“The quicker you get up // The harder they fall.” -Your Inception, Cassette Beasts OST-

_____

James felt prepared for basically anything when he walked into the back briefing warehouse.  A space that really needed a better name than ‘briefing warehouse’, since they only occasionally used it for briefings as opposed to other verbs like ‘planning’ or ‘researching’, and they never used it as a warehouse.

He wasn’t prepared for a crowd.

Not a huge crowd.  Not like when they rearranged the space for a forum or strategy meeting and two hundred people showed up and they needed to figure out how many of each kind of chair they needed for the camraconda population.  But still more people than he normally saw in the space.

This wasn’t just a delve team or two planning for next week or redrawing a map.  This was twenty or thirty people, many of whom James recognized as the Order’s problem solvers for when things got dangerous, all of them either in motion to check their armor and weaponry, or sitting with nervous energy.

Also JP.

“Hey JP.”  James said, cutting through the crowed of humans, camracondas, infomorphs, and even a couple inhabitors.  “I’m here, and you invited me last  I guess?”

JP, James realized, looked prepared for a fight.  Not a dungeon fight, but he was wearing the kind of gear that knights wore when they needed to blend in, and yet be ready for anything.  Bracers outlined under his tailored suit jacket, and a firearm bracelet just barely visible on his wrist.  His other wrist had a bracelet of charm clasps holding tiny blue orbs.  James didn’t spot anything else, but he was pretty sure his friend had a concealed holster under his coat.  And if he didn’t, it didn’t really matter with their ability to summon weapons out of email attachments.

Looking back at the other humans, James saw the whole warehouse was full of people dressed similarly.  Street clothing, sometimes augmented with stuff they’d plucked from Officium Mundi, and all of them looking back at him like they expected something.  The camracondas were more openly armed and armored, perhaps on the grounds that there was no hiding their presence once they deployed to whatever was happening.

James joined him standing in front of a wide whiteboard, covered in marks, and magnetic clasps that held up photos and copied pages.  A few video feeds hovered in the air around the edges of the board, a sentence so patently absurd that James had to do a double take before looking at JP with a concerned expression, pointing at one of the camera feeds.

“No time for your jokes, sorry man.”  JP shook his head.

“There’s a little time.”  Ben chimed in from where he was sitting at the table in front of the whiteboard, two laptops and three cell phones active in front of him.  The mimic didn’t turn to acknowledge James at all, or to react to JP’s scowl.  “The screens are Planner.  It’s handy to have a reference.”  He tossed James a white dress shirt.  “Also put this on.”

James looked at it for a second, and then shrugged and started pulling off his teeshirt to replace with the shirt that smelled lightly of electric salt.

“I did not know assignments could do that.”  James admitted.  “Cool.  So, this looks like a fucking mess. What did you do?”

JP had turned to keep an eye on one particular projected video feed, showing what appeared to be a parking lot and the side of a building in Planner’s blue and white light.  “Hey, you’re a wizard, right?”  He said casually.

It was weird how the simple words made James’ blood go cold.  “…Why?”  He asked with a deep suspicion as he rolled up his personal shirt and stuck it on Ben’s desk.

“I mean, you’ve consistently had a lot of small but useful insights into the magic side of what we do.”  JP clarified.  “Like absorbing blues, or making friends with memes.”

“To be fair, I think that one was mostly Daniel.”  James remarked.  “I think?  Keeping track of the timeline is hard.  Whatever.  What’s your question?”

“How often do you see patterns?”  JP asked, his voice grim.

James paused, eyeing his friend before answering slowly.  “What kind of patterns?”  He asked.  “Dungeon patterns?  Sure.  Especially now that we’ve seen more.  Themes and motifs emerge when you can look at a bigger picture.”  He realized he might be rambling, but wasn’t sure what JP meant, so he just tried to answer.  “There’s the constant push and pull of risk and reward, or how they all copy from their surroundings, but always get more divergent the farther in you go, or how there’s always at least one mimic-type life form.”  James shrugged.  “Not a lot of pattern in how they behave though, aside from a bent toward the literal.  I do earnestly believe they’re people.  Or at least people-adjacent.”

“And what about in our lives?”  JP said quietly, his eyes drilling into James as he turned away from the video projection.

James blinked.  “You mean something like what the Status Quo administrator said, don’t you?”  He asked.  “About how delver teams were always three people.  And how we’ve seen the same pattern, in the kids from Utah, in groups inside the Order.  You’re talking about… about some kind of fate magic.”  His mind went back to the diplomatic meeting with an alchemist that turned into a brawl, and a woman with knives in her hair saying something about fate.  “No.”

“Yeah, me neither.”  JP said.  “But this sure looks fucking familiar.”

James studied the video that Planner was throwing up for everyone.  “This looks like an office complex.”  He said.  Three stout square buildings in a right angle, with the upper floors connected and archways between them for cars to go through.  The fourth quadrant of the grid was taken up by a halfhearted attempt at landscaping, loading docks, and the exit back onto a side road.  Behind the offices, another almost identical set of structures sat, and then a third replication of the pattern, with a parking structure at the end of them, which meant that parking sucked for everyone in the other two buildings.  They curved around a small dirt hill that, according to the printed map on the board, separated the office park from a freeway.  “What’s wrong with it?  Is it a dungeon?”

JP started pointing at prints of photos or video screencaps, copied documents, drivers licenses and other IDs, and a lot of stuff James was pretty sure it was super illegal to have collected in terms of personal information.  “Well, let’s start with the obvious.  We think this building is New York’s Status Quo.  Earlier today, we believe they brought two people in for questioning or ‘processing’, most likely delvers.  Knowing how these fuckers work, the third person is probably already dead.  Identities of the victims are pending, but we think that Martez Mitchell is one of the ones still alive.”  JP tapped a pinned frame with a bunch of questions drawn in dry erase marker around it.

“JP, what the fuck are we still doing here?”  James asked in an abruptly serious tone.  “Why-“

“I made a call.”  JP said, voice carefully neutral.  “I’ll explain myself later.  Right now, moving on to the next problem.”

“Beyond just the-!“

JP silenced James by ignoring the heat in his growing protests and continuing his talk in a studied voice.  He tapped his finger on the mugshot of a late twenties black man, angry eyes staring out of the camera.  “Herc Vandal.  Last name unrelated to his profession.”

“First name?”  James had to ask.

“Not his given name.”  JP answered without pause.  “He runs a nameless neighborhood gang.  Not a great guy, not evil either, rogue report on him is as one of those dudes who has a kind of strong sense of personal honor, even if he is a criminal.  You wouldn’t know anything about that.”  JP slipped the joke in unnoticed.  “And before you ask, I bring him up because this is security footage of him, in the driver’s seat of a box van, with eight of his foot soldiers in the back.  Parked in front of the NYSQ building.”

“Did you just pronounce it ‘nisk’?”

A withering look got shot James’ way for that comment.  “Next problem…”

“What the fuck is happening?”  James had to ask.

Ben started laughing .  A nervous squeak of a noise that was somehow still charming.  A few of the assembled knights, waiting in a loosely organized group past the desk Ben was at, gave nervous chuckles as they heard the sound, which actually made James more tense.  “So, the Alchemist thing was sort of before my time.  But the reports say people just kept showing up to a brawl?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  Ben nodded.  “Sorry JP, keep going.”

His friend flicked back a finger through the side of his hair, and then brought the digit around to one of Planner’s projected screens, of a car idling on the side road.  “This is Brian Brianson, and Liam Lori.  FBI.”

“ Oh good! ”  James couldn’t help the comment.  “Wait, really ?”  JP nodded and moved his finger up slightly to a written note of ‘confirmed by Malcom’ on the whiteboard.  “Holy fuck, who else is here?”

“Well, we don’t know who this  is.”  JP said, directing James to a looped video of a man clearly breaking into one of the loading dock doors.  He looked a little older, salt and pepper hair and a face that looked like he never once in his life got enough sleep.  “But he also showed an FBI badge to a security guard at one of the other buildings.  He’s not FBI though.”

“ Cool .  Cool cool cool.  Okay.  You know what, that’s manageable.  So, what’s our plan?  Send me in to negotiate, then raid the building?  Because I’m not super interested in letting another Status Quo just keep operating.  Maybe we can steal more magical items from them.”

“The proper term is looting.”  Ben offered.  “Also, we- oh fuck me.”  His eyes didn’t leave the screens in front of him.  “Planner, put this up, please.  Now.”  He pointed at the board, and the ghostly infomorph complied.  James barely saw a wisp of a tentacle moving before another box of video footage emerged.  “This is from Yin, on top of the parking garage.”

It was an unsteady phone camera feed, but James could clearly see what the rogue was pointing at.  There were a number of people walking between the parking structure and the buildings, it was around lunchtime after all.  That wasn’t unusual.  What was unusual was the way two of those people were, very obviously, wearing heavy plate armor.  And everyone else was shying away from them.

“Is that… Camille?”  James asked, eyebrows raised.  “Is that two Camilles ?”  

JP’s answer was in the same voice he used to order fast food.  “Looks like it.”

“Is that two Camilles heading for building three of the Status Quo office?”  James asked a probing question.

“Sure seems that way.”  JP nodded, folding his arms and leaning back to tap his foot on the concrete floor.

James waited.  And then decided to stop waiting.  “Should we be doing something here ?!”  He asked.  “What are we waiting for?”

There was a pop of air, and El appeared about a hundred feet away facing the rear shutter door of the briefing warehouse.  She tried to play off her stumble as nothing, brushing her blonde bangs out of her eyes as she turned and started half-jogging back over to them.  “Speaky says there’s infomorphs there.”  El said.  “Something new, which, fuck I dunno, probably bad.”

“They are silent!”  The little fish shaped infomorph hiding in El’s hair announced in a loud squeak of a voice.

“That’s what we’re waiting for.”  JP said, handing James a telepad, which got slipped into a pocket, and then another telepad with a pointed look.  James still took that one, but he rolled his eyes as he did so.  “Unless you’re using a veto, let’s get ready.”

James wasn’t.  He didn’t see the full picture of what was going on, but he decided to generally trust JP, and also he had absolutely no love for Status Quo in any of its forms.  From what the Order understood of the organization at this point, there was no singular Status Quo, but things like them popped up all the time.  Suspiciously like them.

He also knew the last time they’d met something like Status Quo, they’d taken something important from him.

But a personal grudge wasn’t a good reason to just show up and start shooting.  He shook his head at JP.  “What’s our plan here?  What’s our objective?”

Nate’s voice came from behind James like the big man had appeared out of nowhere, but without the pop of air a teleport used to announce people.  “Leave the plan to us.”  He said, getting a shocked jump from James.  “You think everyone’s here for show?  Fuck off.  You’ll go in the front door with JP, and everyone here is backup for when something goes to shit.”  He looked at Planner’s projected images, including the looped shot of a pair of the Last Line Of Defense’s daughters walking down a sidewalk between buildings.  “Like it hasn’t already.”

“Okay, I get that we’re on a timeline, but what are we doing?”  James demanded.  “Help me understand why we even bother taking this risk.”

“Ruining someone’s day.”  JP said.

“No.  Not good enough.”  James shook his head.  “Sure, fuck these guys.  But risking lives just to be a problem?  JP, no.”

JP took a breath through his nose, and turned to face James, the side of his head illuminated lightly by Planner’s ongoing projections.  “There’s five different groups of interest here, right now, at least.  And there’s about to be a lot of chaos happening.  This is our chance to crack open a source of real answers .  Not to mention the fact that whoever Status Quo just kidnapped, no one deserves that.  I’ve fucking seen the .mem footage of what you found last time, I’m not interested in letting that happen again.  I know I’m a selfish bastard, but no one deserves that.”  JP said the familiar words with his usual aplomb, but James had a sudden sense that maybe they just weren’t quite so true anymore.  “James, we’re ready to go, and we don’t have a lot of time left.  Yes or no?”

James glanced at the board of names and images, and then looked back to the assembled knights who were studying other similar whiteboards that had maps and labels on them.  He noticed Alex was there, and felt a moment of guilty surprise; he didn’t honestly expect the young woman would ever have wanted to do fieldwork again.  But here she was, armored and armed, helping someone else properly slot a ballistic plate.

He looked back at JP.  Tried to find anything in his friend’s face that would tell him if this was a good idea or not.  His gut said no.  But James’ gut, even when being improved via the mundane magic of antidepressants, was still guided way too much by his own anxiety.  He needed to be more calculating, and less afraid.

What did they stand to gain here?  Well, JP was right.  This was a path to some answers, and an opportunity to exploit the upcoming chaos.  No one in that building would have an easy time dealing with the Order if they were also dealing with everyone else converging on the site.  It was the perfect time to move.  And also, people did need them.  James doubted a pair of FBI agents were going to be able to get a building full of anti-magic authoritarians to give up prisoners.  Which meant the Order was probably going to have to step up.

But also , there were a lot of moving parts here.  A lot of people who clearly had some plans in action.  And James knew already that he actively disliked at least a couple of them.  Spoiling those plans would be a win for humanity as a whole, as well as his own sense of smug satisfaction.

What did they stand to lose though?

That was easy.  Lives.  Taking injuries they couldn’t undo.  Losing dungeontech.  Or even just failure that got other innocents hurt in the crossfire.  But mostly lives.

James lost himself thinking in circles for a minute.  Trying to balance risk and reward in a way that went directly against his own personal principles.  It wasn’t long before a voice broke him out of it, and he was surprised to find it was Alanna.  “Hey.”  His girlfriend said, tapping a loose fist on his shoulder with surprisingly little force.  James gave her a growing smile, then faltered as he saw her wrapped in their improved combat armor, a heavy rifle slung on her front and a sledgehammer strapped across her back.  “Everyone here either remembers these fuckers, or learned about them after joining and hates them anyway.  Let’s fuck ‘em up.  We know what we’re doing.”

He saw the eyes of the other knights in the room focused on him, and then looked back and nodded at her.  “Okay.”  James said quietly.  Then louder to JP and Nate.  “Okay.  Let’s go.”

The others began moving, and while it wasn’t exactly well oiled clockwork, there was a level of trained coordination that the Order had been collectively working on that hadn’t been there before.  Nate’s voice boomed out as he waded through the crowd, directing knights to their teams and giving orders for engagement.  Team leads double checked with Ben, preparing telepads to their primary and secondary positions.

Across the room, green light bloomed as half the people present let their authorities manifest fully; pieces of green tinted clothing unspooling into projected armor clad around parts of their bodies.  Verbal confirmations rang out as people opened up skulljack links and began coordinating via local signal.

Small orders got layered on.  The proper target protocol before even beginning to point a weapon at anyone.  The instruction to not make contact with the rogues on site unless they needed direct help.  The grim reminder of what to do if someone went down in a fight.

Someone handed James a gun, and he took it and added it to his belt without thinking as JP gave an approving grunt.  “Okay.  Tuck your stupid ponytail back over your skulljack braid.  I can’t believe you got fucking melted and didn’t lose your hair, that’s so goddamn unfair.”  He muttered.  “Here, here, and here…” He pointed to different parts of the map on the whiteboard.  “This is where the overwatch teams will cover us from.  If we need to leave via roof, team four and five are air support.  Here, clip this to something.  GPS tracker.  Any team can relocate onto us if we need close support.”  JP offered James a hand as he finished with everything.  “You ready?”  He asked, flicking at a telepad.

“No.”  James said.  But he was still caught up in the organized motion and called commands echoing through the warehouse.  The people around him didn’t look like a cluster of survivors anymore.  They looked experienced, and prepared.  They looked like fighters, and not just people who were making a desperate move to lash out at a threat.  He wasn’t sure when they’d changed from a group of ragtag people thrown together by chance into something that felt like an actual order , but in the moment, James really felt like everyone else was earning the name.

“Well, too bad.”  JP said, bobbing his open hand and reaching out to grab James when he wasn’t fast enough.

“Well, at least I’ve got experience getting my ass kicked in this office environment.”  James said.  “This is going to be a fucking disaster, isn’t it?”

JP didn’t even have the good grace to pretend to be embarrassed.  Or perhaps he simply didn’t feel like he had the time.  “Not if we can be as good as we talk ourselves up.”  He said.

“Touché.  Zhu, you good?”  A feeling of assent came from James’ chest, the navigator staying hidden for now. “Okay. Let’s get in there.”  James gave a nod of admission.

The two of them vanished.

_____

For some people, telepads were a confusing way to travel.  A sudden shift to somewhere else without any clear reason? Human brains didn’t like that.

The transition of the telepads was, weirdly, not that disorienting for James.  Unless he was using one in or out of a dungeon, which was always  a bad time.  Now, though, it was easy.  One second he was in the briefing warehouse, and in that same second he was next to JP as the two of them were walking toward the front lobby of an office complex.

The entire building was, through a few shell companies, run by whatever this Status Quo group called themselves.  They barely bothered to hide, probably trusting the uncomfortable field effect that made people’s minds slide off of weird stuff to keep their secret well enough.  ‘Well enough’ was probably always good enough for their group of armed thugs.

Still, they maintained pretenses, and the lobby of the building was pretty mundane.  Some kind of beige stone floor, wood paneling on everything that was probably supposed to make the place feel warm and modern, but really just showed off cut corners in the construction budget as there were awkward fits everywhere, and the whole open space mostly given over to a bank of elevators and a hub for hallways that led to the actual rented spaces.

“Okay.”  JP sent to James silently as they established a skulljack connection while walking up the concrete path through a professionally manicured lawn that looked like it had seen better days despite the landscaping.  “We’re gonna play this by ear, but let’s go with investigating a bomb threat.”

James flicked his eyes sideways, trying to get used to the skulljack firmware that made him think he was ‘seeing’ JP’s viewpoint.  He could, he’d been practicing, it just took him a minute.  “They’re not gonna buy that.”  He sent back as he reached the door and tugged at the thick brass bar to open it for JP.  “Let’s go with the blunt approach.  Tell them we’re here about a missing person’s case, and we need to look around.”

“They’ll want a warrant.”  JP countered as the two of them adjusted their collars almost in unison, walking past the elevators toward the receptionist’s desk.  “One guard on duty.”  He noted.

“Are any of these shell companies tech related?”

“Yeah, Ben’s sending us a list now.  Why?”

“I’m gonna tell him that the Patriot Act applies and we don’t need a warrant.”  They were talking fast with their silent chatter, but approaching the desk quickly.  James felt a plan taking shape though.

“You think this dude will buy that?”

James snorted, loud enough that JP could hear.  “It’s actually literally true.  Or it would be if we weren’t committing fraud.  Besides, what’s he gonna do?  Either call the cops or start shooting?  Either one forces his hand.  Primary objective, get the victims out, okay?  Easier if we get to them before Team Camille shows up.”

“Agreed.  You want to lead or should I?”  The two of them stopped in front of the unpleasantly angular desk that the reception was sitting behind, pulling out their fake FBI badges at the same time.  James made a slight ‘go ahead’ motion, and JP huffed out a tiny sigh as he started speaking aloud.  “Good afternoon.  Agent Webb, FBI.  We’re investigating a missing person’s case, and I’ll need you to put the phone down sir.”

The desk was set in an open area near the elevators, partly in view of the various doors into the building, at a kind of crossroads.  It was also in an open part, where the second floor overhead was peeled away into a mild mezzanine.

“I’m… sorry?”  It was on closer inspection that James realized the middle aged man behind the counter was older than he’d thought.  Lines around the face and stiff hands, he had his health but he was showing his years.  “Is there a problem?”

“Yes.  We’ll need to see your security camera footage.”  JP motioned to James, who started circling the desk.  “And this is your only warning not to contact anyone in the building.”  He put a kind of smug authority into his words.  “Now, pull up the recordings of this lobby, and the entrances to both other buildings for the past hour.”  He ordered.

The man almost obeyed on reflex; there was just something about JP that made him feel  like he should be in charge.  But then he remembered something; probably who he actually answered to.  “Hey, I’m gonna need a warrant if you want-“

“Section two fifteen.”  James said in a humorless tone, doing his best to loom behind the guy.  “The Patriot Act applies here, sir.  You do not have the right to refuse a search order pertaining to national security.  Pull up the footage, or we will place you under arrest.”  Actually saying it out loud made James feel gross.  Technically, even members of Status Quo should have constitutional rights.  Though the Order had been scoping out the place for a while, so maybe he shouldn’t be a hypocrite.

Also, and this was more relevant, he had spotted the exact moment when the man relaxed .  He wasn’t Alanna, he didn’t have magic empathy powers, but he knew what he was looking at.  The dude had just concluded that they were bog-standard feds, and that if he actually needed to, he could take them in a fight.  He’d even changed his breathing ever so slightly in preparation.  James didn’t know where that little bit of esoteric combat knowledge came from, but he gave a quick thanks to whatever yellow orb it was.

“Ah, shit.”  JP’s silent voice brought James’ eyes up from where he was carefully watching the four monitors that were concealed behind the desk as the security guard moved to pull up what they’d demanded.  The fact that he was complying made James think there was some extra layer of security somewhere, but JP’s comment made him worry about something new.  “Company.”

James glanced in the direction JP was looking, just as a man and a woman that James had previously seen in Planner’s security footage stomped forward.  He brushed off JP’s comment that their suits were clearly bought off a rack last night, and instead tried to look unconcerned as the woman barked out an order.  “Step away from the desk.  FBI.”  She held up a badge, just as the man next to her did the same.

Affecting an unconcerned aura as he did the same with his own, James made a show of leaning across the desk to check her badge.  Liam Lori, it read, which answered which of them was which.  Then two different skills started pinging in his brain, and he couldn’t keep a confused scrunch off his face.  “Sorry, you’re actually FBI?”  It wasn’t really a question.

“Excuse me?”  The woman seemed offended.  Well, she certainly snapped like she was offended.  Her partner pocketed his badge before James could inspect it, too.  “What are you doing here? This is an active investigation.”  The words sounded… off, now that he was looking for it.  Though he couldn’t place how.

JP pinged him with a similar thought, and an instruction to back off.  But James was James, and his mouth was already moving.  “I mean, you’re actually an FBI agent.  So why is your badge a forgery?”

“Oh my god.”  JP muttered, wiping a hand over his face in exasperation, unintentionally letting his coat’s sleeve slip down to show off the glint of the bracelet he was wearing.  “You fucking…”

“See, I said this was a bad idea.”  The other actual-maybe agent, Brians, said.  His voice was as deep as he was tall, and he was bigger than everyone there.  “We should…”

“I’m calling my boss.”  The security guard reached for his phone, and four people turned on him in unison to yell at him to stop, the single echoed word only briefly giving him pause before he picked up the receiver anyway.

The two fake FBI agents drew their guns and shot him.  Repeatedly.  James jerked at the sudden eruption of sound, his heart rate going from slightly above normal to fast enough to double as an outboard motor in a split second.  The bitter tang of adrenaline flooded his mouth as the guard’s chair went flying, the man toppling backward with a series of motions like he was a puppet being yanked around.

JP had his gun up and was yelling something, and James wondered on a shaking delay if maybe he should do the same.  He blinked, the world feeling like it was moving in slow motion as he started to reach for one of his weapons, and the man turned his pistol on James.  His face looked serious but, crucially, he didn’t fire.

“We’re just here for our friends.”  He said, circling the desk and approaching the computers, keeping his pistol trained on James while JP and the woman faced each other down.  “Don’t get in our way please.”

Up close, because he was already looking for weird stuff and because his brain was completely out of his control at the moment, James noticed something that was bizarre even for him.  The man’s suit jacket, a kind of rumpled beige article, wasn’t… moving right.  It was moving like it was affixed to him.  And as soon as James noticed that, it wasn’t a huge leap to see that he couldn’t actually see anything under the clothing.

“Oh!”  He gasped the word out with a feeling of relief.  “Look!  Outliers!  See, we’re not the only weird thing defying patterns around here.”  He turned to give JP a relaxed look as he sent the words silently, his hands still shaking, but at least he felt like he knew what was happening.  “They’re mimics.”

“Oh?”  JP also spoke out loud as he cocked an eyebrow at the non-fed he was in a standoff with, along with a slight smirk.

“Do you have anything?”  She asked her partner, ignoring JP’s possible flirtation.

James sighed.  “Stop flirting with them until we’re out of here.”  He rolled his eyes at JP.  “You’re here for the delvers they just brought in.  You’re not human, might actually be native dungeon life, and you’re in some kind of symbiotic partnership with the people who found, rescued, kidnapped, or some combination of those things.”  He gave the doors a nervous glance.  “Stop me if I’m getting anything wrong.  Also hurry up.”

“How do you know that ?!”  The woman snapped her handgun toward James, and he took a second to swap one of his bracers to 9mm.

The shield bracers could be a real problem in a tactical situation when you were blocking your ally’s shots around you, so he’d left it off until he knew what they needed to be stopping.

“I like her.”  JP sent to him.  “Read them in.”  And then out loud, to the man who was staring at James and not getting security footage, he added, “Seriously, you should hurry that up, we’re on the clock.”

James glared at her.  “Stop pointing that at me.  We’re literally here to help you, though we didn’t know it coming in.”  He pointed to himself and JP.  “James, JP, Order of Endless Rooms.”   He considered nudging Zhu out to prove a point, but decided to keep the navigator as a hidden backup for now.  Zhu, still not capable of communicating fully when not manifested, gave a pulse of agreement, and settled in.  “We’re here to rescue a couple people, and also gather intelligence on these assholes.  Do you want our help?”

“We can’t possibly trust-“

“Yup.”  The man cut his partner off.  “I’m Ruby, this is Prince.  Found them, sort of.  They got brought in through the back, taken to… that building…” he pointed down one of the wider halls, “and then upstairs.  No cameras up there.  Aaaaand this place just got cut off.”

“I wonder if they noticed that you were shooting their-“ JP abruptly stopped his quip as the security guard, who was not dead , flipped over onto his back, leveled his own weapon, and tried to double tap the two closest people.  Which didn’t work, because James’ shield was absolutely up now.  “Shit!”  He barked in time with Prince, both of them returning fire, though only Prince dove for cover.  Her bullets also chipped off more of James’ shield charges, while JP’s slapped the guard back to the floor, and sent him sliding farther back along the stone surface.

James really should have noticed the guy wasn’t bleeding.

“Stop shooting me!”  James yelled over his shoulder as he ran toward the man, grabbing the back of the rolling chair that had been knocked over a minute earlier, and flexing his muscles to fling it into the guy’s face.  The guard tilted his gun arm to block it, and the hit didn’t seem to do anything, but it did put him out of position to keep shooting as James rushed him and kicked him in the side of the head, carefully not triggering his greave.  Then when the man - dazed but still moving far better than someone who had just been kicked in the head should be - tried to bring his pistol up to focus on James while he was inside the bracer’s range, James kicked him again, then knee dropped onto his chest, grabbing his wrist in both hands and twisting his body to wrench the gun away from him.

As he rolled off and snatched up the discarded pistol, the guard rolled onto his side with a moan, and coughed wetly.  Which was the first blood they’d seen from someone who had been shot ten times.  Which was worrying.

“What the fuck is up with these guys putting their tanks as receptionists?!”  James asked rhetorically as he kicked the man in the back of the head again with a hard thud.  “No, don’t answer that.  We need to move  before…”  Upstairs, through the mezzanine’s open walls, James heard doors being slammed open and the sound of running.  “Shit.”

JP didn’t seem concerned.  “They’ll be busy soon.  Camille’s just entered the building.  And we’ve got a lot of movement upstairs.”  He casually reached over and plucked a pen off the desk out of an overturned wire basket.  Tilting his head like he was listening, he started writing an address.  “Let’s reposition.”  He held out a hand and James hustled over to grab it.  “You two coming?”

The non-fed non-human duo looked at each other, one of them a little more dazed than his more irate counterpart.  “Fine.  Touch?”

“Yup.”  James grabbed her, and with the four of them linked up, JP pulled the telepad just as JP saw four people dropping down from the second floor like they’d just leapt over the railing.  He barely had time to recognize that they weren’t falling at the proper speed before they were gone.

_____

Alanna tried not to be nervous as James and JP blipped away.  She knew this was what he wanted to be doing, but if they were going to be fighting humans  who used guns , then she’d prefer if he were wearing ballistic plates and Kevlar.

A glance to the side and she tried to not be nervous about her teammates either.  Smoke-And-Ember she worked with constantly, and the camraconda was busy running dexterity drills with the new limb pack he was wearing.  It had two longer arms for actually grabbing stuff, and two shorter, vastly more sturdy arms that could fold up to the chest when not in use, which were specifically for manipulating and aiming handguns.  Around him, a scarf made of forest green light wafted in wind that wasn’t there.  Ember’s authority, Quoth, was more developed than Alanna’s barely-hatched one, and was focused on communication and support

 Next to him was Alex, who looked as nervous as Alanna was trying not to feel.

It was weird, Alanna mused, letting the incongruent thought distract her.  While Alanna had been with James on more dungeon delves than anyone else, and it was practically their biggest shared hobby these days, she was pretty sure it was Alex who had been with her boyfriend for the most operations on normal Earth.  At least two, anyway.  Alanna was never around when James was getting shot at or teleported to a hostile dungeon.

“Ready.”  Smoke-And-Ember’s digital voice echoed between spoken aloud and sent across their team skulljack link.

“Yeah, I’m… yeah.  Ready.”  Alex was tugging on her breaker glove, fidgeting with every strap on her armor.  She didn’t look ready at all.

“We’ve got this.”  Alanna said.  “They couldn’t kill us last time, right?”

Smoke-And-Ember stared at her so intently Alanna wondered if he was trying to freeze her. “What a terrible metric.”  He said.  “Who taught you statistics?”

“I dunno, probably a dungeon, if we’re being honest.”  Alanna sighed, and then gave a satisfied smirk as she got a burst of nervous laughter from Alex.  “Seriously.  We got this.  We’re professionals.”  She said that last part while looking right at Alex, willing the younger woman to believe in them.

“Right.”  Alex nodded repeatedly.

Across the briefing warehouse, Nate’s voice barked out commands as Ben rattled off an updated feed of information from the knights already on site.  Two duos of human and paper drake vanished in telepads; neither of them were Pendragon sized yet, and wouldn’t be for a year or two at least, but they could carry one or two extra passengers if they were pushed.

“Team two!”  Nate’s shout got their attention.  “Rogues on site will link up with your team, be ready to support!  Final prep, then deploy!”

Alanna took a deep breath, then nodded, and flipped the cap on the water bottle she had open, and took a long drink.  Her teammates did the same, though Alex was a lot less reluctant than she was.

Alanna hated this stuff.  The potion that made her even more bulletproof was nice , in a technical sense, because she didn’t want to die.  But the numbing of her emotions made her feel a little too much like a weapon and less like a wielder.  It wasn’t too bad if they didn’t abuse it, but even a little bit left her worried.

Still, they had a job to do.  So she drank her potion, and then another pull from a provided bottle of pre-battle exercise potion, just to make sure she operated at her peak.  Then they rapidly linked up and teleported out.

The parking structure they warped into still had cars in it, and at least some of them belonged to civilians.  Civilians who weren’t Status Quo, anyway.  Alanna supposed that SQ agents were technically not military, though she was mildly concerned that the hardening potion was making her more pedantic.

Myles greeted her with a wave, and Alanna cocked an eyebrow at the high-vis vest and yellow hard hat he was wearing.  “Camera feeds are tricked.  Yin and I have the place blocked off on the fourth level.  You’re clear to use the upstairs as a post.  Right there will give you the best view.”  He pointed to a section of the outside wall where the concrete was mostly covered by a pickup truck and a practically antique sedan.

“We’ll need the small car moved.  I’ll use the pickup bed.  The wall’s too high otherwise.”

Alex gave a nod.  “I can fix that one of two ways.”  She offered.

“Move the car.”  Alanna stated, deciding that demolishing part of the structure would be too noticeable.  As Alex found the car’s door unlocked and got to work hotwiring it, Myles pointlessly wished them luck and went back to keeping distractions from using the stairs or going over their line of orange cones, and Alanna popped the back of the truck down so she could hop up into the bed.

After helping Smoke-And-Ember up, the camraconda hissing in annoyance at the height of the truck, she unslung her rifle and lined up on the far building, while the camraconda set up a custom scope on an identical bipod next to her.  “I have the daughters in sight.”  He sent across their skulljack link.  “They are being deliberately ignored by many people, but are heading for the target building.”

“Okay.”  Alex rejoined them, having stuck the sedan in the middle of the smooth ramp blocking off four identical white vans.  “Getting our entrance set up.”  She started writing out multiple telepads, doing frequent checks with Ben for address verification and visual checks out the side of the parking structure as she prepared a few possible angles of approach.

And then they settled in to wait.  For how long, Alanna didn’t know.  But the one good point of the hardening potion was that she didn’t care about it that much.  Still felt a little boring though.

And then, abruptly, she had something to focus on.  After not a very long time at all.  “Gunfire.”  She reported, knowing that Ben and Planner and anyone else were watching through her eyes back at the Lair.  “Aaaand more gunfire.  Bracer flash.  I don’t have a good line on them from here.”  She should have repositioned, Alanna mentally tsked.

“They’re repositioning.  Two new pickups.”  Ben’s message came in text form, and didn’t indicate where James would be going to .  Alanna sent back a rapid request for clarification, as she watched the forms of people burst into action on the upper floors.  Some people seemed legitimately panicked by the gunfire, hiding under desks or looking out the windows like they were searching for the source, while others were clearly armed and running for what they knew was the source.  “Status Quo’s office might be mixed with civilians, be advised.”  She broadcast to every knight on their network.

“Problem.”  Smoke-And-Ember said.

Alanna let his authority reset her scope, and instantly saw what he was talking about.  Both of the daughters of the Last Line Of Defense had reached the outer corner of the Status Quo building, and one of them had just pointed up at the third floor.  The other one shifted, and then jumped , leaving a cracked crater in the sidewalk before her sister followed her.

“Well shit.”  Alanna’s emotions weren’t so deadened that she couldn’t feel a little concern as the two slammed through a plate glass window, a few loose shards tumbling to the bushes that surrounded the building.  Status Quo agents inside reacted almost instantly, splitting into three clear groups as they moved to intercept both James and the new threat.  It happened fast , and Alanna was a little frustrated to just be watching.  “I could start picking off agents.”  She offered.

“We don’t want to give ourselves away yet.”  Smoke-And-Ember reminded her.

Alanna checked an incoming message from Ben.  “Shit.  Small caliber bullets don’t do anything to them.”

“That’s fair.”  Alex gave a sad nod.  “They don’t to us either.”

From the second floor of the building opposite where the daughters had made their entrance, something traced an angry bright line out toward a vehicle parked by a curb, and a second later there was a flash of fire.  “FBI agent’s car exploded.”  Alanna reported, a little surprised that hadn’t gotten her heart rate up.  “The gang members are scattering from their van and rushing the building.”

“Oh good, this is going exactly as planned.”  Smoke-And-Ember hissed a sigh under the digital words.

A message came in.  James and JP were in the back of the building and reentering, heading for the second floor where they had traced the kidnapped delvers.  No contact yet.

The sound of gunfire started to pick up.  Like distant hail, Alanna thought.  Heavy smacks that could mean anything from sustained suppression to meaningless snapshots to individual announcements of someone dying.  Then the screams.  Normal people walking to their offices, or going on their lunch breaks, who were starting to realize that something was going very wrong.

“Damn.  Second floor definitely has non-squo people.”  Alex said flatly.  “No nerf gun for that.”

“Third floor?”  Alanna asked.  She’d look herself, but she was trying to find whoever was blowing up suspicious cars.  They’d taken out another two, and the area was rapidly turning into a war zone.  “Nate, tell me I can shoot this one.”

“Shoot that one.”  Nate told her.  “But also get ready to move.  There’s-“

Nate cut off.

“Jamming.  Local test.”  Alanna pinged her teamamates, and they answered.  Everyone else in the area did too.  “Okay.  We’re on our own, but we have a plan.”  She took a deep breath.  “Route through me, I’ll stay here and direct.  Alex, Ember, get ready to move.  James is gonna need you to bail his ass out.”

“Got it.“ They spoke in unison, the camraconda slithering over the edge to join Alex.

Alanna spotted a flash of a shield bracer through a window, and got a message from JP.  “Okay.  Second floor, west side.  Don’t go for a flank or you’ll get pincered.  Just link up and punch through.”

“Fireballs okay?”  Alex asked.  Alanna gave her an affirmative.

“Be careful with it.  Go.”  The two of them vanished, and Alanna was left alone with only a pair of underarmed rogues to watch her back.  She breathed, her mind feeling a little sluggish on complex planning, but not overwhelmed or panicked.

Then she redirected her attention.  Frequency-Of-Sunlight wanted to move her team to offer covert support to the gang moving on the building.  Alanna swept her rifle in that direction, and made a call.

Anyone Status Quo was shooting at was closer to an ally than an enemy.

She’d worry about if that was the right call later.  Right now, she had a strategy to oversee.  Right after she tasked one of the flyers to look for anything that might be jamming them, because she would really rather have Ben, Planner, and Nate doing this.

Alanna’s job was supposed to be punching anyone who fucked with her boyfriend.  It was where she excelled.

Below her, the shooting intensified, and the battle started to get chaotic.  Somewhere down there, James was doing something stupid.

Alanna could feel it.