After a brief exchange of messages to determine an exact meeting spot, Bob met up with the two minions outside of the Player Arrival Area standing next to a street light. They both towered over Bob’s avatar as they introduced themselves.

Buzzted, or Buzz as he preferred to be called, was about six feet tall, and relatively normally proportioned compared to most other avatars. He was wearing the now ubiquitous light body armor, with a square white patch on each shoulder that contained a red cross shape.

Chunk towered over Buzzted, having clearly maxed out the height slider, as well as the sliders for visible muscles on all the muscle groups. She was wearing heavier armor than the other two with mechanical protrusions near the joints, and had a large rectangular shield mounted to her left arm. Wait, she? Bob distinctly recalled Chunk’s personnel file mentioning a male ogre.

“Chunk. I was expecting a male ogre. Were the personnel records incorrect?”

“Er… Not wrong. Chunk not woman… but Chunk like feel pretty. Chunk was told Big Strong Dragon Boss not judge, not let others judge.”

Buzz looked uncomfortable and shifted his eyes.

Bob nodded, neither understanding nor caring. “Fair enough. Let’s head to the request board and load up on requests. I should have done so before my earlier expedition but failed to do so. I am still getting used to the whole adventuring thing, even if that isn’t what they call it here.”

“What do they call it then?” Buzz asked as they started walking toward the request board.

“Mercenary, security, or contract work. I’ve heard a lot of different ways for them to say it and I’ve not even spent a whole day in here. Sometimes they’ll say it two different ways in the same breath.”

“That’s weird,” said Buzz.

“Chunk agree.”

“This whole place is. However, I find it fascinating, as well. I really would love to find out how they created all this…”

Buzz looked at their companion with an odd expression, while Chunk —following behind the other two— appeared to be regarding Bob with something akin to adulation for a moment before her expression became neutral and slack-jawed once more.

“So, uh, Bob, what do you normally do in Deep Thousand? I’m in the support sector, myself; I work in the Deep Town clinic.”

Bob considered his words carefully. Revealing his true identity would be bothersome if these minions couldn’t just treat him normally. “Administration, primarily. However, if any humans ask, I am an adventurer who farms the early mid-levels for equipment. You should probably identify yourself as an alchemist. Chunk… well, Chunk is just Chunk. I think Chunk’s demeanor will be plenty of explanation.”

“Chunk is Chunk,” the armored giantess boasted happily.

“Uh, yeah. Got it. You’re the boss here, after all. Hey, tell me, have you ever, you know, met Him? The Insatiable Tyrant of Wisdom?”

“You could say that I carry out his will at all times.”

Buzz seemed happy with that answer, as his step took on an extra spring to it. Unseen to the other two, Chunk’s face was split in a wide grin.

Upon reaching the request board, the three loaded up on requests. They accepted two open ended bounties, one for mutants and one for rogue drones, and a third for eliminating an unknown obstruction blocking off a tunnel and adjacent sewer infrastructure.

Morphiest, in the guise of Chunk, was on the verge of shivering with excitement. To be able to fight alongside the Exalted Master, even if it was not in his glorious true form, was practically a dream come true. And she would only have to split his attention with the gnome! Ah, she felt as if she could just squeal in excitement at the prospect. She had taken to walking behind the gnome and the object of her undying loyalty and desire. While she felt she had a fair handle on imitating Chunk’s limited intellectual capacity —with some fun modifications— working directly with the Devourer of Nations strained her composure. Buzz clearly had no idea who Bob really was, or he would not be acting quite so carefree.

She was rather wary of Buzz. Certainly, he seemed amiable enough. He acted kind and engaging and was all smiles and warm fuzzy feelings. But he could not fool her. She was a Doppelganger. She could spot the gaps in a facade like his from a mile away. She wasn’t sure what he was hiding, and, frankly, she didn’t care. She just didn’t trust the runt not to fuck this up and ruin her time to make a good impression for when it would inevitably be revealed that she had been playing as Chunk all along.

Maybe she could have another of the Gang quietly replace him? But would they be able to seamlessly take his place in Ciro?

Better to play it cautiously, for now.

As they walked, she was gradually gaining control of her excitement, and mastering her expressions. Then they showed up.

Bob stopped walking for a moment, looking at something nobody else could see, then resumed their journey after a momentary delay. When they arrived at the request board, two tall avatars stood there, one male and one female, waiting for them.

“FarShot, ShadowRunner, these are a couple of my acquaintances, Buzzted and Chunk.”

“You can call me Buzz,” the gnome’s avatar piped up, moving to shake hands with both.

“Chunk happy to meet you!” The strain of the false cheer in her voice went undetected.

Bob continued talking. “Chunk is a Bulwark. She will be our front-line fighter. Don’t let her way of talking fool you, she’ll be smashing our foes into paste if they get too close. Buzz here is our Medic. He’ll be setting you right if you pull any more dumb stunts, ShadowRunner.”

The male of the new pair rubbed the back of his head and averted his gaze sheepishly, while the female elbowed him in the side and chuckled.

Bob continued with the introductions, gesturing to the two newcomers. “FarShot here has the Marksman class, which means she’s our primary ranged damage dealer, especially at longer ranges. ShadowRunner is a CyberRogue, so he’ll be our stealthy support, and do some stuff with enemy electronics that I’m still working on trying to figure out.”

ShadowRunner spoke up, “You know, just call me Shadow. It’ll be easier. I did some research in the WIK this morning, trying to figure my class out, and it seems that a lot of my abilities center around hampering electronics and communications, and at later levels, even taking control of them.”

“I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sounds useful,” Buzz helpfully added. Chunk resisted rolling her eyes.

“Right, here are the requests we loaded up on. You two should pick them up too then we’ll go get them all knocked out.”

“Ah, but we need to turn in our quest for the three requests from yesterday,” FarShot protested.

“Ah, it’ll be fine. After that they want you to visit the crafting center, then it’s just an open ended ‘Reach Level 10’ quest. Might as well just do that all later while we run these two through the first bits.”

“Fair enough,” ShadowRunner said.

“So, Bob, what kind of neat things can your friends there do?” FarShot asked. Chunk wanted to throttle the woman for the familiarity with which she addressed a supreme being such as he but restrained herself.

“Ah, maybe they should explain,” he said, deftly deflecting the question to his subordinates.

Buzz spoke first. “My equipment lets me monitor the vitals of anyone nearby and alerts me of any major loss of health on those marked as friendlies. I have injectors I can use for healing mid-battle which are little more than pain suppressants, as well as medical supplies outside of combat that allow me to reduce the severity of injuries and accelerate healing.”

“Chunk have armor and shield. Armor make Chunk stronger. Shield gets bigger.” She demonstrated by deploying the shield, which was three thick composite panels stacked on top of each other. The panels slid out and locked together, forming a tower shield. She then retracted the shield. “Chunk can smash with sparky stick or smash with boomy stick.” She paused to scratch her chin a moment, pretending to think about it. “Chunk can also smash with shield.”

Buzz very much disliked Chunk. His voice… her voice… its… Whatever, Chunk’s voice was terrible. It sounded like two wounded hogs hate fucking each other in a pit of gravel. Not beautiful in the least.

This newcomer, though, FarShot? Her voice was musical. However, Buzz knew that she was off limits. Orders from above.

Bob seemed a pleasant sort. Buzz was happy to work with someone so highly placed within the hierarchy of Deep Thousand. Perhaps he should invite him to share a fizzy cider some day at 300 Deep. It’s always good to make friends, after all.

It was too early to tell with this Shadow fellow, though he seemed affable enough. Humans couldn’t generally tell the difference between a typical gnome and a dark gnome. Buzz didn’t blame them, though. Humans just aren’t that bright.

The group was walking along the city streets, heading toward one of the entrances to the Yellow Tunnels. Chunk was Chunking along behind the rest of the group, while Bob was telling the two humans about what he did after they had logged off the previous day. All in all, it was rather pleasant.

Buzz patted his new weapon affectionately. He had spent a couple of hours in the combat simulator, trying out the various types of weapons. The only one that really came naturally to him was the shotgun. Buzz knew he wasn’t much of a warrior, and that his hand-eye coordination was mediocre at best. However, that didn’t matter when your weapon sprayed out hot metal shards in a cone and could fire twice a second. He’d dropped a significant chunk of his starting credits on getting the shotgun with a drum magazine, exactly like the one he’d tested in the simulator. Chunk had also bought a shotgun, but it was a short two barreled affair that had to be manually reloaded every other shot.

“So, Buzz, what do you do for a living?” Shadow asked.

“Alchemy, with a focus on healing,” he answered, not even needing to lie. “Most of my consultations tend to be related to sexual health, though. You have no idea how many patients alchemists like me get that are asking for specially tuned stamina potions. That, together with salves for rashes, make up like four out of five patients I get. It’s not a glorious job, but spell casters with the ability to heal others are simply too busy to deal with some things. We free them up to focus on the more important cases.”

FarShot and ShadowRunner shifted uncomfortably at the deluge of totally unwanted information.

“How about you two?” Buzz asked cheerily.

“Eh, we’re part of a Merchant Noble House. We don’t really do much of anything. Our family would never allow it,” Shadow said bitterly.

The conversation died as the group passed through the locks and into the Yellow Tunnels. Buzz stared in awe at the heavy steel doors and their locking mechanisms. His inner gnome was salivating at the chance to tear one apart.

Buzz pushed down his curiosity and forced himself to be more alert as they descended into the surprisingly well-lit tunnels.