It had been two weeks since the adventurers had killed the White Herald, not that anyone knew that. In King’s Head, The Executives and the Underlanders had been quiet from some time now. It had Gamer Man worried. Seats of power were shifting, and while there was rarely a shortage of heroes, King’s Head always had more than enough villains.

Gamer Man switched on the news as he worked on his latest project, hoping to hear about some villain activity.

“-Marks the third week without major super villain activity. City officials advise caution, saying that this is the calm before a storm. Reports are still coming in about people who claim to be-”

Gamer Man let his mind wander, letting his hands work on instinct. Gamer Man’s workshop was a clean place. Cement floors, metal tables, and a host of screens and neon lights. Gamer Man had special goggles for working in his workshop, something he picked up after he heard that looking at blue light all day could be harmful to the eyes.

Gamer Man thought he looked cool in the goggles. He did not.

“-Of three people attacking a fourth, unknown individual. An eye witness reports that she was familiar with the three people, having worked with them for years-”

The project Gamer Man was working on was a special one, and something that had left him stumped for awhile now. The exosuit frame was in good working condition, but the rest of it was a mess. Gamer Man had heard of power armor in video games that could read brainwaves and act alongside the thoughts of the user. After calibrating the strength to make sure it didn’t twist him into a pretzel, Gamer Man decided to install an A.I. in the suit so that it could act on its own if the need arose.

““-Shoved the sword down his throat!” “Really? That’s insane. You said it was a sword of fire, correct?” “No, I said the sword was on fire-””

This had been a mistake, but not one that Gamer Man was willing to give up on. At least, not yet. The issue was two fold: Gamer Man had no idea how to map brainwave patterns into something a computer could understand, and everytime he tried to get the suit to switch from automatic to manual the system would crash.

“-No idea where this mysterious individual disappeared to. Would you say he was a hero, or-”

An alarm beeped. Gamer Man stood back from the exo-suit. It was time to exercise. Hopefully, the time letting his brain relax would help him puzzle out his coding issue. Or at the very least, Gamer Man hoped as he started with bicep curls, leave him fresh and ready to tackle the problem again.

Why oh why did he decide to start coding? Gamer Man already had a firm grasp on criminal psychology, engineering, martial arts, criminal justice and classical literature. That last one really hadn’t been much help, Gamer Man hadn’t met a single villain themed after Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan.. It took nearly every hour of the day for Gamer Man to study all of that and work as a superhero. Then, Gamer Man had decided to take up the ever so simple subject of coding. Ugh.

“-No idea what these creatures could possibly want, and further investigations have gone cold. Later tonight-”

Oh, that reminded Gamer Man. The armor he had made for the bard was ready. It had honestly surprised Gamer Man, when he had taken the bard’s measurements he found that the elf was more endowed than Faery Fire. Gamer Man didn’t think that was possible. Faery Fire had once explained in a live stream that modern science literally could not make her any more beautiful. Now, where was that scroll they had given him? Ah, there it was.

Space in front of the bard warped and twisted, wrenching open into a wormhole to Gamer Man’s lab.

“Wow,” Gamer Man muttered, standing in his lab and looking at a grassy field in the middle of nowhere.

“Hey, artificer,” the bard said, “What are you doing here?”

“I finished the armor you requested,” Gamer Man said, passing a cardboard box to the bard, “So, the shirt, pants and underwear are nano carbon fiber tubes woven together with silk, for comfort. The jacket has the gold and platinum alloy chain mesh worked into it. You probably want the wizard to put some sort of self repair enchantment onto the armor. Nano carbon fiber tends to be very strong, but also very brittle.”

“Thanks,” the bard said with a smile, “Glad to finally be in armor again. By the way, do you think you could make me a sword?”

“You didn’t ask for a sword,” Gamer Man said.

“Yeah, but you seemed a lot more satisfied with the haste charm than I was with new armor,” the bard explained.

“Do you have any idea how expensive that armor is?” Gamer Man asked.

“No,” the bard admitted, “And yes, I understand that a sword wasn’t part of the deal. But, couldn’t you just do it anyway?”

“Sorry, but you’re not altering the deal now,” Gamer Man said, “I’m busy with other projects, I don’t have time to make a sword. I also don't have time to learn how to make a sword either."

"You hammer metal into a sword," the bard explained.

"It's a lot more complicated than that," Gamer Man said.

"Sounds like you already know how to make a sword then," the bard said.

"I'm not making you a sword for free," Gamer Man said, "What are you doing here anyway?"

"Hmm? Oh, we're training new adventurers," the bard said, gesturing to Alice as the barbarian beat her across the face with a heavy branch.

"Looks like you're beating people up," Gamer Man remarked.

"Getting good at getting beaten up is the first step to being great at not getting beaten up," the bard explained, "Besides, she's training to be a barbarian."

"Alice?" Gamer Man muttered. He recognized her from college. She had been so career focused. Now she was training to be a barbarian?

"Something like that, probably," the bard said.

Gamer Man watched the barbarian slam Alice into the dirt as she wrestled against him in vain.

"Look, you’re not evil are you?" Gamer Man asked, "This kinda looks like you kidnapped a bunch of people and are attacking them."

The bard spent a moment looking over her party and the adventurers in training. Hank was being impaled by the fighter, Felicia was fleeing from the wizard's spells, the barbarian was balancing on a tree branch as he set up an elbow drop, and the cleric was chasing around some poor man.

"Hey! Cleric!" the bard called.

"What?" the cleric shouted back.

"Artificer wants to know if I'm evil!" the bard shouted.

The cleric jogged over, pausing as she reached the bard to wield divine authority upon earthly realms.

"You're not evil," the cleric said, "Neither is the artificer."

"That's good to know," Gamer Man said, fairly sure all the adventurers were terrible liars, "Are you sure this is how you train people? None of my training or studying looked like this."

"Yeah, and you weren't prepared to adventure with us," the cleric said, “Leave adventurer training to expert adventurers.”

“Alright, but-” Gamer Man said, pointing to Hank, “Is that guy okay?”

“Hey!” the cleric shouted, “Are you okay?”

Hank, for a man who had a sword sticking out of him, was feeling healthier and stronger than he ever had in his life.

“Doin’ just fine!” Hank shouted back, “Might need a healing spell in a bit!”

“I’d better get over there,” the cleric said.

“They’re getting better at knowing how much of a beating they can take,” the bard remarked, “Way better than the start. Them rolling around in agony after a single hit was just embarrassing.”

“They did that?” Gamer Man asked.

“Yeah, but they stopped doing it like a week ago,” the bard said.

“Okay. Okay. I gotta get back to work,” Gamer Man said, "Do you mind if I talk to the wizard for a moment?"

“Why would I ever care?” the bard asked.

“Alright then,” Gamer Man said, “See you later. Hey, excuse me, wizard?”

“Huh?” the wizard asked, a locus of arcane energy forming between his hands, “Oh, Artificer. Something you want?”

“Yeah, I’m working on a project and I’d like your help,” Gamer Man explained, “I’m trying to build a suit of armor that can read your thoughts and move with them.”

“Why do you want help building cursed armor?” the wizard asked.

“It’s not cursed armor,” Gamer Man explained, “It’s armor that enhances your movements. The armor reads your thoughts and moves according to the wearer’s commands. It should mean you can attack, run, move, and react faster.”

“I- look, this really isn’t hard,” the wizard explained, “Just summon a spirit, bind it to your command, and then infuse it with the armor.”

“I don’t know how to do any of that,” Gamer Man admitted, “I’m Ga- I’m Artificer. I build stuff, I don’t cast magic. I was hoping for your help with it.”

“I’m busy,” the wizard explained, “I’m teaching what’s-her-name over there of the intricate machinations of arcane werkings. So’s the rogue, she wanted to learn that also.”

“What’s the current lesson?” Gamer Man asked.

“How not to get ambushed and stabbed,” the wizard said, “So far, she’s really bad at it.”

“Mind if I give her some advice?” Gamer Man asked.

“Go for it,” the wizard said.

“Swing your left elbow backwards!” Gamer Man called out.

“What?” Felicia responded, looking around in desperation, “Why?”

“Just do it!” Gamer Man answered.

Felicia did, swinging with wild and feral abandon. The rogue ducked backwards as Felicia’s elbow passed by his face. Finally spotting the rogue, Felicia, straining with effort, conjured a bolt of light and flung it at the rogue. The rogue’s knives flickered through the air as he knocked the bolt aside. Felicia ran.

“You saw the rogue?” the wizard asked.

“Well,” Gamer Man started. The truth was, Gamer Man had watched a lot, and I do mean a lot of anime. The ninja vanish was a staple of the kind of all out brawls Gamer Man enjoyed, and he had noticed that the enemy would always, without fail, teleport behind the hero’s left shoulder. It happened so often, even within a single series, that Gamer Man wondered why nobody ever seemed to notice.

“I simply, uh, learned from the best,” Gamer Man concluded.

“But we’re the best,” the wizard said, scratching his chin, “This is troubling.”

“I- look, could I just, I don’t know, borrow a scroll of spirit summoning from you?” Gamer Man asked, “I promise I’ll return it.”

“Eh, sure,” the wizard said, pulling a scroll from his robe, “This should summon a fairly weak spirit, something that you can easily dominate. Probably.” The wizard briefly held the scroll open. “Yeah, so you inscribe the command word in the center and then speak that word to activate the scroll. It should summon a minor air elemental that you can telepathically control.”

“Does this, I don’t know, destroy the scroll?” Gamer Man asked.

“Yeah, that scroll is literally made of paper,” the wizard said, “If you can reinscribe it onto something more durable, which I’m sure you can, you’re an artificer, it should be fine.”

“Alright, thanks,” Gamer Man said.

Gamer Man walked back through the portal to his lab, and spoke the words to end the scroll's magic. The portal snapped shut with the quiet snap of a branch being split. Useful stuff, Gamer Man thought.

Still, it was time to get back to work on the exo suit. Gamer Man opened the scroll, and saw a messy, absurdly intricate set of runes and sigil drawn in a circle. In the center, there was a space to write the command phrase. But…

“How small is his handwriting?” Gamer Man wondered aloud. He snapped a picture of the scroll, added the command word “load” to the picture using Microsoft Paint, and pasted it into the power armor’s programming.

“Load,” Gamer Man said.

Nothing happened.

Gamer Man grit his teeth. The program had a picture, and it didn’t know what it was a picture of. This was, Gamer Man knew, a long shot, but according to the wizard the magic circle had to be transferred to sturdier materials to keep the magic running. Gamer Man figured his best bet would be redrawing all the runes and sigils in the power armor’s programming. It sounded magical to Gamer Man, and he hoped it would work. So, with a resolute sigh, Gamer Man downloaded as many ASCII characters, font styles, and alphabets as he could find, and began the process of recreating the magic circle character by character.