“I still can’t believe we missed this.” Sarah said, the sounds of papers rustling coming through the phone.

“I’m surprised as well, it’s not like it’s a subtle addition to the city.” Matt said jokingly as he took another bite of pizza.

Once he’d found the state of the beacon, he looked for a place to log out and make a call, hoping that they could do something on their end. But he’d been on the phone for a few hours now, so long that he had ordered, received and had begun eating his dinner, and there hadn’t been much good news. In fact, just getting straight answers had become more difficult lately, as if she was hiding something.

At first he was concerned that August might be trying something against him again, but it turned out that was far from the case. The CEO hadn’t been seen at the company for over two weeks now, and while his emails were apparently being read, there had been little response other than few sign offs on deals and contracts. The board was trying to cover for it as best they could, but they were a globally recognized company, and losing their head was going to be noticed eventually. Whatever had been in the files that August had been sent, it was bad enough that he was beginning to lose his mind. It had gotten to the point where the board had started floating the idea of forcing him to resign for being unfit to lead the company. Whether that happened or not, it seemed like August shouldn’t be a problem for him for the near future.

“Okay, we’ve had a few people flag the guild’s trade deal as a potential scam,” She continued. “So that lets us inspect the contents to make sure everything’s correct. From what they’ve told me it’s definitely your device or at least it was, but it doesn’t count as Maser’s property anymore.”

“So can you use it to deal with the asteroid? It should have a link to it still, even if it’s not in control.”

She paused. “We can confirm the link is still there, but we can’t really do anything about it. Not on this end at least.”

“Seriously? I get there are rules you’re supposed to follow about taking direct action, but isn’t this an exception? If this hits you’ll be back at square one, and you won’t even give me access to the damn thing.” He said in disbelief.

“Look, just... try your best, do what you can and we’ll do the same. But try and understand that you don't have all the information here, and there’s a difference between won’t, and can’t.”

And with that she hung up, leaving him sitting in silence as he tried to process what she’d said. It was publicly known, even if not commonly talked about, that governments had restricted what changes the company could implement. But this was something outside of those issues, even supporting them, so why weren’t they taking action?

Shaking his head and shrugging it off, Matt decided to put that concern aside for the time being. He’d hoped they’d be able to fix everything, but he hadn’t held very high expectations. From his recent dealings with Masquerade Entertainment, he’d learned they seemed to be fine with cutting their losses and leaving someone else holding the bag.

Thinking about the fact that it would probably end up being him if it couldn’t be stopped, he sighed, finished the last slice and went to log back in.

~~~~~~

As Jicker woke back up, he took a second to orientate himself, remembering exactly where he’d left off. It was a side street off the main thoroughfare, alongside a small park set up for people to relax in. He’d taken a seat on a bench as a place to logout since he’d likely be waiting around until he heard from someone to let him know where to meet up. He was just about to send out a message when he heard a crash from above him.

Looking up he had just enough time to make out the bottom of a well made boot before it collided with his face, sending him sprawling to the ground as glass rained down around them.

You have taken 87 damage.

Bonus Panache effects:

Unexpected exit – reaction times reduced for 20 seconds

Dramatic landing – reduced resistances to intimidation and charm effects for 20 seconds

Lucky hit – increased chance of receiving critical hits for 20 seconds

This damage was caused unintentionally by a swashbuckler’s abilities and does not count as PvP.

“Mother...” Jicker swore as he rubbed his nose tenderly, looking at the figure fleeing from the scene. He looked up to see where the bastard had come from, and was glad he had when a second person leapt out the same window several stories up.

This one however, upon seeing his prone form below, reached out a hand with snake like speed, grabbing onto a passing window ledge. With nothing but a flick of their wrist they tossed themself to the side, landing in a roll before standing up with an easy grace. Spinning around and clicking their heels together, they bowed and reached down a hand to him.

“Terribly sorry about that old chap, thought I had him to rights up stairs, but the cad was more willing to ruin people’s days than I thought. Still, I didn’t think he’d go so far as to actually injure someone in his escape attempt. Honestly, youths these days have no respect for their fellow citizens anymore.” They said as they pulled him to his feet.

Like every other swashbuckler he’d seen while in Macross, the white haired elf in front of him hadn’t bothered with armour, instead wearing a dark grey jacket and white silk shirt. Combined with a matching bowler hat, monocle and handlebar moustache of all things, Jicker wondered if he’d been hit in the head a lot harder than he thought.

“I...what?” he mumbled, trying to comprehend what was happening. It didn’t help when he noticed they had an umbrella strapped to their side instead of a weapon.

“Easy there, you might not have a debuff, but a concussion could still be lurking in the old noggin. Now then, Sir Bradley’s the name, pleased to make your acquaintance.” He said, lifting his cap. “And while I hate to be rude about this, I promised a lady that I’d catch that particular scoundrel for her, and I do try to be an elf of my word. So unless you require further medical attention, I need to be after the fellow. I don't suppose you happened to catch which I way he was fleeing..?”

“Y-yeah, I'm good, and I'm pretty sure I saw him climb that building over there, the one with red tile roof?” he said, pointing the way.

As Bradley looked in the direction of the building, he tapped the side of his monocle, causing the lens to glow faintly. “Ah, capital! The trail is revealed and the game is afoot! Take care my little green compatriot, for there is work to be done!”

As he shouted this he drew the umbrella from his waist and brandished like a rapier, getting a few cheers from happy onlookers.

“Actually, before you go...” Jicker said, making the strange swashbuckler pause mid-step as he turned back. He reached into his bag and fished around for a bit before pulling out a small vial. “Here, it’s a tranquiliser I made, should help you slow him down a bit if you can get him with it, maybe even knock him out if you’re lucky.”

They paused for a moment then let out a boisterous laugh. “Ha ha! Normally I’d be against using something dastardly like this, or in fact seeking help from a third party at all. But in this case, we can certainly say that they’re the one who got you involved. Very well, I’ll gladly accept your bit of vengeance to assist me in catching my quarry!”

Taking the vial, they studied it for a moment before nodding and slipping it into their breast pocket. Sir Bradley then raced away, scaling the side of the building like it was no more than a flight of stairs.

“That was easily one of the weirdest things I've seen in a long time.” Jicker muttered to himself after a moment, as people resumed what they’d been doing before the sudden display. “But if I'm going o get on that podium, I might need to get weirder.”

When he got back to the hotel, it had mostly been emptied out, with members combing the city looking for allies or out preparing for their events. Only a dozen people remained, those who were guarding and few of the people who’d come to support the competitors.

Walking through, he made his way to the closet where he’d left the various objects and small animals he’d picked up on the way to town. Someone in the guild had been feeding them, either as a job or just liked to play with animals, but at least it had been one less thing to track. But as he looked over everything he had, he realised he had no ideas, no inspiration. Grabbing a few branches and a one of the birds in a cage, he went up to the room he’d been given and sat down, mulling things over as he studied them.

But after over an hour, he had nothing. There were plenty of things that he could do of course, just make something bigger, give it more claws, that sort of thing. But they didn’t...feel right, didn’t seem like something that should be a part of Genesis. And that, he felt, was the important thing. That his creations fit within the world, even if only at the very edge of it.

As he was lying on the floor holding a branch in front of the window, a knock came at the door.

“Come in,” He said, not bothering to get up.”It’s not locked.”

“Obviously,” Athena said as she opened the door. “We didn’t give you any keys.”

“Athena, what can I do for you?” he asked, turning his head to face the gnome in the doorway.

“As the politicians say, ‘ask not what you can do for me; ask what I can do for you’. I can’t help but notice that you haven’t said that the ‘issue’ above us has been dealt with, I don't suppose..?”

“No luck so far, everyone’s still doomed.” He said vaguely.

She nodded with a sigh. “I figured as much from what I heard when you came in.”

Jicker frowned. “I don't think I said anything when I came in. Are you sure it was me?”

“It was you, it’s just that saying 'I heard' is a lot more polite than saying I picked up your thoughts.”

“...A bit less creepy too. So can you tell people apart from their thoughts, like accents or something?”

“Not anyone’s, but certain ideas give people away, and of course some people just think differently. For instance Oda is very good at partitioning his thoughts, relaxing while his subconcious works on a problem, while yours a very linear with a single goal and no distractions.”

“What about Gabe’s?”

“If yours are linear, then his are dots, and I literally can’t understand how he gets from one thought to the next.”

He let out a small laugh. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“So, back to you then. You said no luck on the doom, but do you have any ideas?” she said, leaning on the door frame.

“Honestly? I'm drawing a blank right now, but I'm sure that access to the beacon is still our best bet. Which leaves me sitting here trying to come up with something for the games. Enough to contribute to the medal tally at least.”

Athena rubbed her neck for a moment before rushing off before returning moments later with a blackboard on wheels. Pulling out a piece of chalk, she began making notes as she spoke.

“Let’s go over this then. The objective is for the guild to place on the podium at the end of the games, so we need to win events, and a lot of them at that. That’s... doable, if difficult. I’ll speak to people and have them put some more effort into the events themselves, maybe have Mary offer some guild rewards. We’re not a big guild compared to some, but our members are all higher quality than most, so we’ve got a shot there.

As to what you need to do yourself, your being put to work for two events: Duel Monsters, and the Minion Melee. The duel is a one on one fight between creatures, in a tournament bracket system. So you’d be looking for something that can handle a single opponent, but a wide range of them. You’ll be up against conjured beasts, golems, summoned demons and a host of other things, so versatility is key. The Melee, on the other hand, is throwing every competitor in an arena all at once, last creature standing wins. For that, the common strategy people have been using is to go for all offense and speed, to take out the competition before getting hit yourself.”

“That’s pretty much what Oda told me, but I did wonder, what’s to stop people just putting together some giant, million dollar golem and crushing everyone?” he asked.

She looked at him oddly, her brows furrowing. “You didn’t see the match..? No, I guess you had other things on your mind back then. Anyway, a few years ago someone did try that, bankrolled a giant monster of a golem, cost a literal fortune but for some reason they thought it’d be worth it.”

“It would make for good advertising.” Jicker said, nodding in appreciation.

“And maybe it would have, if it hadn’t been torn apart in the fifth round by a rust monster a low level player had summoned up for free. They lost millions of dollars of value in minutes, and taught the community that everything has weaknesses that money can’t cover. Yet to avoid a repeat, since then they've changed the rules a little. Now every entrant is checked by an appraiser for its value, with a limit of ten thousand gold. It generally doesn’t even come up for people who make or summon their own, since the cost is in the labour, but it stops people trying to buy wins.”

“Well, there goes that plan then. So what’s up first?”

“The Melee, since a giant free for all helps get people excited for a lot of the other events. Now what can you do?” she asked, ready to write it down.

“I thought you were told about my abilities?” he wondered.

“I was but we’re brainstorming here, so humour me.” She said, tapping on the board.

“Okay then, I can modify plants and animals into new versions. I can’t control them, but I can influence behaviour, and the smarter ones seem to recognize and somewhat respect me.”

“...respect.” she muttered, writing quickly. “Just plants and animals? No constructs, no undead?”

“Look, initially I could only work on animals, so don’t say ‘just plant and animals’. It took some effort to learn that.”

Athena paused. “And how did you learn that then?”

“Well, I went out and learned the herbalism skill which synergised with my ability, as did anatomy when I learned it.” Jicker explained.

She sighed and leaned her head on the board. “And you don't suppose that, maybe, if you learned a few other skills it would let you branch out further.”

“...look, I've had a lot going on alright? Besides it takes time to learn that stuff, and where am I going to find a teacher for...whatever I’d need to learn for that?”

She held a hand gesturing for him to wait then walked out and down the hall before shouting.

“Can someone track down Benny and send him here? Tell him it’s sort of urgent.”

After a minute she came back in.

“Right, shouldn’t be long, he usually doesn’t travel far when we’re- ah here he is now.”

As a set of heavy foots steps approached, Benny was revealed to be a surly looking dwarf, dressed a thick leather robe caked in mud and dirt. Slung over one shoulder was a large pick, with fine symbols engraved over the surface and a small emerald set into the hilt. He was also clean shaven, which made him stand out somewhat from the average dwarven player, but he still had the same deep set eyes that were currently settled on Jicker.

“Athena, you said you had something urgent?” he said in a gruff voice.

“I do indeed. Jicker, this is Benny, better known these days as Rock Licker. He’s one of the better earth mages in the guild, and the geologist in charge of all of our mining operations and interests. Benny, this is Jicker, who you’ve probably heard a few things about, and who I need you to teach geology to in the next few hours.”

Both Benny and Jicker stared at her for a moment before complaining.

“-Brought me here to set up trade agreements not to-”

“-Learn an entire science in a few hours in case it might-”

She held up and, silencing the two of them.

“I’m not asking, just try and get it done. This could help us win a few medals for the tally so I want it prioritized. I'm not expecting you to make him an expert, just the basics will do, and besides, from what I've been told, you’ve managed to close enough deals already. Anymore and we’ll be hard pressed to meet our obligations.”

After grumbling for a minute, the dwarf dropped his pick by the door and took the chalk from Athena.

“Fine, but I’m still getting paid for this.” He said to Athena before turning back to Jicker. “What do you know about geology?”

“I know a bit actually, I learned some as a previous character, so I can remember...some?”

“Hrmm, maybe we can actually do this then. Okay let start with the basics then, there a four types of rocks in Genesis, being sedimentary, metamorphic, igneous and arcane...”

“...Factors are heat and pressure, plus surrounding minerals...”

“...Often mixed in deposits of copper...”

“...Coal seams deep underground need ventilation, otherwise you risk...”

The lecture lasted all day, as he scribbled notes and tried to get things clear in his head. As maser he’d learned all of this before, but the game held a lot of the memories and information for you, instead of making you actually learn and remember it all yourself. Though as he went over it all again and again it slowly came back to him, until late in the evening when he received a notification.

Ding!

You have learned the lessons of a master.

You have unlocked the Geology skill!

Current level: 1

Gives you a greater understanding of minerals, allowing higher grade earthen materials to be detected, mined and processed.

Synergy - Adaptation can now be used to include inorganic and geological substances in creatures. Note: Creatures may only include up to 15% of such materials, improve your abilities to raise this limit.

“And that’s it!” Jicker exclaimed as he read it, dropping his pencil and stretching, cutting Benny off mid sentence.

“You’ve learned it then?” He said, not bothered by the interruption.

“Geology level 1, as well as the synergy Athena was hoping for. I guess I owe her for that one.”

The dwarf snorted. “You’ll end up owing her a lot more than one by the time she’d done with you. But if we’re done here, I'm going to log out for a while. If you see her before me, let Athena know I did my job and I’ll expect it to be accounted for in my rewards for our trip here.”

As Benny left, Jicker turned back to the materials he had on hand, and tried to see what he could do with the new effects. Yet upon trying to get it to work, the fields required were greyed out, only the previous options available to him.

“It just said I could do this, the options are right there, why isn’t this working?!” He exclaimed in frustration.

“You had some success then.” Athena said as when wandered in with a yawn.

“I got the skill, oh and Benny said to tell-”

“Yeah I saw him outside before he left for bed, which I’m about to do myself. So what exactly is the problem?”

He swung the branch in his hand around. “The skill should be letting me put some metal or stone into this, but it’s not working properly.”

She took the branch from him and examined it.

“In my experience,” she began as she looked between it and him. “When a skill isn’t working, it’s not the abilities fault, but the user's.”

“I’ve done this a bunch of times, I know what I'm doing.” He said, offended.

“So how does it work normally?”

He thought about it. “I make contact with the target, activate it and use the system to make the changes. Simple.”

“And where does it get the materials for the change?”

“From the thing itself and from my mana... I guess?”

“So maybe it needs more than that, maybe it needs an example of the material you want?”

He looked at her. “It never has before.”

“Look, It’s late and I'm your senior in the guild, so just humour me and try it okay?” she said crossing her arms.

“Fine,” he said, grabbing a lump of stone off the floor and shoving it against the branch as he triggered adaptation. “But I'm telling you that’s not how it-”

Ding!

You have learned a new way to use adaptation.

You have unlocked Symbiosis

By using adaptation on multiple separate entities or materials, you can transfer the properties of one to the other, linking them together.

Note: Creatures can only gain the traits of those equal to or below their own grade.

A moment of silence passed as Jicker worked, and before long he was sitting quietly, holding a branch that had, growing from the end, a number of stone leaves.

“...well I guess I owe you an apolo-” he began before being cut off.

“God dammit, that hurts!” Athena cried from where she’d been; now sitting on the floor against the wall.

“Athena, are you alright?” he asked, concerned as to what could have happened.

“How in the bloody hells do you handle all of that?” she said, clutching her head. “I picked up your thoughts when you tried to get it to work before and it was fine, but when it went off... it was like a tidal wave of data was being dumped into my brain, and I damn near drowned in it.”

“I... don’t know what to say. It seemed like a lot to deal with, especially when I started out. But it’s always been manageable, never painful or dangerous.” He said in shock.

“A person’s mind isn’t supposed to be operating at those speeds. I thought the system was doing all the work, but your brain was reworking that plant at a nearly cellular level. You thought it was normal to be doing that in just a few minutes?”

“What are you talking about? I get pretty deep into it, but nowhere that deep, that’d be impossible like you said.” He exclaimed, confused.

“You’re right, it wasn’t quite there, and it’s only a game after all. I don't think we even have cells if you really think about it. But part of your mind was interacting at the base level of that little stick in your hand, and it moved so much data around it hurt like a truck to pick it up.” She sighed as she rubbed her temples. “So first of all, a new rule: never use that ability around people with telepathy, especially me. Second, I'm going to log off, take some aspirin and go to bed, and thirdly... if you know some people at Masquerade, maybe ask them about this when you get a chance, because it doesn’t seem right.”

“...Understood I guess, but I really don't understand what you mean. Still, now that this is working, I'm going to try a few designs and see what I can come up with for the match...tomorrow, lord where does the time go? Anyway, sorry again for... whatever happened.”

Athena nodded as she gingerly got to her feet and dusted herself off before logging out, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Staring at the branch he still held, his eyes unfocused as he looked through it, wondering about what she’d said. That his thoughts shouldn’t be working like that, that it shouldn’t be possible, that it could even be dangerous. But he’d seen reports of other people who’d used the class, and they hadn’t mentioned anything, perhaps it was a bug? Some kind of broken interaction between two rare class features?

He sighed. Another thing to speak with Sarah about, another thing he probably wouldn't get a straight answer about. Shaking his head, he decided to push those thoughts away for the time being, with all the other things he blocked out while trying to get things done, and started investigating what he had to work with.

Looking through his resources, he slowly hauled what was left of a rotten tree stump to his room, and grabbed a spare dagger from the guilds stash as an afterthought. Sticking the blade into the side of the stump and looking inside the rotted hollow, he was delighted to see a variety of insect life had been living inside at the time they’d picked it up. Pushing it into the centre of the room he grabbed a cushion to sit on and prepared to get to work.

But right before he activated the adaptation, the window in the room shattered, a foot sticking through the hole wearing an elegantly heel shoe. Getting up and hurrying to the window, he got there just in time to see a woman race around the corner, a guard from the guild in hot pursuit. Another member burst through the door, a glowing staff in hand.

“Everything ok in here? Any intruders?” they asked, quickly scanning the room.

Jicker shook his head. “Just a swashbuckler, looks like they slipped and hit the window.”

The man swore, spitting on the floor. “Damn pests, I can’t believe they got past us in the first place. Oh, um... sorry for spitting.”

Jicker chuckled. “All good, with glass everywhere, the rooms pretty much a write off anyway, though it’ll still do for work. Are there any other bedrooms left?”

“I’ll ask someone about it, if not we can try and get this one cleaned up. Give a shout if anything else happens.”

Carefully shaking the glass fragments off his cushion, he sat back down, and activated the ability, bombarded as usual by the various menus and charts. He was happy to see that the knife’s properties had been included, and in a pleasant surprise, so had some of the glass. In fact there were dozens of other option to include, namely the contents of the stump, but there was apparently a limit to how many could be used at once.

Filtering out what he wanted, and could make use of, he got busy; twisting and reshaping things to suit his needs, and the goals of the events. As he worked, part of him noticed that he didn’t even pay attention to some of the things he was changing, just that if he was going to do this, then that needed to move. He also found that as Symbiosis let him link things together, it could let him change what counted as a single creature, in this case, a swarm.

From the outside, the stump was largely the same, if somewhat larger and sturdier, still no more than a stump, but it was what was on the inside that counts. Hundreds of insects lived within this new hive, feeding off it and ready to defend it from outside threats.

Each of them was based off a dragonfly, their bodies no more than two inches long, black and unassuming. The wings however, were truly a thing of beauty. When stretched out, they had a wingspan just shy of a foot, each wing filled with flexible, stained glass that glinted in the candlelight of the room. Each one was a different colour, covering the entire spectrum, but they all had one thing in common, the edges being made of steel. Strong, sharp and paper thin, each fly effectively carried four razor sharp blades that moved at frightening speed as they flew.

Carefully, he nudged the stump slightly, causing a few dozen to quickly take to the air. The sound of their wings sliding against each other filled the room with the sound of chimes, while the light refracted off them sending vibrant colours over every surface. The flies quickly sped around the room, examining it for possible threats to their hive, but began to settle when they found none. A few had approached him, their bladed wings scant inches from his face, but like his other creations they recognized him on some level and moved past him. Other things hadn’t faired quite so well, with curtains and furniture being shredded, walls being chipped away and the black board sliced to ribbons. Eventually they settled back down and returned to the hive, the room once again becoming quiet and dark.

Disaster almost struck when a loud knock came at the door as the guard came back to investigate the noise.

“Is everything okay in there?” they shouted, causing the hive to buzz ominously again. Jicker carefully hurried to the door, opening it on for chunks to fall away as it moved.

“Everything’s fine,” he whispered. “Just finished making something, but we need this room to be off limits for a while, and make sure there’s no loud noises in this hall for the time being.”

“Sure, we can do that.” They whispered back with a wince. “Someone sleeping in there?”

“Not someone, but something.”

“What is it?”

“You know? I'm not sure yet.” He said thoughtfully.

Ding!

Adaptation has become permanent. Creature remains too similar to existing creatures to become unique, adaptation can be repeated at a 10% chance of permanency

Type: Modified Insect hive. Level: 44

Do you wish to name this creature?