got you into just as much."

Owen just shrugged. "I kind of retired when you two left the scene. It just wasn't fun anymore. I considered ranking up and leaving, but it had just lost the appeal." His eyes flicked to us. "Who are the new kids? You two finally pick up some apprentices? I heard there's a big tourney coming up, and introducing a couple of newbies would be a great way to make a splash. If so let me know, I'll make sure to get my bets in on them early while the odds are still good."

Abel raised an eyebrow. "See, you say that, but it kind of sounds like you're feeling out whether the kids are going to be entering the tournament. I don't suppose there's been some sort of bounty offer going around for contestant information by any chance? Because I could see some of the bigger factions putting out a standing offer for the low down on who they'll be up against."

The shameless grin Owen shot back made it clear he had indeed been fishing. "Well, maybe. Though that answer is just as good for confirmation as telling me yes would be, isn't it? Of course, I don't know their names or who they represent, but the others you came in with are Beast Lord Garden, and one of them is the Beast Queen's personal disciple. I bet if I look around for information on new Beast Lord initiates I can find SOMETHING out. The question is what it's worth to you for me to keep quiet."

I expected Abel to be upset, but he just shook his head ruefully. "That would be a mistake on your part. The kids ARE entering, but they're going to be entering with the two of us. Anyone you pass their information to is bound to just get dinged out anyway. It would be a better investment to pass us the information you have so far and then actually place those bets."

The casual way they were discussing us being sold out was...weird to me. Owen seemed like an on old friend of Abel's but he barely even flinched at the idea that our information might be for sale. Apparently down here that kind of thing was commonplace. For his part, Owen seemed shocked by the fact that Abel was going to be entering. "Wait...you're fighting? Personally? BOTH of you? That's...shit, yeah, ok, give me their names so I can put money on them before that comes out. The odds on the two of them will nosedive when it comes out you two are on their team. I'll pass you what I've learned so far on the house, as long as you promise not to spread your participation for at least two days."

Abel looked interested. "That does seem like it would be a good deal, but we could get that information somewhere else. I think we need you to sweeten the pot a bit. You're getting a chance to make a shitload of money. Granted, we can put money on the two of them too and we will, but if we're helping you I want to get something out of it." He planted both hands on the counter and gave the other man a bloodthirsty grin. "I want free enchiladas for traveling companions for a month. REGARDLESS of quantity."

I expected an eye roll or some kind of dismissal, but Owen's face paled immediately. "A-a month? Pol, that's crazy. You eat at least fifty per sitting even when you aren't trying. Sure, the meat is only H-rank, but in those quantities you'll be seriously cutting into my bottom line. I'm running a business here. I don't even know how much the others might eat, a month is way too long."

Mel reached out and smacked Abel in the back of the head. "We aren't here to feed you enchilada addiction you lunatic." She glared at Owen. "A week, because if he doesn't get SOMETHING he'll never shut up about it. Agree so we can move on to the business at hand." The last part wasn't a plea or a question, it was a command, and the glare in her orange eyes was enough to make me want to take a step back.

At least some of Owen's reticence had clearly been for show, but because his 'pale' face completely drained of blood as he cleared his throat and looked away. "Right. Yes. A week. I can do a week." He reached out and he and Abel shook to confirm the deal. "Let me get you all set up with a plate on the house to get you started and we can talk shop." He looked over his shoulder. "Rudy! Break's over I'm going to make some food and then eat with my friends. Get your ass back behind the bar."

There was a loud groan from inside the door we'd seen Rudy flee through. "Do I have to?" He called hesitantly. Owen didn't even bother to respond, glaring through the door as if Rudy could see him. A weary sigh echoed out and the big man slunk out of the back and took his place behind the bar, glaring distrustfully at all four of us from his spot in front of the bottles as Owen headed for the kitchen.

"Alright, you folks go sit down and I'll get your food." Owen called over his shoulder. "Then we can go over the details of what I know and you can let me in on the who our new wonder team is so I can get my bets in. Four plates of enchiladas coming up. No charge." Despite his supposed resistance to the idea, he seemed to be almost skipping with happiness as he headed for the kitchen, clearly feeling like he'd gotten one over on us with how little he'd been forced to concede.

Or at least, he was putting one on until Abel called him to a stop. "Hey Owen, aren't you forgetting something?" The green haired man froze, turning suspiciously as Abel raised a hand and pointed over to the table with our Beast Lord Garden allies. Owen's eyes widened with horror even before the other man spoke, but he clearly noticed the loophole in his earlier agreement at the same time I did. Abel's grin was positively vulpine as he asked. "Aren't you going to go ask if any of them are hungry?" Admittedly the evil laughter after he said it might have been a touch over the top, but I couldn't say it wasn't satisfying.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Dear gods." I said through a mouthful of rice and cheese and sauce. "These enchiladas are amazing. Like, top five of all time in terms of sheer deliciousness. These are only H-rank?" I shoveled in another bite happily, ignoring the blistering glare Owen was shooting all of us as we scarfed down free enchiladas for almost twenty people. I was planning to eat here every meal for the week we got these free. They weren't that expensive honestly, it just kind of added up because I couldn't stop eating them.

Abel, who was polishing off his fiftieth somehow, nodded without looking up. "Yeah. The original recipe was created by some D-rank chef Taggert met ages ago. He pulled some kind of high ranking nonsense and figured out how to make the ingredients harmonize perfectly to boost the flavor profile. Still only H-rank materials and results, but the taste is G-ranked in quality somehow. Gods I forgot how good these are. I didn't see the chef, who is cooking these things anyway? They must hate me." He laughed after he said that like it was a joke, but I was pretty sure he was right about that.

Owen actually smirked a bit at that. "Cherry took over as chef ages ago. And yes, she hates you, but to be fair, she's hated you for years. My sister always could hold a grudge, and she never forgave you for winning her motorcycle in that poker game and then crashing it. I think she might have tried to have you killed if anyone would have been willing to take the bounty." He was smiling fondly as he stared off into the distance, but at that last word shook his head to clear it. "Ah, right, bounties. You wanted to hear about all the contestants I've met so far."

I fixed my eyes on him, waiting expectantly as I continued eating enchiladas. There was a pair of big platters in the center of the table, and Rudy kept bringing out a fresh one to swap for whichever emptied first. Apparently deciding he might as well enjoy the expense, Owen grabbed a plate and started piling on enchiladas himself, starting to eat as he decided where to begin.

"Well." He said between bites. "I think the first thing to mention is that while I was only planning to collect the information bounty, most of the local factions are taking out legitimate contracts on the known contestants. Once you're all noticed you'll undoubtedly have a few taken out on you too. There's a whole pre tournament war game type thing going on down here, and the biggest names are all paying the most. The outsider factions don't have as much in the way of connections, but most of them are making offers where they can, so just being down here is dangerous as hell."

Abel swallowed a bite and actually stopped eating. "Really? That sounds fun. Anyone we would know participating? We can't be the only ones from the old days that held up at G-rank for whatever reason. I know some of the old Twenty were almost as into combat specialization as I was. Granted, they'd be too old for the list now, but still, they would be decent competition."

That got a chuckle for Owen. "Just two. Rayka Vale and Helix. Vale has been running a bounty hunting business down here for years now. Never felt the need to jump up ranks because she didn't want to lose her cash cow. Word on the street is she's finally ready to make the jump up to F-rank after the tournament. Helix disappeared for a few years there. No one is sure where he went, but I heard rumors he ended up in one of Mad Madigans lost mazes and got stuck there for a while. He came out...weird. I'd avoid him. It's not common for Ascendants to go crazy for non recursive reasons, but I'm pretty sure Helix did."

Abel actually cringed at that. "That's...not ideal. Helix was a scary bastard even back in the day. That transmutation power of his is nasty, and he was always good at coming up with creative ways to use it. Sad to hear he's had such a bad time. He wasn't very talkative, but I always liked him well enough. I remember Rayka too, but she made less of an impression. Something about energy constructs I think? I'll keep an eye out for them. What about the new bloods? Anyone with potential or just the usual legacies?"

Owen shrugged. "Most of the E-rankers have kids going in, but not too many of them are notable. We've got them coming in from both sides too. The Unity and WCP both. Screaming Stevie has a kid entering who seems to be pretty competent. Sonic powers are always a pain in the ass to deal with so he's under scrutiny. Dread's daughter is going to be in it, to no one's surprise. The entire Titan Twenty is going to be competing, though only a few of those are notable. Beat and Sever are supposed to be solid, and they've been seen around with Serenity, the Peace Lord's daughter, though all three vanished for a while."

I shared a look with Callie, who smirked slightly at the mention of our defeated enemies. Good to know that was getting around. Abel, on the other hand, looked annoyed. "Food aside, this isn't really worth much man. You've told me about a few people I could have heard about elsewhere. You made it sound like you had the inside line on anyone we might be meeting. I assume that you can at least give us the details on the outsider factions?"

The eye roll Owen gave my teacher reminded me so much of something Benny would do that I had to stop myself from choking on my food. "Impatient ass. " He said fondly. "Yes, I have the details on most of the recent arrivals. I also have my sources still scrounging and have my ear to the ground. I'll get you the new information as it becomes available too. We're in this together now, so I want the four of you to place well. How else will I get paid?"

"We appreciate the help either way." Callie cut in with a reproachful glare at Abel. "Any information is better than none, and this food is delicious." I tried not to snicker at that. Callie was obsessed with good food, so this deal was already a good investment as far as she was concerned. Abel knew her well enough to know the same and just rolled his eyes at her predictable reaction. "In any case, any info on the outsiders is bound to be useful. We can find out about the locals from anywhere, but knowledge about the new arrivals is sure to be sparse."

Even Abel couldn't argue that, and he raised an eyebrow at Owen, silently prompting the green haired man to continue. With a victorious smirk at my silver masked teacher, he did so. " There are a few of them that I've heard about. Mostly bigger factions from the nearby star systems. The Twilight Order is here. They're monk types, most of them use some variation of light and shadow powers, sometimes both. Big on tricks and illusions and SUPER pretentious. Their contender's name is MacGregor. Big blonde bastard with a beard who prefers light based attacks. Heard he burns out peoples eyes sometimes."

He looked around quickly before continuing, lowering his voice. "The Darkling Institute use some weird combination of necromancy and mad science to create minions. They're mostly pretty scary, but the most dangerous is a girl named Mordaunt. Dark blue hair and dark skin, travels with a huge bandaged guy in manacles. Has the creepiest glowing green eyes. The minion's name is Malgrim and he's got a freaky level of regeneration. Some kind of Vitality multiplier ability I think, because he straight up knits back together as you watch."

I shuddered a bit at what kind of abominations necromancy and mad science could produce in conjunction. Mad science could seemingly bend or even break the rules that governed most ranks out of sheer randomness, and necromancy created powerful undead servants. The last thing I felt like running into was some kind of super corpse with rule bending abilities, and I made a not to avoid the Institute's people if possible. I had to ask. "Are there any less...creepy options? Someone more into direct combat?"

He smirked at that. "Well, the Spear Legion are here. They all have the same ability actually, or versions of it. Spear Mastery. They tend to synergize it with odd stuff, but their whole thing is just being really good at stabbing stuff with a spear. It's less straight forward than it sounds though. Weapon masters are nasty in a fight. They only have the one trick, but they're damn good at it." He gestured at Abel. "This scary bastard could technically be considered an unarmed combat specialist, to give you a bit of context."

That did give me a bit of an idea about how versatile some of those spear users might be, but far from scaring me off, it made me even more excited. I hadn't ever fought a spear user before, and I was betting they had some fantastic martial arts. I wanted to see how they would measure up against our Balam Mastery, not to mention my combination style with Callie. "Who did the Spear Legion send? Most of the system factions have a primary inheritor right? Same as the locals? They must have some really impressive contestant lined up as their primary."

"Got it in one." He said with a nod. "Lament is their main contender. That girl basically breathes the spear from what I've heard. She's spent twenty five years in G-rank, just polishing her spear skills to the peak of Intermediate. If I had to pick, I'd say she's Apollyon's best shot at a decent match up, though the other three members of that team are no slouches either. Their second is a guy named Wren, uses an absolutely gigantic spear made from some oversized animal bone."

At the mention of a peak Intermediate Skill, I just blinked in shock. The absurd amount of dedication that would have to have taken at G-rank boggled the mind. If her Spear Mastery Skill was peak Intermediate and she was still at G-rank, it also meant that wasn't her actual ability either. Probably a synergized Skill. Someone that scary having an unknown ability made me even more excited, and even Abel looked intrigued.

My mentor's eyes had lit up at the comment as he looked at Owen intensely. "Peak Intermediate? My Ragam is intermediate, but its a ways off from peak. Managing to get a Skill more than a single rank above your current ability rank is difficult, bordering on impossible. The soul weight is too much for most people to take. If she's planning to break through to Expert before she hits F-rank she must be a monster."

That was something I was curious about actually. "Does combat mastery have a high requirement for soul strength? I know that any alterations to a technique strain the soul, and combat specialists are all about maximizing usage. Do you and Mel have a high soul strength? I know Alden's is above average for his rank." The news that having a Skill more than a single rank above your standard caused soul weight made sense when I thought about it, considering how elixirs and such worked, but it opened up a lot of possible questions.

Abel nodded absently, barely paying attention. "Yeah, any decent combat specialist has a strong soul. Soul strength is pretty important for any decent elite, it's much more common in higher ranked planets. We need to feel out some of the competition. Most of them will probably be holed up scheming, but the Spear Legion sound like they're the kind to prefer a straight fight." He turned his predatory grin on Owen. "I only have one more question. What are the chances the Spear Legion fighters are at the Bone Arena?" Owen's answering smirk was all the confirmation I needed. Guess I knew where we were heading next.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Owen was incredibly relieved to see us go. Sloane and the others were disappointed to leave, but when they heard we were heading for an arena they perked up. Arenas were pretty popular among Ascendants from what I'd been able to find. We were all show offs who loved to make a scene and being able to make flashy moves in an open space against a strong enemy while potentially thousands of people watched was a popular pass time.

I couldn't pretend to be any different really. I'd gotten excited as soon as I'd heard about the arena, and I was DEFINITELY going to fight someone there. Maybe not Lament, since I didn't want any part of a combatant someone would equate to Abel in terms of skill, especially not someone who knew and had fought with him. Granted, from what I could tell, Abel had gotten exponentially scarier after years of being a sausage selling hermit who presumably trained constantly because he had no social life, but still.

So we were all in a pretty good mood as we headed for the Bone Arena, Doomtown's answer to the unspoken questions on every Ascendants mind: 'is there something stupid and violent we can do today, and how many people will watch?'. As expected, traveling with our full contingent was apparently more than most people wanted to bite into, so we weren't attacked again, and we made good time getting to the arena, which was a massive black stone coliseum that somehow managed to look squat and dark despite being ten times the size of every other building here.

When we got to the Arena, Mel was the one who took the lead, stepping past Abel and waving jovially to the dark armored woman standing to the left side of the entrance. "Ceras! I thought that was you. I haven't seen you in years. They have you on door duty huh? You still fighting? Or is this your usual gig." She stepped up to hug the surprised guardswoman, shooting a perfunctory nod to the man on the other side but otherwise ignoring him in favor of an old friend.

As Ceras responded and the two began catching up, Abel stepped up to us and leaned in to murmur. "Mel was always much more interested in the arena than I was. Don't get me wrong, I came here often enough, but I've always preferred a spontaneous battle to scripted combat. Mel practically lived at this place during our time in the Twenty though. Starbreaker was the queen of the Bone Arena for years, so don't be surprised if she seems to know more than a few of the people here."

As if on cue, Mel waved us all over. "Alright you lot, Ceras says there are a few fights on the card for the evening, but we still have time for the open bouts. Some of the Spear Legion are here. That Wren guy that Owen mentioned is around, but Lament doesn't show up until right before her matches. They have her up against the reigning champion tonight." She turned to Abel. "Apparently Blight is still fighting here. He moved up after I left and has been undefeated for quite a while recently."

Abel snorted out a laugh. "Blight? That super pale kid with the long hair and the skinny chest who only wore leather pants and a vest and followed you around like a puppy? I forgot that kid even existed. Oh wow, this place has slipped since we left." He shot her a wolfish grin. "Though I suppose it became obvious when we first arrived that this place had...gone to the dogs."

We all groaned at that, and one of the Beast Lord Garden intitiates actually booed loudly, though when Abel turned to see who it was he didn't seem to be able to tell. Shame, I'd have liked to tell them how funny I thought it was. Mel had just rolled her eyes and ignored her boyfriend. "Anyway, there are still plenty of matches open for sign up if you two want to fight against Wren. If he accepts you can try challenging him two on one. There aren't a lot of limits in the arena aside from what the contestants agree on."

I turned quickly to shoot Callie a pleading look, which she saw immediately, prompting an eye roll and a giggle. "Oh stop it. I'm fine with a fight. Even if this guy is too tough for us it'll be good practice for the tournament and give us something to work off of. If he isn't we can put the fear of us into the Spear Legion, so really it's a win win." She turned to Mel. "Do we have to pay for this?" We had some money, but most of it had gone into expanding the Pavilion, so we weren't carrying much of it on hand.

Luckily, Mel just shook her head. "Not directly. They charge to watch the fights, but its sort of an all access pass for the open challenges, and fighters are exempted. The rest of us will be fine, Ceras will let us in just this once. The owner, Melkar, is an old friend, and he won't mind her letting me in for free with some friends. So, are you going to challenge Wren? Because if so I have bets to place."

I snickered at that. "Place some for us too then, because yes. Most of our liquid cash is in the Pavilion so just take it out of there. Though I'm not quite as confident as you are that we'll win. We've been training our asses off, but competing against someone like this is a level of combat we haven't ever really experienced. Beat and Sever were the closest but they were distracted and they're locals anyway. This is a guy from a force considered powerful in the star system as a whole. I have a feeling he won't be an easy mark."

Mel just shrugged. "If you lose you lose. It's not like I'm betting my life savings on you. Besides, if he's been doing well the odds should be pretty good. I'll make sure not to put too much of your own cash on you either. I figure ten G-rank chits or so." We followed her past Ceras and into the arena, but the other guard led us away from the group and down a side hallway. We had to stop to do a bit of paperwork before being led to a waiting area with more than a few other Ascendants in it.

We'd signed up for pairs, with the option to fight singles as a team, and when we arrived we sought out Wren, who was actually really easy to find. A huge man with olive skin and long red hair, he was easily identifiable by the absolutely colossal bone spear leaning against the wall next to him. Made from what appeared to be a femur the size of a person, the thing had been shaved down to be grippable by Wren's dinner plate sized hands (seriously, he was at least seven feet tall) and had a single steel coated tooth molded seamlessly into the end, honed to a razor's edge.

We stopped in front of the big man, whose amber eyes remained closed as he reclined in his seat, at least until he heard us stop. They creaked open slightly. "What do you want?" He said in perhaps the most relaxed voice I'd ever heard. "I'm trying to nap before my next match." He yawned expansively after he spoke, but despite the relaxation and laziness, I noted that his hand was never more then a full arm's extension from grabbing the spear. He might be napping, but if he was he wasn't stupid enough to leave any openings.

Callie smiled cheerfully, holding out her hand to shake. "Hi there! I'm Nightstrike and this is Solomon. Can we both fight you at once?" Her tone was upbeat and entirely without shame for how unbalanced the match was, and everyone in the room turned to look at us in confusion. They had all been sitting quietly, staring down opponents or trying to look disaffected and tough.

Wren's eyes opened completely, focusing on Callie, before his lips twitched into a wide grin and he burst out laughing. "That...that was the weirdest challenge I've had since I got here. Wow. No posturing or excuses huh? Just 'let us gang up on you so we can kick your ass?'" He paused in contemplation before standing up, cracking his neck and hoisting the spear up over his shoulder. "You know what? Sure. What the hell. I was going to let them do a random match thing, but why the hell not?"

He strolled over to the window where a clerk was quietly doing paperwork on one end of the room to accept a challenge, and I turned to Callie. She'd been smiling widely at his acceptance, but as soon as he was out of range her face turned serious. "I'm assuming you noticed that?"

I nodded grimly. "He was straining to lift that spear. Not a lot, but anyone at peak G-rank in a physical combat style should have absurdly high Might. Whatever the fuck that thing is made from, it's HEAVY." I wasn't sure what the weight ratio was on bone, but since Ascendants in the G-rank clocked lifting power in the TONS I was pretty sure that thing wasn't any normal type of bone. It seemed to be made from F-ranked materials if the Impact was anything to go by, but it was probably on the high end of that scale.

Instead of coming back, Wren gave us a broad wave and gestured over to a hallway across the room with a sign next to it saying 'left gate enclosure' he turned and vanished into the one on the right, and I got the obvious idea. Callie and I headed for the hall, walking down it to a small stone room with a dark metal gate on one side. It was lit with widely spaced torches, though the flames were the same red we saw in most of Doomtown.

Seeing the closed gate Callie and I posted up nearby. I turned to cock my head at her. "You ready for this? Our first taste of real combat at the star system level? I'm pretty psyched myself." My hands were basically shaking with anticipation. One slipped down to my coat to slide my cane free, twirling it between my fingers so fast the sand at our feet was blown around.

"I can tell." Callie said fondly. "But yeah. This will be fun. How is your Balam Skill by the way? We've been training a while, and I forgot to ask. I know you're at Lesser, but with all the non stop work we've put in I'm assuming you're coming close to Beginner?" She sounded hopeful, which I got. Even if it wasn't much of a restriction, the geas was inconvenient, and I would be just as glad when it was gone.

I shook my head sadly, but before I could answer, a loud voice rang through the stone. "Ladies and gentlemen! Our next match is going to be a special treat. A two on one showcase against Wren, who you've all seen in here the last few days." The gate began to rise. "Now, coming in from the left gate, put your hands together for NIGHTSTRIKE and SOLOMON!" Taking that as a cue we headed off out the gate and into thew massive expanse of sand that was the arena proper.

Seeing us enter, Wren gave a cheerful wave before gripping his spear one handed and whipping it through the air around him. The weight and force caused small explosions of air and sound as the thing broke the sound barrier, blowing the nearby sand around in a storm of motion. "Well!" He called across the sand. "Hope you two can give me a decent workout. I haven't had a solid fight since I got to this mudhole." There was an explosion of sand as he rocketed himself forward, moving so fast I wouldn't have been able to move out of the way if I hadn't been expecting it. Guess we were starting.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Avoiding Wren's wrecking ball charge didn't mean that we escaped it. As he landed from what I now saw had been an incredibly long, low leap, the impact sent sand geysering up into the air around him and shook the ground beneath us, displacing our footing. Unfortunately for Wren, he made the immense mistake of picking the wrong one of us to prioritize. Or rather, picking the RIGHT one to prioritize, leaving the other open to defend.

On landing his spear lashed out at Callie, who, having much more impressive stats due to specialization, was a bigger threat. I had no clue how he could TELL that, but he clearly had some way of doing so, and he went right for her. Sadly for him, Callie had zero defense during our combat trance, she left that up to me. Making a sharp gesture with one hand, I pointed at a spot in the air near her, triggering Cloud Step. While her footing had been disturbed, I'd made sure to put it close enough to plant her hands on the surface, allowing her to arch up into a backbend handstand.

The spear smashed through the air where Callie's ribs had been with bonecrushing force, failing to find any purchase as she pushed off and sent herself flying out of range, at an angle that kept her close to me. During this whole mess, I was able to regain my footing easily enough, and as she distracted Wren with her acrobatics, I used a Sucking Mud skill on the sand to prevent the shifting ground from being as big of a problem, then layered Consecration of Flame and Touch of Tears on my cane as I lashed out at the side of Wren's knee with the weapon.

To my surprise, Wren choked up on his grip, smashing the butt of his spear into the mud and using the ground to create a blockade between my cane and his leg. My blow bounced harmlessly off it, not even managing to corrode the bone. He barely showed any difficulty yanking the spear from the mud, but before he could turn to attack, he was forced to wheel in place and swing the spear to deflect a massive pitch black ball of shadow swinging at his head on a wide chain.

Balam and the combat trance combined to show me exactly where I needed to attack, and I silently activated my overlay, resonating it with my Balam Skill to find the perfect trajectory to attack from. Selecting the option that best mirrored Callie's own attack, I rolled sideways through the mud, smashing out at Wren's lower spine with a vicious blow that left me in his blindspot provided he was focused on Callie.

It...sort of worked. He didn't notice the attack until the last second, and avoided it by pivoting his body around the spear that was driven into the mud again to fend off Callie's offensive. That took his feet off the ground for a second, and as he came down a barrage of shadow spiked lashed up from the ground. He's slipped on the mud, but I was doing the same damn thing. This mud was vaguely better than sand, but not by much.

With the split second of distraction the blades brought me, I used Consecration of Flame again, but this time, I strained my soul to force it to treat Sucking Mud's area of effect as a focus, causing the mud to harden as it was imbued with the same magma like properties my stone limb could get. I dropped the skill nearly instantly, then used Mistwalking, creating a bank of mist around us, which quickly turned into hissing steam.

Wren's frustrated growl was music to my ears as I used Seek Hidden, wincing a bit at so much soul weight so quickly. Still, he came into view perfectly and my mask kept the steam from bothering me. Callie wasn't inside the bank of mist, since she'd been attacking from a distance and I activated Stealth as I walked, keeping my footsteps silent as I circled in the obstruction, looking for an opening.

"Ok." Wren's voice snarled. "I admit. That's really fucking annoying. What the hell is your ability? Fire, water, earth, some weird poison shit if that cane glowing was anything to go by. You're not exactly super powerful, but you're versatile as hell." I snickered at that internally, though I didn't let out a noise. He had no clue how powerful I was. I hadn't used a single stored attack yet.

There were two reasons for this. Firstly, we were trying to see where we stood against an opponent from the star system. Second, the less of our tricks we used here the less we gave away for the tournament. And finally, because this was GREAT training for our dual combat style. This guy was absurdly good with his weapon. I didn't know how he was picking up our attacks so quickly (maybe a Perception specialization) but his ability to react to them without leaving openings was first class.

Sadly for him, that lack of openings didn't extend to his monologue, because as he vented his frustration, I finally noticed a gap in his guard. I flashed in, triggering Flurry of Blows to massively speed up my attack, and swung for his hip joint in what should have been a blind spot. I was kind of suspicious, so I didn't commit too heavily, and that turned out to be a life saver. I was barely able to react to the shift in his center of gravity in time to dodge the blazingly fast attack he launched because I was staring at his midsection for the attack.

The boom of displaced air crashed into the mist and steam, dispersing them both as I landed out of a handspring. Wren grinned at me viciously, opening his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by having to dive sideways to avoid a massive black hammed Callie brought down right on top of him. The impact compacted the ground, which had been sort of loose after being quenched from magma and heated from sand, flattening out a section of it. I considered using my magma leg combo, but it seemed stupid this early in the fight, so I just quietly slipped around to join up with Callie, who was in her dark distorted form, taking advantage of her armor's disguise features.

She'd been waiting for the opening he made with that strike, preparing to cover me if I was in trouble, and I gave her a grateful nod, which earned me a happy smile, one with a violent edge I only saw in fights, and which made me all the more aware how well we fit sometimes. She raised an eyebrow at Wren. "You're pretty good. I heard you're the second in command of the Spear Legion's team. Is Lament really that much better than you?" While it seemed like info gathering or smack talk, I could tell she was just genuinely curious.

Wren's laugh was good natured and rolling. "Are you kidding? Lament is a monster. Three of me would have trouble taking her. You two are damn impressive for such a backwater. Your cooperation is seamless and it's incredibly irritating, and all those fun tricks and the shaping power make you a versatile and surprising team. That said, Lament would pulp you both in a single blow. That's not to denigrate your skills. She'd kill me just as easily. Some people can't be described with common sense."

That was...unfortunate. But then again, she wasn't the only monster. If we couldn't take her, maybe Abel could. Of course, considering how fucking scary Wren was turning out to be, we would need to handle him, or let Mel do it and handle the other two. Assuming they were fielding a four man team. I wasn't sure if teams could be smaller. Either way, no use worrying about it now. We had a fight to win.

I spun up my cane as he spoke, easing myself into a circling movement to try to get to the other side of the disk of solid earth we were using for the fight. Wren noticed, but didn't so much follow as step back so he could let his eyes take in more of the circle. He let them unfocus the same way Abel had done in training, letting his field of view expand so he could react more quickly.

He was not, however, watching behind him. Which was why he didn't notice Callie rise from the sand in one smooth motion and launch a cascade of shadow spears up from behind him. I dove forward in a quick juke before withdrawing, and Wren reacted, tensing up and then looking at me confused before his eyes widened in understanding. He spun on his heel, lashing out with another air smashing strike that dispersed the shadows and hit Callie directly.

My eyes widened in horror before she started to dissolve, and I grinned. She'd used the cover of the mist to make a clone, but had sent the clone around for the sneak attack instead of going herself. Wren's distraction left him open with his back to both of us, and we flickered forward as a single unit, coming around from opposite sides, my cane flashing out for his ankle with a Mercy Kill layered on it as she swung another massive hammer construct almost as tall as she was right at his head from the other side.

Between the shock and the perfect timing, he didn't have time to block both, and dug the but of his spear in to stop the hammer. It was an understandable move, the head was the most vulnerable part of the body, but he left himself open, and I took advantage. Unlike my shadow strikes or flame attacks, the triple stack density shift was completely viable to use without drawing attention. I layered that one onto the cane along with a Mercy Kill to boost it even higher, and unleashed every bit of stored force along with the strike as the head of my cane smashed into Wren's ankle.

There was a loud crack as the bone shattered, prevented from regenerating by the creeping poison fire that I heavily suspected hurt WAY worse when it was getting into broken bone. Wren roared in pain, forced to shift onto his other foot and effectively ruining his footing. I spun off the strike, reversing to spin out into a blow aimed at the back of the mans head as Callie attacked his ribs with a pair of condensed shadow tonfas, even as the hammer dispersed into a concealing shadow fog.

That was a new trick, and my Seek Hidden let me see right through it just as Callie could. We spent the next five minutes whittling him down. Cracking his ankle broke his concentration, and as the pain and damage from the poison fire mounted every time I got in a hit, he got slower and slower as our teamwork chipped away at him. Finally he roared out. "Enough!" Swinging his spear in a full circle to drive us back, then drove it into the ground to lean on. "That's enough. I concede."

I let my body relax, feeling relieved as the constant skill use had been slowly cranking the pain in my head, and held up a fist in triumph. As the match ended, an arena healer scurried out onto the field to treat Wren, who grinned at us widely. "Well, you two are certainly worth watching." He let the healer patch him up as I allowed the poison fire to dissipate from his body. As he turned to walk away, he looked back over his shoulder, still with that same grin. "Don't lose too quickly in the tournament. I want a rematch." It was only after he disappeared behind the gate that I realized that he hadn't used his ability once in the battle. He'd been holding back as much as we had, maybe more. I mirrored his grin, my mouth stretched wide behind my mask. This tournament was going to be so much fun.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

When we got back to the waiting room, Wren was gone, but Abel, Mel, and Sloane were there waiting. Sloane was particularly impressed, cheering loudly when she was us. "That was FANTASTIC! That guy was a monster, his Might must be insane. I was afraid he'd kill one of you by mistake, but you kept him off balance the whole time. He never even had a chance!"

Abel rolled his eyes, holding up a hand. "Alright, let's not take this too far. It was a decent fight, but he wasn't going all out. He never even used his ability. Granted, you kept plenty of your tricks in reserve, which I approve of, but you had plenty of room for improvement. Either Mel or I could have taken him one on one pretty easily. It's fine to recognize your strengths, but don't let it go to your heads. These next two weeks are for training, and if you lose motivation you'll stall out."

"He's not wrong." Said Mel in a conciliatory tone. "But still, I do think you two did a damn good job for your first major fight against an outsider. With the caveat that you can still learn plenty, it's not a problem to be proud of your battle. In that vein though, why don't you point out some of the things you did wrong. It'll help to contextualize where you can improve in the future." She gestured over to the nearby seats. "We can wait over here. Sloane signed up for the singles matches, but she needs to wait until her name is called."

Callie, as usual, picked up the inconsistency first. "Wait, where are Beric and Croll and the other Beast Lord Initiates?" She asked. "Also what are you all doing down here? Weren't you being escorted to like an observation deck or something?" Thinking about it that way I was pretty curious too.

"We were." Answered Abel. "It was more of a VIP box. But the part time fleabag decided she wanted to fight, and Mel and I know this place pretty well. The others are up in the box watching the fights, but we figured coming with her would be a good chance to give you some feedback." He pointed to the back corner of the room where a scan box was projecting an image of a currently starting match onto the wall. "We can watch her match over there. Now, like Mel said, what did you do wrong? Solomon, you go first."

I wasn't sure if he decided that because Callie was better able to note details or because I was more in tune with combat, but it didn't really matter. I cocked my head slightly in thought before I responded. "Off the top of my head, using my triple strike on his ankle might have been sloppy. I was trying not to use any of my powerful tricks before the tournament. It might have been noticed and given away some more of my abilities."

To my surprise, Abel shook his head at that. "Nah. It was a physical attack, hard to tell when those are more than they seem. And you showed enough variety with DS Mastery to make it unlikely for anyone to catch the slip. It was a measured risk that you put thought into. I'd say it worked out fine, given the overturn in the combat dynamic when it happened. Try again."

That had been the most obvious slip, and I had to dig a bit deeper to find something else. "The mist?" He raised an eyebrow over his mask, gesturing for me to continue. "I used it without warning Callie it was going to happen. She adapted on the fly, but it was a stupid slip to make, cutting off her line of sight to me without letting her know." It was sometimes hard to remember that while we were incredibly in sync, we couldn't read each others minds. Trust could become a liability if it wasn't tempered with knowledge.

Abel smiled. "Good. The hardest part of perfecting team dynamic is to find your partner's limits. You two did well taking advantage of the mistake, but it still happened. You count on your partner in all things when in battle, which means you need to be able to estimate how much information they can glean. Without knowing what they know, you can't predict what they'll do, and someone you can't predict isn't an asset in a battle, they're a liability."

"I guess." Callie said thoughtfully. "I mean, I feel like that was a good move though. Using that combo to take care of the sand. He communicated some of it with handsigns. I wasn't expecting the steam, but it didn't seem to hurt us. Are you saying we can't improvise? Because that doesn't sound like you." I smiled a bit at how defensive she sounded of me. It was sweet how much she cared.

Abel shrugged. "Not at all. I'm saying you need to game out these combinations and responses beforehand and have contingencies for them. It's not a matter of never reacting, it's a matter or making sure your partner has a frame of reference for every action you take. The whole, magma mist combo was a smart way to solidify the ground, but it was NEW. Trying new moves outside your partner's grasp on your abilities creates gaps."

"So...more training?" I asked wryly. His answering grin was response enough, and I rolled my eyes. "Fair enough. I can't imagine how many years you two trained together when you were younger to have as good a grasp on your combat style as you do. How did you even maintain that level of cooperation for such a long time? Even after Apollyon was gone for a while you just fell right back into it."

Mel just waved that off. "Once you hit a certain point your combat style tends to solidify. I was able to predict how he fights because he hasn't changed it much. He still uses the same martial art, the same ability, he just uses them more smoothly. It's a benefit of developing your cooperation now. Less change at this point in your journey, at least in terms of combat. Not that no one ever pivots or changes their style, but most people tend to stay on brand. Consistency helps build a bigger impression."

That made sense with how most people gained stats. Less of a priority for me honestly, but I could see how even without that factor, specializing in a certain kind of combat and sharpening that skill set would be a big help. Hell, I'd been doing exactly that lately. Deciding to do the rest of the 'what did you do wron' exercise later and in private, I turned to Sloane. "So, you decided to fight next? I haven't really seen too much of your serious combat abilities. Some during the siege but I'm curious to see what you can do."

I knew she could merge with her animals somehow, she got bird wings and...,fox ears? I guessed foxes had good ears since they were so big. It would be interesting to see more of what she could do with them. She'd mostly been fighting random minions in the siege, so she hadn't had a chance to shine.

She certainly looked excited enough. Sloane was one of the many WCP residents that didn't bother with a mask. Some of the kids of the E-rankers, like Sage, just figured there was no reason for a second identity given who their parents were. I wasn't sure if Sloane was Melinda's daughter or just her apprentice, but she seemed to have gone with the same general idea. It made it incredibly easy to see the energy and anticipation on her face as she spoke. "Hell yes! I saw your fight and it got me pretty pumped. I hope I get someone that strong!"

Mel chuckled. "You won't. None of the regulars are that powerful, but you might get someone with a drastically opposed power to yours. Those are always fun. I remember one time I got matched against an opponent who absorbed fire and converted it to physical strength. That fight was annoying."

Callie nodded fervently. "I'm lucky my constructs are dense enough that normal light doesn't affect them much. I've run into a few counter powers and they are absolutely awful to deal with. Unless you work with a team, the easiest way to deal with them is to have some kind of combat Skill." She cocked her head. "Although, actually, I don't think I've ever asked if you have a martial art Skill. Being the direct disciple of an E-ranker I figure you probably do though, right?"

"No spoilers." Sloane snickered. "You'll have to wait and see like everyone else. Don't forget that the Beast Lord Garden is entering the tournament too. Don't want to give away any tricks to the competition too soon. If you can figure some things out from watching me fight that's fine, but I'm not giving any hints." She gave a mysterious smirk, making it clear she'd be holding back just as much as we had.

We talked for a bit longer before a voice called for Sloane and she headed out to get ready for her fight. I raised an eyebrow at that and turned to Mel. "Wait, why did she get called but we didn't? We were able to just head out when we were ready, is that not how it usually goes?"

"Nah." Mel said casually. "You were benefiting from Wren's status. He's been tearing into their best for days, and while he isn't at the same level as Lament, he's got quite a rep at this point. If there wasn't a qualitative difference in renown at higher levels I don't doubt factions like the Spear Legion would just send all their kids to backwaters to crush everyone else. Hell, some of them probably do that anyway, though thankfully it's not common."

That made sense. "So he was just allowed to go up whenever he wanted and took us along? I'll have to thank him when we see him again. So can we place bets down here? Also how much did we win off the last bet? I'm pretty confident in Sloane and if we got a bunch of extra cash anyway might as well keep it going." I wasn't sure how much Mel had put up for us, but our odds had probably been decent if Wren was so well known here.

My enthusiasm got a chuckle from Mel. "I figured you'd say that. I put some of your winnings on Sloane, though the odds were much less favorable for her. I figured if you decided not to bet I could just take it out of my personal account instead to cover the difference. You won about a hundred G-rank chits. I put twenty down from your Pavilion account and you got five to one odds. Pretty decent, though I doubt it'll be anywhere near as much if you do it again. I put twenty five on her for you, but it's only two to one odds."

"If?" I asked in confusion. "I figured we'd be spending most of our trip down here. Seems like a great place to train. We need to polish our combat skills don't we?" I'd been looking forward to possibly becoming a champion pit fighter. It seemed like such a cool accomplishment.

Abel answered with a laugh. "Kid, most people aren't responsible enough to come to a fighting pit in Doomtown. We'll get in just as many fights out in the wild, and under plenty more circumstances, besides, it'll be a good idea to establish your brand a bit around hear. Aside from learning about your opponents you'll have plenty of opportunities to expand your reputation." Before I could respond he held up a hand and pointed over to the screen. "We can talk about it later. First lesson of the arena kid, always watch matches you bet on." And with that bit of wisdom, we turned to see Sloane's fight.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Sloane had already merged with her companions by the time she reached the sand. They had somehow restored the arena to its original state, sans big circle of rock, but I noted with interest that her feet seemed to skim over the ground without imprinting too deeply. I wasn't sure if it was some effect of the silver wings, or some kind of light step fox ability, but it was an interesting detail to note.

I turned to Mel briefly. "So." I asked. "Who exactly is she fighting? I don't think they said. Do either of you know?" Having details on the other fighter for comparison would help give me a better idea of what Sloane could do. Since we were apparently going to be fighting her in the tournament. Or more realistically, I might be fighting her. If our team ran into the Beast Lord Garden's crew, Abel and Mel would crush them, but the team competition was only the preliminary stage of the event.

She shook her head. "No, but they usually do some kind of announcement." Even as she spoke, the announcer who had introduced us bellowed Sloane's name, mentioning her affiliation, before moving on to introduce the dark cloth wrapped form slinking from the other gate. When Mel heard the name, she winced. "Ah. That's not going to be an easy fight. I've never fought Shale, but I got a quick run down of the big names from Ceras."

"Shale?" I asked suspiciously. "That's a type of rock right? Some kind of earth manipulator? I could see how that might be a pain in the ass." As the battle started, I saw Slone pivot forward, her wings cracking the air as she was driven straight at the other fighter almost too fast to follow. The glow of the wings made it clear there was more at work than just muscle, and I whistled at the speed on display.

Still, it wasn't too fast for someone like me to dodge, so I assumed Shale would move. I assumed wrong. Not only did Shale not move, Shale didn't do ANYTHING. They just stood there as Sloane smashed into them at top speed...and bounced off, skidding across the sand with a scream of pain, holding the shoulder she had led with. She staggered to her feet, giving a quick jerk of her arm to pop it back into place as she glared at the other fighter.

The cloth across Shale's chest had been shredded slightly by the wings, some kind of split second slashing attack I hadn't even been able to see in the split second after Sloane bounced off, but the flesh under the wrapping didn't seem to be bleeding. Hell, it didn't seem to be flesh. Shale shook their head, reaching up to unwind the cloth from their face and rebind it over their chest.

The revealed face was masculine and rough. Not like some people use that phrase to mean worn or hard won, but LITERALLY rough. Also grey. Because the form under the wrappings was made of solid rock. Mel snickered slightly. "Earth manipulation adjacent." I turned to cock my head at her. "He's a golem. It's a relatively rare racial trait. They're pretty environmentally specific, but in an arena like this he's going to be a beast to get by. Most of them have a few earth manipulation Skills."

I winced. "That sounds...unfortunate. I take it from that blow he tanked that they're relatively sturdy for their level of Impact?" I knew that some abilities could make people more durable within their rank. Rock with twelve Impact was tougher than wood with twelve impact, and they were both tougher than flesh. That was how defensive abilities worked, and this seemed like a pretty good one based on the attack he just took.

Rather than answer, she gestured to the screen, where Sloane was climbing to her feet. "Ok." She growled. "That hurt." Her voice was rough and animalistic as she began to slowly stalk forward. "I admit, I wasn't expecting that. Don't suppose I actually did any damage?"

"Not much." Shale chuckled. If Sloane's voice was the growl of an animal, Shale's was the crashing of falling rocks. It was so bassy it was almost hard to discern the words. "Still, that's better than most manage. You definitely cut into me a bit. I'm curious to see if you can do it again." As he finished speaking, he stripped the sleeves off his arms and knelt down, pressing a fist to the sand. The earth began to crawl up his grey stone flesh, thickening and expanding his arms and then moving to his chest, stretching the chest wrapping to the limit but not breaking it.

I could see why he used the wraps instead of normal clothes now. The expanded as he did, preventing rips and tears. By the time he was done and stood back up, his upper body had almost doubled in muscle mass. The sand had condensed into something halfway between armor and a body modification. I winced. Mel had been right. Earth based Skill. Probably his ability before he became a Golem. I knew racial traits shifted the primary ability to a Skill when the transformation was activated, just like Jobs.

Sloane looked a bit conflicted. She was obviously unhappy to just sit and watch him buff up, but this was such an obvious opening that actually attacking probably felt like a trap. I knew I probably wouldn't have closed during that little show, maybe trying some kind of ranged attack. I didn't know if Sloane even HAD any of those. She seemed indecisive for a minute, before eventually deciding to just bite the bullet and attack again, flashing forward in another blur of silver wings.

I was confused as to what she was going to do, but she seemed to have taken into account the new information. Instead of slamming into Shale, when she got in close this time, she juked sideways, spinning out on her wings to circle around behind him. As she pirouetted in the air her wings lashed out like blades, scoring along the exterior of Shale's new enhanced body and flitting away too quickly to grab.

Despite the wings versatility, I was ninety percent sure that some of the movements Sloane was making shouldn't be physically possible. Not for lack of power or anything like that, but because the smooth shifts in momentum were antithetical to how force and inertia should work. In some strange way, it reminded me a bit of the weird lack of impression her feet had left when she entered the arena. While the wings clearly gave her some kind of massive speed boost and could carve into the stone that way, I was pretty sure the fox aspect of her transformation was giving her access to agility and maneuverability that shouldn't be possible.

The combination was absolutely brutal, and despite his incredibly powerful form, it made her functionally untouchable by Shale as he lashed out at her with short, precise jabs and grabs. Despite the huge disadvantage of his speed though, the Golem was doing an amazing job of keeping himself from being damaged too much by assuming an extremely tight defensive stance and focusing the slicing attacks at non vital areas.

I could see grey metallic blood begin to leak from some of the slashes, but only a trickle, and Shale remained as composed and unmoving as his rocklike exterior implied as he patiently waited for her to show some kind of opening. Sloane, for her part, was starting to look a bit tired after a few minutes of the stalemate. She began to slow down, and finally, after three minutes of the attack blitz, she desperately dove for a low sweeping cut that left her open to the Golem's retaliation.

He lashed out with all the speed his immense Might could manage, snapping out a grab at her wing with the speed of a striking snake. Unfortunately for him, she had expected that. Her 'accidental' slip hadn't been an accident at all. She'd been setting up an opening to exploit in return. As he dove forward in a split second grab, the wings turned into silver mist in his grip.

Eyes the color of granite widened in shock as he overbalanced slightly when he grabbed nothing but air. It was only a split second, but it was enough. As the wings faded, birdlike talons tore free of the shoes on Sloane's feet as she planted her hands in the sand and lashed out at Shale's exposed body. One claw raked over an eye, another opening his throat, both vulnerable spots he'd bee protecting with his defensive stance.

The gouges weren't crippling or life threatening, she didn't have enough force for that. But they were distracting and painful and kept him preoccupied enough for her to swing around and start lashing out with more blows. The claws were much better suited for cutting than the feathers, and they tore holes in several vulnerable places, cutting into the under arms, the pecs, and even the thighs as Sloane unleashed a blistering storm of slashing kicks on her enemy, who stumbled back blindly to get away.

A back handspring up to her feet followed by a scything flip that brought her legs up and over again in another assault pressed the attack, and Shale desperately tried to regain his footing to defend. It looked like she was going to pull off the win for a minute, until Shale managed to find a small gap in her attacks and post up again.

With his defense in place her attacks did far less damage than they had been up to this point. No vitals on display meant no obvious strike points, and aside from being durable, Golems were apparently tough as nails, because the damage he'd taken up to now didn't seem to be slowing him down much. While her earlier exhaustion had been a feint, Sloane had been going all out in this attack blitz, and after another minute or two she actually started to flag for real.

Having learned his lesson, Shale didn't go for the opening, he just stayed posted in place, feet sunk deep into the sand as he endured the slowly flagging wave of attacks. In the end, Sloane just wasn't able to put him down, and after she had thoroughly exhausted herself and slowed down immensely, he started taking cautious shots at her. She avoided some of them, but not all, and slowly but surely he chipped away at her until she left herself open for a finishing blow.

The punch that he landed to her jaw snapped her head to the side sharply and she was unconscious by the time she hit the sand. Mel cursed. "Shit. I should have quit while I was ahead." She shrugged guiltily. "Sorry about that. You want me to cover the bet? I didn't ask you so I won't be too bothered to handle the payment."

Callie just waved her off. "Nah. It's fine. You won us seventy five chits on top of the loss, so we'll cover it. Cost of doing business." Seventy five G-rank chits was a decent windfall anyway, so I wasn't too worried about it either. Glancing at the screen she winced as some guard hopped into the pit and started dragging Sloane out by her ankle. "Wow. She's going to have sand in so many uncomfortable places."

That surprised a laugh out of me. On that note we headed for the tunnel to meet Sloane when she was dropped off. Might as well save her some annoyance by picking her up. I was a guest elder after all. Once that was done we headed back up to meet with the rest of the Beast Lord Initiates, who all seemed a bit sulky, probably having bet on their boss to win like we had. I tried my hardest not to snicker at the expressions. At least Doomtown hadn't been boring so far.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Sloane was understandably upset about losing, but we made sure to let her know how well she'd done. "You were awesome." Callie stated with finality. "Seriously. You were so fast. You just met the exact wrong opponent. Solomon or I would have had a hard time beating you and you're going to do great in the tournament." I wasn't really sure that was true, but I decided not to get involved. She was trying to help Sloane feel better more than anything.

"That's not the point!" Cried Sloane in frustration. "I barely put up a fight. Not to mention everyone bet on the match. If I got back to the Garden missing that much money I'm going to be in so much trouble. Since the two of you kicked the shit out of the big guy, I can't even bet on you both to make it back, because no one is going to give either of you decent odds in any of your fights now."

Abel snickered a bit at her frenzied tone. "Well, I was planning a trip to the Burning Rain Casino next. If you really want to make money you can always do some gambling. Sadly the games are all luck based so enhanced stats don't do much good, but still, it's not a bad place to make a few bucks if you're having a good day." He paused. "Or lose a few, it's pretty hit or miss, but you're already behind quite a few bucks anyway. Might as well give it a shot."

"That's..." Mel sighed, putting her hand to her mask in annoyance. "We aren't really trying to get them all to gamble away their...and you're gone. Fantastic." Abel, apparently not in the mood for a lecture, had turned and wandered off when she started talking. That was the most proactive I'd seen him about ignoring anyone. I expected Mel to be offended but she just sighed. "Right, I forgot how he gets down here. Honestly surprised he stuck around for that much of the conversation. Oh well, you kids coming?"

Apparently deciding to follow him to wherever the Burning Rain Casino was, Mel just set off after Abel. Callie and I shared a look and then shrugged. We still had seventy five G-ranked chits worth of profit here, so a few bets wouldn't be a big deal. Besides, I was curious to see more of Doomtown. Sloane and the others all trailed behind us, Beric and Croll trying to reassure their team leader as we went.

The wolves prowled around behind us, and it struck me that I hadn't really noticed them around for a while. I wondered where they'd gone or when we'd lost them, but they were still fine so it didn't really matter I guessed. They were smart enough not to go around eating random people. They caught up to us and I scratched Jin behind the ears as Rellia snuggled up to Callie as she walked, all of following behind our mentors as they led us back out onto the road.

It didn't take us long to get to the casino. Much like the rest of Doomtown the building was dark stone, but unlike the other places we'd seen, the stone on this place was slick and reflective. The tall building had hundreds of windows, each shining one of a half dozen colors and creating a sort of absurd, fantastical effect as the mixture of colored light poured down on the entrance. A pair of double doors lie open, blocked off by a rope attended by a pair of hulking guards in suits and featureless black full face masks.

I caught up to Abel with a grin as he stopped to take the place in. "Another old haunt? Do you or Mel know the guys at the door here too?"" I could understand why they might have old friends all over at the places they brought us, since they were pretty impressive and they'd taken us to places they knew best, but eventually they were going to have to run out of places where everyone knew them on sight.

To my surprise, Abel just shrugged. "Who the hell knows. It's not like I can tell them apart. They're just door guards." He strolled forward with purpose, coming to a stop in front of the guards. Instead of telling them who he was or bullying them, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold casino chip, holding it up to show the guys at the door. As soon as they saw it they opened the rope to let him in, ignoring the boos of the people in line that we'd walked right past.

Mel snickered at that. "He was never close to anyone here, but he came by a lot. The arena has built in bets, but Doomtown as a whole tends to attract lots of fights. You can place prop bets on the outcome of fights between certain big name players. Apollyon used to come here to bet on himself and then hunt down all the strongest fighters." Then she sighed. "He ALSO has an extreme fondness for roulette, and he ended up feeding them back most of his winnings. That's why he has the golden chip, it's a high roller token. He's never really worried much about money. Easy come easy go."

I could kind of see that really. He definitely seemed like the type to ignore anything that didn't suit him. If he needed money he'd just go get some. It put his sausage stand into a bit of a different context. I knew he'd worked his way up, but it was a lot more impressive knowing he could have solved any money problems even easier than I thought. I noticed them closing the ropes and hurried forward, not wanting to get left behind.

Shockingly, even the wolves were allowed in. I wasn't sure if it was a factor of having a gold token or they just didn't care, but it was a relief we didn't have to find somewhere to board them while we went inside. The inside of the Burning Rain was, if anything, even more chaotic than the outside. The multicolored swirl of lights was still present, but the carpets and furniture were made in swirling patterns of black and white that caught and twisted the colors in ways that probably would have made a mortal pass out.

Even I, with a surplus of Perception and plentyof Focus to block this out, was feeling a bit disoriented. I turned to look at Abel, who at the very least was less dizzying that the surroundings, and found him rolling his eyes. "They haven't changed. Same nonsense games to throw people off." He turned to Mel, giving her a charming grin. "Honey, do you happen to have some pocket money we can use? I want to try the roulette table." He literally folded his hands under his chin and pouted as he asked, like a puppy dog begging for a treat.

Mel just snickered at her boyfriend. "Oh now you listen to me? Not going to just wander off?" Abel had the good sense to look abashed and began to apologize (probably a bit too vehemently to be serious), wrapping Mel in his arms and expounding at length about how heartbroken he was to have offended her. The whole performance carried over into blatant sarcasm after a few minutes, but Mel was giggling too hard to be annoyed, finally putting her hand over his mouth. "Enough! You lunatic. Fine, take some money and go."

"Fantastic!" Abel cheered. Leaning down to peck Mel on the side of her mask. "Thanks honey, have fun!" Then turned to us. "If you kids want to have some fun might want to come with me. Knowing Mel, she'll probably go relax at the bar or something, though she might hit the prop bet table and try to get in some odds on the lot of us before people start adjusting for your fight with Wren. Either way, it'll be boring so come on."

He didn't bother waiting for us as he took off into the crowd, energetically bulling past everyone around him in his hurry. I shrugged at Callie, and she and Sloane both trailed after us. The rest of the Beast Lord Initiates didn't follow, probably because they cleaned themselves out betting on Sloane. Sloane herself was hoping to make some money back, so she should have at least something to bet.

The wolves trailed behind, moving through the dizzying crowd like sharks through a neon ocean. I couldn't even find Abel for a second, but luckily his silver mask stood out in this light, so I caught a trace of him. We pushed through the crowd to reach him and found him standing at a table in front of a diminutive woman in the same nondescript mask as the guards. She was wearing what I suspected was a white shirt and red vest, and standing in front of a huge roulette wheel, which was ALSO lighting up in a riot of colors.

"Whooo!" Abel cheered. "Rainbow wheel! Guys come over here!" He waved to us excitedly, shoving a few nearby forms aside to make room. "This is awesome. It's rainbow wheel. Unlike boring roulette where there's two colors and a bunch of numbers, rainbow wheel is even more fun! The wheel is covered with numbers, but the numbers are in grey screens, As the wheel spins the colors flicker randomly across the tiles and when the ball stops they all lock into place. Don't worry though, rainbow wheel is watched over by high Perception reps from the WCP to make sure they don't monkey with the color change."

That was...insane. "So you just pick a random color and number and hope it hits? Is this the game you always play? Also what are the odds on this?" I kind of wished someone had thought to do a luck wish before coming here, but I made a note to bring Benny back once he was strong enough to survive down here.

"A thousand to one." Came a smooth, lackadaisical voice from the other side of the table. I turned to find a girl with dark skin and glowing green eyes staring back at me. I couldn't see her hair color with all the light pollution, but my guess was that it was dark blue. Of course, the hulking bandaged for with wrist manacles and a long coat standing behind her kind of gave it away. This would be Mordaunt then. She smiled widely when she caught our gazes. "But no, rainbow wheel isn't a consistent thing. They only spin once a night."

Abel nodded excitedly. "It's true! Sadly we can't play tonight. You can only bet money on rainbow wheel you won AT the table. It stops people from just dumping all their cash on it. Shame, I love rainbow wheel. I've played four times. Never won, but it's always a blast." I could see how they would be able to afford thousand to one odds under those conditions. It was probably a huge draw. Quite a spectacle.

Mordaunt chuckled, somehow audible despite all the noise around us. "I'd be happy to let you watch my spin. There's only a one in ten thousand chance of triggering a rainbow wheel spin on a winning bet, or at least so I was told when we began." Abel nodded enthusiastically and I shrugged. It sounded like a fun time and it wasn't like it would cost anything. We'd obviously stick around.

Mordaunt turned to the woman. "Forty six, red." She just picked a random number and color combination, not that I imagined there was a much better way. With seven potential colors on each number the chance of hitting was absurdly low. No way they could afford to pay so much out unless the odds were freakishly slim.

Before the woman could spin though, we heard a new voice cut through the din. A haughty sneering tone that boomed across the space around us. "Why am I not surprised the abominations are engaged in such depravity. I suspected I'd find you here, monster maker." We all turned to take in the hulking form of the blonde haired man in the brown robes, sneering through his bushy beard. The game was forgotten as Mordaunt turned to face Macgregor, and two of the outsider factions squared off against each other. Why did I think this was going to get messy?