"In the event of a fire the only steps I'm taking are fuckin' big ones." -Chris Boden, physicsduck-

  _____

  “This is Fuego.” JP said, using Planner as the world’s most extravagant PowerPoint presentation as he got the infomorph to display a set of images. A building as seen from New York streets, the doors seeming to James like they were the least inviting things he’d ever seen even counting the Sewer’s old entrance. A couple overhead shots of that same building. A blueprint. Two interior shots of the dance club. JP turned his head to check them before pointing at one of the interior pictures. “Now, this isn’t firsthand, but-“

  ”JP, I have a problem!” Yin raised her hand next to James.

  ”-but we didn’t want to put anyone inside just in case. Not yet anyway.” JP continued. “Now. The operation-“

  ”JP, I have a problem!” Yin repeated, hand still up.

  James gave her a tired glance from his own seat around the briefing space. “I love a good joke as much as the next three people put together, but since we know pillars can sometimes feel themselves being talked about, maybe we shouldn’t stall this out?” He commented calmly.

  Yin stilled for a moment, then kept her hand up with a renewed vigor. “This isn’t about them so it should be fine.” She said.

  JP shook his head and sighed, Planner’s own sigh echoing around him as the infomorph’s tentacles that had slightly translucent images hanging off them all slumped. “Fine. Yin, what problem?” He asked.

  ”It’s pronounced Fuego!, not what you said.”

  Even Tylor looked like he was annoyed by that, and he hadn’t said anything for the whole briefing except to return James’ ‘hi’ at the start.

  ”Noted. Don’t interrupt the briefing again or I’m throwing you into the iLipede habitat tank so we can figure out what’s wrong with you.” JP threatened, shaking his head.

  James shifted, adjusting how he was sitting as he got ready to go back to taking notes while JP talked. He could do it with his brain, but he found that pencil and paper legitimately helped him remember stuff, and that freed up his skulljack use for other things in the field. “And I’ll be the chauffeur on his power trip. Anyway, JP, please continue before Quinn has an aneurysm. I don’t want to find out that’s the one thing Deb doesn’t know how to treat.”

  ”Thank you. I think.” JP brushed invisible dust off his shirt cuffs, the little infomorph that was perched on his shoulder mimicking the motion with the long koi-esque tendrils coming out of its fishy body. “Planner, bring up the interior please.” He said, pointing at part of the image as Planner also straightened themselves up. “Now. This part of Fuego - shut the fuck up Yin - has this door here, see?” JP twisted his hand, Planner following the motion to bring a new image up, also stolen off someone’s instagram. “But this one doesn’t. Note the timestamp.”

  ”Dungeon?” James inquired as he noted the time difference, just wanting to be thorough.

  ”Doubtful.” Myles said from next to him. “JP had me going over a lot of these. The door is there until 2017, and then it’s gone in every photo taken afterward.”

  JP nodded as he started pacing in front of where Planner was hovering against the side wall of their warehouse space. They weren’t being bothered exactly, but ever since the Order had turned dungeon delving into a full time job for some people, this place had gotten a lot busier, and he paused to let a group on the other side of the wide room finish their distant laughter before continuing. “So we have a move in date, estimated anyway.” He said. “Now. There’s a few other discrepancies like this, and one of the downsides of putting your secret base inside a modern day dance club in a world with cell phones is that I know what all of them are. Planner?”

  ”Here,” Planner’s voice scribbled into the air as they began to pair off pictures taken from across social media, “are all of the points inside the structure that have changed in the last seven years. This cluster is explainable by a mundane remodel that was performed in 2019, but the rest happened within three day windows.”

  Off to James’ side, a person he’d known his whole life spoke up. “What does it mean?” Quinn asked.

  JP smiled. “It means I know where our terrifying friend lives.” He said, snapping his fingers and signaling Planner to bring up the blueprint. Planner probably would have done that, if they’d arranged a signal or something, but for all the things the assignment was very good at, dramatic timing wasn’t one of them. “…Planner, can you… this one. This one Plan. Thanks.” JP sighed.

  ”I love it here.” James muttered with a small smile.

  “This area of the building doesn’t exist.” JP said, outlining part of it. “This room specifically used to be a manager’s office, and this whole back access hallway isn’t there anymore. The kitchen actually changed where they take deliveries from at some point, and no one seems to think it’s weird. Or if they do they’re not talking.”

  James nodded as he flicked his eyes over the diagram. “We can get in there easy.” He said. “Ghost juice, drop through the ceiling. Right?”

  ”Correct. And we’d need to; no teleports in the area.” JP said.

  ”Is that common?” Quinn asked stiffly.

  Clicking his tongue, James gave a slow considered answer. “It’s… not uncommon.” He settled on. “We’ve seen it around pillars a lot though. In our first meetup, Blitz made it sound like she was letting us go with our telepads. We know police stations often don’t let people teleport in or out, so Long is probably doing something similar, and Lloyd definitely locked it down when he was planning to flatten Townton. But aside from a few Garden spells, we haven’t seen the same effect anywhere else.”

  ”Oh.” Quinn shuffled paper, flipping through a printout copy of the operations manual. “What… who is Lloyd?” He asked, continuing to scan with long blinks of his eyes as he worked to take in the mass of words as quickly as he could.

  ”Last Line of Defense.” Myles supplied.

  ”A dick!” Yin added.

  ”Last Dick of Defense.” Myles corrected. “He’s a pillar that seems focused on preventing dungeons from spreading. Not the people in the dungeons though, which is worth noting.”

  Quinn’s shoulders untensed, and James tried not to quirk a smile at the motion. “Oh. Good.” He said.

  ”Yeah, so. No teleports. Maybe no walking through walls either.” JP commented, turning back in unison with the mile-long coiled serpent on his shoulder. “Thing is, we don’t know what they can block, or what categories our stuff fits into as far as pillars are concerned. So any infiltration is a risk, and we may only have one shot.”

  ”I have a question.” Myles said, not bothering to raise his own hand. “Why are they called pillars?”

  ”Oh, I have that section.” Quinn said, his friend running a long finger across the operations manual part that he currently had open. “The term was known for a while from a Camille - a Camille? - before being confirmed by the Right Person At The Right Moment, parenthesis, Nick. The term is a reference to the pillars of heaven, holding up the civilizations, or broad ability for civilization, of Earth.” He looked up from the book at the others, eyebrows raised. “Oh.” Quinn said again.

  Myles pointed over at the new friend. “Right. So hey, a question we’ve asked before, but is suddenly becoming relevant again. Uh… why do they have a group name and ideology if they’re enemies?”

  Maybe James had just been fucking around in dungeons and Townton and Saskatoon for too long, but that hadn’t been a question he’d been asked, or asked himself. “Well shit, that’s a great point.” He muttered. “JP, did you…?”

  ”I am aware of that, yeah. Don’t worry, I’m on it.” He said with a definite nod.

  ”…and?” James asked.

  ”And I have no idea.” JP finished with the same confident tone. “It’s a contradiction in big bold letters. They do all seem to think of themselves as pillars, even… this one. But you know who doesn’t?”

  ”Kiki.” James said instantly, now no longer hiding a smile as Quinn sighed and started looking for that entry. “Two pages forward, same section.” He stage whispered to his friend. “But she doesn’t, does she? Even though she’s the same. Pillars aren’t a… a species, or a condition, they’re a group. But also this group regularly gets in fights with themselves? What the fuck?”

  Yin kicked her feet up. “I say it makes sense.“ She declared. “Think about it! What if our own bespoke magical girl paladin here needed to get into a real fight in order to turn on the superpower that… I dunno… cures world hunger?”

  ”James doesn’t need help getting into a fight, have you been skipping briefings?” JP asked her with a frown.

  ”I mean what if one didn’t show up?” Yin pressed.

  ”…And it would fix another problem if one did?” Myles started to see the shape of her idea. “Oh. Then we’d start one.” He said.

  Now that was something James had a problem with. ”Well hang on!” He started to say.

  Twisting their tentacles forward and forming an eye so that they were more present in the conversation, Planner gave a mimicked nod. “Yes. The cost would be understandable. All we would need to do would be to manufacture a crisis, and trust James. Doable. Should I begin outlining options?”

  ”I do not have that power!” James declared.

  ”But you see what I mean, right?” Yin stressed. “They’re rigging the game. Team stacking. They’re colluding.”

  ”Someone did their vocab homework.” Myles muttered.

  James saw it though. “New York. Long, Lloyd, and one other one, who apparently lives there.” He avoided even thinking too hard about the Chain Breaker’s name. “None of them seemed aligned with the Status Quo group, even Long. It’s hard to guess at what they wanted out of it, but Cam told us that they often got sent out to interfere with another pillar. What if… what if that wasn’t true?”

  Looking up with a worried wide eyed stare, Quinn asked, ”Uh, is that a Camille?”

  ”That’s the Camille as far as I’m concerned.” JP said.

  ”Hey, there’s-“

  ”I know about the Ochre, I’ll figure out how to be less of a problem later. What’re you thinking?” JP focused on James.

  James shrugged. “Just what Yin is, right? That they’re staging fights and letting the collateral do their job for them. They clearly know where the others are active, so they can do this. So they must know she’s got a base in New York, right?”

  ”Right. So getting in is…”

  ”Less of a risk.” Yin declared.

  James gave her a raised eyebrow stare. “Go on.” He said, in the voice that implicitly added the statement, “you absolute melon.” At the end.

  ”If they know it’s there, but they don’t touch it, it means that it’s not important, right? Think about what we know about these guys, especially from Kiki! They can’t ignore what they are. Can’t. Not won’t, not don’t, but can not. So if they’re ignoring her private lair, that means that it isn’t actually strategically relevant.”

  It probably shouldn’t have been so surprising to James that one of their best and longest serving rogues thought things out to that degree. “Okay, I get it.” He said, following along. “They’re willing to fight over random acts of political violence, or secret black ops agencies, or whatever. But they won’t fight over this building. Where one of them hangs out.”

  ”So it’s not actually a pillar thing. Or not in any of their domains, or whatever we’re calling it.” JP hummed.

  James shook his head sadly. ”Not domain.” He told his friend with morose resignation. “Vex and her meddling polycule beat us to that.”

  ”…Right. That then also asks a new question though.”

  ”What is in this structure?” Planner posited. And then before anyone could follow up on that, they continued, “We know that. It is a dance club with a heavy emphasis on salsa music, including house and electronica mixes of the same.”

  ”Aaaaaand the pillar? Plan?” Myles asked, concerned about Planner’s mental coherence if they somehow weren’t aware of the point of this briefing.

  ”What about the pillar Myles?” Planner asked back. “Kiki enjoys baking cookies and reading romance novels. We are aware that Aku appears to have a fondness for tea as a performative food ceremony. Is there some rule that prevents a pillar from enjoying salsa?”

  Myles slowly closed his mouth, before clearing his throat in a rough cough. ”Alright. You got me there. That’s on me. I sort of assumed the living unkillable concepts that cause property damage whenever they show up didn’t have hobbies, and that was, I admit, a mistake.”

  ”It shouldn’t be a mistake though, when you describe it that way.” Quinn added. “It could be a disguise. Or a front? What if the other pillars also like salsa, or have made themselves like it, so they have a place they can meet that is neutral ground?”

  ”Ooh, we could play all sides against the middle!” Yin said happily. “Which is us! We’re the middle.”

  ”Yeah I’d prefer it if the power of friendship were on our side.” James mused quietly.

  JP looked back at his wall of images, suspended from Planner’s multitudinous tentacles. “That would make this harder.” He admitted. “But we haven’t seen any of them come through. And they do stand out. At least, to anyone who’s been in the Order long enough.”

  ”Hold up.” James held up a hand, palm out. “What?”

  ”Most people see pillars as either perfectly normal people, or they have a hard time seeing them at all.” Myles said. “You need a weird kind of mindset to get to the point where you can sort of see them as sliding pieces of different ideas of people. Or whatever.” He cleared his throat again.

  ”Myles would know!” Yin slapped her fellow rogue on the shoulder. “Fucker didn’t need to be in the Order more than ten minutes, right?” She laughed roughly. “But yeah, spreads to everyone eventually! I think it’s when you get enough time to get used to nonhumans as alive.”

  While he hadn’t heard about this phenomenon, James was interested in it. The problem was, he was interested in it during a briefing about infiltrating the Chain Breaker’s private rooms. So he held off on asking more questions for now, because they’d had too many interruptions already. “So what’s our plan here?” He asked JP.

  “I’m so glad you asked.” JP said, and this time, when he snapped, Planner had actually been informed as to what to do here.

  As JP laid out what they were going to do, Planner helpfully highlighted parts of the building, and the individuals who would be taking that particular risk. Disabling cameras, setting up escape routes, preliminary tests of things like the intangibility potion and the mapping laser pointer. Groundwork and information gathering, which would lead to them potentially adapting the shape of their final plan.

  That plan was ultimately pretty simple. And it went something like this:

  Some of them were going to walk into the Chain Breaker’s hidden back room while she was out ruining someone’s life, and they were going to walk out knowing an order of magnitude more things, hopefully about the pillars as a whole. And if they did it right, then they wouldn’t need to use any of the grenade launchers that they’d gotten out of the Townton police department’s abandoned armory.

  It was audacious, and stupid, and James loved it.

  He just wished he had any hope of learning forty two hundred more things about basketball before the operation. Just in case.

  _____

  “Right center leg.” Cam instructed, voice firm and steady as she watched her students.

  The three chanters, still struggling with recovering from the effects of long term malnutrition, outright starvation, and muscle atrophy, wobbled as they obeyed. Raising the bladed limbs as instructed, their legs rising, and straightening outward, all of them plated in a similar if not identical material as what made up their main shells.

  ”Return. Left side.” Cam continued, weathering the small cyclone of emotions that kept impacting her with surprising force. The chanters were getting better every day at controlling their empathic broadcast while they were speaking, directing emotions with words to small areas or even singular people. But when they weren’t doing that, they didn’t seem to have either consideration or ability to cap the feelings they put off.

  So Cam felt frustration, determination, and an infrequent but powerfully strong pulse of body dysphoria. Which made it hard to go through these exercises.

  “Return. Ready position.” Cam’s voice directed the room, the chanter’s stockinged legs landing on the gym mats in the otherwise empty apartment below the one where she and Nate stayed. Cam took measured steps around the side of the group, keeping herself in their line of sight so they wouldn’t feel that buried panic that so many residents in Townton had lurking just beneath the surface, but putting herself in position to observe. Crouching down beside the first of the chanters, she gave another instruction. “First strike, nonlethal.” She said.

  The chanter, already standing in a way that was testing her regrowing muscles, took in a sharp breath of air at Cam’s direction, shell rising and tilting as her body shifted. “Yes!” She said, the simple word paired with targeted anticipation.

  Cam watched closely at how the chanter’s muscles pulled and flexed, how her balanced changed, what she did with the smaller limbs and hands that were part of her undershell torso, how she breathed, every detail that Cam could see about her inhuman body.

  The chanter, Pia, was one of the oldest of her kind, and she knew she would never be ready for what that now meant. But here, she could focus herself, and when Cam directed her, it was like the world fell away and all there was was the motion of her own body. Her front left leg rose off the padded gym mat, weight already distributed to her rear four legs. The joint at her body twisted in a way that was possible, but never used naturally except when there was a stumble while scuttling; her leg angled with the main joint pointed ahead of her. Pia took a second to become comfortable with her balance, and then, struck.

  A nonlethal blow, delivered into the air ahead of her. The raised leg extending like a reaping scythe until she pulled it to a halt. If there had been a person in front of her - a human person - Pia would have just slammed the blunt side of her leg into their stomach hard enough to stagger most people.

  She lowered her leg back down, and took the risk - not a risk, not really, but the fear never left - of looking at Cam for comment.

  ”Keep your weight on your front leg as well. Just because you won’t topple over doesn’t mean you’re using all your strength.” Cam told the chanter directly, eyes still sweeping her body like Pia was being observed and appreciated down to the bone. She kept talking, trying to ignore the thrum of something like satisfaction the chanter started broadcasting. “Try again, and try to not hesitate when you move from your ready stance. You are standing that way because you can fight from it, you don’t need to rebalance.” Cam rose up and nodded. “Practice, alternate legs. Otherwise, good work so far. Keep it up.” She added by way of reassurance, before moving on to the next chanter.

  Behind her, Pia practically lit up with a shivering admiration and gratitude, before speaking a quick “Thank you” that was shot with more directed and controlled feeling of understanding and acceptance.

  Cam still wasn’t used to that. Wasn’t used to chanters at all. Was barely used to herself. But she still moved on to the next in line, repeating her instruction and appraising their form as they moved.

  A harsher critique this time, but one she kept fair; if this chanter moved like that too often and too quickly, the tendons that tethered the hip joint would be strained, and possibly tear. Cam knelt slowly, asking if she could manipulate him into the proper position, feeling the blended swarm of hidden terror and painful yearning as she used her steel grip to gently adjust where his leg points were placed, and how he was holding his leg up while kicking.

  More confident he wouldn’t hurt himself, Cam set him to practicing, and moved on.

  They were, for all intents and purposes, inventing a martial art.

  The chanters weren’t fighters. Weren’t soldiers. Cam was actually, in a way she would have found alien a year ago, curious about them. About where they came from and what their dungeon had made them for.

  The camracondas and HVACnids, the ratroaches and labratoads, the umbral, the necroads especially, she saw the purpose of them. They were, in a way that was both achingly painful, but also familiar, purpose built. They were made to be soldiers, or maybe weapons, and that was it. Expendable, maybe, but designed for a use. Even the navigators, increasingly common orange and red glowing feathered forms dotting up around Townton, were for something.

  The stuff animals were a little different, but there were only two of them living down here right now. The paper drakes were similar, in that they were also made to be loved, but there was a role for them if they were willing to step into it.

  Cam hated having the thought, but there was more than one night she had sat by herself and wondered why she didn’t get to be made to be loved.

  The chanters though? The Order had no idea what dungeon had made them, and it was hard for Cam to tell why they’d been made at all. Yes, they grew plants around themselves at a rapid rate, the magic turning a relatively small city park into a bountiful green zone that produced enough food that Townton would probably never actually starve if they needed to go it alone. Yes, they broadcast their emotions in a way that was distracting and sometimes debilitating, an ability that, in groups, could let them control the mood and narrative of an entire region. Yes, they seemed like they had more sharp bits than was needed for a social herd creature. Yes, they ambiently made any room they were in smell like burnt cinnamon, especially after strenuous exercise.

  But they weren’t fighters, or weapons, and Cam didn’t really know what to make of them. And yet, despite having nothing in common with the species that was one of the more populous groups in Townton, Cam found them interesting.

  It wasn’t because she found them so similar to herself. Or at least, she was reasonably certain of that. She had, when telling her sisters about them on a warm summer night some months ago, found she was describing herself more than the chanters as she talked about being trapped and kept from a life of freedom. But that was everyone the Order brought here, she wasn’t special.

  No, the chanters were fascinating just because they were one of the most different species. And yet, they were here. Participating. Not just that, but unfolding into a world where they were capable of thriving too.

  Cam saw the pattern over and over, but she still didn’t know how James kept doing this. Find someone who needed you, rearrange their world so completely they might think they’d fallen into a parallel Earth, give them everything they needed, and then, watch as they turned around and echoed the process. Cam kept seeing it in action, and yet every time it was still like the first time. Insane. And yet.

  Some people took advantage of it. Or maybe would never be ready to take the final step. But what of it? Enough did. Cam did. And here she found herself, in a downstairs apartment, trying to help some of the more recovered chanters learn how to move, and how to begin to defend themselves.

  She was struck by the sudden urge to swear out loud as she realized that she was exactly seeing herself mirrored. But that would be unprofessional, so she settled for a closed-eyed exhalation instead.

  Cam circled the room, watching the chanters with folded arms. Their bodies weren’t human, obviously. Muscle structure followed mundane conventions, though, which meant she could work with that. Cam had, perhaps unintentionally, become a student of the physical form after enough yellow orbs and the need to train herself to be more controlled in how she fought as well. And while she didn’t feel like she was quite prepared to make up a fighting style, she did know how to maximize force and minimize return damage to a body.

  The chanters weren’t built for flexibility. And yet they had it anyway. Low to the ground, low center of gravity, their backs already protected in a way that mostly evenly distributed impacts. Their legs could rotate in a startling range of degrees, and Cam wanted to find actual experts to bring in to begin developing a grappling style. Their hands weren’t suited for either grabs or strikes, with their digits having less strength than a human, but they could still possibly work in concert with a leg pin, especially if the chanter could apply the weight of their shell to immobilizing someone.

  And to add to that, their legs were blades. Not razor sharp but the edges of that secondary shell weren’t exactly something you could ignore. In practice, that meant that while they were practicing and eventually would be sparring, it was important to take safety precautions. But if a chanter actually needed to fight?

  Cam found it fascinating how, for a species that was sword and shield all in one, they were so gentle.

  Also her test subjects and-or students were starting to flag. Breathing heavily, their cinnamon scent turning bitter to match the complex emotion of feeling like they had to keep going that was filling the room as well. Cam nodded to them, knowing they were watching her. “Finish this strike, then let’s rest and talk.” She said, feeling them all wash with relief.

  Cam sat with them on the gym mats, cross legged while the chanters found various different ways to collapse in exhaustion. Muscle development and physical therapy was an ongoing process for them, especially since it was too much of a risk to use exercise potion on someone who was still recovering from what they were. But they were growing stronger every day, bit by bit.

  ”Dying.” Pia gasped out, her wide oval eyes glistening with the same coy amusement that filled the word.

  ”Dead.” Evie said where he had just toppled over on the mat next to hers, his own mixed emotive voice declaring exhaustion.

  Cam smiled. It was good that they were learning how to joke. Their unique use of language was one of sometimes painful honesty, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a humor possible within it. And every joke they made was one step further out of the dark.

  “Next time,” she told them, “I’m going to bring James in and we can start learning about throws and grabs.” The room twisted with complex emotions that stuck in Cam’s gut as she almost lost herself, unable to differentiate the way they felt about James with her own thoughts for a moment. “Individual strikes do not make for a martial art. We need to understand your full range of options, so we can begin developing a coherent style. Does that make sense?”

  She added the last words softly, aware that the chanters, much like the ratroaches, often needed prompting to let them know they were part of a conversation and not the targets of orders.

  The tight grey hide of Pia’s face looked up at Cam from where she was laying with her shell tipped sideways, tall oval eyes blank but alert. “No.” The chanter said with curiosity and shame. “Why?”

  While the others more openly echoed her spoken feelings, Cam explained. “Knowing how to stand and move to throw a strike is foundational to any fighting style.” She told them. “You need to know the limits of your bodies, and any style will share certain common traits. But that is only the start of learning.” She smiled tightly as she felt the stirring of anticipation around the room. “Ultimately, a martial art is… this may be a difficult way to word it, but it is your side of a conversation.”

  ”Speaking? Like this?” Evie asked with confusion and more curiosity.

  ”A physical conversation.” Cam corrected. “An example; you are fighting someone and you kick, as you have been practicing, but then, they block. What next?”

  ”…kick them again?” Pia asked with a light dusting of aggression. “On the other side.” She added with smug satisfaction.

  Cam almost smiled at the girl. “And what if they dodge that kick?”

  ”How?” Concern, annoyance, the start of bitterness.

  ”Stepping toward you. Say you kicked with your right leg first, then your left, and they are now stepping into your right side.” Cam took the back and forth seriously, preempting Pia and the others before they could offer more options. “They are now too close for that same kick to build force. You can’t sufficiently strike them. And so, the conversation has ended.” She spread her hands. “All fights are a back and forth, in a sense. Your objective is to limit options from your opponent while keeping your own options open. What is the best way to keep someone in proper striking range?”

  The swirl of consideration built as the chanters bounced the thoughtful emotion between each other, each of them amplifying and echoing the feeling, with Evie and Pia rolling upright, though not standing as they thought. Eventually, Evie asked Cam, with buried fear that he was wrong, “Walk away?”

  ”Broadly correct.” Cam nodded. “And here is where it begins to become difficult. You need to reposition, while staying in a stance that is ready to strike, while aware of your surroundings, while also being prepared to dodge or block any incoming strikes, while also looking for, manufacturing, and taking any openings to strike back yourself. And this needs to be done without thought, so you can focus on making choices while you fight. Now, what have we learned so far?”

  ”Kicking.” Pia answered with split pride and dismay.

  ”So there is more to develop.” Cam told them. “Every move you make must be a question to your opponent, or an answer to their own. To do this without thought, we simplify. How did you learn to speak this language?”

  ”Pieces.” Evie said quickly as he understood. “Small pieces, that fit together. Words, then sentences, then expressions.” Each of his three tiers of his speech were layered with increasingly complex emotions. Simple awareness, then understanding, then fumbling delight at his own capability.

  ”Exactly right.” Cam nodded, awkwardly using her own purple orb ability to emote in the same way to add pride to those words. She was learning the same way, from a reverse direction. “A martial art requires the same. First we learn to stand, and strike, and step. Then, we will learn to block and dodge. Or more complex grapples and throws. Then, we will begin to mix these things together, so that for any question you are asked, you have an instinctive answer prepared. Does that make sense?”

  Pia’s extended forelimb raised up so her fingers could rub at where her shell met her body. ”No.” She said eagerly. “But it will.”

  ”Yes. It will.” Cam agreed, standing slowly. “Now, we have been pressing ourselves, and I am going to the baths. You are welcome to join me.”

  The chanters, exhausted and drained, wobbled as they pulled themselves up on their angled bladed legs. All three of them were in a spiral of good spirits though, as they followed Cam out of the apartment, and through the delightfully cool air of Townton’s streets toward the repurposed building near the park they called home.

  _____

  James felt awkward being backup. He was hanging out on a deeply uncomfortable bench made of metal bands, waiting for a bus that he wasn’t going to be getting onto. On watch, rejecting a childhood of ingrained behavior that made him want to keep his head down and avoid everyone else, and instead scanning every passerby with a friendly but distant smile.

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  Names, affiliations, and ranks all filtered through James’ vision as he checked everyone going by. There was no shortage of people, either; Saturday night in this part of the city was a lively affair, and James had no envy for the people that were either negotiating or dueling for parking. The humans passing by - and it was all humans, James thought sadly - moved in small groups, in pairs, or by themselves, but they always moved with purpose. No one was out for a casual stroll, they were going places. Dinner, a movie, a show, a club, a bar, somewhere was the place they all wanted to be, and almost no one bothered to even glance his way as they did so.

  On the other side of the layered buildings that were crammed into the long city block James was supposedly keeping watch on, he knew JP was doing the same thing. Ben had another corner covered, too. On a nearby roof, Tylor had found a potential sniper post, but wasn’t deployed in it, instead hanging back just as Nate was on another more distant balcony. The odds of being spotted weren’t exactly high, but this was a night where the police had cars parked by curbs, lights on, uniformed officers partially milling around and partially directing foot traffic.

  James felt like he should have drones up. But that got shot down fast as an idea. The city didn’t take kindly to random civilian surveillance, and it wasn’t like James had a permit. Not seeing where he was from overhead made him feel a little exposed after all his time practicing it.

  He also felt like he should be the one about to do the infiltrating, not the one watching Myles and Yin do it.

  ”New York still smells weird.” Zhu muttered from inside his coat.

  ”Do you smell? Like, at all?” James asked, the image of a guy on a bench talking to himself not exactly something that stood out.

  It felt like Zhu was trying to batter a reply into James’ head, but the two of them weren’t in the right mindset for that kind of talking right now. So instead he just spoke up through the neck of his friend’s coat. “Sorta. I can smell through you, which is ‘normal’ or whatever. But I can also smell… uh… people on the move? I guess? It’s really weird. I think it’s a thing navigators grow into; I talked to Pathfinder about it the other day and she says I’ll get more senses over time too.”

  ”So how does the city smell weird then?” James asked, raising his eyebrows as he spotted someone in the passing flow of humans that his glasses labeled as an independent journalist.

  ”Like a lot of stuff got stuck in a blob and congealed.” Zhu stated.

  ”Eugh. Thanks.” James shook his head, and then sort of followed Zhu’s sensory logic. “New York is a place where a lot of people arrive. Every day.” He mused. “And a lot of them never leave, even if they meant for it to be temporary.”

  Zhu’s feathers swept across James’ skin, gentle bristles from the navigator hiding in his shirt. ”It’s the perfect city for you, philosophically. So why’s it smell… eugh?”

  ”A lot of those people probably want to leave.” James said, just loudly enough to be heard over the booming music from a passing car and the drunken cheering happening two blocks up the street. “Or didn’t want to end up here. A lot of people probably need to leave. ‘A big blob that’s all snarled up’ sounds like the New York that I’m aware of.” James admitted. “But I think that you’re probably smelling the travel side of things. If someone’s journey ends here and that’s it, then… would you notice?”

  ”…probably not.” Zhu thought out loud. “It’s really… I barely know anything about being what I am, you know?”

  ”We’ve got plenty of time to figure it out!” James said happily.

  ”If we don’t die in the next half hour.”

  ”It’ll be fine.” James said as optimistically as he could. “They’re professionals.”

  Zhu tapped James from inside his coat with a single curved talon. “Only because you pay them.”

  They both went quiet as James stiffened, sitting up straight when a message popped into the convenient little program he had running on the compacted skulljack braid plugged into his brain. Zhu couldn’t see it, but he knew what it meant when James tensed up.

  Primary obstacle not present. The message read. Beginning approach.

  James took a long breath, standing from his bench to pace the corner of the street. Hugging the edge of the curb, close to the cars inching past and then accelerating with frantic motions when a streetlight turned in their favor and the line moved, he watched his seat get snapped up almost instantly as he tried to force himself to be both relaxed and ready at the same time.

  He was just here as backup. If the Chain Breaker was here, they would have bailed. If she came back, they might need to distract her.

  Not the kind of backup that kicked in the door and saved the day. James was here as a backup plan when they needed to make an escape while he bantered with someone that could rip people apart from fifty feet away.

  Secondary obstacle not present. The next message came an agonizing twenty two minutes later. Either Yin or Myles having confirmed that they could, in fact, go through the walls with the intangibility potion. Now one of them would be hiding in a bathroom or dark corner of the club they’d been admitted to, waiting for that to wear off so no one walked literally through them before they were ready. Testing for alarms.

  James wanted to banter. His impulse was to fill silent connection to the others with chatter, jokes, or deeply personal moments of connection that would strengthen their bonds from now until their untimely demises. But while that was a powerful tool for dungeon delving, it was somewhat frowned upon when engaging in clandestine infiltration.

  Also JP had explicitly told him not to. And James had never actually seen JP be quite that serious. The last time his friend had a look that spoke of uncomfortable regret on his face, it had been when he’d almost gotten James killed with the inhabitor potion. So when James saw it again, before they’d all teleported out here for this night’s work, he thought one of two things was happening.

  Either JP was using their shared history to better manipulate him, which was both possible and in character, or, he really actually did think that James needed to tone it down. Also he was probably feeling pretty bad about maybe needing to put James specifically at risk of real death.

  When James had joked about it last night, lying in bed and failing to sleep before yet another thing that took him away from the people he actually liked, Arrush had offered a third option. Well, Arrush had tried to hug James close enough that he was crushed into unconsciousness, but when that didn’t work, his big spoon had then offered a third option.

  Maybe JP just didn’t know how he felt. Especially about something like this. This wasn’t getting in a brawl with some corrupt cops, or fighting angry books in a dungeon. Nothing so survivable, if things went wrong. This was weird, and dangerous, and also not knowing how you felt was just something that was present in about ninety percent of the Order.

  At least, according to Arrush. He’d been taking a survey, apparently. James hadn’t gotten an answer on if that was a joke or not before falling asleep.

  A third message came, this time a little quicker. No sign of alarm. Primary obstacle still absent. Begin run in thirty seconds.

  There was a timer attached, and James sent his acknowledgement ping back, seeing his handle in the roster change color alongside everyone else’s.

  Thirty seconds, and a lot of things were going to happen all at once. A program planted in the club’s security system was going to make sure their wide array of cameras weren’t recording, a begrudging action from Ben was going to draw a lot of attention as a distraction, and two rogues were going to walk through a wall that had used to be a door and begin moving very quickly.

  Just because the Chain Breaker hadn’t returned when they’d shoved hands through into her secret hideout, didn’t mean that she’d just let them literally walk in. And just because the leveler earrings, tested with Kiki’s help so they knew that at least did a little to divert hostile attention, were running at full tilt didn’t mean they were perfect or would last forever. And so, James was twitching with impotent anxiety at every single alert.

  Blinders on. Clear.

  Distraction up. Clear.

  Moving.

  James waited for the feeling of the city to change. For the call to come for him to need to sprint down the block, past the crowds waiting for a seat at their favorite hole in the wall restaurant and the alleyways that led back into the textile factories sandwiched between the street facing buildings, to the nightclub where he’d have to shout at a pillar. For the world to turn to something that felt too big and too violent for anyone to not notice. For something to go wrong, and for the eternally shifting lines of civilians around to be turned into unacceptable casualties.

  ”Deep breath.” Zhu choked out. “Please? You’re giving me a heart attack.”

  ”Sorry.” James let the embarrassment push away the gnawing terror, rubbing the back of his head before tightening his ponytail as he fell into a casual walk down the street, everyone else on their own sides beginning a rotation as well. “Better?”

  ”Much. They’ll be fine.” Zhu said. As if he were trying to convince the universe itself. “It’ll be fine.”

  ”Right.” James confirmed.

  He wished he were the one in there. Throwing himself into peril was easy. Watching other people do it was a lot harder for him.

  James forced himself to not even glance at Fuego! as he passed by on the other side of the street, negotiating through a cluster of milling Saturday night enjoyers that were collectively getting in or out of the three different taxis and two ride share vehicles currently blocking the street in a mirror of their treatment of the sidewalk. He had a sudden moment of feeling like he understood New York a little bit as an older man behind him, unwilling to contort himself to slip through the pack, just started yelling at the crowd in a voice that was somehow both frustrated and yet non-hostile. Like he was shooing raccoons out of his garden; scattering a path through obstructing people like it was a chore and nothing personal.

  Then James became an obstruction himself, leaning back against a low brick wall surrounding a property as he pulled out his phone, pretending to check something even though no one was watching him.

  How long had it been, he wondered. How much trouble were Myles and Yin in. How many things had tipped off Chains. How much time until disaster.

  How bad was this going to be.

  James breathed evenly, finding it a lot easier these days to keep a steady and calming rhythm when he actually tried. A result of eight levels in the surprisingly useful skill of breathing. Almost enough to make James want to push it up to ten, just to see what would happen to its Garden spell connection when he did. Would he just open up a second slot, or would his ability to hold his breath while reading Charm River Transformation’s spellbook get even stronger?

  His calming exercise was broken by a message, a half hour of public meditation and trying to not attract the attention of the police officers directing traffic through the jam packed intersection having passed by without anything exploding or appearing like a vengeful god.

  Extracting.

  That was it.

  No call for help, no crisis. Just… extracting. They’d gone in, they were coming out. The time it took for that was also long enough that James and Zhu started chatting about whether or not they wanted to hit up one of the battered food trucks in the area before they went home. Zhu called it an adventure, James called it… well, also an adventure, but he used a much more suspicious tone.

  Then the rogues were out the front door again, having fulfilled their nightclub obligation of a two drink minimum, and their secret agent quota of whatever else they’d done. The building’s cameras went back on, Ben was already out and in the clear, everything was fine.

  James and Zhu got a cardboard tray filled with street tacos that one of them was pretty sure was going to kill one of them, and it could have been either of them for either category. One by one, the different knights found places out of sight, or in Tylor’s case already had one on his rooftop perch, and teleported to their secondary location.

  Just in case.

  And James and Zhu followed. Backup, for once, not having been required at all.

  _____

  “It’s weird.” Dance said as she waited impatiently in the back seat of Alice’s car. It wasn’t really Alice’s car; her teammate and maybe-sort-of-parental-figure had one of the rentals that the scout team was using, and it was too clean. Alice’s actual car smelled like hamburger wrappers and never stopped needing to be vacuumed no matter how many times Alice vacuumed it; it wasn’t her fault, it was just the way the car was.

  Dance didn’t like the rental car, she liked Alice’s car, because Alice’s car usually meant that they were going to confuse a drive-thru employee, or to pick up Alice’s sister and confuse a bunch of humans all at once. This car meant they were doing a job.

  ”It’s not weird.” Alice told her, the human woman’s eyes light with a smile as she peeked at Dance through the rearview mirror. “It’s what we do, you little goblin.”

  ”We haven’t met any goblins yet.” Dance retaliated, twisting to focus her lens on her driver and making only a slight wheezing sound as her stiff cables pulled in a painful way. “We should go meet goblins! Emma says they have them in the parking garage!”

  Alice looked away suddenly, and Dance narrowed her lens at the woman as the older human clearly tried to hide something. “They’re more like rats, not, like, goblins. Also don’t sidetrack us! It’s not weird!”

  ”You and Charlie went without me.” Dance said, suddenly feeling every little ache and pain in her coils that she had been ignoring. “…Aw.”

  Talking quickly to mollify her, Alice turned around and leaned on the center armrest of the rented vehicle, the motion pulling her collar down and showing off the thick white scar she tended to cover up most of the time. “Hey, don’t panic, it’s not a big deal, I swear! You’ll get in there too, once you’re a little better, okay?”

  ”Not mad.” Dance said, hissing out a stuttering sigh. “Just feels weird. You guys fucking hate bringing me into dungeons. But we’re supposed to find dungeons.”

  ”…mmmmh…” Alice looked like she’d bitten into a lemon, holding back the reflex to tell Dance to not swear.

  Like a flip being switched, Dance’s voice went back to being suffused with exuberant energy. ”Anyway whatever! It’s weird and you’re all weird!”

  Back on track, Alice rolled her eyes, hoping that the camraconda wasn’t just faking being okay with things. “We adopted you, and that’s working out!” She retorted.

  ”Did you?” Dance asked. “All you do is tell me not to swear and make sure I eat dinner and then Charlie disprovingly shakes his head when I talk about going on a date and sometimes I call you mom and okay I take it back you did adopt me. Wow, how did that happen?”

  ”Charlie always wanted to be a dad.” Alice said, before her smile broke and she turned away.

  Dance went quiet too; she had a hard time really grasping the sheer scale of time that Charlie had lost in his life. Alice had a scar that was open and visible, but Charlie’s scar was in the form of a decade of people who didn’t remember him. Including a different family, out there somewhere, that he couldn’t go back to.

  ”I should stop saying it’s weird.” Dance announced. “Because I’m smart.”

  ”You are smart, when you wanna be.” Alice said, looking out the car’s window at the approaching headlights, wondering if that was the man they were talking about arriving. “You remember how we met?”

  ”Yeah, Sarah said I’d fit in with you guys.” Dance said, her tail pushing her body into an arch before she scrunched forward and raised her head, mindful to not slam her camera skull into the roof of the car. “Just a team assignment, right?”

  Alice took a moment to reply, and Dance wondered if maybe she’d said something extra stupid this time. “Right.” The human replied. “A team assignment.”

  ”That I can’t escape from!” Dance continued, slightly bumping the volume on her voice. “I’m trapped here now because of all the glue!”

  ”Dancy, what are you-“

  ”Stuck with you.” Dance added, tilting her head up and sticking her long tongue out.

  ”…Yeah, you are.” Alice sighed. “Dummy.”

  Dance watched out the side window as Charlie’s rental pulled up into the parking lot next to them. Observing carefully as her teammate got out of the driver’s seat, and two much older humans exited too. Along with one new person that had been assigned to their team by James. A favor, of sorts, though to whom Dance wasn’t really sure.

  Manon was wrapped in a trenchcoat that Dance wished she could wear. That was the worst part, the green skinned crocamaw got to have the cool human clothes that just didn’t work the same for her. Yet. But despite the coat and what he was wearing under it covering up the pebbled spots across his body, nothing could conceal the fact that his face was about half of Dance’s total length.

  It sucked because she was trying to be upset, and trying to stop being upset, and he was ruining it because crocamaws actually looked really cool and Dance kind of wanted to just, like, really closely examine the way they could use just part of their mouth for things? She was pretty sure that if they really trained at it they could talk in directions, but that sounded stupid as soon as she thought it.

  ”It’s not weird. I’m weird.” Dance muttered to herself as she awkwardly grabbed the door handle with her fangs and shuffled her body forward to shove it open. Oh, maybe she liked Alice’s car more because the doors were modified for her.

  Alice’s door clapped shut as she stepped out into the wind. “Hey guys! We’ve been waiting forever!”

  ”You can’t give an old lady time to get her socks on?” Eileen laughed as the older human stretched, the surprisingly taut muscles on her arms belaying the way she grimaced like she had just run a marathon and would never recover from the experience.

  ”Bah. Don’t call yourself old, you’ll give yourself more wrinkles.” Her husband, Archie, announced as he helped Charlie get a pair of duffel bags out of the trunk, similarly moving with far too much ease for his age. “Where’ll you be then?”

  Eileen’s face was a smile wide enough to rival Manon’s as she answered. ”Filing divorce paperwork I suppose!” She said happily, before confiding in a conspiratorial voice to Dance, “Not sure it’d take, though. Archie seems stuck to me.”

  ”I know the feeling!” Dance said, hissing a laugh.

  “If the bantering is finally done, let’s get to checking the site.” Charlie said, the man standing up like the bag he was carrying weighed next to nothing, and looking toward the empty farm buildings ahead of them. “We have a lot more of these to check off.”

  It was bizarre to Dance that there were so many abandoned farms here. They’d been in Oklahoma for two days so far, mostly getting settled in with the Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparent’s Adventuring Society and staring their usual method of getting big maps printed out and looking for obvious potential spots ahead of time. This time, though, there was no one here to try to kill them when they found the dungeon, which was a big perk. Instead, it was just a place that had successfully antimemed its way through the elderly humans and semi-elderly cat that had known about it.

  Kiki apparently knew it was here, too, and had told them as much. She’d also told them that she couldn’t find it, which was kind of weird. Or at least, Dance thought it was weird. Charlie had gone off on a really long and boring explanation of how pillars or pillar-adjacent beings perceived the world different from everyone else and that while Kiki being unable to sense it probably meant something, they had no way of determining what it meant without further exploration and data.

  Dance had listened to him closely. As far as he knew.

  It made sense to her, at least. The dungeon was doing something weird, as they did, and they needed to refind it. So that a bunch of people that were old enough to have lived Dance’s whole life more than ten times over could go back to being delvers. Alice seemed uncomfortable with that, but Dance didn’t really have a great frame of reference for older humans; the oldest human she knew was… Davis, maybe? And Davis once threw her out of a Research lab she wasn’t supposed to be in by picking her up and dumping her in the elevator.

  What didn’t make sense was the number of farms. There were so many. The map of the northern chunk of Oklahoma looked like it had fucked up somewhere and was undergoing severe artifacting; it was just green and tan circles and squares, some of the bigger ones multiple miles across. And for the first time Dance had come face to face with the way that humans reshaped the planet. Not just in an immediate area where you could look around and see, but on a scale that showed up on satellite photos.

  Kinda freaky, really.

  The fact that a lot of the farms were empty was what had gotten the scout team’s attention. For once, they knew that the dungeon was somewhere in this general area, so they’d started just calling farms and doing checkups. Well, mostly Charlie had, the man being impervious to phone call fatigue. But when they’d started to find a chunk of farms that never answered, and all of them adjacent to each other, it started to look like they had a lead.

  Dance was excited, and she had trouble holding still as Alice helped her snap her armature into place. She had a good feeling about this one. Though she found herself shifting her tail awkwardly in the gravel lot as she ended up trailing behind the others.

  It wasn’t that she was avoiding anyone, and Dance definitely didn’t think it was weird. But Manon was already walking like he was attached to Charlie’s side, and Dance didn’t want to make one big line of people. Yeah, that sounded like a rational excuse, she’d go with that if Alice asked.

  “Anything?” Alice asked Eileen as they approached the farmhouse. It didn’t look abandoned, but that didn’t really mean anything. The last time Alice had seen an abandoned farmhouse, aside from on this operation, was in Yamhill, and that one had only been abandoned for a brief moment before the Order started using it and then blew it up for reasons. “Something familiar, or a habit of some kind?”

  ”Nothing yet, I’ll keep you in the loop dear.” Eileen said, her wiry grey hair moving around in a puffy cloud as the wind swept around her. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  ”Do what?” Dance asked behind them, glancing at the seemingly endless leafy green rows of peanuts off behind the barn. Or at least, she was told they were peanuts. Here was something weird; the peanuts that showed up as a coating for the ice cream bars she liked started in a place like this. One of those things that reminded Dance that the world of Earth was just fucking huge. “You do dungeon things! You know how! You just… do the thing, and then try not to get thrown through a window again.”

  Ahead of her, Manon turned so one of his raised eyes was looking at her with a worried slit of an iris. They hadn’t really talked much yet, but he seemed like he reacted badly to everything Dance said, which also made her uncomfortable. “W-what?” He murmured quietly.

  ”Oh yeah, watch out for windows.” Dance nodded. “Or anyone who can throw you through a window! Shit sucks!” She declared before Alice flicked her in the side of the head. “Ow! Mom, I-! Oh, right, sorry!”

  Eileen didn’t bother hiding her amusement at all of it. “Oh don’t sweat it girls. I’ve heard worse.” She jerked a thumb up toward Archi. “Mostly from that old coot. No, girly, I mean, how do you… stand it?” Her voice got sad all of a sudden. “How do you keep going when your memories might just go away?”

  ”Oh. That.” Dance straightened herself up and slithered faster to match the human woman’s pace, falling in next to her and providing her expert opinion. “It’s easy for me, because I’m perfect already and don’t have to learn any new life lessons! But it’s still scary.” She admitted as she waited at the bottom of the porch steps while Charlie knocked loudly on the farmhouse door, and then repeated the motion again before he and Alice split with just a nod at each other to circle the building, Manon pausing before keeping close to Charlie’s side. “We wait here.” Dance told the others, knowing how this went. “They’ll open the door in a sec. Anyway, yeah! It sucks! Plan keeps most of us safe at home, but if you wanna do what we do, you have to learn all these tricks to notice. Oh, and don’t freak out when you realize you’re somewhere you used to be! That part’s important!”

  “So you have some experience with it.” Eileen sounded so sad about that.

  Archie was much more blunt. “Crap thing to do to a kid.” He said. “Crap thing to do to us too!”

  ”What do you have in your bag of tricks?” Eileen asked as they waited.

  ”The basics. You know.” Dance figured they’d probably have more experience as delvers, but they gave her expectant looks, like the elderly humans actually meant to ask her a question. “Make timestamps of things, keep physical records. Oh, oh! Pay attention to if you’re doing something and you don’t know why but it feels like you’re in a routine! That one only came up once but it was kind of important.”

  ”Things make you forget that often?” Archie grunted, and Dance hissed a laugh at how pissed off the old man sounded. “Thought it was just us losing our marbles with Kiki gone.”

  ”She’s not dead gone, she’s still around.” Dance hissed. “Also is marbles an old human thing? I thought it was a measurement for orb size.”

  ”He means dementia. Alzheimer’s.” Eileen said with a gallows humor chuckle, and then, seeing that Dance didn’t actually follow, slowly added; “Us humans lose our minds sometimes when we get too old. Things fall apart a little bit. Can’t remember quite as well. Watched it happen to my granny when she was my age; you might call it an antimeme you can’t note take your way through.”

  ”That sounds dumb and stupid and a third mean word.” Dance declared. “I bet we have an orb for that! Also you can’t note take your way out of most infomorphs, but it totally works on memeplexes! I mean, we think it does, but I guess if it ever didn’t work we wouldn’t know.” The camraconda nervously twisting back and forth in the cool air around the cultivated land, the pink and black sweater she was trying out keeping her surprisingly comfortable.

  Archie and Eileen didn’t twitch or fidget that much, Dance noticed as she waited with them. The old humans were interesting, because they clearly had echoes of a lot of old habits. Both of them were standing like delvers, comfortably unbothered by boredom for the short time it would take to either have something or nothing happen. They didn’t remember the dungeon, but they still had the upgrades it had given them; even if they couldn’t name it exactly they knew they were getting too much done even for people who Kiki had changed with her own magic.

  And they didn’t have a problem with her. At all. A lot of humans that saw Dance for the first time took a little while to stop being jerks, but no one in the Northern Oklahoma Proud Grandparents Adventuring Society blinked at her. One of them had yelled at her, but that was because she was blocking some kind of esoteric human sporting tradition on the TV, so Dance was only a little rude.

  And their clubhouse had furniture they’d made themselves out of dungeon materials, and a cat that could play Scrabble, and weird fish, and a normal garden, and also a Nintendo. Like, an old one.

  Dance kinda liked being there. Maybe if Alice and Charlie did decide to give up being scouts, she could just go hang out with the human elders for a while.

  She was about to ask, the beginning of her sentence interrupting Eileen talking about Christmas coming up, when everyone was interrupted by a muffled thump from just inside the door. Then another. And then a crash from upstairs, getting a yell from Eileen up the steps of the porch. Dance whipped her head up and flinched as a rain of glass came down around her.

  Also a rain of Manon, who she stopped moving before the crocamaw hit the ground. His back was facing downward, his long mouth tipped up so it looked like he was a longer reptile than even Dance usually appeared to be. Suspended there, the rest of the glass spattering to the ground around him, Dance hated that he looked cooler than her. She needed a trenchcoat. And to get defenestrated again.

  Speaking of which. “Archie, help! Catch him! Also hey Manon! You’re officially one of us now!” She declared, still holding the crocamaw’s momentum hostage for a moment. Normally when this happened Charlie would already be there. Where was he? Also where were the others? “Archie? Eileen?!”

  There was another impact from upstairs, and a twisted mass of grey fur stained with blood arced through Dance’s line of sight before slamming into the packed dirt behind her. The others weren’t coming, or weren’t coming fast enough. And yeah, it was weird having someone new around, but she wasn’t gonna fuckin’ let Manon die. So Dance started thinking.

  She didn’t like any of her ideas. They all sucked. But the best one she had was just letting Manon land on her instead of the ground, so she inched forward, arching her body and keeping her lens locked on his still-falling form, until she was underneath him.

  ”This is gonna suck for everyone.” Dance announced, forcing herself not to flinch and snap her gaze toward the louder sounds of fighting coming from inside the farmhouse. Her armature pack, something she had been wasting time not getting practice with outside of learning how bad she was at using a NES controller, raised up to brace on Manon’s sides. Dance flickered her gaze for quick half second, and was only barely fast enough to not be crushed outright as the crocamaw kept falling, the sudden rush of a keening wail coming out and cutting short as she pushed back on him with her arms and held him off the ground just long enough to get him down into a better range.

  Then she started pulling. Hauling the momentum out of him like it was an almost physical thing, pulling against the force of gravity as she tried to convince his body to not just crater the ground.

  Or, well, her tail. Since that was what was stuck underneath his falling form. Eventually, Dance didn’t think she could do more, and she needed to go help or something, so she braced herself and let go.

  Manon hit her with, if Dance had to guess, about thirty percent of the force of a skinny crocamaw falling from the second floor window of a farmhouse. Not too bad! She’d brag about this later. But right now, she had to get him to stop scratching at her sweater as he flailed and panicked. “Hey! Hey it’s me! It’s me!” Dance had to fire off her words manually, which was embarrassing, as she hissed through a lot of pain from the cords in the base of her tail crunching together. “Ow, stop!” That was more natural.

  Seeming to realize who he was clawing, Manon shoved away from her, rolling in the dirt before rising to a crouch with his claws out, the right side of his mouth cracked open and panting heavily.

  Then another one of those furry lumps impacted the dirt, bouncing toward his snout. He slapped it away, but in doing so, something stuck to him. Or around him. Dance felt like she might have gotten some head trauma if she was seeing colored lights, though when Manon swiped at them, they faded away. “Come on!” She called, turning and pushing herself up the porch steps. “Charlie! Where are you?” Dance yelled through her synthetic voice as she burst into the farmhouse through a door that looked kicked in, and found a scene of chaos.

  But, like, old chaos. She couldn’t drop the pattern recognition training they’d been building as they searched for dungeons. This place had furniture that had been gnawed on, personal belongings scattered to the floor and shoved into piles to gather dust or rot, broken interior doors and shredded bedding. But it had happened a while back. The bullet holes were new, as was the blood from the various grey furred forms that Dance thought looked kinda rabbit-y scattered around, but the rest of it?

  This farm had been full of monsters when they’d shown up. Or full of people, worst case; she knew better than anyone that just because they looked different didn’t make them monsters.

  Then one of them burst out of the bathroom she was passing, a pair of bone scythes like massive mantis claws coming for her face, and Dance screamed as she writhed back. Her body crashed into the damaged drywall and left a crunched indentation as she froze the doom bunny, but the scream didn’t go anywhere. It just bounced around in the air around them, the sound held in a tiny little bubble near the thing that had opened with trying to kill her.

  When she saw motion out of the corner of her eye, and saw Alice charging forward with a folding chair, Dance didn’t miss that she couldn’t hear her at all. Alice’s hit on the danger rabbit made a satisfying hollow klonk though, but didn’t deform the monster the way that happened when you actually did damage to something affected by a gaze. And Alice had to whirl to deflect a second one of the things with her combination shield and sword.

  Manon though? Manon was silent except for his heavy custom boots thudding on the floor as he ran in like an anime character, claws punching into the frozen hell hopper’s throat, carving a clean red line through the fur, and then ripping free with a splatter of unfrozen blood before he kept going, slipping past Alice to slam the other one she was fighting through the drywall so he could slice it open too.

  Dance didn’t know what to think about that. For all that she was from a dungeon, and she’d seen a lot of fucked up stuff on their scout assignments, she wasn’t really… that violent. But he’d definitely just put himself between Alice and something dangerous, so Dance decided she’d double down on making him officially a member of their group.

  When she let go of the dead obviously dungeon life though, she forgot about momentum this time. And while it had been jerked around enough that it didn’t quite splatter into her, it did get blood on her sweater, and it also hit her in the side of the head with the glittering orb that came out of it. An orb Dance obviously broke when she twisted to push herself out of the drywall, one broken mechanical arm trailing off her back.

  Unlike the orbs she’d become accustomed to, this one didn’t give her an instant roll of her lens. Instead it split apart; gentle crystal lines forming a triangle to three points centered on the point where she’d non-deliberately cracked it.

  Dance didn’t really know what to do about that. Was she supposed to pick based on color? The Red-blue-yellow choice was familiar enough at least! But apparently waiting too long just let it pick for you, as the small pulse of light racing along the connecting lines made its way to the blue side, and the whole thing shattered.

  Then Dance got something she could be sarcastic about.

  [+1 Focus Rank - Enacting : Botany - Trees - Chinese]

  ”Cool.” Dance said, before remembering she had more important things to do. “Wait, shit! Hey is everyone alive!” She yelled out.

  Panting and leaning on the wall just above the depression Dance had left, Alice looked down at the camraconda, dropping the chair with a clang that nothing impeded. “Okay.” She gasped out. “This is a case where it’s okay to swear.”

  ”Sure whatever mom. Are you dead?!” Dance tried to adjust her sweater and found that her arms were both too fucked up for that.

  ”I’m good. Gotta go check upstairs, but I can hear Charlie pontificating so I guess they dealt with the rest. Hey, can you keep Manon…”

  ”Yeah, we’re fine, go! And don’t touch the orbs!” Dance warned her scout team partner, turning to Manon, both of them flinching as a single gunshot rang out upstairs. “Hey. High five.” Dance said, raising her partly working arm.

  ”…what?” He whispered at her from the top of his mouth.

  ”You got defenestrated and we saved each others lives. We’re teammates now! High five!”

  Gently, the crocamaw raised his hand, and pressed it to the manipulator that Dance was offering. She decided now was not the time to explain that high fives were supposed to be more kinetic, or to complain about the blood he was getting on her robot arm.

  That time wouldn’t be for a while, though. Because right now, they had to deal with something much, much more important.

  More careful inspection, and drone use, revealed this wasn’t the only building within a few miles full of dungeon creatures. Some like these fluffy sword-arm fuckers, some different, but all of them out in the open. Hundreds of them. More. With no sign of anyone in the immediate area or any organized resistance. Also, Archie and Eileen said they instantly recognize the orbs when they used them. This was something they’d done before, and their memories unpacked of a lot of similar uses. Maybe not specifics or a list, but enough to know they’d been fighting stuff like this a lot.

  But they’d done it in a dungeon. Not in Oklahoma farmland.

  And yet, it was at least ten square miles of that farmland that was the new habitat for things that had decimated the local wildlife, and set up shop like they owned the place. Maybe more. Probably more. That was just as far as they’d searched so far.

  ”We could talk all day about theories.” Charlie said. “But right now, we need to get out of here. And call for backup. A lot of it.”

  ”I think the dungeon exploded!” Dance declared as they piled back in the cars and began a hasty retreat, with Archie and Eileen splitting up so they had a shooter actually riding shotgun for each vehicle; they’d seen too many things moving in the fields to think they’d be safe just because they were in cars.

  ”I think you have no way of knowing that with the information that we currently have.” Charlie said, not looking up from where he was making rapid notes on a sketch of the area and the farmhouse that he’d thrown together with too much skill for it to be mundane. “And you know that it doesn’t matter, because-“

  ”Because we are calling in the cavalry.” Alice said, a low anger not aimed at anyone in particular in her voice as she stood by the open driver’s door of her rental. “Before we get another Springfield.”

  ”I’ll make the call.” Dance offered, dialing as they pulled away, the empty and dead farmhouse behind them, and the collected orbs of the twenty angry jackknife rabbits in it piled in their trunk.

  It was only a day later, after a whole shield team showed up just for them, and with the scouts sharing their experience with both the shield team and the Grandparents Society, that they began to make a thorough survey of the area. Searching for a dungeon entrance that no one could remember, even with infomorph help and the proven moderately effective strategy of microdosing LSD.

  They were still rushing to find the limits to the numbers of dungeon life that were nesting in fields and farmhouses, abandoned roadside churches and desecrated gas stations. But they weren’t moving like an army, they were just moving like animals in an unfamiliar environment.

  By the end of the day, they had no good answers, and only one clear next step.

  The dungeon might be missing, but everything that had lived in it appeared to be out here now. Which meant they needed help. More help.

  And quickly too, before they found out that ten square miles was actually fifty. Or a hundred. Or most of Oklahoma and they just hadn’t noticed yet. Though Charlie reminded all of them that there was, again, no proof this was that widespread yet. But Dance made an equally compelling argument against that way of thinking.

  Because it would be terrible for them specifically if it were that bad, she reasoned. And that definitely meant that it was how things were going.

  It just felt like that kind of dungeon.

  _____

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