As the sun reached its noonish apex on the second day, a woman hesitantly made her way into town. Her trip via teleport crystal dropped her off in the multicolored cobblestone-paved center of Eastgate, surrounded by a sparse group of fellow travellers and wooden buildings painted in whites and grays to contrast the floor.

Stale air from a lack of wind and the musk of those who’d been on the road for too long wafted around her in a sickening miasma, forcing her to quickly leave the vicinity with a feeling of apprehension of what she could expect to find in this new town. Once she was far enough away from the malodorous scent, she took a deep breath to reorient herself. With a flick of her long, amber hair, she began to strut towards her true destination, and hoped she’d at least have a better time than her sisters, at least.

“Up and at ‘em!” shouted a gruff voice from the other side of the door alongside a rough series of raps on the slab of wood. The owner of the voice, Sergeant Mike, moved onto the next door before Annabelle could verbally respond and repeated the same exact actions on the next door, down to the note of his knocks. It was early enough in the morning that nobody sane would be up except for the inn’s owners, and only to make sure they could prepare breakfast before their patrons rose.

“Come on, five more minutes!” complained Ramirez, loud enough to be audible from the next room over.

“If this were a battlefield, you would’ve already been hit with a fireball with an attitude like that!” responded the sergeant. “So get the hell up!”

“If I would’ve ‘already been hit with a fireball’, I wouldn’t be here with the rest of you. I can take care of myself, thank you very much,” he grumbled, voice muffled by his face in a pillow and the barrier of thin walls. Despite the additional sass, Annabelle could hear Ramirez’s bed frame creak from the other side of the wall as he threw himself to his feet in a quick motion. She figured his attitude was mostly just for show, and his experience as a lone ranger already instilled the skills and instincts needed to keep himself alive.

Annabelle slowly made her way out of her own nest of fabric and fluff, not bothering to rouse herself with the same conviction as Ramirez. She’d save that for when their lives really were in danger. After a very refreshing stop in the bathroom, Annabelle made her way down to the restaurant-bar portion of the inn her squad was staying at for breakfast.

While all of the assault squads brought to this World by TOAL started their own missions with a long trek to the town of Eastgate, only Annabelle’s team was instructed to stay behind in relative safety. After all, with the callsign of “Senior Level Interns,” how was Delta Squad supposed to be anything but the newbies in training?

“Good, you’re all up,” grumbled Delta Squad’s babysitter. Sergeant Mike looked at his charges as they gathered at the same table and readied themselves for their mission briefing, and breakfast. “Since you’re still pretty new and this is Annabelle’s first mission with us, we’ve been assigned the ever important task of gaining intel. In the form of local gossip.”

The rest of the team groaned. They’d known this was their mission, but hated to be reminded that they were missing out on the real action. Ramirez reacted by leaning back in his creaking wooden chair and placing his feet on the old, Sparkle-stained oak table. He still gave his superior officer the attention he deserved with direct eye contact, but his smirk didn’t do a very good job of conveying that respect.

“And that also means you have to go around and talk to others, not just yourselves. So you’ll have to split up once you finish eating,” added their sergeant. Then uncharacteristically, he began to smile, or at least try to. “And don’t look so down, you’ve even been given a budget to have some fun around town! So spend some on the local cuisine, give it away to some carny for a rigged game of ring on the bottle, or whatever else the people here do for entertainment.”

Delta Squad regarded their commanding officer with suspicious looks, before accepting his generosity and their supposedly simple tasks with a collective nod.

“Good, we’ll meet up back here for dinner. There should be plenty of patrons around that time we can hopefully work over.”

“And it’d be a good opportunity to practice my aura,” said Aidos.

“Just don’t overdo it and piss anyone off,” replied Ray. “If someone figures out you’re using it on them, they’ll probably pick a fight with you. And we do not need to get kicked out of town on our first day here!”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, Ray,” said Aidos. “But as a king, I don’t need votes.”

“Alright then,” said Annabelle. “I’m going to get going now and see what they sell for breakfast out there. I’m not really interested in the porridge they’re serving here, even if it is free. I eat enough of that sloppy oatmeal back at headquarters.”

“Ah, you’re finally learning how to make proper use of the company credit card!” exclaimed Ramirez. “As I always say, why bother with the complimentary continental breakfast that comes with your room when you could buy something much better tasting elsewhere? Whenever I was given a budget for living expenses, you could be sure I maxed it out with as much booze as I could drink. And for what I couldn’t fit inside me, I’d just bring it alongside me back home!”

“For someone who lived in the wild west, I’m surprised you didn’t spend it on hookers and blow!” joked Ray.

“Hey, hey, you should know I happen to have standards!” replied Ramirez. “Besides, they didn’t have cocaine there, so I had to settle for peyote when I could find any. And when a company card was involved, they usually sent me somewhere civilized, so all of the prostitutes were unionized. And I couldn’t get it on with them.”

“Unionized? What the hell does that have to do with anything?” asked Sergeant Mike, forced to ask what everyone else had on their minds by virtue of being the most curious and trained to deal with shock.

“Well, the unions always had ties to the countries they operated in, which meant that they had to write down and send over detailed reports of their budget as part of their monthly audits, and if my employers caught me making use of those services on their time and dime… well, it’d be pretty hard to get another company card from them in the future.”

“Huh,” replied Aidos after several seconds of deep thought, yet still too puzzled to piece together what kind of World Ramirez came from. “I never realized the kinds of sacrifices you had to make back in that World. How truly fortunate you were to be found by TOAL, since now you can purchase hookers and blow on their dime.”

“Nobody’s hiring a prostitute here!” shouted Sergeant Mike loudly enough to attract several glances from the other early risers sitting nearby. Embarrassed, he turned away from them and lowered his voice before continuing. “If Captain Michaels finds out you all spent part of the operation budget on something like that…”

“He’d demote you?” asked Annabelle.

“Worse. He’ll tell Gus.”

Everyone let out a nervous chuckle. They’d met Gus, but his boring pencil pusher persona didn’t really match the fear everyone had of him. They never really knew how to react to those kinds of jokes about him, but hoped they’d never have to learn the necessary context for themselves. After pocketing several unmarked gold and silver coins from Sergeant Mike, the members of Delta Squad got down to business.

Later that day, but still several hours before noon, the members of Alpha Squad fell to the cave floor in triumphant exhaustion. They’d worked themselves ragged throughout the night and finally had the results to show for it. Sergeant Natalie Murphy removed the balaclava from her sweat-covered face and fished out a ration bar from her pack. Eyes partially glazed over, she took a mindless bite and began to chew, not bothering to wretch at the awful taste until after she swallowed.

“Well, I guess I spoke too soon,” she said out loud. “Looks like I’m going to have to eat this thing, after all. But I’d say it was worth it. Keoki, how goes adding the new energy signature to the scanners?”

“Almost done,” replied Keoki, having repurposed his own face covering into a towel to keep his face dry as he tinkered with a metal device. “It would’ve taken another half week if it weren’t for that giant bowl we found in the back room. They even put it on a pedestal for us, how thoughtful!”

“I’m pretty sure that was a pauldron,” replied Sano. “You know, the piece of armor that’s supposed to cover the shoulder?”

“I would say that makes sense,” said Keoki. “But what kind of shoulder pad is big enough to use as a cooking pot?”

“You’d be surprised,” answered Sergeant Murphy in between bites. “If you saw some of the armor prototypes the research teams have been putting together, you’d be asking why their shoulder pads are big enough to bathe in!”

Keoki chuckled. “Now that’s something I’d like to see! But for the one we have here, I’m guessing it was supposed to be found by the hero we’re keeping an eye out for?”

“Looks like it, given how it’s filled to the brim with the goddess’ energy signature,” replied Natalie. “It was probably the prize of this dungeon, and now it’s ours. At least its secrets are.”

“And with those secrets, we should now be able to track the goddess’ influence for ourselves! I’ve uploaded her energy signature to the visors, so take a look!”

The three agents who still wore their visors looked around the room, seeing small brown, polygonal motes of light floating about. They grew higher in concentration as they turned towards the remains of the foreman, who glowed white alongside the bits of brown.

“That white and brown glimmer are the signature aesthetics of the goddess, and the visors should be able to pick up traces of it that aren’t visible to the naked eye. I’ll be able to do more with the data we’ve gathered once we get back to basecamp.”

“There’s a lot of it in the air,” noted Mahmood. “Perhaps that is the reason for the static on the radio?”

The others nodded in approval of his hypothesis. They couldn’t prove it yet, but the idea made a lot of sense.

“Well, if we’re done here, let’s get going,” said Sergeant Murphy, finishing half of her ration bar before forcefully stowing it away. “We can at least get ourselves a proper lunch before heading back. If Delta Squad gets to spend all day enjoying themselves, then I say we at least deserve a lunch break.”

“Here here!” exclaimed Christina. “And you might be jealous now, but they’ll be doing the same as us soon enough. But for now, let’s see if we can get a bottle of that Sparkle Artyom mentioned in his reports. I bet it’ll help wash down the crap you just ate!”

The soldiers laughed, as they picked themselves up from the ground and reapplied their gear before they made their way out of the cave. There was no point tidying up the place as the bullet casings, numerous dead Kobolds, and the splattered brain matter of the foreman would give away their involvement even if the missing treasure at the end didn’t.

As the members of Alpha Squad reached the cave’s exit, they shielded their eyes from the light of the near noonday sun. Spending the full night awake inside made them forget that the sol was a thing, especially this World’s kaleidoscopic variant. They were ready to head back to town in time for a late lunch or an early dinner, but something stopped them.

“I swear, Keoki,” began Sergeant Murphy. “Your upgrade had better not be making my visor malfunction right now.”

“It’s not,” he replied, staring at the same thing as the others. “I think that’s exactly what the visor says it is.”

Ahead of them was a floodlight of the goddess’ power shining all the way up to the sky in a giant pillar of speckled white. Amongst the gleam, they could make out a group of five who made their way towards their position. They couldn’t discern much about this approaching party, except that they had a rainbow of different hair colors and were making casual conversation.

“Now I wonder who they could be?” asked Sergeant Murphy, sarcastically, as the original glow began to fade. She fiddled with her visor and switched out Keioki’s latest upgrade for a standard zoom function. “We’re in luck, everyone. It’s them.”

She regarded the Great Hero and his battle harem walking through the clearing in the foliage past an uprooted banana tree. She couldn’t make out their conversation from that distance, but could see Tommy’s head sagging as the other ladies were mostly gathered around him.

“Alright everyone,” she said to her team. “Slight change in plans. Keoki, radio basecamp to let them know we’ve found our little hero. We’re going to see if we can tail them until Prithvi can get a squad specialized in stealth to replace us, probably someone like the Wild Frontier Kings.”

The others around her nodded, and they all made their way away from the cave entrance to particularly large shrubbery they were able to conceal themselves behind. Keoki pulled out a small device with an antenna and placed it on the ground pointed towards the now approaching party. With the flick of a switch, the Great Hero’s conversation was now audible to Alpha Squad through their speakers. They waited with bated breath behind their bush, a wolf pack on the hunt carefully observing a passing pride of lions.

“Oh come on, Tommy!” exclaimed Xerica, her long red hair bobbing up and down as she skipped at the hero’s side. “Cheer up, everything’s going great!”

The Great Hero walked along the clearing in a slump, his face weathered with worry. He didn’t bother to look up when he responded. “How can I? Artyom and Neitra are missing, and I don’t even know for sure what happened to them. They could be alright, in danger, or even…”

“Dead,” completed Ecole, nonchalantly. She walked right next to the hero, attempting to lean her head on his shoulder as much as she could while in motion. “It honestly doesn’t matter, because them being gone is for the best.”

“That’s right!” squeaked Lensa from behind him. “He was obviously a traitor. The Goddess sent down her Divine Serpent to fight him and the Dark Lord’s elite kill team who he was obviously working with!”

“And that’s why all of those priests were dead. He and the kill team were going to kill us and decided to start with them,” added Daisy. She walked at the front of the group, arms crossed indignantly despite the wicked grin Alpha Team could make out across her face. “Too bad the Incarnation of the Goddess’ Wrath died in the end. Obviously, he either sacrificed the rest of his allies to get away even though they were able to win in the end, or he got eaten.”

Alpha Squad looked on in indignation as their targets talked trash about the man they respected. The man they came all the way here for without bothering to recuperate. Their friend, their Captain. Mahmood tensed his muscles and squeezed a free hand into a fist, but that was the greatest of their reactions. They were trained operatives after all, not hotheaded heroes who would seek death before dishonor.

“But he seemed like such a nice guy, especially since he was also… nevermind.” Tommy sighed. “But Neitra’s been with us for so long, and she helped us so much! There’s no way she’s a traitor, so there’s no way the Serpent would’ve eaten her! She must’ve gotten away, but why hasn’t she come back yet?”

“Maybe it’s because it was too much for her? Or she ended up suffering the same fate as Artyom?” opined Xerica. “Well, it’s the five of us now, and honestly we work a lot better than with her tagging along.”

“I still miss them,” replied Tommy. “And I refuse to believe they’re dead!”

The five stayed silent for some time until they reached the entrance.

“You know what will cheer you up?” asked Xerica, bending down with her arms behind her back while showing a friendly smile to Tommy. “Crystal Kobold Crossing! I’ve heard that there are a bunch of new monsters that showed up and turned the place into a really cool dungeon! I’m sure fighting your way through it will get your mind off of all this nonsense!”

At last she was able to elicit a physical reaction from Tommy, who slightly lifted his head to look at her, but quickly put it down before they made eye contact. Or it could’ve been that he got a peek at something else, and deemed it more than enough.

Sergeant Murphy gave a quick hand sign to the others to get ready to move positions. As soon as their prey entered the cave, they’d have a chance to get a comfortable distance away to track them more easily. As the hero’s party was about to enter Crystal Kobold Crossing, Xerica turned to directly face them. Immediately, Alpha Squad’s visors lit up in a blinding white and speckled glow as the redheaded party member summoned a small ball of fire in her hand.

Realizing what was about to happen, the soldiers jumped out of cover and ran far away from the bush as the white hot flame struck where they had been prior, igniting the shrubbery into a massive conflagration. A burning plume of red and orange sprouted from the point of impact, powerful enough that they could feel the intense heat through their armor. Even Mahmood.

“Another change of plans, team,” shouted the sergeant. “We’re going to run, and use an emergency teleport.”

“But Sergeant,” began Sano. “Isn’t that reserved for life or death? And won’t that bring us back to headquarters? It took the portal techs a long time to get things set up to bring us here in the first place, and we might get stuck there.”

“Command requisitioned us a team-based emergency teleport for situations like this that’ll bring us to base camp, but it’ll take half a minute to set up. You think we can play keep away for that long?”

“You won’t need to,” replied Mahmood. “Run and get the teleport set up, I’ll cover you.”

“Sorry, but we’re not on a suicide mission today,” responded Sergeant Murphy. “So I can’t have you getting yourself killed just to save Gus a few bucks. Emergency teleports might be expensive, but it’s not worth as much as any of our lives.”

“Ha! Don’t worry, Sergeant. I plan on using my own emergency teleport once things get heated here. I’ll give you a full minute, so go!”

“I swear Mahmood, you’d better not fucking die here! Or else I’ll head over to whatever World this bitch of a goddess reincarnates you into and kill you there!”

None of the other soldiers argued. They nodded and ran off into the forest, away from the beautiful death that was staring them down. Under his balaclava, Mahmood put on a wild grin as he switched out his gun’s magazine for anti-magic beryllium bronze rounds. He didn’t expect to be able to do much damage, he was there to stall.

“Stop there! Why do you fire at us?” he shouted at the party as he lifted his gun towards them while fishing out a small, soft stone from his potions pouch. Regrettably, his greatest weakness was smalltalk, and couldn’t think of much else to say besides that.

He received another fireball in response. As it made its way towards him, he open-fired, the magic-dampening effects of his bullets shredding away at the white hot flames until it resembled the warm, orange glow of a candle. He juked out of the way as it finally reached him, barely getting clipped on the side of his armor.

Mahmood let out a scream as the mostly dissipated fireball turned that spot of his quicksteel shirt white-hot, drops of molten metal metal dribbling onto the ground. Lucky for him, it didn’t pierce the second layer of his armor, but the heat it carried through even pierced the elemental protections his enchanted undershirt provided. He’d never encountered an attack like that before.

“Xerica, wait!” shouted Tommy. “Why are you attacking them?!”

“Uh… they were obviously sent by the Dark Lord!” she replied, focus split between Mahmood and Tommy.

“No I’m not!” shouted Mahmood, gun still raised. “I’m a good guy!” Most people were intimidated by his apparent stoicism, but this was the reason. He was really beginning to regret volunteering to stall. It’d been 15 seconds so far, and the rest of his team was no longer in sight. 45 more to go before he could get out of here. He just hoped he didn’t die from embarrassment by then.

Before Tommy could respond to the plea, a speeding knife flew through the air towards Mahmood. Before he could even react, it struck his chest, piercing the quicksteel and even overpowering the reactive scale mail armor underneath. He quickly pulled it out and tossed it to the ground, and was ready to spray a healing potion on the spot when he realized that the blood weeping from the wound was tinted green.

“Ecole, wait!” shouted Tommy. “Seriously, I don’t think these guys are bad! I mean, look at them! They look like a SWAT team from back home, and they even have guns! Police were supposed to be the good guys!”

“Haha!” laughed Mahmood at Tommy’s innocent reaction, before beginning to cough out green blood. Realizing that he didn’t have much time, he quickly put the soft stone he was carrying into his mouth and swallowed it whole. Immediately, the ingested Bezoar took effect, absorbing the poison coursing through his veins into itself. Extracted from the stomachs of a magical species of goat, Bezoars could absorb and neutralize the worst of poisons, even the one Ecole was so fond of that could kill in seconds. He was thankful that TOAL was able to find such a strange item on their many journeys.

Tommy’s continued pleas won Mahmood another 30 seconds, as he ran around and grabbed whoever was about to attack, distracting them enough to stop their assault at risk of harming him instead. Mahmood really didn’t know what to say now. Tell him that there are friends from Earth who want to help him? Or that everything he knows is a lie and that these ladies he’s travelling with are secretly evil?

He would’ve asked for information about Artyom, but it sounded like none of them knew where he was either. Gus said that he was still alive, and he yearned to tell that to the sad boy who mourned for his friend, but decided against it. He didn’t need to give this goddess a reason to try and beat them to the punch.

“Aaaah!” shouted Daisy, as she charged at Mahmood with her twin cleavers in the air.

Mahmood sighed to himself, and took aim at her. He pulled the trigger, dispersing a thundering stream of bullets towards his target as she screamed back her battlecry. As the super-mundane projectiles were about to hit, Mahmood was sure Daisy would do something to avoid or deflect the attack, such as swat them out of the air with her blades… or with her fists.

Instead, much to his pleasure, they landed true and struck her lightly armored body. Bullets pierced her clothes, leaving holes all over the overly tight leather armor as if it were attacked by a swarm of ravenous moths. Mahmood grinned to himself, but his features quickly contorted when he realized that that was all the damage he had dealt. The holes in her clothes stayed completely dry as she pushed her muscles and heart to their limit to charge at him, not even letting loose a single drop of blood.

“Daisy, please!” raggedly shouted Tommy as he held out his arm towards her, afraid to put himself in the way of the storm of bullets.

Mahmood knew that Tommy’s pleading wouldn’t do any good to convince his assailants to stop. He switched his magazine to armor-piercing rounds and restarted his own assault anew. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to do anything to them, but he was just here to stall. 10 seconds left.

The mithril jacketed bullets sped into Daisy with a sharp howl in the wind, the force of the blows imposing on her charge, bringing her down to a slow jog as she covered her face with her arms. Mahmood did the math in his head, and things looked like they would work out in his favor.

A large crack of thunder from far behind him shook the air and slowed down Daisy even further, leaving a smile on Mahmood’s unexposed face. It sounded like the teleport was a success, now it was time for him to get out of there. Hand still on the trigger, he pulled out his phone and readied the emergency recall to bring him back to base. Would Gus be upset with him for using it? Gus was practical, not cheap. Still, Mahmood felt bad for leaving Tommy there with nothing but didn’t want to give away any details to his enemies. Then, he thought of something.

He let go of the gun and relative silence returned to the forest. Daisy took the opportunity to speed up her attack, but that didn’t matter anymore. Mahmood looked over to Tommy and said his own magic words before putting a finger to his lips. “Hasta la vista, baby!” He pressed the button on his phone and disappeared in a flash of light as Daisy’s cleaver swung at where his head was a moment ago.

“Where did he go?!” shouted Daisy, looking around manically. “Where did that son of a bitch go?!”

In the distance, the other ladies looked around with sneers while Tommy sighed in relief. That feeling didn’t last long when everyone else ran up to Daisy and followed her to where the intruders had fled towards the source of the earlier thunderclap. Tommy tried to follow after them but couldn’t keep up.

In a small clearing in the distance, the four ladies stopped and stared at the charred ring on the grass. The vague outlines of runic symbols could be made out, but not well enough to impart their knowledge onto the reader. Xerica kneeled down and touched the surface of the teleportation ring with her right hand, closing her eyes and focusing on the residual magic around it.

After several seconds, she stood up and smiled a wicked grin at her compatriots. “Well, well. It looks like I know where they ran off to.”

“Can we go and kill them now?” asked Daisy, hate and aggression seeping from every syllable. “Now I have to get new clothes, and I liked these!”

“Not while we’re with Tommy,” replied Ecole. “Besides, I think holes look good on you. Well, they’ll look good to Tommy.”

“Eh, there’s only one hole of ours he’s interested in,” retorted Lensa, hand on her hip. “But what are we going to do about them? After how long it took to take care of the other intruders, I don’t want to have to deal with this.”

“Don’t worry,” said Xerica. “I have something in mind. After all of the annoyance they’ve caused us by barging into the Goddess’ business, let’s see how they like the taste of their own medicine?”

“Hey, everyone! Did you find them? Please don’t tell me you killed them!” shouted Tommy from the distance as he finally caught up. “I think they’re also… uh, nevermind.”

“Oh, don’t worry Tommy,” replied Xerica. “It looks like they got away.”

“You’re safe now! And that’s all that really matters to us,” added a wide-eyed Lensa sweetly.

“Come on then,” said Daisy, walking up to the Great Hero and dragging him by his collar back where they came from. “We’ve still got a new and improved dungeon to take on!”

“Unless they also ruined that for us too,” thought Ecole to herself.

The quintet made their way to the cave, their minds racing with thoughts. Tommy recognized those words spoken to him and saw the SWAT man hold a finger to his lips. He knew something was going on, and he could tell the people from back home specifically didn’t want his girlfriends to know. Who else could he talk to about it?

He hated keeping secrets from them, especially when they got intimate with each other, but something deep down told him to keep this one fact to himself. They were strong anyway, and a secret like that couldn’t possibly harm them. Only time would tell what this mess was all about.