Not quite fifteen years before, Izzy had been a wanderer. Her role was quite similar to her later position as a messenger, with one major difference… she didn’t get paid. And she wasn’t really welcome anywhere either. She mostly survived by foraging off-road during her travels.

She convinced herself that the life suited her. She liked traveling, seeing new places, meeting new people. Especially because she could leave those very same people behind her.

She usually avoided embroiling herself in local problems, but there were some things she just couldn’t ignore. She heard sounds of trouble from afar, and couldn’t help but sidle closer to get a clearer picture.

“... causing trouble, orc.”

“You’re the one causing trouble, human.”

The second voice was… hardly like an orc at all. She expected them to be deep and booming, and while there were always some differences it was pretty odd. Until she saw him. Three barely teens stood around a kid hardly bigger than her. Not that the other three were much bigger .

“You bit my little brother’s hand. Then punched him in the face. This is payback.”

“He deserved it,” said the young orc. “He called me stupid. And when I said he was the stupid one, he punched me in the tusk. So I broke his nose.”

“We’ll break more than your nose, orc.”

By this point Izzy was sticking her head around the corner. She wasn’t sure who moved first, but it was pretty clear that none of them knew how to fight. There was just a flurry of limbs, at first just the orc kid and one of the others. Then when the orc got in a good hit, the other two joined in. She knew she should stop them but… they were just kids.

When they knocked the orc to the ground they began to kick him. Alright, now they were going too far. Izzy was prepared to step out when she saw something. Lightning crackled in the palm of the orc kid. She could feel the mana.

“Hey!” Izzy yelled as she jumped around the corner. “Why don’t you three idiots go pick on someone your own size?”

The shock of everyone that they were being watched stopped everyone involved for a moment. The ringleader of the whole thing then snorted. “What, like you? You’re even smaller than this kid.”

“That’s the point, dumbass.” Izzy continued striding forward, placing herself between the fallen kid and the three bullies. “Now get out of here before I make you.”

“Out of the way,” said the ringleader, reaching down towards her.

Her leg kicked up, hitting him in the nuts. Making use of class abilities against kids was undignified, but hitting somewhere it hurt was just fine given her lack of strength. Besides, they should be grateful to her for saving their life.

They were not, of course, but as it turned out they were unwilling to continue fighting after experiencing any real amount of pain. She might have used a teensy amount of her class abilities to move around and avoid their attacks, but she didn’t use anything offensive.

When they were gone she turned around. “Hey, you alright?”

Through the blood she could make out a grimace. “I could have beat them.”

“With what, huh?” Izzy put her hands on her hips.

“Magic.”

“You i-” she stopped herself. “You don’t… do you even know how powerful magic is?”

“This one is uh… two?” the kid looked at the lightning around his hand.

“That’s…” Izzy honestly didn’t know. “What spell is it?”

“Shocking Grasp,” said the kid.

“Look I don’t know exactly how powerful magic is, but you could kill someone with that,” Izzy said. “Seriously. Especially people without a class.”

“Really?”

“Yes really! That’s like pulling out a knife!” Izzy demonstrated, waving one in front of her. “You can’t just… use magic on people! Even if they’re idiots who start a fight with you.” Izzy sighed, “What’s your name?”

“Turlough.”

“I’m Izzy. Can you… stop that magic?”

Turlough waggled his fingers and the lightning disappeared. She hoped he actually knew how as she stretched out her hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

Turlough looked unsure what to do, but eventually they shook hands.

-----

“After that,” Izzy explained to Midnight, “I eventually learned about his Curse of the Barbarian. And though he knew his letters and numbers from the orphanage, he didn’t really know how powerful magic was. Normally kids don’t choose a class until later, and even if they do spending points requires a decent understanding of what’s going on. You can’t really do anything by accident.”

The black familiar nodded from where he sat on the table in front of her. “I see. But Turlough said he chose his Mage class when angry at people calling him stupid.”

“I know about that, actually. He had to try for a while before he was actually allowed to choose the class, but he’s the stubborn sort so he didn’t ever give up on it. Anyway, he couldn’t really choose spells until he learned to read, and his early spending was… uninformed. He didn’t even think about a directly defensive spell until I told him about it,” Izzy sighed, “I knew there was a mage’s tower in a nearby town, Mossley. It was lucky that Master Uvithar was willing to accept him so young. I stayed in the area for a while, teaching Turlough a little bit about fighting unarmed… though after a certain point it just turned into brawling for experience. I drifted around, but I kept coming back to Mossley.”

“Then what happened?” Midnight said. “It seemed like you would be fine as friends.”

“Well, sure. For a few years. But honestly, aside from setting him up with Master Uvithar, I didn’t really do much for him except sparring. It was fun, roughhousing like a kid again. Keeping my thoughts away from the responsibilities of life. But that’s… about as far as our friendship went. And I kind of… never mentioned I was a halfling.”

“So?” Midnight asked. “Turlough doesn’t seem to be the racist type.”

“Sure, but…” Izzy gestured to herself. “Without the armor and the weapons, he just thought I was a kid. I kind of wanted to be. Then he went from a little stunty orc to almost five feet tall by the time he was ten. That and me being bad at sharing about myself ended up with us having a stupid fight and I skipped town for a while. Except I just… never came back.” Izzy just held her head in her hands, “I know I should have been the responsible party there, but I never was, and knowing that just made it worse. Harder. Besides, Master Uvithar was good for him, and he really needed to make friends with people his own age.”

“I… don’t know if he did,” Midnight admitted.

“Pretty sure he didn’t. I talked to Master Uvithar.”

“Okay, now I understand the source of the conflict. Turlough is… pretty angry.”

“Really?” Izzy asked. “He didn’t look like it. He just kind of ignored me and walked out,” she looked at her knuckles, which were still bruised. “But if he did care I made it a million times worse by lashing out. I can’t believe I seriously punched him. Also, is he made of rock now?”

“That’s Stoneskin,” Midnight said.

“Isn’t that like… really powerful magic? Has he been getting levels?”

“Lots of them,” Midnight nodded. “He’s level 19 now. Most of that is from coming here.”

“But he has Curse of the- is it that dangerous here? I mean, when I came through the portal there was an attack by that cursed grove but…”

“Very,” Midnight said. “Superheroes and supervillains and all sorts of stuff all the time. Turlough loves it.”

“That’s… good,” Izzy said. “At least he’s happy.”

“He was happy, yes. Now he’s angry and won’t admit it.”

“... how angry? I know I screwed up pretty badly, and attacking him probably didn’t help.”

“I feel like that second part is less relevant than you think,” Midnight explained. “But as for how angry…” Midnight pulled his phone out of Storage, carefully manipulating it with a paw until he got to a certain picture. “That angry.”

“What is this? It looks like a pile of bricks. A fancy, small painting?”

“... you don’t know about technology.”

“I know what technology is,” Izzy said. “People learning to build better roads and houses and farms and weapons and stuff.”

“I meant this world’s technology. Electronics and... Anyway, this is a picture. A highly accurate representation of a real thing that could have been seen elsewhere in the past. And it used to be a wall.”

“Okay, so…” Izzy frowned, “I’m not great at subtext, but I can figure this one out pretty easily. Turlough was mad enough that he blasted this wall down with magic?”

Midnight shook his head. “No. He punched it. Enough to break through Stoneskin and break his fist.”

“... and it’s my fault?”

“I haven’t seen anything else make him truly upset in the last few months,” Midnight confirmed.

“Has he been healed by a cleric?”

“I’m going to have to explain a lot of things, aren’t I?” Midnight sighed.

-----

For some reason, everyone seemed to think something was wrong with me. Midnight wasn’t coming back to the apartment at normal hours either. When I asked him, he just said he was working on something. That sounded suspicious, but I trusted he knew what he was doing. Probably. At least he wasn’t getting lost and could find his way to me. I could track him down if I wanted to but… I didn’t feel like it.

Most of my time these last few days was spent teaching Jerome- somehow he learned Grease and Force Armor, which made no sense because he couldn’t possibly have the points. Especially because he was clearly still level one. Though he had been level zero.

In short, we’d determined that his mana capacity had improved from five to six. Going from level zero to level one only took five experience, and he killed a whole plant monster. Nothing weird there. Plus… studying should provide experience.

But why was he level zero? He had gone to school. He did things. I didn’t know, and I really couldn’t figure it out. I had the feeling something weird was happening, but for some reason I had trouble focusing.

The rest of my time was spent on something simple. One of Doctor Rose’s crazy suggestions had resulted in something that actually worked. Forming mana crystals. Thus, I was spending a lot of time unconscious.

It was for science, of course. I had to know what the absolute maximum size I could make was. Mana exhaustion wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t dangerous. Plus when I was unconscious I didn’t feel my hand hurting, or have to think about… other things.

There were some other people that talked to me, but I didn’t really focus on what they said. Calculator maybe mentioned something about Handface? Or his goon. They found the hotel they’d briefly stayed at, but they were gone now. So I’d have to Scry them sooner or later. But I couldn’t at the moment because I was constantly out of mana despite my regeneration being strangely high. Nothing crazy, but a noticeable change. The numbers… were too hard to calculate at the moment. One of the fractional ones.

I saw one of those guys in suits. The fancy ones, like Calculator. Not the super kind, though I thought maybe it was one of those too. He was the guy who did all the teleporting at the fire. I still hadn’t caught his name. Anyway, he asked to look at my hand for a bit. When he touched it my hand really hurt for a while. It was like someone was ripping it apart from the inside. I almost punched him, but I found that I couldn’t move. When he stopped, I felt like I should have been angry, but the throbbing pain had receded to a dull stabbing and I wasn’t angry. Just the same. Besides, when he left he just teleported out.

I had to admit that I had been a little bit out of it, since I hadn’t even noticed my level had gone up. I could have sworn that after the portal thing I was barely halfway to a level, but here I was. Had I been in another fight?

… couldn’t think of anything. Well, it would probably be fine. Levels were good.