“...And then she told me that *I* was the crazy one! Can you believe that? I wasn’t the one who keyed her car, but after what she said to me, I wish I had been!”

I nodded when I heard the pause in the rambling, pretending to pay attention.“Uh huh.” I said, maximum effort on my deflection.

“And now Ralph is threatening to fire Marcy, and on her birthday too!”

“Wow.” I said, putting an ocean of emotional weight into my voice as I kept checking drawers at the desk I'd occupied, still not really listening.

“But anyway! You're Marshall’s secretary, do you think you could pass on a message to him? Make sure he knows that I need Marcy to keep working here so that Karen won't be mad at me and that way my daughter gets to stay in her after school program?”

I looked up for the first time at the person talking to me. Leaning on the elevated part of the receptionist desk outside this floor’s pool of offices, she was uncomfortably middle age, too many pearls around her neck, and a red power suit that looked strangely familiar. She has a desperate smile on her cold face, coated in glaciers of makeup.

“Sure,” I said, not meeting her eyes, “I'll make a note.”

She was gone before I could even pretend to pull out a piece of paper. Off down the hall to where the interns answered phones all day, presumably to regale some poor bastard who couldn’t escape with her tales of woe.

I didn’t have the heart, or the level of idiocy required, to tell her that I didn’t work here.

I’d like to tell you that the trick to getting away with sitting at someone else’s desk and randomly searching through drawers for keys is to just keep doing it when they start talking to you. Pretend you’re supposed to be there, play it cool, etc. That whole stealth package. In truth, though, I hadn’t really planned that. I’d panicked so hard when… I didn’t know her name but I was gonna call her Karen… started talking to me. Mostly, I’d kept moving out of anxious energy, not some kind of plan. And against all common sense, it had worked. She’d been so caught up telling me about something I wasn’t listening to that she hadn’t bothered to check if I was actually employed here.

So, what I’m trying to say here is, sorry Karen! The boss isn’t getting that message.

That said, maybe this is just rightful punishment for a corporate culture that doesn’t encourage you to know who the receptionists and personal assistants are. Maybe next time, don’t be a monolithic insurance company that acts like it’s already the cyberpunk dystopia, I guess?

I wish I could tell you that was why we’d chosen this particular office building for today’s Task. Speaking of which, it turns out the keys were in the candy bowl on the corner of the desk, and with that, my job here was done and I needed to reconnect with Becca before whoever actually worked here came back from lunch.

As I stood up, pocketing the jingling pile of metal passwords, I flicked a Card out of my Hand and into my hand with a gesture that was becoming more and more practiced. Paying out the three points of Curiosity required, I concealed the small halo of light in my palm, and let the effects of [Shared Discovery] take over.

“The keys were just sitting on the desk” I submitted the information to the newly formed link between my mind and Becca’s, and waited for her to come up with something I didn’t know to return. The way this Card worked was actually fascinating, and super limiting, but Becca didn’t have a phone, and I couldn’t afford to get her one right now, so we worked with what we had. When I cast it, it opened up what felt like a metaphysical waiting room between myself, and anyone I knew. Then I put in something I’d recently learned, that was new information to the other person, and they did the same for me. Then the spell shared that information.

Take too long, and it vanished. Not have anything learned recently, or that was new to the other party, and you got the same. So it was super tricky, and practically useless, but also kinda cool, and it gave a full sense of the knowledge shared. Maybe I could use this someday for more altruistic academic purposes or something.

For now, though, I was using it to tell Bec to meet me by the elevator, and getting back the thought from her of “there’s cake in the break room.”

Good to know.

I passed by a few other employees as I made my way to the lobby and the elevators. This was, admittedly, the shakiest part of our collective plan, because it required kind of a lot of people to not pay proper attention. For me, this meant that it was about time to duck behind a potted plant, and cover the action of pulling and casting [Aura Of Unconcern]. For the next hour now, my Ennui pool would act as a kind of attention shield, and that should be enough to get us upstairs.

As I stepped into the lobby, and leaned against the smooth marble wall that the elevators faced to wait for Becca, I parsed over the plan in my head one more time. It wasn’t a great plan, I won’t lie to you, but it wasn’t *that* bad. First off, our objective in breaking into an office. (Urban Explorer), which I’d been stupid enough to lock in a few days ago, had decided the best place I should have to get to was a rooftop. I’d thought it would be an easy score when I’d checked the area on Google maps, but as soon as I’d driven by, the pull had shifted to *upward*, and I’d spent the whole ten minute drive home scowling at traffic.

Of course, I’d already locked in the Task, which was a problem, because it meant it wasn’t rotating out. Which was just… I mean, I don’t know about you, but for me personally? Seeing a thing sitting in my mental to-do list that was never going away just created a large and larger ball of anxiety over time.

So! Given that the stakes were kind of low, and probably the worst thing that could happen here was getting kicked out of a building, I’d asked Becca if she wanted to help me sneak onto a roof. Which led to a quiet question about why, and my much more boisterous explanation of the Tasks menu. Apparently, while she’d inherited the shell of the Game from me, and I could pass off some things like Cards or Decks, she didn’t get the Tasks like I did, or the Shop either.

After that, she had questions of a more tactical nature. Asking what Tasks I had available, and trying to help me work out a plan. One of the side effects of her lack of actual human contact was an almost complete inability to hide the emotions she did have, and it was telling to see the raw hunger written in her face and words when she asked about the kind of rewards we could get for these. A little unsettling, really.

Honestly, I got it, though. I felt like I had the same look on my face sometimes when I looked through my screen. Mostly I was just super happy that she was getting more comfortable with talking again. It was probably going to be a long road to recovery for her, and I needed to see about finding a therapist that wouldn’t ask questions.

Anyway, we’d waited a day for a couple Task rotations, and then snapped up (Infiltrator II) for my locked tasks, and hoped that the weirdly similar (Breach) just stuck around for a bit. Just the few hours it’d take us to throw our coats on against the cold weather, and make it downtown, and also the time to make sure that the Deck that we’d built for Becca was working, and that she could in fact do the same thing I could.

I’d given her the , and stocked it with pretty much everything that fit. That first time I guided her out to the old quarry and showed her how to [Blast] a rock apart, her face lit up like the Fourth of July, and I got this feeling in my chest like I suddenly understood how my parents felt when I graduated high school. It was great. It even made me feel less bad about giving up my grip on [Under Cover Of Fortune] when I passed it to her for her own deck. Becca was quickly turning into my precious little cinnamon roll, and it took the sting of the loss away to know she’d have a little extra protection. Then she had to make it awkward by essentially swearing herself to my service as a bodyguard. I *think* she was kidding, but she was my big gun now, and I’d just given her a hug and tried to not notice how much she tensed up when touched.

Spending that last day and a half experimenting had been that same sense of fun that I’d enjoyed since this system had descended on my life. And sharing it with someone, even someone who preferred to speak in single word sentences if possible, was amazingly cathartic. Like it validated my choices in a big way. In a way, it made almost breaking the ceiling of my apartment with a misunderstood casting of [Growth Spurt] worth it. It did not make me any happier to try to find a way to dispose of a new tree, though.

Which had led to us here. Realizing the door to the roof was locked, wandering through this building we’d casually slipped into behind an actual employee, and trying to figure out where the fuck they kept the keys.

Would you believe all I had to do was tell someone I needed roof access, and they told me who normally had the keys? I was almost insulted. I felt like my (Infiltrator II) rewards weren’t gonna be super high if casual disregard for security protocols were all they had to offer. Granted, that set of keys had already been borrowed, and I needed to do a little more of my expert ‘wandering around asking stupid questions’ game to figure it out, but I got there without having to teleport through a wall to escape or punch someone off a balcony.

Oh, that was something else I’d learned today. [Wanderer’s Step] didn’t go *up*. I would like to file a complaint.

So, when I said “plan” earlier, that was kind of just a hot lie to both you and myself, as I wanted to collect my thoughts while I watched my Ennui tick down every time someone walked by and failed to fail to notice me. It was getting awkward waiting for Becca to show up so we could try to slip in behind another employee without swiping our non-existent badges on the elevator keypad. This place had such a fucking weird idea of security; like everyone trusted the electronic locks and chipped badges so much that they stopped asking questions.

Speaking of, where the hell was Becca? I looked up, and almost screamed as I noticed her standing literally right next to me, reading something off a clipboard. You’d think I’d be getting used to this by now, but no. A few days of her presence had yet to innur me to how she seemed to just pop out of nowhere when she did her stealth thing. Which was always, because she was eternally paranoid. Frankly, I was shocked I’d gotten her out to a place with people, but I felt it was important to get her used to humanity again.

Trying not to let it show how much she’d startled me, I took a shallow breath and lightly elbowed her. “Ready to go? Also, what’s with the clipboard?”

“No one talks to people with clipboards.” She told me, in one of her longest sentences yet.

I mean, I couldn’t really disagree with her. Probably would have helped if there was any paper on the clipboard that she could have been reading. As we slipped into the elevator behind a couple other employees after one of them scanned their badge, though, neither of them even glanced at either of us. Perks of living in a world where people could distract themselves with their phones, and never made eye contact on elevators.

Also where I had wizard powered cloaking fields. But let’s not focus on that, I thought to myself with a grin.

Speaking of those powers, when the two other employees got off on the third floor, I leaned over and punched the button for the fifth, watching one of them eye the now-lit panel for a second before a point of Ennui drained away from me and he shrugged, and stepped out. Then it was just a matter of leaning back and waiting for those last two floors to tick by.

“Hey.” Becca’s sudden word drew me out of my relaxed state. She didn’t talk much, so when she did, it really caught my attention. I also vastly preferred this to when she tapped me on the shoulder out of nowhere, so we were making progress.

“What’s up?” I asked her, wincing as another point of Ennui dropped away, leaving me at a paltry three left. Turns out, [Aura Of Unconcern] doesn’t care if you intend for someone to notice you.

She didn’t look over at me, instead still mock focusing on her empty clipboard. “Why’s nothing going wrong?”

Oh my god, you can’t just *say* that. That’s exactly the sort of genre blind behavior that gets well meaning wizards and their apprentices killed. In fact… “You can’t just *say* that.” I informed her with a tone of high indignation.

“You said bad stuff happens.” Bec said, almost accusingly. Ah, that was what she meant. Took me a second to wrap my head around it.

“Yeah, I mean, things go wrong when I’m just hanging out, but it’s not like everything I do has some kind of mandated level of problem.” I told her. “Besides, I think it turns off when I’m pursuing a Task. Like, nothing went wrong when… um… when I got you.” I dodged saying exactly what had happened, it was a touchy subject. “And anyway…!”

The elevator doors opened to show a pair of men in security uniforms, leaning on the desk right across from the elevator, and facing each other as they talked. Of course, as the doors opened, they were both already looking up and directly at us both.

See, this is why we don’t say stupid things.

Keeping myself pressed to the right side of the elevator so my hand was covered by the panel, I fired of my secret weapon. [Monk’s Bounty] was a Card that I’d gotten the chance to play a couple times since resetting the other day, and I felt like it was going to be one of my absolute favorites. I’d been saving it, actually, to make some kind of cake thing to split with Becca after the success of our not-heist, but this seemed like a great time to make it happen. The follow up to that, which I only barely got off, was [Steady On], and for the next minute, I could be sure that if I did screw up, it would be because of my own panic. It did eat up one of my precious Ennui though.

“Excuse me, miss. May I see your employee badge?” The older guy asked. He was probably about fifty years old, greying hair that was still hanging on. His partner was a younger kid, too skinny looking in his nylon jacket. Both of them were staring at me now, in a way that made me immensely uncomfortable. Probably a bad time to notice that I’d run the well dry on Ennui; should have told Becca not to try to think about me too hard. That was a tactical error.

Of course, I didn’t have an employee badge. But what I did have was maybe one level better. I stepped out of the elevator, holding up the bag newly formed in my right hand. “Oh, I don’t work here!” I said cheerfully, showing them what I was carrying. “I’m just here delivering lunch. Well, doughnuts. But I don’t judge. Did either of you order anything?” I asked in the most casual polite tone I could muster.

I could visibly see them untense. “Ah, well.” The older guy rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “You shouldn’t have actually been able to get on the elevator. It’s employees only on the upper floors.” He told me. “Wait, was there anyone else with you?” He peered over my shoulder.

I just shrugged. “Don’t think so?” I looked behind me; Becca had just fucking vanished. Her Batman routine was starting to get predictable, and yet somehow, even more impressive. “Why?” I asked, actually kind of curious.

“Oh, system flagged two people coming up.” He said, in a way that legitimately worried me. I mean, their reliance on security tech over actual practical common sense was on full display right now, but it was a bit concerning to know that their elevators tracked how many people were on them. “Who are you delivering to?” He asked.

Now *this* one, I’d actually had a plan for. “Michael Indrik.” I said, with just that right amount of confusion in my voice that delivery drivers always had. Phrasing it as just not a question. It was a name I’d swiped off the directory downstairs. “It has a note that says it’s for a meeting room?”

The security guys exchanged a look. Then the kid shrugged. “I mean, the conference room is down that hall, take a right, then it’ll be on your right.” He turned back to me. “If you promise not to steal anything, you can just drop it off and head back down.”

“Aren’t we supposed to escort people who come in?” The gentleman asked, in a way that made me suspect that he was actually the new guy here.

The kid just shrugged again, scratching at the back of his hands. “I mean, yeah, but no one cares. And we have to finish our round anyway, or it cuts into lunch. So…” Another shrug. This guy was less decisive than I was, and that was saying something.

“Alright, alright. You know where you’re going?” Oldy asked me.

“Down the hall, take a right. Got it.” I gave him a thumbs up and started walking. “You guys have a good one!” I called back, cheerful and not suspicious.

Technically, I shouldn’t even code myself as suspicious. I mean, I was breaking into their building, but I remember reading something a while back about how it wasn’t actually a crime to be somewhere you weren’t supposed to be if you didn’t damage anything to get in and didn’t steal anything. None of that really mattered as I started trembling a bit as soon as [Steady On] wore off. Turns out, my fear response is irrational and inconvenient. At least it didn’t feel like all the anxiety that would have come from that conversation had been deferred or anything. I felt this weird lightness at being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to, at breaking the rules and being on the edge of getting caught, but it wasn’t compounded with what [Steady On] had helped me dodge.

As soon as I was out of sight of the two guys, I started looking around for the stairwell door, or roof access. I’d worked in buildings before where it was a separate door, and I’d also worked in places where it just flat wasn’t labeled. So I scanned all the doors as I passed, sorting them into offices or bathrooms or conference rooms or whatever, trying to find any that didn’t fit.

It was when I turned the corner at the next intersection in this weird maze of a building that Becca popped up at my shoulder. “It’s this way.” She deadpanned.

I yelped, and my grip slipped as I jumped backward, flinging the small bag of doughnuts backward into a wall. “Oh, come on!” I panted as I tried to still my heart. “Stop *doing* that!” I tried not to snap at her, but she still looked kinda hurt. “But yes, let’s get this over with and get out of here.” I tried to control my tone, but now that I knew there were actual security here, I was kind of on edge. Even if their security was, well...

Okay, you know what? This wasn’t exactly a secret corporate facility guarded by thugs with assault rifles. So far, every experience that movies had taught me to prepare for in terms of infiltration tactics had woefully over prepared my imagination for the actual act of just walking in and asking nicely to be let into places. I needed to stop stressing about this.

“Okay.” I said, more calm this time. “Sorry about that. So, where’s the roof?”

Two minutes later, she’d brought me to the well camouflaged door that lead to the roof, and was labeled “boiler room”. Two minutes after that, I’d managed to find the correct key to unlock it, and opened up the door to the dimly lit staircase leading up a half flight to the roof. It was musty, and the steps looked like they’d been scuffed a million times and cleaned exactly zero over the years. But nothing collapsed under us as we went up to the exterior door.

“What do you wanna bet that their state of the art security system doesn’t know about this door?” I asked as I tried to figure out which side of the door bar I needed to push on. Somehow, like a rogue USB stick, it didn’t work on either side until I switched back again and found I was right the first time.

Bec just glided out in front of me, throwing her one word answer back at me. “Nothing.”

Stepping outside, I took a nice breath of fresh air. Well, city air; but while it may have been kinda sorta full of car fumes, it was chill and outdoors and a pleasant change. As I stepped onto the gravel floor of the top of this office tower and stretched out my arms in the October sun, I bumped into Becca who had stopped in front of me and was staring straight ahead.

“Okay, why?” I asked as I righted myself and brushed my hair out of my eyes. She just stepped slightly to the side, and pointed.

Specifically, she pointed over to the ledge of the roof, where a tall, raven haired woman in a sleek grey business suit was holding a short, bespectacled man by the collar of his shirt, half pushed over the edge. Both of them were frozen, as if they were statues, staring at us.

“You see?” I said cheerfully to Bec, gesturing to the scene in front of us. “This is what happens! This is every fucking day now!”

For some reason, I felt almost relieved. Happy, even. Later, I’d look back and realize that it was because this was turning into my comfort zone; me against the world, their bullshit versus *my* bullshit, winner take all. I was starting to relish the feeling of just having problems dumped in front of me, almost as much as I was in having the tools at my fingertips to solve them. This was probably super unhealthy, but in the moment, I didn’t care. I just grinned.

“Hey there!” I called to the two of them. This time, I didn’t need any Card to keep my voice steady and cheerful, if maybe a little faster than I normally talked. “Any way I could convince you to put him down and leave peacefully?”

The woman straightened herself out, rising up to a rather intimidating form, not letting go of the man she was holding. Her voice projected across the roof with ease, and for the first time in a while, *I* felt like the kid in the situation. “Just a misunderstanding, girls. Why don’t you head back inside?”

“No.” The word came from Bec beside me, who shifted easily into a stance that wouldn’t make sense to anyone who didn’t know what she was getting ready to do.

“Yeah, sorry. This looks like the kind of thing we get a lot. Is this a murder, or an assassination? Asking mostly out of curiosity.” I started circling to the side, getting clear of Becca’s line of fire.

As the man in her grip took the chance to break free, stumbling backward against the ledge, the woman sighed visibly, the sound swept away by the wind, but the motion of her shoulders exaggerated and dramatic. “Kids.” I heard her mutter. She shook her head, like this was just a casual misunderstanding.

Then she slipped her free hand into her coat, pulled out a handgun, and shot the dude in the chest.

Before I could react, she raised it up and started shooting at Bec. This turned out to be the wrong call, as my partner was [Under Cover Of Fortune]. It had stung to give that up, and now, I felt like the champion of everything as every single bullet went wide while Becca overhand threw the water bottle she’d been carrying in one of her pockets at the woman - assassin, I’d decided - and with her other hand, made the strange looking gesture that I now knew was what my spellcasting looked liked. A fist out in the air, then a snap of the arm, broadcast fingers, and suddenly, [Bite Of The Water Wolf] turned the calcium treated water bottle into a potentially lethal projectile.

Say what you will about the effect of years of traumatic daily battles for survival on Bec’s psyche, but it had done *wonders* for her combat reflexes. By the time I’d even started to react to the horror of watching someone get shot in front of me, she and the assassin had traded two salvos, and I’d been all but dismissed from the fight. There was a pause as the two of them sized each other up, the other woman seemed legit perplexed by the fact that this girl had snap-summoned a riot shield and Becca scowling at the fact that the high density water spike was apparently high density enough to be slapped away with a knife.

“So, assassin then?” I yelled over, burning Spite as I flung one of the last two cards in my hand at her, a [Headache], before ducking behind an air conditioning unit.

This had gone horribly wrong in a big hurry.

I had one card left, it was [Triage And Stabilize], because that was one that I never discarded and held onto at all times. I checked and saw a Draw available, and quickly grabbed a disappointing copy of [Potential], I knew Bec was down to two Cards in hand, and I had no idea how to get to the guy in time before he died from lead poisoning. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was still alive. This was exhilarating, but honestly way beyond any plan I actually…

There was a crunching explosion punctuating the gunfire, and shards of gravel pelted against the machinery I was crouched behind with metallic pings.

One card in hand.

“Did you get her?” I shouted over to Bec.

No answer. Then, a second later, the sound of a door slamming.

“Bec? You alive?” I peeked out, then ran over to where she was a second ago. The other woman was gone, and so was Becca. As the sound of gunfire faded and my ears stopped ringing, the sound of the injured man weakly groaning came through. My priorities almost shifted, but first, I bolted over to where I’d last seen Bec.

If I hadn’t spent the last few days becoming more and more on alert for her disappearing act, I may not have noticed her, crouched down with her back against the brick of one of the skylights. But I had, and I did. As I got closer, she shifted to look at me, one blink staring forward and the next her head tilted up to track my approach. “Gone?” She asked me curtly, and I noticed her hand clasped over a dripping wound on her forearm.

I sighed to see she was okay. “Yeah, she’s gone. Or did you mean the guy? Wait, shit! I have to go!” I turned and bolted back to where the woman’s target was lying on the ground, trying to drag himself toward the stairwell. Now that I knew Becca was okay, or at least not about to die, I had one last thing to do.

[Triage And Stabilize] took twelve points of Compassion. I currently had ten, and my Draw was another half an hour away. As I slid to a stop next to the guy, now was about the time that I realized that maybe cutting back on the amount of [Potential]s in my Deck wasn’t the best plan. It’d seemed like such a good idea at the time, trading short term ramp for long term utility. Now I sat here a couple points short of saving this guy’s life, and felt like the biggest idiot in the world.

But I had to try.

[Potential] dropped into my hand, and the spell triggered as I closed my fingers into a tight fist. A small halo of light and a warm feeling propagating through my arm and into the rest of my body. *Just this once*, I thought at it. *Just one time, give me one extra. I play by the rules, even the ones I don’t know. I do your Tasks, I use the Cards like they’re written. But right now, the rules aren’t enough. So just this once, one more point.*

And before he breathed his last, my Compassion ticked up by two points.

The spike of life from [Triage And Stabilize] hit him hard enough to physically eject the bullet from his lung, leaving him gasping in breaths of air and clutching at the no-longer-bleeding hole in his chest. And I let out another relieved sigh.

“Tha… thank you.” He started to say. “Who are…?”

And that was my cue to bail. “Good luck!” I told him. “Don’t get shot again!” And I was up and moving, my legs suddenly a lot less tired from all the walking I’d been doing today. “Bec! Time to move!” I called at her.

Both of us made for the stairwell, hoping the woman was long gone by the time we got back to the top floor. We still moved like we were paranoid of our own shadows, checking corners and sneaking through the hallways. Both of us were almost totally tapped out on resources, both Cards and otherwise, and I didn’t like our chances in another fight.

As we got to the elevators, and dismissed the idea of taking the stairs outright, I noticed that the two guards from earlier were still there, but one of them was sitting behind the desk holding their right eye while his friend tried to open up a bottle of aspirin.

“Um…” How did I ask this… “Did a woman who looked like a highly paid assassin come by here? Maybe punch you?”

I got a “How did you…” And a “Who’s the other…” from the two of them as Becca grabbed one of their badges off the desk and used it to summon the elevator.

“No time. Check the roof, please, and call 911. Also there’s doughnuts around here… somewhere. I have no idea where I left them, actually.” I admitted a bit sheepishly. “Sorry about the trouble. Didn’t honestly expect that.”

“You can’t just…!”

Could. Did. Elevator doors closed, and the two of us on our way home.

Actually leaving was a bit of a pain, as Becca insisted on a side entrance and circling around to my car through a back alley, in case we were being tailed. I mean, I didn’t exactly blame her, but I also didn’t complain. And by the time we got home, the fact that we’d been shot at was starting to catch up to me.

You know, I’d diffused multiple situations with guns in them, before this one? And this was literally the only time someone had leveled a weapon in my direction and pulled the trigger. And had it work, I guess; there was that one guy who had some bad luck at the school. But still, it was unsettling at best, horrifying at worst. And the silence on the ride home was like a thick blanket of paranoid thoughts about being hunted down for interfering in some government sanctioned assassination, having my apartment blown up or wiretapped or something worse.

I don’t know what’s worse, shut up. It’s my worst case scenario, I’ll think of it later.

I think the worst part of all of it was that I kept trying to help Becca once we got back to my apartment with her wound. She’d gotten grazed by a round, and it had left a gash on her forearm that she’d mostly kept closed and had clotted over, but still needed attention. And all I could do was fuss and try to offer to help, while she glared at me and showed full well that she could do first aid on herself one handed better than I could with two.

“If you want to help.” She finally said, pushing me out of the bathroom. “Check your Tasks.”

That wasn’t, I insisted, helping. But she didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t have anything else to do and needed something to keep my mind and hands busy, so I guess it was better than nothing. I sat myself down on my couch, shoving aside the branches of the curved tree that had grown down onto the leather like a green blanket, and opened up my interface.

Maybe she should be a therapist herself, because the first look at the Tasks menu gave me a pulse of excitement and victory that blew away my worry about being murdered in the night.

Six. *Six* things done. (Urban Explorer), which I’d snagged off the roof between checking on Becca and helping the victim. (Infiltrator II), of course, though the value of that one I wouldn’t wager on just yet. (Breach) hadn’t actually triggered, but that made sense; we hadn’t actually kicked in the door or invaded, just snuck in. I got the feeling it was the polar opposite of (Infiltrator) and maybe mutually exclusive with it.

Aside from that, I’d scored (Shake Hands II), which I hadn’t even bothered looking at before since I never really *planned* to meet people, and it was still classed as white. (Savoir), which was an obvious one. (Quick Thinking) again, probably for the elevator bit. And then a new one called (Shieldbearer), which was to use a creation-type Card for a Risk 3+ effect, without being critically injured.

That last one was what caught my attention.

Because I absolutely hadn’t done that.

In fact, I knew exactly what it was for. It came from Becca using [Forge In Flames] to weather the bullets that [Under Cover Of Fortune] didn’t catch, and it meant something kind of important. Whatever it was that let me share my collection with her, actually really did care that I’d categorized her as an apprentice. Her actions reflected on me, and that made it a lot more possible for us to tackle Tasks together.

But that got to take a back seat now, to the rewards. Because there was one last thing to check, and that was the notification that had popped up on the roof.

It was about [Potential]. And it told me, in surprisingly clear terms, that I had improved [Potential] to [Potential II]. A check of the text of the new card, and it *was* kind of a new card, showed that it did what I thought it did; cost one extra Curiosity, and gave two points instead of one. Notably, it also made it clear that it would degrade back into a regular [Potential] with Reset. And what else had changed was that [Potential] itself now had the conditions for improving listed on it.

So, great. Another layer.

Wait, actually great. Another layer! Another piece of the pattern, another slice of the power pie, at my disposal! I wondered now, if I could possibly find ways to improve other cards, especially the more basic ones that were easier to understand. Maybe get Becca to try it out with hers as she could practice far more rapidly than me.

But those were thoughts for future Mia. Present Mia had rewards to harvest.

(Shake Hands II) gave me 10% off my draw timer and fifty cardbucks. Solid, especially this early.

(Urban Explorer) handed me two copies of [Edge Of Summer], which I was almost positive was actually a card from a much more mundane game, but wasn’t going to complain about since it looked cool.

(Quick Thinking) gave me another fifteen cardbucks, which I didn’t care about. Yet.

(Infiltrator II) was a niiiice award, apparently having taken the rogue assassin into consideration on the difficulty, and it had two copies each of two different cards for me. [As It Was] didn’t have a description, but it did boast an Impatience cost of twelve. Making it unlikely to see use, and also probably impressive. On the other hand, [Red Scrapper] did come complete with… some… description, and offered me escalating levels of combat power the longer I was in a fight and the more damaged I was. Which was just… uncomfortable, at the least. But I was starting to realize that combat was a thing that I might just have to get used to in my life.

(Shieldbearer) gave three copies of [Shield]. That’s it. That’s enough. I’ll take it. It does what you’re probably thinking.

(Savior), finally, the blue task that I always felt lucky to see and luckier to complete, just gave a single card. But boy did [Marquis Of The Greedy Sands] look like it was a hell of a card. I mean, it didn’t say what it did, but what a *mouthful*.

After all that, all that information and recontextualizing and inflation of my cardbucks account to a whopping 232 points, I just felt… kind of tired.

By the time Becca came out of my studio apartment bathroom, I was napping, curled up in the leaves of the oversized potted tree like it was an overprotective blanket.

We’d deal with splitting the loot tomorrow.