"Left side, many whelps. Handle it!" Cayden shouted with a combination of frustration and resigned bemusement as he absorbed the impact of another of Mecha Dragon's swiping robotic claws on his upraised shield. He'd known from the very beginning that nothing good could come from a pickup group with two random players, or pubbies, as they were known in a traditional MMO. But he'd hoped against hope that maybe, just maybe, he could trust them to follow simple instructions.

Five minutes into the tenth-floor boss fight, he'd be happy if he could just avoid getting them all killed.

It reminded him of the allegory of the Pubstove:

A hot stove sits in the corner, bearing a brass plate with the brand name “Pubbies” riveted into its frame. Having touched the stove in the past and found it to be hot enough to burn your hand, and having witnesses others touching this stove in the past and also burning their hands, how do you choose to proceed?

Cayden had chosen to slam his face into it.

Not that he'd had too much of a choice. Celia, Shifty and himself had been powering their way through floor after floor in the aftermath of the incident with Immolatus. Their potent combination of classes had made short work of even level quests and monsters, but as a three-man group, they'd been forced to avoid any content, such as dungeons, that had been designed with a full five-man party in mind. Unfortunately, that content included floor bosses.

He'd accounted for them in his original routing for the game, of course. A bookmarked website kept track of which floor bosses were alive or dead on any given day and provided an editable tracking sheet so that groups could avoid squabbling over who had 'next' on any given boss. Ideally, this meant that all Cayden had to do was keep an eye on the list, wait for another group to defeat the boss, then travel through to the next floor before it could respawn.

That was the idea anyway.

The strategy had worked without a hitch for the first nine floors, but a combination of bad timing and bad luck had stymied their efforts on the tenth. A group had been scheduled to fight the boss three days after their arrival, the perfect amount of time for Cayden and company to grind their skills, levels, and quests before progressing to the next floor. Unfortunately, that group had failed in the attempt. Worse yet, for Cayden anyways, was the complete emptiness of the upcoming schedule. They could wait two weeks for a group to clear the boss, or they could do it themselves.

It wasn't a choice. None of them could stomach the idea of sitting around for two weeks waiting for some other group to maybe get it right. Which meant they needed two more party members. Which meant they needed pubbies.

Which gave them the Banes.

"Oh for... Personal Skill Use: Taunt!" Cayden shouted, following his command with a roar that was as much irritation as battle-cry. Thankfully, the game couldn't tell the difference, and the skill went off without a hitch, a half dozen cat-sized dragon-whelps giving up their pursuit of Lightbane and Darkbane in favor of rushing Cayden.

The two players continued to sprint away at full speed, somehow completely oblivious to the fact that their pursuers had found a new target. Cayden had no doubt that the twin brothers had thought that moniker bane made for a cool pseudonym, but he wondered just how many players now thought of it as a curse. They certainly felt like the bane of his existence, at the moment.

"Uh, a little help?" He shouted as he shifted a step back and to the side. It was a vain attempt to get both the whelps and their adult sibling into his forward arc where he could hope to block their attacks; an effort made all the harder by Grasp the World locking him within a small area.

"On it!" Shifty shouted from the other side of the blue and silver dragon. It was difficult to hear what he said next over the sudden roar of the dragon as the creature lashed out its tail in his direction, but the effect was visible as two of the whelps fell away from the onrushing back. Their feet were pinned to the floor as they thrashed and gave mewling roars of their own.

"...Out of time!" Celia finished. In the confusion of the battle, he hadn't even heard her start casting, but he wondered why he had ever doubted her help. Another two of the whelps suddenly vanished without fanfare save for a comical pop of air. It was Celia's crowd control spell, an ability that sent regular enemies up to thirty seconds into the future.

He'd still have to deal with all six eventually, but fighting them two at a time instead of six at once was a hell of a lot more manageable.

"Skill Use: Shield Bash," Cayden yelled a moment after blocking MEKA's most recent lunge for his throat. The flat of his shield struck the metallic beast a solid blow just below the red visor that passed for its eyes. The force of the attack sent the monster stumbling away, its head shaking this way and that as it struggled to throw off the stun effect, Cayden had inflicted.

The momentary reprieve gave Cayden all the time he needed to deal with the remaining to whelps. By themselves, the small winged creatures were only complicated due to the erratic nature of their attack. The first pounced him, managing to find purchase on one shoulder but the other found only the tip of his sword, piercing its frame in the attempt to attack him. It let out a squeal of shock and pain, then went silent as Cayden flicked his blade and finished bisecting the small creature.

The one on his shoulder didn't go so easily. The black and white lizard pecked, scratched and bit Cayden, staying one step away from the young man's grasping hand as it skittered from shoulder to shoulder, then settled in the middle of his back, raking claws over and over against his armor.

Truebane's Holy Smite hits you for 212 Holy. [Dark Resist Impaired]

“Really?!” Cayden cried incredulously. The whelp on his back had taken similar damage from the Lightcaster's spell, but Cayden couldn't help but think there must have been some way to do it that didn't involve scorching him with divine power.

“S-sorry.” The man replied awkwardly. Both brothers were nineteen, but neither had the maturity or self-confidence to match their age.

“Just deal with the whelps!” Cayden swung back into action, turning on the Mecha Dragon and ducking behind his shield just as a ray of blue fire shot from its mechanical beak. “We've got this thing!”

In truth, Cayden was beginning to wonder if the brothers had done more harm than good. They'd contributed significantly to DPS on the boss, but their inability to follow instructions and stop throwing damage over time spells had triggered its second phase before Celia had managed to heal Cayden back to full health. Their just to stand in one place had been what had inundated the party with whelps, and considering how deep he was into the yellow half of his HP bar, Cayden wondered if their stupidity would be the death of him yet.

Thankfully, the two brothers proved at least competent at the one thing he'd brought them along for, dealing damage. Alternating dark and holy spells provided the Banes with a steady source of damage even if they did sometimes stumble over their words or incantations. The mixture of a lightcaster and a nightbringer made for a powerful combination, which had been part of why Cayden had picked the pair in the first part. At the time he'd thought they were smart for coming up with a good build combination.

Now he was fairly sure that they'd picked it so they could pick cool names.

Either way, the pair of them made short work of the remaining whelps with a somewhat excessive barrage of spells. That left Cayden, Celia and Shifty able to focus on the actual threat, their weapons clanking and shrieking off the chrome surfaces of the bipedal dragon as the beast gave ground before them. MEKA had solid stats, but by now its attacks were becoming predictable. It was a neat little Easter Egg, a mechanical enemy with a robotic attack pattern. Claw, claw, bite. Swipe with the tail, bite, try a breath attack.

They pounded on the dragon, laying strike after strike across its surface until, at last, it roared in final defiance. Cayden and his comrades backed off from the creature, their weapons lowered, but the Banes continued to attack, launching spell after spell at the dragon as it fell back towards the silver and blue walls of the compound.

"It's dead," Cayden said with a roll of his eyes.

“Doesn't look dead.” The twins replied in unison.

"Did you not even...?" Cayden started, then a smirk caught the corner of his lips, a similar smile coming to the faces of Celia and Shifty as they made the same realization. The trio began to put distance between themselves and the dragon, slinking back to the edges of the room even as the brothers advanced on the dragon, throwing spell after spell.

"Did we not what?" Asked Darkbane, before a rumble of laughter echoed from the towering dragon. It's metallic head lowered once again; it's mouth opening with blue fire bubbling inside. But instead of the beams that it had thrown their way time after time, a small sprite of blue-white flame emerged, floating in slow, erratic patterns just above the dragon's mouth.

Neither brother knew what to make of it. But Cayden did. He stood on the sidelines, grinning and watching as the flame wiggled this way and that. It turned slowly, until it, at last, revealed a face inside the flame, a comical looking visage consisting of a pair of black flames for eyes, and an equally ridiculous black flame smile.

The flame's expression didn't change, but it evidently caught sight of the ones who had defeated the dragon. It rushed towards them, and the brothers attempted to flee, albeit into one another. Their awkward crash sent them sprawling to the ground as the flame descended upon the, striking the top brother in the pile, Truebane, in the center of his back.

"Gah!" The man cried, though it was more from surprise than pain. A second more and he was back on his feet, eyes twisting this way and that as he sought out the flame. The fire was gone, but in its place, there were new smiles, Cayden, Celia, and Shifty all grinning ear to ear.

His brother, on the other hand, was not grinning. “Ethan! Your face?”

“What? What about my face?” The panic in Truebane's voice was as palpable as the shock on his brothers. “What happened!”

“You're all... scaly.”

It was too much. Cayden burst out laughing, followed soon by Shifty. Celia, to her credit, lasted the longest, doing her best to put on a mask of sympathy that slipped only as she watched Truebane run fingers along the green scales that had sprouted all across his skin.

“What the hell!” Truebane shouted, whirling on Cayden. “You knew about this?!”

"So would you, if you'd bothered to read the prep work Celia gave you," Cayden said through barely controlled laughter.

“You think this is funny?” This time it was Darkbane venting his anger, the dark haired young man on the verge of violence.

"A little, yeah," Cayden admitted. Unperturbed by the vitriol coming from Darkbane, he gestured to the man's reptilian twin. "Check your debuffs."

There was a short pause as the young man navigated through menus on a pair of antiquated AR glasses. Then he nodded grimly. "The Dragon's Curse. It's okay Erick; it is temporary and cosmetic. A couple of hours and I'll be back to normal."

“Which, again, you'd have known if you had spent five minutes reading.” Celia chimed in irritably. “Or if you'd played any classic games at all.”

“Hey, we skimmed it for the important parts, okay?” Truebane frowned, unnerved by the sudden amount of hiss in his words.

Shifty was not amused. "You skimmed it? Did you consider scanning the part about avoiding the whelp caves when MEKA knocks down the far wall?"

“Everyone is alive, what do you care?” Darkbane shot back.

“No thanks to y-”

"Shifty..." Cayden said the name softly but firmly. Outside of shot calling in combat, he never gave orders to their party. The mutual respect was part of what made their dynamic work so well, but from time to time Cayden had to put his foot down, even if it was awkward to chide a man twice his age. "We made it through, which is what matters. If they want to get themselves killed going forward, that is their business. Let's check the loot and get going.”

The brothers continued to protest, eager to continue the argument. To his credit, however, Shifty turned away from the pair in disgust, following Cayden to the fallen, sparking corpse of the Mecha Dragon.

“Why hasn't it despawned?” Celia asked.

Cayden shrugged. "Floor bosses all die in different ways. Some will turn to ash after a while, others, like this guy just sort of lay here until reset. Seems like its just rule of cool from the developer.”

“Okay. But... where is the drop then?” The blonde persisted, creeping up on the destroyed machine just a few steps behind Cayden.

"Chest cavity." He replied, casting a slightly annoyed glance back over his shoulder. It made sense for the party healer to spend most of her time behind the tank, but over the last week, it had started to irk him just how often she spent peeking just over his shoulder. "Now who didn't read up on the details."

"I've got it pinned if it mattered." Celia stuck out her tongue, the undignified act making the sixteen-year-old Chronomagi seem even more her age.

"I am certain," Cayden replied dubiously as he clamored up onto MEKA's fallen frame. It felt weird to stand on the fallen robot, in large part because this wasn't the first time he'd beaten it.

When he was seven, his mom had brought out an old cardboard box containing a host of dusty electronics. A Super Nintendo, an original PlayStation, and her favorite, the Sega Master System her mother had bought her as a child. His mom had insisted he try out some of those old classics, and the time spent rampaging through games like Metroid, Zillion, Kung Fu and, ironically, even Rampage, were among his fondest childhood memories.

One game that had always stuck with him, however, was The Dragon's Trap, an old Sega adventure game that began with a fight against the very dragon upon which he was now standing.

To say the experience was surreal was an understatement.

Cayden didn't understand how anyone could think the developer was anything other than human. Who else could mimic gamer culture in so many ways? Who else would be crazy enough to use reality warping power to make the tower in the first place? For Cayden, the question was never if he was human, just what on earth he was thinking.

“What on earth are you thinking?”

“Huh?” Cayden jumped, startled out of his musings by Celia's playful tones.

“You're just staring at the thing. It's creepy.”

"You're creepy." He shot back ineffectually before clamoring over the metal husk of the defeated dragon.

MEKA's chest cavity was easily accessed, the two plates over its heart having loosened during its death throes. They pulled apart easily, revealing a mass of wires, circuitry, heat sinks and other technical components. In the center, shielded behind a second protective barrier, he found the crystal, housed within a protective cowling of orange and gray metal.

"This loot will light our darkest hour," Cayden said, rolling his eyes. The phrase had appeared on his AR glasses the moment he'd removed the assembly from its housing. Only once the words were spoken could he pull on either end of the casing, drawing it apart as the crystal began to shine with an incredible light that was dimmed only by the sudden appearance of an item window on his display.

WonderPlate (Rare)

And now... Proceed with your adventurous undertaking.

Defense: 250

Required Level: 20

Required Strength: 24

Durability: 30/30

Bonus Resist Damage 10 (All Except Holy)

Immunity to all Polymorph or Petrification attacks. (Not Again!)

Special: Impeccable shininess.

Everyone else was similarly looking at their AR displays or, in Shifty's Case, their screens when Cayden looked up. Owing to the two pubbies in the group, Cayden had decided to set the loot system for the boss encounter as personal. This reduced the overall amount of loot the boss would drop, but guaranteed that each party member had a chance to receive at least one piece of loot tailored to their particular build.

Considering all difficulty the Banes had put them through, it seemed prudent.

Shifty was as hard to read as ever, but whatever she got, Celia was overjoyed. The petite girl was hopping foot to foot, her hands balled into fists as she shimmied this way and that. Undignified, but considering Cayden had done the same thing on more than one occasion he wasn't about to point fingers.

"So what's next?” Truebane asked, his lizard tongue struggling with each and every syllable.

"Next?" Cayden asked with an upraised eyebrow. He walked to the edge of MEKA, hopped to the ground and snapped his fingers to gain access to his full menu. A few seconds of silence followed, then the face of each brother tightened as a message appeared on their display.

Cayden has kicked you from the Party.

“Does that sum it up enough for you?” Cayden asked with a sickeningly sweet grin. “In case you missed it on the rundown you didn't read, the stairs are right there. They lead directly into the middle of Terebeth, the floor capital, so you can't even accuse me of putting you at risk getting to town. Have a good night boys.”

The two men exchanged looks, an unspoken communication passing between them before a different sort of non-verbal message was passed in Cayden's direction. He was only too happy to return it, keeping his hand extended in their direction long after they'd turned their backs on him and headed for the stairs.

It was only once they were finally out of earshot that Celia's soft giggle broke the tension in the room. "What a bunch of..." She started, intending to drop a particularly unpleasant name before she shook her head an thought better of it. "I thought they'd never leave."

"You're telling me," Cayden remarked dryly. He began to intone a mixture of English and Runic words, canceling the series of buff spells he had placed on his person to diminish his MP to the point that the twins wouldn't have any questions about why the tank had such high MP. At the same time, he toggled an option in his menu, removing the blocks that he'd put in place, blocks that concealed his Runemagi class levels and abilities.

“Any runes worth having?” Shifty remarked, making his way alongside the pair with a whetstone in one hand and one of his throwing knives in the other.

"Let me check. Skill Use: Find Rune." Cayden said. His AR display dimmed, all his regular pinned information and statistics falling away to provide no distraction as he turned and surveyed the room. Find Rune was the level eight power from Runemagi and perhaps the most useful of the bunch. It highlighted any and all runes within roughly two hundred and fifty feet of him on his display, even through walls or other obstacles. It was useful, of course, for expanding his vocabulary, but it had proven equally helpful in finding a couple of totally undiscovered secret rooms during the course of their adventures.

"Nothing." He said, at last, disabling the skill. He hadn't expected to find much. The walls of the floor ten dungeon looked like blue painted silicon boards, covered in all manner of gold traced circuitry, but little else. If there were any runes to be found in the entire complex, they would have been found here. "Can you stop doing that though?"

“Doing what?” Shifty asked.

“Sharpening knives next to me? Sounds like hell and makes me think you're going to stab me.”

“Wouldn't be the first time.” Shifty grinned.

“Which we still need to talk about.” Celia joined Shifty with a smug expression of her own. The two had swapped stories during the weeks he'd been gone, and the fact that Cayden and Shifty had first met in combat had been chief among them. He'd lied to her by omission, and she wasn't likely to let him live that down. “Get right up next to his ear with it.”

“I'd rather you not.” Cayden groaned. “Why are you doing that now anyways, we're done for the day. Going straight to town.”

“Forearmed is forearmed.” Shifty shrugged.

Cayden cocked and eyebrow. “I'm almost entirely certain that isn't how the expression goes.”

"Potato, potato," Shifty replied without the slightest difference in the pronunciation of the two words.

“I am entirely certain that isn't how that goes.” Cayden frowned, looking to Celia for help. “Celia, could you ple-”

His words came up short at the point of one of the girl's upraised fingers. Her other hand was just behind her ear, covering it slightly as listened to some audio being broadcast by her glasses. All three stood in silence as she listened, both Cayden and Shifty watching as blood drained from Celia's face

“What happened?” Shifty was the first to ask as the hand came away from her ear.

"A joint CFC raid went completely wrong. Don't have all the details, but there was apparently some big infighting afterward." Celia replied with a soft frown. "Silver died."