My very pleasant bit of sleep was disturbed by the agitated jabbering of three very familiar voices. One of which I was surprised was jabbering at all, considering I couldn't recall the last time Alan had jabbered about... anything.

"Can you all argue not where I am sleeping?" I said, rolling over in bed. Unfortunately, the motion sent a ripple of clarity originating from my whole body. It felt like the equivalent of the Bunker's light alarm system flipping all the lights on at once when it was time for me to get up for morning lessons. Truly a whole new exercise in torture for those that weren't morning people and all thanks to my vibrosense.

"Ronan!" Ava called out, not bothering to be gentle as she gripped my shoulders and flipped me around to face her.

"Ouch?" I said, squinting up at her face.

"Ugh." The older woman released me and I flopped down to the bed, unable to keep the smirk from my face.

"Oh great. He is back," Sam said, and I didn't need to have my sight nor my vibrosense trained on him to know he rolled his eyes.

"Good to see you too, Sammy," I said, squinting in his direction.

"What? Why are you doing that? I thought we established the joke has passed. Har Har, very funny. Can we get to the serious part of this greeting, Ron?" Sam said in the closest approximation of a growl the blonde could get to.

"Well, you see, that's part of the serious part," I said, lowering myself back down. My mind was still working out the cobwebs of sleep, but I ran them through what had happened --I checked the intensity of the light coming in through the windows of the medical building-- the previous day. Leaving out the more introspective parts of my day, I explained the facsimile to the Entity whitespaces that I encountered when I helped the Afflicted. Neither commented on the fact that I finally revealed what had happened each time I touched one of the trainees, but I could see the wheels already spinning in their heads. For Alan's part, his eyes were ready to bulge out of his head.

Since he hadn't asked a direct question, I ignored the mumbling as Alan worked through his own complex thoughts and finished the story with my recounting of using consecutive trainees to 'pop' them out of the Dreg's oppressions.

"Of course," Alan said, notably louder. "Psychometrically linked interactions. If the Metier Entities can interface with both cerebellum and cerebrum, then it is entirely possible that those are one of the places where mana makes its primary manifestations. If I can interface with it using an analogous scaffolding, then..."

Without warning, the man dashed away. I was distinctly aware of how little his ripples actually were before he vanished, but I didn't know what that meant. Not that I had a handle on the whole sixth sense thing.

"I'll... check on him later," Ava said. One of her feet was pointed towards the door, but I watched as she made a deliberate decision to turn back around. Thanks to vibrosense, I could feel that her foot didn't change direction, even if she was facing me. "Your recklessness is the current problem."

"I'm fine, really. Well, it's more like I have one of my cylinders clogged, then someone slapped an external cylinder to compensate," I said, attempting to explain how I felt about my sight plus vibro situation.

"Brain probing is really outside my wheelhouse," Sam said, gesturing towards my slightly singed head of hair. His decentralized nerves curled and uncurled in his hands. Now that I wasn't restrained, I could shiver freely at the sight of them and at the possibility of being touched by them.

"Can you tell us anything else? How are you really feeling, Ron?" Ava asked, turning from sharing a look with Sam.

Honesty time, is it? I have been a huge turd. "I'm sorry. I am fine, better than I have been in a bit. I just... I guess I needed to take a step back. Since that wasn't happening, getting sat on my ass by our new reality really did the trick for me."

All I could do was shrug helplessly when neither of them responded. Squinting at them seemed to do part of the trick to reduce my vertigo, so I was amazed they were able to keep such serious expressions through my recounting. After a few seconds of awkward silence, the two of them let out deep sighs.

"Ron... You know what? I'm not gonna do it again. I think you are a big enough boy to recognize your own shortcomings. Just... the next time you feel like gaining a masochistic streak in order to feel better about things you can't control, do it when none of us are around. Please?" Ava said, the woman leveling a grey-glowing pair of eyes at me.

"Noted," I said, tongue tied and unwilling to respond to her level of intensity. It wasn't like she was wrong either.

"I'm going to check on Alan. Samuel, please help him deal with... whatever he's dealing with." After meeting my eyes one last time, she turned and strode out of the medical building.

"Daniela is going to tear you a new one, so I'm not gonna bother," Sam said, plopping onto the bed across from me. "Buuut... it's good to have my friend back."

"It's good to be back. I'm not looking forward to that conversation," I said, scratching the back of my head. "She's probably still pissed at me."

"Nah, but she will be when she hears about your shenanigans. You know she's been keeping tabs on how you're doing. When she's not blasting fire down the Dreg's throats, of course."

That tidbit of information made me feel both better and worse for being a crap friend. There was nothing to do but apologize and try to be more cognizant in the future. I asked Sam for some suggestions on how to deal with my new... sensory situation. If I couldn't fight I would still help out in town, but already my blood was itching to punch some faces in. Or pick them, or slash them or generally strike them with stones of some variety. Man, really discovered a bloodthirsty streak since coming to the surface, huh?

Samuel spent some time probing me, to my chagrin, and having me better describe what I sensed with vibro. After I walked him through my testing and my observations about people, materials and the like, he pulled out a notepad. His face scrunched as he wrote down several notes, prodded me some more and asked pointed questions about what happened while I kept my eyes open. The whole barrage of questions and testing took most of the morning, and by the end I almost would have rather helped another Afflicted. Nonetheless, Samuel did not disappoint.

"Here is my recommendation," he said, handing me one of his notepad sheets. The writing, in typical medical professional fashion, was barely legible. It might have been a result of vibro lighting it up as it crinkled in my hand, but I was pretty sure it was the writing. The short of it was that I should alternate between relying entirely on vibro, being blind so to speak, and then running simple exercises with both. This included not just physical fitness type training, but small hand eye coordination. He even recommended that I try swimming in the lake, as a means of testing the limits of vibro.

Pushing that frightening experience for future Ronan, I agreed to a few more days in the medical building until I could safely traverse without sight. Samuel made the point clear that if he found me attempting anything combat related before him and Ava did another physical on me, I would be physically forced to remain in bed. The fact that he said that with a perfectly flawless smile definitely got the message across.

With his check up more or less complete, Sam put me up to date on the state of the Afflicted. While most were still struggling, they were already up and about. Many mentioned they had vague memories of when I'd interceded on their behalf, but not all of them. That was fine with me. Being recognized wasn't my goal in their treatment, even if I knew the gossips would already have that information spread through the town. It often made me wonder why we needed our comm-plants if the rumor mill was often more effective for sharing information.

When Sam eventually left, I laid back on the mattress and read through the list of tasks he'd suggested I work my way through. Starting from brushing teeth and toe touches all the way to sprints and cartwheels.

"Did he have to make this so comprehensive? It's like I need to relearn how to live," I sighed. I suppose I am. Man, this is going to suck...

---+---

While I was completely right about how the vibrosense adjustment process went, it gave me the opportunity to reacclimate myself with the town after my days in recovery. Moving about with vibro certainly slowed me down, but I wasn't locked up like before. Ava still scowled at me every time she saw me, but that wasn't too far from the norm before we'd stepped on the surface.

Compared to before our excursion to the other towns, morale was at an all time high. Part of it was the return of the Afflicted, considering they were related to a not-insignificant portion of the town. Another was that something akin to 'trade' had been established. Every three days, a relief team of Wild Guard would rotate north, bringing some of the armor and weapons the crafters of Wildwood had been able to Infuse. Even without the guiding hand of the Status the Implants provided, the other Fallen had no problem using the Attribute boosts of the Items. Even those who were born just before the Fall could at the very minimum benefit from the defensive difference the Tanker armor and Cowls provided, the latter was being almost entirely snagged by the people of Stonecrest.

A thrill of excitement filled me as I thought about my prototype armors spreading far and wide. It wasn't even something I'd considered a possibility, but the more I spoke with the Guard and some of the Wildwoodians brave enough to go along on the squad swaps the more I realized it was more inevitable than anything.

The final thing that seemed to blow up morale was the fact that people were learning to Infuse without a direct memory transfer from me. It started in the forge, more or less as an accident. One person Infusing was interrupted by another person holding an uninfused piece. The accidental mishap turned into a collaboration of sorts, wherein the dwarf that had been lugging the sheet of metal to cool touched upon the concept of Infusion. It was subsequently repeated until the dwarf in question was able to unspool Pith from one of the blobs alone, essentially giving him the Miscellaneous Skill without even having the Implant or myself to shove it in his noggin. From there, almost everyone in town wanted to learn it; this explosion of knowledge soon trickled to the other towns, even if their infrastructure lagged behind the Wildwoodian Infusion bandwagon.

So, the first day after my return to ambulatory shenanigans the Crafting Hall was an explosion of activity. Many had been reserved about experimenting since the Afflicted were being housed there, but almost overnight the addition I'd seen start to spring up was complete, and twice over. Each of the major crafting professions -- smith, woodworker and tailor -- each had a strong room attached to their wings of the Hall. It was fairly astounding how quickly the people worked, but I could sympathize.

If you spent your whole life cowering in the dark, unsure if life would mean anything regardless of your struggles, and suddenly there was a shining opportunity to actually gain control over your life you would grasp it firmly however you could. I certainly did.

As I worked on getting acclimated to vibro just by being in proximity to the thriving hive of activity that was the Crafting Hall, a most unexpected person pulled up beside me.

"Vanguard," Rommel rumbled.

"You can call me by my name, Rommel," I said, chuckling to myself. My eyes were closed, but the man's bass of a voice was hard to forget. His footstep ripples were unfamiliar, but they marked him as a large individual. Putting two and two together wasn't hard.

"I believe you are more than just your name. Perhaps you haven't heard it, but the Bunker Busters are all spoken of by their nicknames," he said.

"Oh? First I'd heard of it," I said, turning to the man and opening my eyes to a squint. Even my own nickname I'd only heard a few times on the front while someone in the squads wanted to get my attention quickly.

"That is the point." For the first time I could recall, I heard the large orc laugh from deep in his chest. It was curious to see the force actually manifested as tiny waves flowing through the ground. "No one wants The Torch to know they've been talking about her behind her back."

"Let me guess, that's Daniela?"

"Precisely."

"Honestly? I totally understand. Even if her nickname is pretty cool," I said, snorting at the blush that would creep on her face before she torched the people responsible. "What's Sam's?"

"The Druid."

"Again, can't really argue with that. Sometimes I think that Sam is better at talking to plants than he is people." That earned me a huff from Rommel. You fall in that same camp buddy; except maybe not plants, probably little defenseless animals, if the stereotype holds.

"There is something I've prepared for you," he said, breaking the silence that had fallen after the brief conversation. "Please follow me."

Without bothering to wait for a response, Rommel strode forward towards the original strong room. Focusing on the trailing ripples of clarity his steps left, I tapped the ground with the heavy wooden pole Marie had been kind enough to Woodshape for me. Rommel's footsteps, plus my own tapping, was more than enough for me to get my bearings and walk a normal stride forward. When I stepped into the main hall, some of the people loitering discussing this or that project parted without a word.

That was distinctly awkward, but my pseudo-blindness wasn't necessarily a well kept military circle. I caught a few nods through my squint and offered a genuine smile in return. As much as I wanted to get back to fighting, the act of learning, crafting and building was what grounded my thoughts. Just as I was ready to make a snide remark about what the orc had 'prepared' for me, I stepped around the bend and felt what he was referring to.

In my days after developing my vibrosense I'd discovered that things affected by mana reacted differently to the sense. It was part of my hypothesis of why I was only able to sense people's feet clearly, even if the vibrations of their motions should have traveled all the way through their bodies. This was especially true from Blobby when he came to visit me and I had absolutely zero warning before I got a chest full of gelatinous slime.

This strange phenomena occurred in the opposite way with Infused Items or Materialization byproducts, meaning things conjured into being thanks to a Skill. My naginata, for instance, put out long quiet waves of energy just existing. Sam's armor also lit up with the strange eddies of live fire when he took it off at the entrance of the medical building. The entire building that was the Crafting Hall let out deep steady throbs that lit it up in vibro every so often.

The thing laying on the strong table shimmered with the eddies of a Fire Infused Item, but they were stronger than anything I'd seen. I hadn't had the opportunity to look at the Stinger Staff Clara carried after gaining vibro, but I couldn't imagine even that having a stronger signature.

I opened my eyes all the way, vertigo be damned, just to be able to get a proper look at the pierce of armor in front of me. In as few words as possible, it was astounding. Maybe not an artistic masterpiece, but it was beautiful in its practicality. Two of the torso sized chitin plates had been melded seamlessly together, accented by some of the head-sized plates of a Q1 ant studded all over it. The Infusion welds weren't anything fancy, but there wasn't a single skip in them. My fingers itched to grab hold of the tower shield.

"Go ahead. A defender should have a proper shield," Rommel said. I'd forgotten he was in the room.

I took some unsteady steps forward, making sure to keep my eyes open, before my palm landed on the shield. It was reminiscent of an old roman shield I'd seen before, a flat semicircle beneath the smooth studded exterior. The piece of armor was warm to the touch as I picked it up. I almost dropped it in surprise. It had to be almost twenty pounds of shield, and the reason was revealed when I flipped it over.

Bands of metal crisscrossed the inside, also welded to the chitin with the power of a Fire Infusion. There were four enarmes on the inside, so the shield could be worn vertically or horizontally along its length. Lining the path where the arm would go were several entwined bits of wolfhound leather and wood shaped supports to take yet some more of the force.

With the intense once over I gave the piece of armor, it was no wonder its information bloomed in my Implant.

The shield was yet one more level higher than my own helm, lending a massive jump to Strength if activated. My body itched to put it to the test, but I was liable to hurt myself more than actually come across as even slightly proficient.

"Take this as thanks for your sacrifices. And, if I know you at all, to use it for us all," Rommel said, snapping me out of my daze.

"Oh you are damn right I'll use it!" I slipped my arm through the enarmes and grunted slightly at the weight. If it had been before stacking five Quotients and numerous passive gains, I would have struggled just to hold the thing for long. Now, it felt like I had put on my just by picking it up. Only my head and shins down were exposed as I hefted the shield. If I really wanted to bunker down behind it, it wouldn't take much of a crouch. "I'll get--woah!"

I attempted to spin to look back at Rommel. While holding on to the shield, my vibro picked up the surge of motion as well as the heat ripples and made me miss my step. Like a clumsy fish out of water, I flopped onto the tower shield and bonked my head on the top lip before spilling out on the ground. Once again.

"Perhaps walking is advised before putting the shield to use?" Rommel said, chuckling.

"Touché, orc boy. Touché."