Nick and his family all headed over to Maddy’s room, Maddy healing Nick the entire time. He joked about how much she could be making if she charged for this stuff. Which led to him finding out that Tony didn’t let her charge for it. He took any profits she made from her healing. The conversation awkwardly died after that.

“You got any clue what’s going on with Tony?” Nick asked.

“Well, we were all sitting in the bar when Val suddenly came running in and asked to speak to Tony in private. When they finished talking Tony lost it and started running around like a headless chicken.” Maddy explained.

Val. Nick recognised the name but couldn’t quite place it. Lily, who had no idea, just asked.

“Val is the Shaman working on this floor. That’s why I asked my sister if she had any clue. If one Shaman found something, maybe another did.”

The group then made it into Maddy’s room and found Abigail in almost the same state they had left her the other day. She had changed clothes but the theme was the same. All black. She was still curled up in the armchair, but now she was holding some sort of crystal slate in her hands. She was staring intently at it, but Nick couldn’t make out anything on it.

“Yo Abby. Tell everyone what you told me.” Maddy called out.

The girl didn’t react, just kept staring at the crystal slate. Maddy had to walk up to her and bonk her on the head before she reacted.

“Jeez. I was getting to it.” Abigail said, angrily swiping at Maddy’s arm. “Val must have seen something about tomorrow. He was talking about it in the forum. Now everyone’s got their knickers in a twist. Seems the war might be kicking off.”

“Forum?” Nick asked.

“Yeah. Us Shamans can all communicate using our magic powers.” Abigail wiggled her fingers about and giggled, apparently taking great delight in the family’s confused faces.

Maddy let out a sigh. “Shaman’s skills don’t seem to work like the rest of ours. They can do a whole bunch of weird things with just a few skills. One of them is some sort of way of communicating with each other.”

Straight up hocus pocus. Nick was beginning to regret not taking Shaman as his class. The girl in front of him was literally a wizard. Screw the different titles, she had magic powers! Nick couldn’t help but be jealous. It was only once he stopped his fangirling over magic that he thought about the consequences of what Abigail had said.

“Wait so, Val saw a vision of Doyle’s group coming up tomorrow and interpreted it as the start of the war?” He tried to clarify.

“How many people is Doyle sending up tomorrow?” Abigail asked in turn.

“Uhh.” Nick had to think about it for a moment. “Well, he didn’t give exact numbers but we agreed on a single team. A decently strong one, but just one.”

“Yeah well that’s not what Val saw. There’s a lot more than that coming up here tomorrow.”

Nick frowned. Then he started to connect some dots. Doyle’s meeting with those people from the Parklands. Paige sitting in on the meeting. Her comments about seeing him tomorrow.

“Holy shit. The Parkland is invading the 72nd floor tomorrow. Doyle must have made some sort of deal with them.” He exclaimed.

“Hey I resent that.” Abigail puffed. “It’s not the Parklands invading. Just the PPM.”

“The difference is?” Lily asked.

“The Parkland People’s Militia is just one of many factions within the Parklands. They might be the largest, but they don’t represent the many diverse groups and factions within the larger Parklands.” Abigail answered. It seemed close to her heart.

“Okay then.” Lily nodded. “What’s that mean for us though?”

Abigail just shrugged.

“Well I think Doyle must have worked something out with them. He didn’t tell me anything different so I have to assume our plan is still on. I saw him today and he totally would have had the chance to tell him if the plan was changing.” Nick thought out loud. “I say we just all group up tomorrow and wait for Doyle’s team to get here.”

Nobody else had a better idea so they decided that would be the plan. It was likely going to be a very rough day tomorrow. Nick asked Maddy if she had anything in the room that she wanted to bring down to the 71st floor. Nick would be keeping Tony’s magic bag and taking full advantage of it. Maddy shook her head and explained that Abigail had a bag of her own they’d be using. Nick was once again stumped by the girl. Apparently she never left the room but somehow had all this stuff from the Parklands, and now a magic bag.

He couldn’t lie, there was a bit of envy there. It was likely magic related and deep down Nick still wanted to be that OP wizard murder hobo, powerlevelling through all his obstacles. All he could do was sigh though, some dreams just weren’t meant to be. Instead he was some sort of discount Indiana Jones who liked to get in pub brawls and was slowly losing his marbles. Well, when he put it that way he kinda liked it. He had matching last names and everything, maybe it was meant to be.

Abigail then got up with a deep sigh of her own. She walked around the suite, grabbing everything and throwing it into a small black bag he hadn’t noticed she was holding. Eventually the room was left barren and dark, Maddy had to flip the lights back on and Abigail literally hissed. Nick then watched as she put the bag down on the floor and pushed the large armchair towards it.

What was she planning on doing? The chair was far too large to get through such a small opening in the bag. Everyone in the room, bar Maddy, was then shocked to watch the chair just get sucked into the bag.

“I need one of those.” Lily exclaimed.

“Her bag is way cooler than yours Nick!” Benny added on.

Abigail smirked and Nick jumped to the defence of his bag.

“Hey now, it’s not the best but it gets the job done.”

Maddy and Abigail both raised an eyebrow at him. Nick just rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

“I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

With that Nick stomped off towards his room. His bag was great. It was all magic and stuff, who needed a super cool, super magical bag anyway. He’d find way cooler bags eventually anyway. Wait, were these bags crafted or found in the Hotel? That was an important bit of information, and no, not just because he’d be able to brag about it if he found one. Nick was once again reminded just how little he actually knew. He was certainly learning but there was much, much more he needed to find out.

That could be worked on soon. He was sure once he was down on the 71st floor he’d get a bit more breathing room to focus on that sort of stuff. Hopefully. Nick returned to his room and was quickly joined by his family. He showed off the new clock he’d gotten from Paige. He couldn’t tell them how it worked when they asked, but they were all pretty alright chalking it up to magic. It was still only about mid afternoon so the family had a while before they’d be sleeping, so they sat around and chatted. The topic of classes came up eventually.

“I’m definitely taking Chef. Not a doubt. No clue about what to take for a second one.” Henry gave his two cents.

“Isn’t it going to be Healthy Individual? That class seems pretty great.” Nick asked.

“Well, Gareth keyed me in on some pretty good information. He said that no one worth their salt takes it. He said it’s good at the lower levels, especially for people who don’t actually fight. But the real money is in a class based around what you actually want to do. The skills you’ll get with each level will actually be useful. Apparently the average skills you get from Healthy Individual are rather garbage.” Henry explained.

That both surprised Nick and didn’t. Everything made sense about it, but it was surprising that Gareth was so against the class. Gareth seemed like a pretty knowledgeable guy about this stuff so it was likely he had good information. Lily then gave her own thoughts.

“I was considering going with Scout, I feel like I could specialise it towards something that would work well for me.”

Nick agreed with her, she was already a very observant person. Adding skills and buffs towards that would definitely make her a powerhouse in her own right.

“Though after meeting Abigail I can certainly see myself taking Shaman. That class seems so damn cool.” Lily added on.

Nick had to agree again. Magic was just too cool to logically pass up on. It seemed like Lily had a pretty good idea on what she wanted to do.

“Which would you take first?” He asked.

“I’m not sure, I wanna chat with Maddy and Abigail about that. No need to go into it blindly if I have both a Scout and a Shaman nearby.”

Nick then turned to Benny who seemed a little bored. “So champ, what class would you want?”

Benny, with a completely serious face answered. “Dread Pirate or Mecha Pilot.”

“Ah yes, two excellent choices.” Nick nodded.

“Very important sounding roles.” Lily nodded along.

“Core parts of any team.” Henry said, nodding and stroking his beard like an old sage.

Benny seemed pretty happy with their answers and went on to explain how he and his friends talked about it a lot. They had all apparently come to the consensus that those two choices would simply be the best. Yep, no wonder people stopped kids from taking classes.

The family laughed and joked around for the next few hours, enjoying board games and various junk foods. As the night went on and the time to sleep got closer an anxiety also began to grow within the adults. They knew what tomorrow entailed. No longer was it just a simple escort mission they’d be carried through. They’d potentially be dealing with the Parklands's invasion as well, Nick doubted Doyle had arranged for them to be separately timed events. That would just be far too convenient for Nick, wouldn’t it?

Eventually the time came for everyone to hit the hay, they wanted to be up bright and early tomorrow. There were a lot of hugs and reassurances shared between the members of the family before they went to their separate rooms. Nick wasn’t sure about everyone else but he didn’t find sleep easily that night. Even when he did eventually fall asleep it wasn’t great stuff. He was tossing and turning all night, just not able to sleep for any long periods or make himself comfortable at all, even if it was the most comfortable bed in the world.

When he finally did manage to get to sleep he was woken up by Lily. Her phone hadn’t died like Nick’s had, so she still had a working alarm. He wondered if he could get a clock with an alarm feature. He checked his own clock and saw that it was 7am. He sighed. The arranged time for Doyle's team to arrive was 10am, so Nick had a feeling that’s when he could expect the rest of the PPM’s forces as well.

Nick and his family gathered in the living room of the suite for a very quiet breakfast. Nick went through his bag and was presented with a difficult choice. He had a bunch of armour he could give to his family to keep them safe. The only issue was if an actual war broke out, armour would just turn them into potential targets. He wanted to make sure they were as safe as possible during the next conflict but he didn’t want to put a target on his family’s back. He asked for their opinions and they all preferred not wearing anything.

Except for Benny, he really wanted to wear some armour. He was a little dude, so Nick gave him the leather chest piece the poor swordsman had been wearing. Nick was handing it over to the kid when the entire family saw the blood stains running down it. Nick quickly retracted it and shoved it into his bag. Nick had broken the swordsman’s nose and blood had gone everywhere, Nick had only cleaned his own armour back on the 71st.

The entire family was a little bit spooked. Benny even looked a little taken back and started asking questions. Nick had to awkwardly explain he’d broken the nose of the person he had gotten it from.

“So you’re a thief?” Benny asked.

That cut deep.

“No, they tried to rob me.” He replied.

“I dunno bro, you still stole it from them.”

Nick got a little frustrated. “It’s not like that, they attacked me first.”

Benny didn’t look convinced at all and Henry had to step in. He put a hand on Nick’s shoulder and gave him a gentle look. Nick took a deep breath and cleared his head. Benny was right in a way but Nick didn’t want to admit it.

Nick then got geared up and earned a laugh from everyone when he pulled out his new bright pink wraps. Nick certainly wasn’t living them down for a while. Once he was geared up he reluctantly got ready to go to the bar. He wanted to stay with his family until 10am but he didn’t want to make Tony any more paranoid than he already was.