Artyom’s hand glided over the paper, guiding the pen across the page to leave a series of curved lines at its bottom. With a final flourish, he set the utensil down on the large, circular table and admired his handiwork, a sizable John Hancock-style signature sitting at the bottom. Six other signatures appeared below his, their issuers sitting with him around the table.

“And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” said the half-asian man with a smile. “I’ve repealed my veto and we finally got this thing signed in.”

“It’s hard to believe,” replied a woman sitting on the other side of him. Dressed in a set of form-fitting quicksteel armor, she had dark brown skin, short curly black hair, and a cocky smile. Unlike the others in the room, she was the only one in any sort of battle-ready gear. The others mostly chalked it up to her training during the War of the 7 Worlds, but they didn’t mind. “That last mission must’ve done a number on you.”

“You could say that, Khethiwe,” replied Artyom, slowly shaking his head with a soft grin. “But I just made a friend, is all.”

“As long as she doesn’t replace me as your bestie,” joked Khethiwe, her eyes darting between the others in the room without so much as letting her smile twitch.

“Hard to say,” retorted Artyom. “She also happens to be a rogue and gutted half of an elite kill team with minimal support from me.”

“Oh please, I could do the same without any levels to back me up!”

“Alright you two, that’s enough,” interrupted a man with a deep, southern drawl. He was in his mid thirties and wore a button-down full sleeve shirt that did well to cover his conspicuous pot belly and take attention away from his graying head of otherwise black hair. “While I appreciate your continued camaraderie, we have some very pressing business that needs discussin' now.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Obadiah,” joked the woman. “I know what we have to talk about, but Artyom finally signing in this order is just as momentous, as I see it. Now we get to go help out Worlds where one of us is responsible for the problem.”

“I really wouldn’t call those kinds of people ‘one of us’,” replied another woman as she played with the pair of goggles sitting around her neck. She wore a white lab coat over a turquoise sweater and khaki pants.

“Me neither, Iori,” replied Obadiah. “But they represent us, even if it’s because they’re also from Earth. It’s our job to stand up to injustice, that’s why God brought us together and by Their light may we fulfill Their will.”

Several of the others present rolled their eyes. Obadiah was essentially the closest thing to a “born again Christian,” minus the Christian part. When exposed to all of the deities present across the multiverse, it was hard to build up brand new faith around a single one, though his upbringing in rural Texas heavily influenced how he practiced it. The others didn’t mind, really, as his own efforts helped to bring a lot of hope and familiarity to the rest of TOAL through some semblance of organized religion. They just thought he came off as a little sanctimonious, was all.

Iori simply nodded along. Until now, Artyom was the only holdout on getting this particular bill signed into law, all in part due to his deep-seated cynicism stemming from his constant exposure to the worst the multiverse had to offer. But he’d finally seen the light, and recognized the innocence of Worlds that deserved to be protected from the worst Earth’s humanity had to offer.

“Yes, yes, we got the bill signed in and Worlds protected from evil Earthers. There’s nothing else to discuss about it,” said a third woman impatiently as she twirled her right hand in a bored manner. She had long black hair and tanned skin, and wore a T-shirt and normal sweatpants. Compared to all of the others, she was dressed the most casually. “As Obadiah said already, can we please move on to the next matter of business?”

Artyom sighed. “Fine, Belicia, let’s move on.” He grumbled to himself at their accountant raining on his redemption parade, but he didn’t blame her. While he already had the chance to digest the topic of their next order of business, the other members of the Executive Council were itching to discuss the biggest thing that’s happened to them in years.

“Alright folks, I do reckon it’s time we addressed the elephant in the room. The fact that we have a war against a deity sitting right on our doorstep.”

The other six sitting around the table nodded in unison, the frowns they now hosted quickly draining away the previously cheerful atmosphere.

“Well then, let’s start by going over everything Artyom here was able to find out. Unfortunately, he was unable to retrieve one of her agents for interrogation, but he was able to get some very pertinent information straight from the horse’s mouth in return. And with the limited responsibilities of that particular agent, I’d say that it was most certainly worth it. So, if you would, Artyom?”

“Thanks Obadiah,” replied Artyom with a sincere nod. “As you all know from the report sitting in front of you all, this goddess, Allivaine, is the very same from the World we last deployed to before the one where you rescued me from, which I’m going to call World A. Oh, and I mean ‘same’ as in the very same entity, not some kind of copy or an alternate version. She was pretty pissed off when she learned that we were the ones who interrupted King Reggie’s summoning ritual.”

The others nodded again, many of them paling despite having already read the report for themselves. Hearing it directly from their compatriot’s mouth had that effect. However, they quickly regained their composure and began to ask questions.

“So she’s multiversal and exists as a single entity across multiple Worlds,” summarized Khethiwe. “Does she have any limitations, or are we talking about someone nigh-omnipotent? I don’t think any of us have met any deities that are multiversal like that.”

“I made it back out alive, didn’t I?” jokingly asked Artyom. “But luckily, she seems pretty limited. Apparently, in the World I just came back from which I’m going to call World B, she usurped the entire old pantheon and seemed to have a lot of trouble maintaining all of their responsibilities while also guiding her summoned Earther on his quest.”

“So she’s limited to one world at a time?” asked another man with a focused expression. He also sported somewhat dark skin and black hair, but alongside a square jaw that sat on a bored face. He was dressed in dress pants and a greasy long-sleeved shirt, most of the color faded from both. “If that’s the case, then we just need to match her tit for tat.”

“If it were that easy, Adithya, then we wouldn’t be having this meeting,” replied Khethiwe. “Besides, there are plenty of holes in that theory.”

The Indian man nodded as he realized the obvious. “Oh, right! Why did she summon those kids like Kai in that other World first? And she’d been leading Tommy for several years at this point, so she’s obviously able to juggle multiple things to an extent, and pay enough attention to know when things go wrong.”

“And then there’s the question of why she waited 600 years to actually do anything,” added Iori. “The timetables of her presence on both Worlds only start then. Maybe it was to gather influence and solidify her base of power first?”

“Maybe she’s been acting before now, but only started bringing Earthers into the mix recently?” suggested Belicia. “Tommy got ‘reincarnated’ just about 20 years ago, and we haven’t picked up on the same traces of Earth culture that let us find him in the first place. Another option is that she delegates. The report shows that she has many powerful servants, perhaps she has equivalents who exist within the deific sphere? Like her own army of bureaucratic angels?”

“At this point, who can tell?” asked Artyom with a shrug. “What we do know for sure, however, is that the goddess is limited. She had trouble managing Tommy and the wild goose chase of an adventure she put him on, and complained to me about the difficulty in finding good help.”

He looked around at the others, who urged him to continue.

“She was also talking about how her adversary's soldiers were lacking, but what about her own? I mean, what if the kids we rescued from that last World were going to be groomed into her soldiers?”

“That idea fits well with what she has said,” replied the final member of the Executive Council in a soft, masculine voice. He had almond eyes and spiky black hair similar to Artyom, yet deathly pale skin to go along with it. He regarded the others kindly as he continued. “But I believe the biggest takeaway is that this goddess does in fact have an adversary. And as I understood it, there was a strong implication that they too would be summoning the people of Earth to fight on their behalf.”

“Yi’s got a point,” replied Adithya. “But are they an ally or another potential enemy? You don't summon Earthers unless you're either desperate to save innocent people or selfishly looking for powerful soldiers. There’s almost no in-between.”

“Well, this adversary was implied to be summoning many Earthers and raising them to fight against this goddess,” Iori retorted. “It doesn't really bode as something ‘good’, if you ask me.”

“Maybe this is a case where the enemy of our enemy is our friend?” proposed Obadiah. “They could be a potential ally in our fight if the lives of those they summon are supposed to be so comfortable.”

“All that means is that they're our enemy's enemy,” rebuked Khethiwe. “Nothing more, nothing less. But I’d like to take a look at why the goddess needed to pull this Tommy into her games in the first place, and didn’t realize the obvious.”

“Which is?” asked Adithya.

“That someone ‘borne from such a casual and debauched lifestyle’ is going to be a pushover. I mean, what’s there to research? I or anyone else who knows how to lie could easily befriend and stab an army’s worth of them in the back!”

“She was fishing for more information than that,” replied Belicia, matter-of-factly. “Any massive business will want to know how their customers tick, even down to the tiniest detail. Apparently a lot of folks in marketing we’ve picked up over the years say that technology’s gotten to the point where they can track that info from millions of people from their phones.”

“And these little quirks of how someone operates can be used to better advertise to them?” asked Khethiwe.

“And here I thought I was the businesswoman,” smiled the accountant. “And the goddess could be doing the same with her enemies. Figure out how they tick and find ways to use those subtle details against them. But using a sample size of just one isn’t going to get you much.”

“She did have to wait until Tommy grew up,” replied Artyom. “So that was something like 20 years just for a single experiment, and her attention seemed to be split amongst other tasks as well. So maybe this was all she could manage for the time being?”

“If that’s the case, we should be lucky that she’s spreading herself so thin,” sighed Khethiwe. “But there might’ve been something she was trying to learn from this so-called experiment that only needed one test subject. But there’s no way to tell what that could’ve been as it is.”

“Yeah, we’ll need to make contact and find out for ourselves with her ‘adversary’ first before reaching any conclusions,” said Artyom, concluding that particular line of thought. “But we should of course prepare for the eventuality that we might need to pick a fight against this possible deity as well.”

“Alright, now that that’s done with, let’s move onto something more technical,” said Adithya as he straightened his motor oil-stained apron. “The goddess apparently operates through giant runic crystals that allow her to feed her power across an entire planet and between Worlds. And luckily, we can fight against her by destroying these crystals in Worlds covered by her influence. So at least we can fight back.”

“One more fortune befalls us,” replied Khethiwe with a frown. “But finding these runic crystals might end up becoming difficult. She could start hiding them from our sensors from now on, or make it much more difficult to gain access to them through having them heavily guarded by enemies on par with the Fatewatchers.”

“And there’s also the problem of finding Worlds with those crystals on them,” added Belicia. “Looks like that particular responsibility is in the hands of the R&D department.”

“Speaking of R&D, this mission has shown me that we need them now more than ever,” said Artyom, a pang of fear beginning to drip into his voice. “Our current technology isn't enough to effectively fight against the goddess and her minions. A single Fatewatcher nearly massacred our entire basecamp, for crying out loud!”

He smacked the table with his fist, getting everyone’s attention. They remained silent as he continued.

“I hate to be the one to say this, but maybe it’s time we bring them back up to their full potential. Like we did during Carnicula.”

Everyone’s eyes grew wide as he made that statement, as he uttered that accursed name. Terrible memories flashed into all of their minds and only Obadiah had the guts to immediately push it back enough to reply.

“While I admit that it was a terrible time and we were forced to create some of the most fearsome weapons ever imagined,” he began. “I and many others believe it was for the best that those terrible inventions seemingly disappeared overnight once the conflict was over. There was nothing meaningful we could've done with a collection of doomsday devices.”

“Until now,” shot back Artyom. “What if this goddess was simply holding back in this World because we landed a lucky surprise attack? We're going to need those doomsday weapons to stand a chance if things are going to get worse!”

“You have to admit, Artyom has a point,” said Iori with a sigh. “The Eye of Balor, the only thing we had left from those days, was barely enough to kill a single one of those Fatewatchers, even when she was under concentrated fire for over half a minute! This was just the first battle, and it’s only going to escalate as both sides enter an arm’s race. We can’t afford to lose here.”

The others looked around with a mix of trepidation and excitement. Opinions on the topic were mixed, and many of the members broke out into their own smaller arguments with their neighbors at the table. Mutterings and gestures evolved into bickering and shouting. A cacophony drowned out all coherent thought, as the council devolved into a group of screaming toddlers.

“Enough!” shouted Khethiwe. “I don’t care whether or not you want to start making antimatter bombs or tidal wave generators again, that’s not the point! If we’re going to save more Earthers, we have to step our game, and that means jumpstarting R&D. We’re still years away from getting to Carnicula War levels anyway, so let’s just start with making it easier to kill a Fatewatcher or something? Can we at least agree on that?”

The other members quieted down and began to nod, finally in agreement.

“So, first order of business. Find this goddess and whatever World she’s probably operating out of, her adversary, and figure out how the hell she even works. We’ve got a war here, people, and I fear it won’t end until we have Allivaine’s head.”

Artyom looked at his friends with sorrowful eyes. He felt somewhat responsible for dragging them into what they all knew would be hell, despite the obvious nonsense of such a sentiment. He was merely the messenger. But as the messenger, he was ready to deliver a brand new message to this goddess and others like her. Whenever someone would act to bring harm to the people of Earth, he and his companions would be there to stop them. After all, there was no one else in the multiverse who was willing to play their role, so they would have to be the ones to step up. Nobody else to act as Earth’s Advocates, the Isekai Police.