“Un jour je serai de retour près de toi” -Cindy’s message, Disco Elysium-

_____

Twelve hours later, well after the sun had abandoned the September evening, but before it was so absurdly late that everyone had gone home, James sat on one side of a desk in the gathering warehouse, fiddling with a magic item and helping Liz find stuff in the stacks of documents on the surface between them.

They weren’t monstrous stacks, not like you’d see in a movie that was trying to drive home the point that this was business, dammit. But there were still enough folders full of reports that they blanked the desk in a labeled manilla formation.

“Heck.” James said as the blue orb he was holding popped, giving him a skill rank in toboggan and cleaning his fridge. “…what fridge?” He muttered, puzzling over the alien information as it ran across his thoughts. “Oh, whatever.” He grumbled, reaching for another orb and picking up the Status Quo glove again.

He was trying, and failing, to create a magic item from a different flavor of magic item.

The left handed glove wasn’t a Status Quo original. For whatever reason - probably all the blood magic involved in their creation - those ones started out a lot more powerful, and leveled up a lot slower. This was a duplicate, the process the Order used to make it stripping away all its accumulated power, but also making a more efficient long term piece of equipment. Right now, it had two abilities stored in it; Break Wood at level five, and Shatter Stone at level one. Each one accumulating a single charge of use roughly every two days, it was only where it was because of a vigilant use of dungeon time dilation.

It was also one of the less valuable Status Quo items they owned, duplicate or not. And so it was okay for James to risk blowing it up or turning it into sand or whatever else he might screw up while attempting to infuse it with magic from a different dungeon. Assuming the glove even came from a dungeon in the first place.

“Heck!” James barked out in shock as his hand slipped and he broke the other blue orb, this time not even failing the magic, just simple physical error. It netted him a skill rank in the history of the Mexican auto industry, which was depressing, and solved the problem of making sure his delivery wasn’t lost. “…was it lost?” He asked the air. “Or does this… what did I even order…?” He trailed off. Either way, it was probably a net good, so he carefully picked up another blue orb, and set back to his task.

The Status Quo items held abilities, that generated charges, that could be used by anyone using the item. Those abilities then leveled up, and unlocked new abilities. And what James wanted to do - what a lot of people wanted to do, really - was to use the blue orbs they used to make their own magic, to add a new ability. Something that used the same structure of power as the Status Quo item, but that they had a hand in. No pun intended.

It hadn’t worked on any other item. They had a few people who were getting good at making dungeontech, but no one could make anything even remotely like the Status Quo gear. For now, it was unique. But if it didn’t have to be, if they could just expand even one piece of it a little bit, then every future copy of that item would be stronger and more useful, forever.

It was the kind of legacy building James normally didn’t think much about. But then, he planned to be around for a long time. And as someone who averaged about one level up in his basketball Lesson every year, he felt comfortable making magic items that would really come into their own two decades from now.

He ignored Liz glaring at him over the folder she flipped down, before she pulled it back up and tried in vain to get the papers to line up properly. The teenager had been here for two hours, and James, who was making magic items, was already close to restless. She was reading after action reports. He could not imagine being a human with that level of focus. When he was a teenager, he literally could not focus on something for more than twenty minutes at a time, unless it was trying to find physics exploits with the plasma grenades in Halo 2. So this was relentlessly impressive to him.

The least he could do was try again on the magic item creation.

There were a few things the Order had started to learn about making dungeontech. First, you needed to think like a GM. This was not hyperbole, this was almost literally true; people who had run tabletop RPGs, especially who had at some point had to deal with players who thought game balance was for suckers, just did better at this. You needed to be in that headspace of creating a set of conditions that were limiting, while still useful. Which led to the second trick; you couldn’t be focused on making something that solved your problem. Or rather, you could, but it was fighting an uphill battle, and it led to quirks in items. And third… third was weird. Third was that there seemed to be a sort of economy of vibe to the way things were made. Working with office supplies took less than working with industrial tools, working with professional dress clothing was easier than working with something like a hoodie. And, more than that, making things that ‘felt right’ for what you were enchanting was easier, too. You could, in theory, make glasses that changed the font of what you read and a pencil that let you write in infrared. But it would be so much easier to do it the other way around. And you could surpass those limits, but it took larger and larger blue orbs, and you could not stack multiple blues in a single object.

With all that in mind, James tried to just let his creative thoughts flow to something that felt like it fit. He knew pretty clearly that trying to enchant a new ability into the glove that looked like the original powers was pushing it, but he had a fairly large blue orb here to compensate. So he just let his mind wander, since his last four direct efforts had resulted in broken orbs and weird skill ranks.

What did a glove do? Well, it held things. Or rather, the hand did. It wrapped around a hand. It protected. But professional dress wasn’t for protection, it was for style, wasn’t it? And the blue orbs did seem to like their professional twists on things, even if they were sometimes sarcastic about it.

James smirked as he had an image in his head of an author, or maybe a secretary, writing with a feather pen with a single glove on their hand. Something that probably never existed, really, but it was a nice image. What would that look like as a power? Something that made a pen?

No, that was silly. And also not especially useful. But the part of his brain that was always fielding questions on game balance kicked into gear as he had the thought. A power relatead to pens. What could it do? Make a pen better? Maybe. Make a pen a weapon? No. Sharpen a pencil? Sure, all writing implements. But only for writing.

He didn’t even notice when the orbs he was holding silently shattered into glittering dust, which was pulled into the glove that he was holding. At a certain point, he’d created an idea coherent enough and fitting enough that it just worked, and that was it. One new magic item.

One new category of magic item.

“Heck!” He burst out, throwing his chair backward as he jolted to his feet. “Yes!”

Liz thwapped the folder she was flipping through onto the desk, unaware of the breakthrough that had just occurred. “You asked me to do this! Can you please stop being so distracting?!” She said with the conviction only a teenager could muster.

“Sorry.” James grinned, not really feeling the apology. “I got the thing to work?”

“Great.” Liz stared at him blankly, until she awkwardly looked down. “Oh. Sorry. Great?”

“Nah, it’s fine.” James’ smile softened. “How’s it going? Do you wanna take a break or, like, go home? It’s kinda late, isn’t it?”

“It’s only eight, and my mom is doing a class tonight, so I was gonna be hanging out here anyway. Momo’s busy though, and Morgan’s asleep, and… I like being useful?” She looked at James then glanced away. “I guess?”

He set the glove on the desk. “It’s okay to like being useful.” He said. “But it’s not required, you know? You’re kinda in a special position when it comes to this specific task, but we lived without you and you don’t need to feel pressured on it.”

“No!” She seemed startled by her own instant vehement reply. “No, I mean, it’s okay. I don’t mind!” Liz looked around the room, seeing the only other people in it were forty feet away and working on what looked like a suit of camraconda armor. “I just…” she looked like she had a lot to say, but didn’t know where to start. She did have a lot to say. She wanted to tell James that he brought her mom back, that he saved her life, that he broke her out of a doom spiral and made her sane again. But while Liz was smart, she was still a high school senior, and she didn’t exactly have the words to say it. Didn’t know where to find purchase to slip that into conversation. “I wanna be useful.” She said with a tilt of her head.

James heard a lot of the space where things weren’t said, even if he didn’t know exactly what she was holding back. “Well, I appreciate it.” He told her reassuringly. “And you can go at your own speed here. Got any notes so far?”

The notes in question were any discrepancies with reality.

Liz wasn’t exactly a brilliant tactical mind, or the brains behind the curtain. But she was entirely, naturally, immune to antimemetics. Forced forgetfulness, information erasure, behavioral restrictions, it just didn’t work on her. No one knew why, even Planner, who lived partially in Liz’s head by invitation. But as a result of it, she was the perfect person to take a look at the Order’s writeups of events, and check to make sure that no one had been compromised.

“Um… there was a Response thing about them rescuing forty cats?” She half-asked, looking at her notepad. “Was that… a thing?”

“That was a thing.” James confirmed. “We took them to a local no-kill shelter, they’re fine.”

“Oh. I just thought, because there are no cats around here…” She waved a hand.

James nodded. “I getcha. Good thing to check, really. Also, it is weird there are no cats? I thought for sure at least one camraconda wanted a pet cat.” He trailed off. “I’ll check on that later. Anyway, got anything else?”

“Uh… there’s a lot of these.” The words were somewhere between a defense and excuse, as Liz realized that maybe one person was the wrong scale of team to read over the reports generated by over a hundred researchers, responders, and delvers. Her eyes held a note of distress as she looked at the table full of documents. “I don’t even know where to start. But, like, does anyone ever follow up on anything here?”

“That… that is the point of this.” James tilted his head at her. “Why, find something?”

“Well, there’s a recent thing about animal orbs? And it seems like no one is doing anything with that? Is this… is this a pokemon thing or something?”

James sighed in relief. “Oh! No, we’ve been prioritizing other things to copy, and since some people incidentally picked up the orbs, we’re waiting to dig into them until we have a little more to go on, which we’ll probably find out also incidentally. It’s not a great system, but Research is very busy, and we need more people.”

“Oh. Okay?” Liz sounded almost disappointed. “What do they do?”

“No idea.” James said to her as he turned in his seat, having spotted Dave walking past. “Though I actually see someone who I’ve been trying to find to ask about this who doesn’t answer his messages.” He raised his voice to call Dave over to them before the other man could make it to the access ladder to the roof.

Dave curved his walking path to drop by the table they were at, stepping out of the shadows of the mostly unlit back area and into the pool of lamplight around their working space. “Sup?” He asked James. “Also hi Liz.”

“Dave, you work at an animal thing, right? Can you bring me a hedgehog?” James asked him directly.

With a shrug, Dave easily answered. “Probably not? But I can try. Why, trying to put together a Dr. Robotnik cosplay?”

James made a shooing motion. “Get out of here. Liz has work to do.”

After Dave had sauntered away, laughing to himself a little too loudly, Liz looked up at James from what she’d been trying to read. “What’s a robotnik?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” He said rapidly.

The teenager gave him a belligerent look. “Really?”

“I mean, maybe.” James shrugged as he leaned back and gave a real answer to that question. “That’s a thing that adults say a lot. My parents used to tell me that, and it was really frustrating. I think it’s shorthand for ‘there is a lot of cultural context here, and you might get it when you have had time to read and watch more, but I just do not want to explain Sonic the Hedgehog lore to you right now’, you know?”

“Your parents said that?” Liz asked him, confused.

“I’m saying that. Sort of. Anyway, sorry, I think I cut you off yelling at Dave. Did you have another one?”

She pulled a stack of now-unsorted papers from the side of the desk, getting a wince from James as he realized they weren’t copies. “Uh, okay, what’s up with all the dungeons you guys don’t use?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s no exploration logs from the Clutter Ascent, right?”

“Oh!” James sighed. “That’s because people live there. We’re not treating that one like a dungeon. Wait, you said ‘all the’. Are there…?”

“Wherever stuff like that came from?” Liz pointed to the glove on the table.

“Dead.”

“…and whatever is in Utah?”

“…Alchemists?” James raised his eyebrows at her.

“No, like, the dungeon in Utah. There were those kids, right? Morgan and Color and I hung out with them. The ones who’s friend died and lives here now?” She stopped and frowned. “Wait…”

James nodded knowingly. He recognized the look on her face from saying novel sentences. Then the understanding look slipped from his face as his brain caught up. “Wait, yeah, hang on. I remember this. We sent them home, informed their parents, and told them no more delving until they were older.”

“Uh…” Liz looked at him like she was either hoping or worried that he knew something she didn’t. “And?”

“And what?”

“And… why did you do that?” She squeaked. “Because that seems stupid?” As soon as she finished speaking, for a brief second, that was actually several seconds, James felt a rush of uncomfortable anger, tinged with shame. Who the fuck was this kid to tell him he was stupid? Liz watched as his face shifted instantly to a scowl at her, the atmosphere of the room turning hostile in a split second. “Uh… ah! C-code one!” She stammered out.

James heard the words, and froze from where he’d been about to stand up and storm off. “What?” He snapped. Then heard himself, and slumped back into his chair, a wave of confusion coming over him. “What?” He said again, softer.

“Code one.” Liz almost whimpered, shrinking back in her seat. “You… you…”

An orange dusty light whipped out from James’ neck and back as the navigator living in his mind manifested. The feathered set of limbs pushing outward in the vague outline of a coat with a high collar and a wide eye set in that collar, the ghostly feathered tail it brought out wrapping around the chair James was sitting in. “Something is trying to cut lines off your map.” He bluntly informed James and Liz.

“I feel it.” James said. “Yeah, there’s a pressure when I think about-“

“Stop that!” The navigator hissed. Then, a second later, “No, wait. Do that again.”

James did so, because being told not to think about something is basically the same as being told to think about something, and he was already doing it. There was a hiss of orange light, and the rustling of feathers like a single great flap. James felt a pressure, like a melange of anger and shame, building in his chest. But with no direction to go, it quickly turned inward, leaving him feeling disgusted with himself, making thinking or focusing on anything a real challenge.

The navigator squawked something incomprehensible, a row of feathers along his flank burning away in a line like he’d just punched into something on fire. And then, the pressure on James was gone.

“Haaaaaa…” he breathed out a long gasp. “Thanks.” James muttered, turning his arm over to examine the navigator’s manifested flesh. “Shit, are you okay? Did you kill it?”

“I will live.” The navigator said. “And no. Only tore a hole. Big enough for you, maybe one or two others. It’s not smart or strong, just big.”

“Well, thank you.” He said. “Do you need anything? Nap? Long drive to the coast?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, I’ll get on that soon.” James promised. Then he looked back up at Liz, who was still watching him with apprehension, one of Planner’s tentacles coiled protectively around her. “Sorry. Fuck, I’m really sorry.” He said. “I dunno why we didn’t plan for security for this. That was really stupid. Also, you’re right, the dungeon thing was stupid! Tell teenagers not to do a thing and expect that to happen? What were we thinking?!” James berated himself. “Dammit. We need to get someone to Utah and… and…” he paused, then looked down at his arm where the scorched feathers were already dissolving back into his skin. “We need to get someone with infomorph support down to Utah.”

Liz just gave him a slow nod. “Are they gonna be okay?” She asked.

“If they are, they already are.” James said with a sigh. “Since they almost certainly went back into the dungeon, didn’t they?” He looked at her with a sad grin. “You would, right?”

“No!” Liz protested way too rapidly.

“Uh huh.” James’ smile became a little more real. He pulled out his phone, and started composing messages, before realizing something. “Dammit, I’m gonna need to do this in person. They just won’t react to messages.” He sighed. “Okay. Hey, you wanna call it here for now? That was kind of horrible, and I don’t wanna push it.”

“I… uh.. yes.” Liz nodded. “I can go… bug Morgan or something.” She said, and James felt like he restrained himself very nicely from raising his eyebrows at her. Taunting the kids, even if he thought it was in good fun, was the opposite of the world he wanted to build here. “Oh, there was one other thing from way at the start?” Liz asked. “I don’t think it’s… that weird… but, do you know someone named Frank?”

“Used to.” James nodded. “I mean, I guess I still do. Why?”

“Well, why’s he in prison?” Liz asked.

“Because it was an efficient way to remove his ability to hurt people.” James stated, a hard tone to his voice as he remembered that Frank had been selling people to one of the real monsters of Officium Mundi. Trading lives for a few thousand bucks here and there. “And it seemed nicer than killing him.”

“Oh. Okay. I just thought… ah, nevermind.” Liz set the folder she was looking at back, and let Planner help her up. “I’m gonna go?”

“Sure, sure. But, like, it’s okay if you share your thought, you know? Pretend I’m not a stuffy adult if it helps.” James joked.

Liz shrugged, not really looking at him. “I just thought you guys didn’t like prisons.” She said, before she said something James didn’t really hear about doing this smarter next time, and heading out.

Leaving James sitting at a desk covered in folders, staring at the far wall of the warehouse, not reacting to the delve team that came in to add their route up Winter’s Climb to the growing map of the mountain. He sat there, staring down at his own hands, for a few minutes completely silent.

Until he looked up at the ceiling, considered screaming, and instead just said, “Well fuck.”

Over a year of actually committing to the process of restorative justice, working with people who had done way more damage than Frank ever had, and James had just… fucking forgotten. Not out of an antimeme or hostile infomorph or anything he could excuse. He’d basically just ditched Frank in a cell somewhere and dusted his hands off, problem solved.

He waved off the delve team that was giving him concerned looks, assured them he was fine, and chatted with them for a bit while he put all the folders away. He didn’t recognize any of them except Ethan, the overly excitable early twenties guy having gone through a tempering of sorts. He was still overly excitable, but his enthusiasm was a lot less self-centered and oblivious now. The others included a pair of human women who were doing the nearly constantly skulljack link thing, an authority that was on the cusp of being a person, a camraconda still bundled in a snake-shaped parka, and a laminated paper dragon named Elegan that was the size of a horse and kept trying to eat James’ coat. The dragon, apparently, was the mount for the camraconda when they escorted people up the mountain.

Their team had been sort of ad hoc thrown together by Sarah and Karen, according to them. But it had grown over the last month into something reliable and effective, and they were preparing for a dedicated treasure hunting run to look for more Climb books in the near future, and to see if they could get high enough to unlock a second spell slot.

The girls, who went by Amyea, a name James was certain was a portmanteau, asked if James had the power to get them more of the wood resistance programs. He told them he’d see what he could do, while in the back of his head wondering what the fuck Research was doing with the massive server farm they kept expanding.

It wasn’t until he’d already left with a vague idea of heading down to one of the basements to wrap up some loose ends that he remembered the glove, and darted back into the cool warehouse area to grab it off the desk. Already, his victory on doing something to it felt a little sour, but he couldn’t help be excited as he prompted the copied item to tell him what it could do.

The first two abilities were expected, and the same. Break Wood five, Shater Stone one. But then, beyond that, there was a third thing. Something new. Something that had worked. A magic power infused into a different magic item, following a different set of rules, and, importantly, telling James what it was.

At least, a little bit. Partially.

It told him it was called Evoke Quill. Level one, no charges, fifty uses to level up, and a cooldown of half a day. He had no idea what it did, and yet, seeing that third line of information alongside the two familiar ones was an electric rush of satisfaction. He had proven it worked, that it even could work. And now, the door was open to more. To see where this new angle of magic could take them.

Eventually. After at least fifty days, for this one. Maybe forty days, if they really streamlined their time dilation exploitation. And even then, probably more days after. Spells on these things didn’t seem to unlock anything until levels above two.

James thought about the brooch that purified food, and how it had recently unlocked the ability to bind itself to a ‘processor’, and he gave a chuckling wince at the thought. That ability wouldn’t be going anywhere for a decade, and so far, it seemed to be a meta power with nothing to influence, making it about as useful as the gun bracelets when all they could do was tether themselves to a weapon once every year or so.

It was just very cool. And while he didn’t have much of a need for a quill, evoked or otherwise, James was still generally excited to see where someone who was better at this, like Anesh or the living potion Bea, could take the art of enhancing Status Quo items.

For now, though, he was still feeling that lingering anxiety of hurrying up and waiting for JP or Nate or someone to report back to him and tell him where to go to solve a problem, and so, instead of going home and going to bed like a normal person, James went back to looking for things to do to keep himself busy until he was exhausted.

Halfway through waiting for the elevator, James’ brain caught up to the fact that, while he might not be able to give specific orders about the Utah dungeon without an infomorph on hand to help, he absolutely had an easier way to contact the scout team than waiting to stumble into one of their members. Because he lived in the future, and had a smartphone, and sending someone the sentence “I need to talk to you, what’s a good time to meet?” Was something even the most finicky memeplex probably wouldn’t mess with. And if it would, then it was already way too late for the Order to save themselves anyway.

So James sent that message, and then got on an elevator feeling a lot less overwhelmed.

He’d been on an antidepressant that had been working for him for months now. But that didn’t just make every problem his brain had magically go away. And sometimes, he still ran into bouts of exhausted despair when he had more than one thing to do at a time, and was foolishly trying to keep the whole picture of every problem at the front of his brain. So it really was a big help to throw the ball into Charlie’s side of the court, and go back to just worrying about the big thing.

The big thing, which was that a mysterious group of assassins were killing investment bankers and stock brokers, and he couldn’t do anything about it right now. The big thing, which was the thing he was trying to distract himself from.

But he could distract himself from a single problem at a time. That was easy.

The elevator let him out into the sunlit garden mezzanine of one of the basements, cool sunset light that would have been normal to see upstairs maybe three hours ago pouring through the skylight ceiling and onto the pair of trees growing through the center of the circular space. A balcony overhead had someone on it doing some light pruning of one of the trees, while someone else worked at watering the ground cover plants with a set of mechanical arms on their serpent body.

James nodded politely to the gardeners as he walked past, and headed for the hospital segment.

It was still acting as a secure area, at least two ratroaches here under quarantine until they fully tested negative for anything hostile to human life. But James wasn’t here to visit them just yet; that would be in the next week or two. Instead, he was here to say hi to Alanna’s wasp friend, who actually had decided to start calling herself Banana, much to Alanna’s semi-exaggerated exasperation.

“Now, remember,” the nurse on duty told James as she walked him back, “no sudden movements, don’t raise your voice, and if you need assistance, there’s a call button over the bed and by the door that will alert either of us.” She gave James an appraising look. “Be nice to the poor girl.” She told him suspiciously.

“Thank you.” James said, as he set a hand on the room’s door.

The nurse nodded at him. “Oh, and Deb would like me to tell you that she has the power to have you thrown into the ocean if you ‘do anything overly dramatic again’.” She eyed James, looking for a reaction.

The reaction she got was James turning slightly red, and breaking eye contact. “Yes, I am… the ocean? Really?”

“She said ‘the sea’, but I assume she means the Pacific.”

“Good to know.” James tried an awkward smile. “I’ll refrain this time. I’m just here to say hi.”

He distangled himself from the prying gaze of the newly hired nurse, made a mental note that whoever had picked her out had done a good job finding someone who so easily identified Banana as a girl and a victim to be treated kindly, and not a monster or something else. The door, he left cracked open, remembering that most of the ratroaches he’d talked to down here got very nervous if they felt like he’d sealed them into the room.

“Hyyyylo.” Banana buzzed the word at him with a warbling squawk through her open beak. She’d been, according to Alanna, struggling very hard to form words without skulljack assistance. And she’d perked up as James came in, but then, as if remembering suddenly, shifted into a more reserved posture where she was sitting on the hospital bed and tried to peer around him.

“Hey Banana.” James said softly. And then, with a sad twist to his smile, added, “Arrush isn’t with me today, it’s just me.”

“Kaay.” She cawed at me. And then, with the small wireless speaker paired to the Bluetooth she had her skulljack connected to, she added in more level English, “Is good. Scares me.”

“He’s…” James suppressed the urge to get mad on Arrush’s behalf. Especially after the day he’d been having, he wasn’t particularly interested in letting people be rude to the big ratroach behind his back. “You know he’d never hurt you, right?” James asked her quietly. “He’s like you. Like a lot of people here.”

Banana cocked her head to the side and opened her beak again, the crack down its side still not healed and probably never fully whole again. “Still scarrrrry.” She intoned with a buzz.

James sighed softly. “Well, we’re all kinda scary, aren’t we?” He smiled at her. “Have you been feeling better?” He asked more directly.

The girl nodded, feathers on her head splaying as the antenna that flowed back from her skull bobbed with the nod. “Yes!” She squawked, adding with her digital voice, “Less sleeping for me! Deb says… says…” Banana leaned forward, breath wheezing out of her compressed lungs as she rustled her wings slightly, but kept them closed under her shell. “She teaches me about me. Soon we can try… the thing.” She looked at James with her single remaining eye. “And then… and then…” The words trailed off.

James settled into the chair by the side of the bed. “And then, something different!” He said happily. “But hopefully something good, right?”

“Riiiight!” She cawed.

“I knew Deb and Reed and co were making progress on the shaper substance thing, I just didn’t think we were ready to start person trials.” He tapped at his chin. “You feel okay with that?” He asked her.

The wasp girl just shrugged, the elytra that hid her wings rising and falling in a way that mostly just messed up the hospital gown she was wearing. “Maybe? I want to be an elephant.”

“I… what?”

“Elephant!” She tilted her head back and tried to emulate an elephant’s trumpet. It didn’t work.

“I… uh…” James clamped his lips shut, tried to keep the booming laugh from escaping. “You like… elephants?” He asked.

Banana vigorously nodded, and then seemed to regret it almost instantly as she started drifting from side to side, her good eye unfocused. “They are a good mammal.” She said. “Largest land mammal! Eat three hundred pounds a day. Tusks made of ivory; poaching is an ex… exis… existential problem.” Banana stopped wobbling and looked at James with that glitteringly intelligent single eye, a sudden amount of focus that made him feel like he was being hunted. “When I am better, I will kill the poachers.” She said calmly through her skulljack. “I do not know what kind of land mammal they are.”

There was a lot to unpack in that sentence. Including the fact that someone was going to have to talk to her about the ethics of murder sometime in the near future. But right now, James wasn’t here to start a debate, especially with how tired she looked. “You know a lot about elephants.” He told her without trying to hide the pride in his voice. Banana gave him a sleepy nod, her eye already drifting closed as she leaned back into the pillows.

A second later, she was unconscious again, and James waited a minute before he quietly rose and left, shutting the door behind him.

“So, did someone give her a skill orb on elephant facts?” James asked the nurse as he left.

“Animal Planet.” The nurse answered simply, looking up from the skulljack link she was doing something with. “Poor kid can’t really leave, so she watches a lot of Animal Planet. Not sharks though. They scare her.”

“I should bring her the stuffed shark I have.” James mused. “No one can be afraid of sharks with that guy around.”

“Check with Deb to make sure that doesn’t fall under dramatic gestures first.” The nurse wisely told him as he left.

Before he went, he requested and received a digital copy of the current shaper substance research. Actually making use of the technorganic marvel that was the skulljack he had in the back of his neck, James mentally flipped through the document on his phone as he wandered aimlessly through the Research basement.

There were two big barriers to safely using the shaper substances. Needed knowledge, and pain. It was possible to just have an impression of how you wanted to change, and make that happen. But the more you knew about your own biology, the more focused you could be, the faster it went. And speed was a factor, because you needed a lot of the substance to keep up the effect for longer periods of time. And also, because of that second problem, the pain.

Using the shaper substance hurt. Not just what you were changing, though apparently that hurt more than anything else. Of the recorded testimonies from sophont’s who had used it, two of them were from ratroaches and so the pain couldn’t exactly be balanced against human pain tolerances. But there were humans who had tried it, either in tiny microdose amounts as part of testing, or in large quantities because Nik was a fucking idiot sometimes.

The pain was always described as ‘the worst they had ever felt’. Which, naturally, made focus challenging. Nik was an outlier, but the small tests had been pretty conclusive. The more you knew about your own body, the faster you could make it work. And you could control the pain, without lessening the effect.

Of course, things that controlled that level of pain, like morphine, also had a negative impact on focus. Which, according to the information from their resident ratroaches, was often far worse than simply living with whatever you were trying to fix. Sometimes it was lethal. Other times it was worse.

James sighed as he entered the Research communal pod, and stole someone’s empty chair. All the chairs were empty; it had gotten to be fairly late at night, and no one was here right now except a bunch of dozing shellaxies in the pen in the middle of the room. “I dunno if I could do this.” He said to himself. “I’d love to have a better body, but this… this is a lot.”

He didn’t quite say it to himself, though. There was a whisper of orange glow as his navigator wrapped around his collar. “I could try it.” The navigator stated.

“You… I mean, you have a body, sometimes. That’s an interesting thought.” James considered kicking his feet up onto this person’s desk and leaning back, but settled for just tilting his head back and hoping his back pain went away on its own. “Do you want to change yourself? More than you already can.”

“I cannot change myself.” The navigator said. “I am always the same. Just sometimes I’m different. But different in the same ways.”

“I am… getting too tired.” James stated. “Because I almost understood that.”

“Mmh.” The navigator hummed at him. “I will change in my way. You can try changing this way.”

James nodded, spinning the chair and idly reading the big list of blue powers that were written on a whiteboard on the wall. “That actually does remind me. Despite having your fruit name sniped out from under you, did you have anything you wanted to be called?”

“Zhu Bajie.” The navigator answered instantly.

James blinked, the unfamiliar name taking him more than a few seconds to process as he stared at the writing on the wall with a blank look. “Sorry, what?”

The navigator curled its feather form up his neck and partially into his field of vision. “Zhu Bajie. I like what they are.”

“They… I… where did you even get that name? I don’t think a single person working here right now has a Chinese name. Though, to be fair, I don’t know everyone by name anymore.” He trailed off. “But also what is that name?”

“I stole it.” The navigator - Zhu, now, James supposed - announced. “It is from a story.” James raised his eyebrows and waited, silently prompting an explanation. “It is an old story, I think. Journey To The West. I am still learning it.”

And now James was more confused than ever. “Wait, hang on.” He said, arresting the ongoing slow spin of the chair he was in. “I haven’t ever read that. I saw ten minutes of the bad modern day version movie of it, when I was, like, twelve. And then a much worse video game later on. How do you know it?”

“I know all stories about traveling.” Zhu told him smugly. “I can see them out there, and read them if I stretch.”

“That is so cool.” James instantly latched onto the concept of a personal thematic library, drifting through the ether. “Wait, so, the two characters I know for sure through cultural osmosis are Monkey, and… Tripitarka? Which character is Zhu Bajie?”

“The pig.” Zhu answered with a joyous tone to their manifested voice.

James thought about that for a second, then pursed his lips. “Wait. Wait, no. The pig demon who constantly causes everyone problems?”

“Yes!” Zhu cheered. “And sometimes fixes problems! He is perfect.”

“If this were a book, this would be ominous foreshadowing.” James pointed out. “But then, I can’t really tell you to repress your nature. Please don’t get me covered in soda again or anything.”

“…What?” The navigator asked.

“Long story.” James said, “I’ll tell you later.” He looked up as someone wandered into the space. “Momo! Hey! Are you busy?”

“Yes.” The girl answered instantly, like a liar. “What’s up?”

“I just want to drop off a magic thing, and talk to Reed or someone about it. Is anyone in, do you know?”

She shrugged, tugging the midnight black bathrobe she was wearing tight around herself. “I mean, most of them go home at night.” She said. “I think some of the engineers are in the design lab, working on-“

“We have a design lab?”

“Yeah dude, we have a bunch of different segmented spaces for work and testing.” Momo told him. “Ever since we started abusing orange totems. How often are you down here?”

“I don’t get out much.” James admitted.

“Anyway. Camraconda arms, or something. Those guys basically don’t sleep. I think Chevoy actually literally has a purple that lets her turn energy drinks into naps or some bullshit.” Momo sighed wistfully. “If only I could be so irresponsible with my body.” She mused.

“Deb finally put you on medical arrest from making red totems, huh?” James smirked at her.

“No one can prove the brain damage was really happening!” Momo accused the world itself of unfair behavior.

James rolled his eyes. “Except the MRI.” He said. “Anyway, you’re nominally in charge of our magic department. Here.” He tossed her the glove he’d enchanted, and then nudged a block of text through his skulljack and into his phone. “I just sent you my observations and thoughts on it. Creation’s a little different, but it works. Your initial hunch was right.”

“Fuck yessss.” Momo grinned wolfishly. “You know what I’m gonna do?” She demanded.

“No, because I’m tired.” James said, voice coming out sharper than he meant.

Momo paused, and looked at him with a worried expression. “You okay?” She asked. “You look tired.”

James couldn’t help but give a small laugh at that. “I’ve been up for a while. I’m waiting on JP or Nate to contact me about… about the thing.”

“Can you convert energy drinks to naps?” Momo asked.

“No.”

“Then go the fuck to sleep?” She shrugged. “If it’s really important, they’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Or I can wait for Sarah to get here and mooch a nap off her.”

“Sarah doesn’t come in on Mondays.” Momo reminded him, rolling the long side of her hair around her knuckles and giving herself temporary curls. “Even I know that. Why do I know that?”

James groaned. “I’m going to bed.” He announced. “And then driving to the coast tomorrow.”

“Cool.” Momo didn’t even bother to question him. “Can I come?”

“Sure. Goodnight.” James slid out of the chair, and stalked out of the room, leaving Momo to slip the glove onto her hand and start rummaging through drawers looking for a pen that wasn’t magical.

He’d had a long day. And as much as he felt like he needed to wait until something came up, the part of his brain that couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer knew that he was being an idiot. James needed to sleep. Momo was right.

The problem would still be there for him tomorrow.