“I think I’ll get a dragon for my next pet. Mr. Thing could use a buddy.” Jr said wistfully

Omega’s plans were coming along beautifully. Headmaster Omega, a new copy made to run the almost complete school, watched a crane lift most of the weight of a steel beam as workers riding worker ants guided the huge beam into place.

“You know that’s not what I meant!” Tiffany said in a huff “we already have pets, you have the strongest one, I have two, Jaw has his special ant, Wang has an awesome steam doggo” Omega could sense her gesture at Billy even though she was certainly not paying attention to the kids third argument about fair pet distribution today. Tiffany went on with her point “Billy has no pets or guardian beasts yet, he needs one before you get a dragon, it’s only fair” Omega also ignored Tiffany’s ‘princess that just won an argument’ pose.

The workers used pre-enchanted rods to cause the beam to fuse seamlessly with another metal beam. They worked with supreme efficiency creating the skeleton of a huge Bee Hive shaped structure. They were building in the recently reconquered hex of the city’s slums. It would eventually be a huge community housing hive, which would eventually be able to house up to half the poor population of the Hive slums. They would live in better, cleaner, safer homes that take way less space, opening up more areas for redevelopment.

Workers were being given items that gave them 5 Ranks in the C Rank Building skill while worn, this made them skilled construction workers, architects, electricians, carpenters or any other job associated with a building-related D ranked skill as long as they wore them. These skill items had similar ones for any other broad C Rank skill she borrowed from those infected with her nanites.

This allowed Omega to give any unemployed worker any basic job without forcing them to take skills they may not want in the long run. As unwanted skill ranks might mess up their eventual build. This also meant workers could try a number of related jobs until they found one that suited them. If not, they could try a new skill granting item and a different host of other related professions, until they found a job they liked doing.

Billy laughed at Tiffany, “you really can’t talk, you have more than 2 pets, I’m pretty sure all the ex-zombie monsters that live in your weird misty place would happily jump at your command, so you have more than two pets, more like 50.” Tiffany started to look embarrassed before starting to perk up, but Billy cut her off “No, I still don’t want one of your monsters, I want to catch or tame my own monster friends, or else it just doesn’t count”

Tiffany looked sad but understanding, nodding slightly at her brother’s words.

Omega continued pretending to ignore the kids’ conversation, but she sent off a mental message to make sure that a few more of the odd “animals” that Omega Scout had been keeping an eye on would potentially cross their path today.

A pale young girl wearing the illusion of a frail old lady strode slowly but confidently up to Omega, the last person she had been waiting on. “You must be Grandmaster Loretta of the Adventurers Guild and head of the local retired adventurer’s community. I have been hoping to speak with you for several weeks now. Welcome to your job interview. Any questions before we start?”

“Girly I don’t have time for your shenanigans. I never said anything about potentially taking new jobs, heck I’m only still a grandmaster because they know I’ll always help the younguns, I should be enjoying my retirement. But no, I have to come yammer on with some young slumlord who thinks they're important because they gave the local guild a political black eye.” She huffed, finished with her tirade. Most of the sting of the rant taken out by the fact that Omega could hear the real little girl’s voice and the illusory gruff old lady’s voice at the same time.

“‘Always help the younguns’, yep that is exactly why I’m interviewing you to be the Head Teacher of my new school, and since there was no actual question in that adorable speech I’ll assume we can move on to the interview. In fact, it’s a group interview with some of the kids, and potential faculty of other departments. You are making us late, come along.” Headmaster Omega began to climb a staircase on the side of the large carriage-double decker bus hybrid “TIME TO GO KIDS” Omega hollered from the top of the stairs

She led the Dazed guild grandmaster to the other adults on the open top deck of the bus. The woman was clearly waffling over seeing where this went or storming off in an indignant huff. Then she caught sight of Jr carrying Mr. Thing and Tiffany and seemed to calm down and gain a small interested gleam to her true child self’s eyes. Omega carefully watched both of the Guild representatives' faces using a sensor suite hidden in the hair on the back of her head. The same sensor suite she had just finished calibrating by pretending to ignore a child’s conversation behind her. A good headmaster needed excellent senses in the back of her head.

She suppressed an instinctive evil grin, wary of being too cliche. She worried about eventually having the system re-cast her as a villain. Truly the greatest danger of the system she had found so far. Her system integration skill had reached a high enough level from constant use on behalf of all her infected hosts, that she had found an additional hidden deeper layer of data for each person. Deeper even then the genetics and inherent values hidden stats that greatly influenced every other stat. Their Story Tropes.

These seemed to act as guides for how stories, or specific parts of a person's life story, should go. She had been concerned to find several indicating that she was the protagonist. However, she found similar tags on important people, adventurers, even some orphans not part of her Aetherial rebirth catastrophe. However, she was the only local with the Ruler Protagonist tag specifically, she also had several family tags like Almighty Mom and Action Mom, and there is another family one called Badass family that was pending, so that must mean that she was close to qualifying, but she had no additional information. Did she need a husband, a wife, or maybe a romantic interest? Or do each one of the kids she adopted need to reach a certain minimum threshold of strength? Both, or neither? A frustratingly unhelpful subsystem.

Checking old logs for the Story Tropes was even more disconcerting, for example, Tiffany now had tropes like Pretty Princess Powerhouse with others like; Princess Protagonist and Lancer in the pending Tropes, but when she almost changed into a zombie bio-weapon her pending tropes were Biological Weapons Solve Everything and Bioweapon Beast. Now without context, she didn’t really know what any of that meant, but it told her that she had changed the type of story Tiffany’s life would have been drastically.

The worst were some of the earliest logs; like when she awoke with no chance of truly recovering her memories, in a mostly alien world she had gained the Protagonist Without a Past trope. When the nanite swarm almost ate her, her pending tropes were Villian and Generic Doomsday Villain and Complete Monster. But she’d somehow maintained her mind and become something greater; The Ace and Game-Breaker were just a few of the tropes she’d gained that day.

Mary Sue had been pending but had faded. For some reason, she thought that would have been almost as bad as the Complete Monster trope, but she had no idea as to why yet.

She decided to peak at the top 5 on the vampire guild master little girl she was about to interview: Retired Badass*, Never Mess with Granny*, Really 700 Years Old, Not Growing Up Sucks, Undead Child. Why did the first 2 have stars, are they maybe only included with her illusion, or maybe they go with the whole fake life up to retirement she has supposedly lived as a part of the guild.

Why are there no descriptions?!

She mentally shook off thoughts of the strange data points.

Once they reached the top deck, she signalled the giant ant team pulling the bus to move out. A wind barrier created a cool quiet area on the top of the bus giving the feel of a cool gentle breeze. The Barrier also greatly lessened the sounds of the passing city and the clacking of ant legs to allow for pleasant conversational volumes.

She Introduced the curious being with the face of a little girl, but who hid behind the mask of an old woman to the various craftspeople, and gangsters already waiting on the top deck. The absent-minded shoemaker from the arena was there with his small Orc team mate. A bunch of the other craftspeople from the upper areas of the hive were also here. most were too afraid to turn down someone making as many waves as the Omegas were. The gangsters were all leaders of small gangs that mostly just tried to help their members survive the predation of the big 5 gangs of the Hive slums.

After Grandmaster Loretta had taken a seat with a good view over the side of the ant bus, Omega began the basics of her pitch

“As many of you know, I am building a public school just outside the hive district, I need teachers. I am hoping that when Grandmaster Loretta takes the job of headteacher she will help me find the appropriate adventuring teachers. So that leaves you folks as my potential crafting teachers.” Omega said, gesturing briefly to the magic Cobbler and his peers.

Omega went on; “I have scavenger profession teaching covered already, and many of the Aetherials are training themselves to become teachers for less common professions in the area. So I need you guys” gesturing to the Confused gang leaders. “To help me pick teachers of the local rogue classes. More important however will be your job of providing stability in the criminal element of the city”

A gang leader in a faded yellow and black striped shirt raised his hand and tentatively asked “yeah, but how? Not exactly like my Hive Hornets are gonna go tell the Black Dragon’s to behave.” the other gangsters laughed in nervous agreement with the statement, clearly horrified at very the idea.

Omega smiled, shape-shifting her face just slightly to exaggerate the wicked grin. “Oh you misunderstand, The Black Dragons and the other “big bad” gangs, deal in child-snatching, slaves, non-consensual prostitution, and a myriad of other pretty unforgivable crap. So they are having a very different interview with my other-selves and many of my babysitters about the new opportunities to Alpha test a hellish prison dimension for re-educating souls. A few of my dungeon friends and I are working on it as a gift for one of my daughters.” she sighed wistfully at the thought of the challenging project.

Her new smile was back to being inviting and pleasant “No no, I want you guys occasionally committing petty crimes on people who have volunteered to be potential “victims”. We need crimes that the kids can foil, without real risk. Bad Guys with cute pet monsters that their cute pet monsters can battle under controlled conditions. Should also help your people grow safely as well, even if you're meant to be fairly easily defeated.

I can likely revive anyone who dies in such a role, but most of the kids will be learning a non-lethal takedown preference. The revival policy is more in case of unrelated adventurers killing you to stop a fake-ish crime. Or if members of approved groups get killed in their other duties of preventing unauthorized crime, or subduing unauthorized gangs that eventually pop up.”

She stroked her chin “Those of you or your people who enjoy these roles may find themselves getting temporarily cast as characters in dungeon plot lines, or as dungeon bosses. No worries, we can let you use dungeon avatars so you can be a goblin, zombie, dragon, whatever the dungeon in question needs. You can level up these other avatars, but also earn items or XP for your real selves as well if you do well.

You would be surprised how much negotiating power my plans of providing quest actors to help teach the kids in dungeons provided me when I was trying to get the local ones to team up with me. It’s way cheaper for them to just provide the body if I provide the temporary mind and soul to pilot the body. We already have some ghosts and members of the babysitters club doing that job, but I hope dungeon acting becomes popular enough to catch on in a bunch of groups”

Another gang Leader in Green looked like he only understood maybe half of her monologue, but spoke up anyway. “Won't people suspect us if you kill all the big gangs while we're out here with you”

“I mean I am not REALLY killing them. But... I guess if you're trapped in a personal hell the distinction is minimal” She shrugged “and yeah, I suppose I did make sure you had many more reasons to agree then to try something silly like jump off the bus or try and distance yourself from me afterwards.”

They all shuddered at her mischievous grin.