Despite Val’s thoughts tempting fate, the journey back into the city was fairly uneventful. The Defects caught up to the Scout patrol quickly as they were moving slowly on account of carrying their injured companion.

Unfortunately, it was also Val’s first exposure to how regular Guild members treated the Defects. They quickly rebuffed Zavis’s offer to carry the injured Scout, despite the fact that he was clearly stronger than them. They smiled nervously when Bri tried to make cheerful small talk, and declined the suggestion to stay within the scouting perimeter set by Kaya and Val. Val frowned and sent a message to Zavis:

Val: Seems like we’re getting a bit of the cold shoulder now. They were happy enough to accept our help when they were beset by wolves. Does this sort of thing happen often?

Zavis: Unfortunately yes. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. In this case, our squad doesn’t fit within their normal expectations, and we’re clearly stronger than them. Fear and hatred are common reactions under those circumstances. I personally prefer the former because those who fear us tend to leave us alone. Those who hate… well, there are plenty of records of conflicts between normal Users and Defects.

Val: Have there been any attempts to familiarize ourselves with the Guilds, break down those barriers? From everything I’ve seen, there’s very little difference between our squad and most Guild squads, with the exception of our unique combat styles.

Val frowned as Zavis sent the equivalent of a mental shrug.

Zavis: Things like that have been attempted in the past. They mostly fall through because there’s so few of us, and turnover is relatively high. And in the end, I don’t think it matters much. We only report to the Guildmasters, and they know our value. So long as the rank-and-file doesn’t cause us any trouble, I’m content for us to avoid any entanglements with them.

Val fell into silence after that, mulling over Zavis’s words while her eyes continuously scanned the forest. The older warrior was clearly an excellent squad leader in the field, but she couldn’t help but feel that he was wrong when it came to how the Defects were perceived. She would reserve her final judgment until she had seen a few more interactions, but she would greatly prefer acceptance or even indifference over fear and hatred.

The Scouts hid their relief poorly as they left the group, quickly scurrying away down one of the streets towards the city center. With no Guild to report to, Val and the Defects simply headed back towards their compound to debrief after the mission.

It turned out that the underground compound had multiple entrances. The ladder under the rubble that Val used was only good for one person at a time, and she imagined that it would be a tight squeeze for Zavis. Instead, they walked down a set of stairs into the basement of a smaller house where a pair of large metal doors waited for them.

Walking through the doors, Val found herself off to the side of the sparring ring. To the right were what appeared to be the living spaces of the compound, featuring a small kitchen and then a series of personal rooms. To the left were a series of workbenches hosting a variety of diagnostic and repair equipment.

The Defects immediately beelined towards the repair stations and started shedding their exosuits. Each seemed to have a dedicated workbench, although there were several empty spaces. Val slowly drifted towards the stations aimlessly, unsure where to set her stuff down. Bri noticed Val’s hesitancy and waved at her before patting the workbench next to hers.

“You can set up next to me, Val!”

Val gave Bri a smile of thanks and hurried over to the proffered workbench. Placing her pistol and dagger on the edge of the workbench, she activated her exosuit’s removal subroutine. A series of clicks rippled throughout her armor as various interlocking sections disconnected. It took her less than one minute to doff the entire suit, each component coming off easily now that the nano-based connections weren’t holding the pieces together anymore.

Reaching up with an arm, Val wiped the sweat off her brow as she stood barefoot in front of her station. A quick glance over the armor showed some minor scratches from the wolf’s teeth and claws, particularly on the left arm. Looking around the shop, her eyes landed on the standard-issue armor repair module standing alongside the wall. With some stock nano-infused steel and an hour, the module would be able to fill in the damage without any issue.

Bri’s armor will probably require a little more effort to fix it. Glancing over Bri, Val was surprised to see that she was only about a third of the way done with her armor removal, just now starting to unhook the damaged chestpiece.

Seems like I was correct earlier. That armor has no active nano at all. Curious.

Although Val was starting to get used to Noir’s unexpected comments, she still started a little bit as their thoughts entered her mind. Despite her mild annoyance at their inconsistent contact, she found herself agreeing with the Daemon. Although the metal alloy was certainly post-War technology, the bindings seemed to be a more traditional pre-War design that required no nano interfacing at all.

Padding over to Bri’s station, Val asked, “Need a hand with your armor? Looks pretty beat up.”

Bri shot a mischievous glance at Val. “Already trying to get me out of my clothes? I’ll need a few dates first, Val.” She cackled as Val felt her face flush. Luckily, Bri didn’t tease her any further, her expression morphing into a grateful smile instead. “I don’t need the help, but I certainly won’t say no to a pair of helping hands. Mind grabbing the back?”

Not trusting her voice, Val simply nodded and walked behind her. Bri reached around and hit a few more releases before the backplate fell into Val’s hands. With a grunt, Val immediately activated her limited body enhancement routines to prevent herself from dropping the heavy armor piece on the ground.

“Gaia take me, how much does this thing weigh?” Val asked incredulously as she maneuvered the backplate onto Bri’s workstation. Bri grinned as she grabbed the breastplate and lifted it off with a single hand, placing it on the workbench with ease. There were several large holes in the armor, but it still could not have weighed less than forty pounds by itself. For the third or fourth time that day, Val found herself reevaluating just how strong Bri was.

“Like it? You might have noticed your usual exosuit doesn’t work for me, so I commissioned this set of armor instead. It’s made of magma serpent scales!” Bri exclaimed proudly.

“Ma… magma serpent scales? But that’s… Those are… ” Val’s sputtering trailed off weakly. The Scouts had drilled the wildlife of the Eastern Henian Mountain Range into her, so she had heard of the creatures. Post-War biologists posited the creatures had evolved from snakes exposed to large quantities of volcanic activity and nano, and humans occasionally encountered them in the deep caverns under the mountains.

“Well, I occasionally get called over to help when the serpents start forming larger packs and interrupting Rune’s magma harvesting operations. The packs are a low-tier Class C threat, but individually each serpent is barely a Class D so not too bad once you separate them.”

Val staggered over to the side of Bri’s workbench, sitting down heavily on a metal stool. Leaning forward, she placed her chin on top of her clasped hands and just stared at Bri. Despite her nonchalant tone, the twinkle in Bri’s eyes made it clear she knew exactly how overwhelming that information was to Val.

This conversation was like the final crack in a dam before it failed, and the enormity of the situation slammed into Val like a tidal wave. She knew that becoming a User led to more dangerous situations than most encountered. She had also heard rumors about the Defects and the supposed level of difficulty of their missions, but it was all too easy to discard that as gossip. But she realized now that it was all true.

She felt wildly out of her depth. Nano-enhanced beasts and threats were graded in danger level from Class F up through Class A, with extreme cases dipping into the special tier of Class S. Humans were given a grade based on what class of threat they could handle, and parties were also given an overall grade based on each member’s classification. Each grade was subdivided from 9 up to 0 where F9 was the lowest rank and denoted the strength of an unenhanced human.

Most non-Users peaked in the high F grades, while an average User would have a power level somewhere in the D or C range. Guildmasters and elite Users populated the ranks of Bs and As, which S ranks reserved for the truly powerful Users. After years of hard work, Val was incredibly proud of her F4 combat ranking. Although she had never tested it before, the mid-F ranking indicated she should be able to stand against common nano-enhanced beasts by herself. Today was clear validation of her accumulated strength so far.

But it was also clear that the other Defects were in a completely different league. She wasn’t surprised they could handle Class D threats; after all, today’s large wolfpack and pair of Enhanced probably classified as D rank mission, and it had been handled with relative ease.

But Val’s analytical mind made several inferences based on Bri’s statement. First, the fact that they regularly dealt with class C threats implied the Defects themselves had at least a class C rating. Second, it sounded like they treated those missions casually enough to literally farm material off the beasts. If it was in their comfort zone, they were probably higher than a C ranking.

Finally, probably the most overwhelming piece of information: Bri had clearly said “I”, not “we”. Which implied that she regularly harvested material from Class C threats by herself. So she had a personal rating higher than C grade.

Val’s eyes flicked towards the other members, each performing maintenance on their kits meticulously. Bri was physically the strongest by a large margin, but Val didn’t think any of them were particularly weak compared to Bri. A shiver ran down her spine as she looked at her new teammates.

Just how strong are they? What have I gotten myself into?

“Bri, don’t haze Val. Val, finish taking care of your equipment. I’ve reported our success to the Council and gotten our review back. We’ll go over the details when everything is squared away.” Zavis gave Bri a reprimanding look, but she just waved him off. Val just nodded mutely and trudged back over to her station to finish the catalog of her equipment.

It turned out that Wallon’s experience with things that give off lots of heat and light was not limited to explosions. Val probably should guess from the man’s round waist, but Wallon was quite skilled in the kitchen. She inhaled deeply, reveling in the hearty meal in front of her. Meat and potatoes were relatively basic fare, but Wallon’s spice blend did wonders to break her out of thoughts and awaken her appetite. She scarfed down the food quickly, much to Bri’s amusement. After finishing her second serving, Val laid back in her seat and sighed in contentment.

Zavis leaned back as well as he finished his portion. “So most of you may have guessed most of these details, but I’ll still go through it, particularly for Val’s benefit.” Val gave him an appreciative nod and paid close attention. This might be a daily occurrence for the other, but it was her first completed mission as a User.

“The mission was originally estimated at low D rank, and the official post-action ranking was locked in at D8. That’s high for a pack of direwolves, but the presence of three Enhanced and urgency needed for the extraction of the Scout patrol bumped the difficulty up. Credits have been deposited into your accounts, commensurate with your contributions as usual.”

Val nodded along. She had expected as much regarding the mission difficulty. Out of curiosity, she displayed her current account balance in the corner of her vision. Her eyebrows raised as she saw the figure was almost 5,000 credits higher than this morning. That’s more than two months worth of living expenses.

As Zavis had mentioned, it was fairly easy for their Daemons to keep track of contributions to the mission. All the data was collected and sent to the Daemon collective after each mission, which then assigned appropriate rewards as a neutral third party; after all, Daemons didn’t care about money or physical goods. The merit-based system kept conflicts over reward distribution to a minimum.

Val’s surprise stemmed from her reward being much higher than expected. Her own optimistic estimate of her contribution was between 5% and 10% – she only took down one wolf out of a pack of two dozen and two Enhanced, but she had helped secure the primary objective and noticed the third Enhanced. Extrapolating up, a D8 mission should not be worth 50K to 100K credits.

Noticing Val’s look, Zavis added, “Val, you might also be seeing your new User stipend. Guilds, or in this case the Council, often provide an initial set of funds to help new Users set up their personal exosuits.” Val nodded, satisfied with his answer. “However, it’s perhaps more interesting to talk about our squad ranking.”

Zavis’s eyes remained fixed on Val as he continued to speak. Shrinking back from the intensity of his gaze, Val found herself shifting restlessly. I have a bad feeling about this.

“It should come as no surprise that our typical ranking has dropped since Val has joined us. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way, Val. After your performance today, you’ve been bumped up to F2.”

Bri clapped her hands enthusiastically, but Val sunk further into her seat. Wallon sat forward now in interest.

“What do you mean by ‘typical ranking’? What other ranking is there?” the portly man asked as Val’s stomach dropped.

“The usual ranking concerns how well we stand up to monsters or other wilderness threats. But there is a second ranking that we usually ignore – how well we stack up against other Users. Typically, only Guardians and Mercenaries care about this ranking. The former police other Users in the cities, while the Mercs need to fight off the occasional exiled User in the wilderness.”

Val’s attempts at keeping a neutral expression failed as she winced. She was not looking forward to the inevitable next question. Even more disconcerting, she could sense Noir’s discomfort as well. Her Daemon partner had been extremely effective at keeping their emotions from leaking into her mental space. Their feelings must be extremely intense if she could pick them up now.

“As I said, our regular ranking, the anti-beast ranking, dropped significantly. It’s no cause for concern, it’ll bounce back as Val increases in power. But our anti-User ranking barely budged. It’s the lower of the two ranks, only in the Ds” – beast ranking greater than C confirmed – “, but that implies Val has a personal anti-User ranking close to ours already.”

The other three Defects now joined Zavis in staring at Val. Val licked her lips nervously, eyes darting back and forth.

“Now, I hate to put you on the spot like this, Val. We usually don’t pressure new recruits into sharing their circumstances. Especially since you are joining us so young. But, this discrepancy… is extremely irregular. It’s critical that we understand everyone’s strengths and weaknesses if we want to function well together as a team. Can you help us understand the discrepancy between your rankings?”

Val hung her head as Zavis posed the question she was hoping to have been able to avoid. For at least a little while at least. Until she at least had an idea of what she and Noir were capable of. If she answered now, it would be half-baked and mostly conjecture.

She reached out to Noir. Hey, I could really use your help answering this. I realize it’s a sensitive topic, but can you tell me anything about what you expect we can do? She waited for several seconds, but the Daemon had closed themselves up tightly, completely ignoring the outside world. I get it buddy, I wish I could do that too.

Looking up, Val saw the Defects still looking at her intensely. She hated the position she found herself in. But taking a closer look, she didn’t see any malice in their gazes. Wariness from Kaya and Zavis, interest from Wallon, and… is that pity, Bri? Shaking her head, Val tried to organize her thoughts. If there was any group of people that could help her navigate what she was going through, it was the four in front of her now. Either that, or ostracize myself on day one. Just have to hope cooler heads prevail.

“Alright, I’ll share what I know.” Val tried to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Taking a deep breath, she started to speak.