Roughly twenty-two thousand miles above the planet’s surface a geosynchronous satellite noted a bizarre energy signature in the north-eastern portion of the north american continent. The signature was coming from a certain area in Pennsylvania. The satellite noted the anomaly and proceeded to observe the area, taking records and pictures of the site.

Normally, this was where things would have ended, but for once there was an actual human present to man the consoles back in facility that these observations were sent to. A tech saw a strange prompt on his computer and opened it. At first he didn’t know what he was even looking at. Then he felt the bottom fall out of his stomach as he realized he was seeing the scorched, bombed out, remains of a small town.

He queried the satellite that made the report wanting more information on the matter only to find that there was no information on the matter. After a frustrating hour of trying to interface with the satellite he found that as far as the satellite’s records were concerned there had never been an anomaly. Everything had been normal or at least as normal as things got on post-ENE earth.

Confused and more than a little alarmed the tech went to the picture he’d opened an hour prior, only to find that file was gone. Not just erased. Gone. As far as the computer’s registry was concerned the file had never existed.

If the tech were an older tech, more jaded member of the facility staff, he might have simply logged the matter as a low-priority technical incident and called it a day.

This tech was a new hire. Young, bright eyed, and eager to please after managing to get himself brought into the UN’s aeronautics program. The tech filed the issue as a top priority technical incident, alleging the possibility of the UN’s system and the Global Technological alliance’s satellite network, being compromised.

Unfortunately, for the poor tech, this got the man fired and later...eliminated... because it was actually true that both the UN’s facilities and the Global Tech Alliance’s satellite were being infiltrated by several groups from around the globe and beyond. For the sake of the world’s peace that was something that could never come to light.

However the incident report ‘did’ have the intended effect. Drawing the eye of the CS Corp that technically ran the UN aeronautics program and was ultimately in charge of the thousands of satellites that orbited Earth to the strangeness that took place in Pennsylvania and a number of other incidents that would follow.

The ramifications of the CS Corporation becoming aware of something stranger than general strangeness taking place in their world would come later. Right now a crowd gathered within the newly rebuilt “ruins” of the town of Andante.

The crowd was made up of a mixture of camera men, audiovisual technicians, reporters, EMTs, police officers, and other emergency responders. All of them having gathered when a certain pair of players called the league asking for backup because they had a little under seventy unconscious, mentally and physically strained, individuals in their custody.

Technically speaking the league only called the emergency responders. However greed and graft were as ubiquitous as death and taxes so perhaps it was just a given that somebody, whether in the league, or the emergency response dispatchers office, would inform the media that something big was happening.

Now Thomas, Margot, and Monty stood facing a crowd of reporters who surrounded them holding microphones like bandits brandishing weapons.

“Are you the ones who rescued these people?”

“How did you rescued all these people?”

“What happened to these people?”

“Do you have any statements you’d like to make to the families for those you rescued?”

“How about a statement for the families of those you failed to rescue?”

“What are your names?”

That last question was a question that the group of three could finally handle. Monty quietly nudged the two youths in front of him forwards. He’d known that the reporters were coming and had taken the time to ask his companions whether they were willing to reveal their faces or not.

Margot didn’t want to reveal her face, especially since she was technically still in hiding to avoid a confrontation with the Wallaces. Thomas also hadn’t wanted to reveal his face because a prior bad experience had taught him exactly how bad a time being trapped in the midst of a media frenzy could be.

Thus Margot wore her mantle, the cowl of the mantle creating an impermeable shadow that made it impossible to see her features.

As for Thomas, Monty was able to whip up a domino mask that could obscure, hide, and erase all memory and recordings of the wearer’s features.

The mask was another gift for the boy from the aeon, who now saw the trajectory of the boy’s life going in an interesting direction after this particular incident.

Monty hid his face as well, but only because he’d have felt left out to be the only one not doing so.

“I-...I’m Strange Mage.” said Margot. Managing to wow both herself and Monty when she managed to actually answer the question instead of simply hiding behind Monty’s back as her instincts were screaming she should.

“Greetings all, I go by Uncanny Gentleman.” said Monty.

“I’m Photogenic Swordsman.” said Thomas.

The names Monty and Margot had used were their player handles. The gamification of the players league was complete and even if that wasn’t the case it simply made sense that certain players who didn’t want to become public personas be allowed to use workplace pseudonyms.

As for the name Thomas gave, that was just something he’d thought up on the spot. He’d be quite surprised, and dismayed, when he later found out that the name stuck.

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The job in Andante turned out to be an even bigger deal than I’d expected it to be. Though the investigation we’d been assigned was only supposed to pay $10,000 or so, the media coverage, and the return of all the victims of the chorobasnu, was enough that the Players League gave us a $50,000 bonus. A sum that might seem tight-fisted considering what we’d done but considering that the corporation didn’t technically have to pay us extra at all, I suppose the extra $50K is plenty to celebrate.

If that wasn’t enough, when I sold the chorobasnu cores to the league each one was purchased for around $300.

After everything was said and done, We’d killed over 1350 chorobasnu in the town of Andante, including the ones that were protecting the conservatory and the one’s the ustachorobasnu released during the main fight. I’d made damn sure to collect each core that fell.

I ended up keeping the core of the ustachorobasnu as well as the piano which served as the core for the spirit of the “barrier maiden” that had so valiantly fought the creatures trespass into our world. The spirit deserved better than to be reduced to just another subject locked up in the CS Corporations vaults. I also kept 200 of the lesser chorobasnu cores.

Meaning in total we made over $345,000 just from selling the loot we’d collected during the job. Added to the $60K we’d been paid for the job itself and that became a net of $405,000 dollars.

In superhuman dollars, or mage dollars, it wasn’t really that great a sum of wealth, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at either.

Margot suggested we send some to young Thomas, because he’d been of great help to us, and as a student that would be graduating from highschool soon, he’d need the money, especially if he intended to go to college. So we sent $105000 to the lad.

Besides the monetary compensation from the league, the job also gave us a nice bump to our levels. All players league players had levels that were a sort of formal, informal, rating on their overall effectiveness and reliability. Having a higher level meant having more jobs available to you, and going from the first level to the fifth level as we had would certainly open some interesting doors for us.

I thought things were going well and was already starting to plan what we’d do after we were done with our next period of downtime. Then Margot told me that she needed to go see her mother about something and that she didn’t want me to come with her, because she wanted to use the time it’d take to take the trip the normal way to think about some things.

Thus in the same span of twenty-four hours my mood went from feeling on top of the world to being down in the gutter.

Naturally, I sent Margot my well wishes and reminded her that all she needed to do was say my name aloud if wanted to call me. I didn’t want to be some creepy, possessive, evil spirit, stalker-type.

All the same, I still couldn’t help feeling a little bummed that the one human I actually cared about in the whole wide world was going to be away for more than a month.