His purple eyes widened as he took in the sight before him.

The conference room itself was a fairly large circular chamber, with dark brown walls that complemented a crisp white ceiling. Off to one side were overhanging windows, presenting the beautiful view of a scenic courtyard. On the opposite end, near the doorway, were intricately drawn maps of what appeared to be Voirsten and several unknown locations.

Scattered around each corner of the room were small tables next to shelves filled with books, papers, and various writing utensils. The main centerpiece, however, was the long rectangular table dominating most of the room. Around it were over a dozen high-quality wooden chairs, three of which were currently occupied by costumed individuals.

Mr. B walked forward with long strides and a practised smile.

“The last member is here folks!” he proclaimed, waving a hand to the entrance. “This fellow over here is Solaris.” He turned back to look at the frozen Dario, gesturing for him to approach. “Come on in and introduce yourself.”

The young man remained still, simply staring at the ladies around the table — two of whom were looking back in similar bewilderment, and the third smiling knowingly. After a moment, Dario released the breath he’d been holding before laughing out loud.

“Haha… oh man,” he chuckled, wiping a fake tear from his eye. “This is just... priceless.” He shook his head in amusement, widely smiling. “Who would’ve thought, huh?”

Mr. B looked confused, glancing back and forth between him and the rest of his team. “Uh, I’m sorry, but… am I missing something here?”

A familiar woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and bright blue eyes leaned forward, her all-white ensemble looking cleaner than the last time he’d seen her. The scar on her right cheek crinkled as she smiled. “No, no, nothing to worry about,” she said. “It’s just that… it so happens that we already know our last member.” She turned to the redhead sitting beside her, a hint of mirth at the corner of her lips. “Don’t we, Amara?”

Next to her was a young woman with red hair styled in a waterfall braid, wearing what appeared to be padded dark clothing with golden lines running along the sides of her suit and across her chest. On her face was a look of befuddlement, but she quickly blinked out of her stupor at the mention of her name.

“Umm, yes… we’ve met. Rather recently actually.” She leaned back in her seat and slowly turned to look at Bright Star with a narrow-eyed stare, arms crossed. “This is... suspiciously convenient,” she said with a frown. “Are you responsible for this? Did you set this up?”

Bright Star shook her head with an amused smile. “Not at all. I actually had nothing to do with this for once. There just aren’t that many new supes popping up right now.” She shrugged, gesturing at Dario. “I only recently heard that he’d be a part of your team. I thought it was a pretty funny coincidence so I didn’t say anything.” She chuckled at the skeptical look on Amara’s face. “The look on your face was well worth it though.”

Amara rolled her eyes and sighed before turning towards the blonde advisor. “Yes, both Bright Star and I know him,” she said. “We only met him once before though, so it’s not like we’re best friends or anything — just enough to be familiar.”

Mr. B blinked in surprise before quickly regaining his composure. “Well then, that makes this whole thing a lot easier. It should help with the initial team cohesion at the very least.” He paused and turned towards Dario. “Your previous interaction with these two were positive, I hope?”

“Well, yeah, but we met on the same day I got my foot blown off, so I may have been… a little out of it.” Dario shrugged. “I don’t know if I was good company for them, but they were to me.”

“You were passable,” Amara chimed in with a quirk of her lips. “Adequate even.”

Before he could reply with something witty, Mr. B stepped forward, clapping his hands.

“Wonderful,” the blonde advisor said with a relieved smile. He then pointed at where the last individual sat. “If you’re familiar with Bright Star and Imperia, then I guess that just leaves Devel-OP over there—”

“Actually, it’s just Devel now,” the fourth member of his team interjected, a wide grin on her face. “I also happen to know this Solaris guy. I’m even the one who handed him his Band.” She chuckled softly, white hair swaying as she shook her head. “Small world, huh?”

Leaning back, with her feet resting on another chair, was the unmistakable figure of Miss Aimee’s daughter. Her long hair was the same as ever — the sides braided and dreaded, fading to black at the tips. This time, however, she wore a dark padded uniform that was white at the shoulders, forearms, outer thighs, and calves. Across her chest sat a bandolier filled with all manner of weapons and strange objects. She sat there looking at him with an amused smile.

“Yeah, small world.” Dario snorted. “What are you even doing here? You’re not a newbie. If anything, I’d have thought that you’d be an Architect, not a Freelancer. Didn’t you want to make innovations or something?”

Deja’s smile quickly dropped and she looked away with a sigh.

“Uh, I was an Architect, but… it hasn’t been going too well.” She shrugged. “I don’t know... I just couldn’t seem to make progress in any of my work. It was pretty rough, to be honest.” She looked up at the ceiling, brows furrowed. “I've already spent a whole year as an Architect accomplishing pretty much nothing. I couldn’t even make sense of what my specialty actually was. I thought it was in weapons and armor at first, but that wasn’t quite right. I tried novelty gadgets and utility items, but that wasn’t right either… I know that my Artificer specialty has to do with something mechanical, but I can’t seem to grasp what it is.” She took a deep calming breath and crossed her arms. “It pissed me off, so I left that gig and I’m here now to find a solution.”

Dario blinked at how vexed she seemed. “How’s joining a Freelancer team going to help you with that?”

Deja shrugged. “This is the only way for me to find out where my talent lies.”

“What?”

Amara leaned forward on the table. “She’s here for the same reason you are, judging by the conversation I had with her earlier,” she said. “She wants to increase her levels, and from the sound of things, it’s Artificer she’s focused on, which is understandable. You can’t really level up just by inventing stuff. You need World Energy for that.”

“Yup,” Deja confirmed. “The only way for me to get more insight is to level up. Maybe then I can understand what my Artificer skill is, and actually make something useful.”

“Wait a sec,” Dario said, looking a bit taken aback. “Are you saying that you get smarter the more levels in Artificer you have?”

“Uh, sort of? It’s not that I get smarter in general, it’s really only my Artificer specialty that improves.” the amber-eyed woman said. “Which is why I’m here, to find out what that specialty is in the first place…”

“Come, sit down you two,” Bright Star chimed in, gesturing for Dario and Mr. B to sit at the table. “It’s annoying having to crane our necks to talk.”

“Sorry,” he said, quickly moving to sit across the three women. Mr. B smiled as he took the seat next to him, seemingly content with staying silent and letting others talk. When Dario got comfortable in his seat, he turned back towards Deja. “Back to what you were saying... if all you wanted was to improve your… ‘Artificing’, why didn’t you just start off as a Freelancer to get levels in the first place?”

“Heh, in hindsight, that definitely would’ve been the better choice,” she said with a self-deprecating smile. “I thought I knew enough to start inventing new shit right away, but as you can see... I was wrong.” She raised her arms and shrugged. “I’m here now though, right? Better late than never.”

Mr. B suddenly clapped his hands with a small smile.

“That’s exactly right, Devel,” he said. “It’s never too late to change your vocation, and we here at the Guild strive to make sure that all of our members excel in their goals.”

Dario could hear Bright Star softly snort at her end of the table.

Mr. B either ignored it or didn’t hear. “Speaking of goals, since you all seem to be acquainted with each other now, I think it’s safe to discuss your collective aim as a team.” He leaned forward and steepled his hands. “Each team is different, and members tend to have their own ambitions. It’s my duty to try and accommodate those needs.” He pointed at Deja. “So far, she has an eye on leveling up, a pretty straightforward objective. What about the rest of you?”

Dario and Amara looked at each other questioningly, wondering who should go first. However, Bright Star beat them to the punch.

“I’m just here to watch over Amara,” she said, patting the redhead on the shoulder. “Just making sure she doesn’t get into too much trouble. Her team is included by proxy, of course.”

Amara rolled her eyes. “And I’m here because… well, I don’t have a particular goal in mind. I just want to go out and have adventures. But... leveling up is fine too.”

Despite the casual way she said it, Dario could tell that she was very earnest about her desire for adventure. It was similar to him, in a way.

“Hmm, okay,” Mr. B said, rubbing his chin. “What about you, Solaris?”

He shrugged in response. “Same as Dej— err, Devel. I want to level up. As soon as possible, preferably.”

The blonde man tapped the table and hummed in thought. Eventually, he let out a pleased sigh. “Hah, this team is the best I’ve had to deal with so far,” he said happily. “You’re already acquainted with each other, and all of your goals seem pretty similar as well. Fantastic.” He leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. “At this point, all you need to do now is decide your team name, and how soon you want to go on a mission.”

Both Dario and Deja spoke simultaneously. “Right away,” they said, quickly looking at each other in surprise.

Mr. B chuckled. “What about you, Imperia? Bright Star? When do you want to go on a mission?”

The older blonde woman shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me.” She pointed at the redhead beside her. “I just follow this one.”

“I don’t mind going on a mission right away,” Amara said. “The sooner the better actually.”

“In that case…” Mr. B nodded as he stood up. He walked over to a nearby desk and picked up several sheets of paper, quickly discarding a few in the pile. He then headed back and spread the papers out on the main table. “Here’s some copies of several open missions from the Freelancer Board. I took out the ones that don’t really involve any World Energy gain, like ones asking for aid with city fires and whatnot. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave too much to choose from.”

Everyone leaned forward to look over the available missions. There were only four sheets of paper, three of which had the letter ‘D’ at the top left corner, and ‘C’ on the last one.

“As a new team, you’re only allowed to take D-rank missions and below, for now at least,” Mr. B explained. “I included that C-rank because it only just barely counts as one, and all of the other qualified teams are busy, so you’d probably be allowed to take it.”

Dario read through the listed missions, trying to discern which one would benefit him the most. Two of the D-rank missions were fairly similar — both were requests for clearing out some Wildland areas near the northern and eastern gates of the city. And by ‘nearby’, they meant only a minute’s worth of walking away from the city walls, simply to lower the local arachnid population and obtain their corpses. The third D-rank was a request for some Peacemakers at a nearby village that was having some pest problems with large cockroaches and rats.

Dario shook his head and quickly dismissed those options, the C-rank being the obvious choice.

“This one,” he said, tapping on the paper with the ‘C’ in clear view. “Definitely this one.”

Mr. B chuckled. “I had a feeling that’d be the case.” He turned to the others in the team. “What about the rest of you?”

Amara hummed in thought. “...yeah, the C-rank seems like the most appealing option. The others look boring.”

“I agree,” Deja said. “The C-rank looks like it’ll give out the most World Energy. I’m totally down for that.”

Dario picked up the C-rank mission paper and glanced over it once more. It was a request for aid from a town called Rivercross that was quite a fair distance from the city, almost a hundred kilometers away. Apparently, monster activity had been on the rise, resulting in some people from the town going missing, occasionally being found mutilated or half-eaten. It seemed like the best place to gain some levels while doing some good in the world.

Nodding with a look of determination, Dario handed the sheet over to Mr. B.

“It’s decided then,” the blonde advisor said. “I’ll inform administration of your choice, but keep in mind that the mission you chose is fairly time-sensitive, so don’t dawdle for too long.” He started walking towards the door, but paused just before leaving. “Oh, I forgot about your team name... Uh, you can tell me what it is later, or if you want to stick with V-33 than that’s fine too.” He waved goodbye as he left the room. “Nice meeting you all!”

Dario blinked at the man’s sudden disappearance. “Uh…”

Bright Star rolled her eyes as she waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, most advisors are like that. They usually have several teams to manage, so they’re always in and out, and are pretty straightforward.” She shrugged. “When I was your age, I thought it was pretty annoying, but I prefer it this way nowadays.”

“...I’ll take your word for it.” Dario leaned forward to place his elbow on the table and palm against his cheek. He looked at the others in the room. “So…" he drawled. "Team name...?”

“Yes, a team name.” Amara frowned and crossed her arms. “We need to come up with a good one…”

“Oh! I have some name ideas!” Deja grinned.

“Okay, what did you have in mind? Because I got nothing,” he said.

“How about... ‘Team Extreme’!” she exclaimed.

Amara facepalmed while Dario tilted his head, actually considering it.

Bright Star snorted. “Already taken, sadly."

“Oh.” Deja frowned. “Well, how about “Dream Team’?”

“Also taken.”

“Team Supreme?”

“Please no,” Amara sighed.

The white-haired Artificer pouted. “Team Unseen?”

“No.”

“Unforeseen Team?”

“That’s barely any different, and also lame.”

Deja crossed her arms at the redhead’s rejections. However, she quickly perked up and started listing off names at a rapid pace.

“Team Thirteen, Team Routine, Team Smokescreen, Team Latrine, Team Hygiene—”

“Stop, please.” Amara groaned. “You can’t just use words that rhyme with ‘Team’! Most of those don’t even make any sense!”

“Sure they do, if you really think about it.” Deja grinned.

The red-haired Superior grumbled and looked at Bright Star with an expression asking for help.

The blonde veteran simply chuckled. “Leave it be for now. You don’t have to come up with a name right away. In fact... my first team never even came up with a name. We just used our designation.” She shrugged. “It worked well enough.”

Amara sighed. “Coming up with a team name was something I was looking forward to though...” she muttered.

Deja nodded. “I agree with Imp. Coming up with names is the best part of forming teams. We can’t skip something like that!”

The corner of Amara’s eye twitched. “It’s Imperia. Please don’t call me Imp.”

The white-haired teen pouted. “Why not?” she asked. “Shouldn’t teammates have nicknames for each other? Imp is a pretty cool shorthand, in my opinion.”

Amara’s eyes narrowed. “How would you feel if I called you… Dev, rather than Devel?”

“I wouldn’t mind.” Deja shrugged. “That doesn’t sound too bad actually…”

“Yeah, that’s not bad,” Dario muttered.

The redhead glared for a moment longer before releasing a sigh, shoulders drooping. “Fine, call me whatever. It’s not like I spent a long time coming up with the name or anything…” she grumbled.

Bright Star smiled mischievously. “It was one of her maids that came up with Imperia actually,” she said. “She couldn’t come up with a name herself.”

Amara blushed as she turned to glare at the older Superior. “I’m perfectly capable of making up a good moniker myself!” She crossed her arms. “Imperia just happened to be a good suggestion, so I took it, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” Bright Star smirked.

“So... can I call you Imp?” Deja asked. “It’s short, rolls off the tongue, and kinda badass.”

Amara took a deep calming breath, and exhaled. “...fine, so long as you use Imperia in more formal situations.”

“Great!” Deja turned towards the only male in the room. “You hear that, Sol? She’s cool with it.”

“Sol?” Dario raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. It’s your nickname.”

He rubbed his chin, looking upward in thought. “...I like it,” he said. “What about Bright Star? She’s part of the team too.”

“Well…” Deja tilted her head as she stared at the older blonde. “I guess we could use the initials—”

“Don’t even think about it, Ms. Vulori,” Bright Star said with a steely gaze. “You will refer to me as Bright Star or not at all. Got it?”

“...right, sorry.” The white-haired teen rubbed her head sheepishly. “Just Bright Star, got it.”

The Superior veteran nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Keep in mind that we don’t have to use our supe names all the time. We only use it when we’re out in public, understand?” At their assenting nods, she continued. “Now, since you’ve all decided to go on a mission right away, and for a far one at that, it means that you’ll all have to get your mounts earlier than usual.”

“Wait, mounts?” Dario perked up. There was only one creature that he'd seen Superiors occasionally ride. “Does that mean we’ll be getting—”

“Raptors, yes.” Bright Star nodded. “They wouldn’t be necessary if you chose a mission near the city, but that isn’t the case with the one you all picked.” She stood up and gestured for them to follow her. “Come, let’s get you all some mounts at the Menagerie. Move quickly, the mission is time-sensitive. You can talk about names on the way.” Opening the door, she exited the room and started walking down the hall.

As the three young Superiors scrambled to follow, Deja suddenly paused with a look of epiphany.

“I got it! A name for our team!” she exclaimed, a playful smile tugging at the edge of her lips.

“What is it?” Dario asked curiously.

“It’s simple. We just combine the first letters of our names.” She pointed at herself, then at her two teammates. “Deja, Amara, and Dario.”

He blinked as the redhead beside him groaned.

“Team D.A.D.!” Deja cackled as she rushed out of the room.

The purple-eyed teen and elegant redhead turned to stare at each other.

“We… we’re not actually naming ourselves that, right?” Dario asked.

“Absolutely not.” Amara rolled her eyes. “The name’s completely ridiculous. I’m sure she was just joking.” She slowly started walking towards the door. “From what I could glean during our talks before you arrived, Deja seems like the type to mess around.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure she was just joking though?”

She frowned with a look of uncertainty. “...okay, maybe we should go after her. Just in case.”

“Yeah... for all we know, she could be looking for Mr. B right now and trying to make the name official.”

Amara paused in place with a look of horror before suddenly speed walking out of the room, red hair flailing.

Dario chuckled as he moved forward to join the chase.