“The tiger / He destroyed his cage / Yes / YES / The tiger is out” -The Tiger, by Nael, age 6-

_____

It took James half an hour to get a team of people together, and they immediately began getting outfitted for an intervention action.

His team was a lot of familiar faces. Partly because it was hard to not be familiar with everyone since he spent his whole life now around the Order he’d built, but also because James picked people he trusted completely.

Alanna and Dave were old friends. Thought-Of-Quiet was the camraconda James had spent the most time with, and also the one with the most actual experience in combat situations short of Frequency-Of-Sunset, who wasn’t available today anyway. Simon and Momo were people James still couldn’t help think of as ‘kids’, but they were also people who’d proven over and over what a person could do with compassionate support and free reign to try new things. And Nikhail was…

Well, Nik was weird. Every time James worked with Nik, on delves or talking through stuff in the Research department, the young man had been helpful and eager to learn and grow. But every time James looked away, the kid had caused some new chaotic problem by testing something he really shouldn’t have with zero safety net. Inviting unknown infomorphs into his head, or using shaper substance unsupervised for dealing with gender dysphoria or something like that. James figured keeping him close today would be honestly the safest option, especially since the authority Nik was bonded to was an increasingly powerful medic, especially mixed with his magic.

The people he’d chosen were from a bunch of different parts of the Order, but fundamentally he’d pulled people from two mindsets. Delvers and Response. He was a delver, so was Dave, and Momo. Nik, Alanna, and Simon, spent most of their ‘dealing with a crisis’ time doing so with Response. And there was an intentional separation between the two groups. Because delvers often had to fight for their lives, and often went up against things where literal monsters would be at their throats. And Response put people in situations where they might feel that way, but fundamentally had to hold back. Different mindsets for different jobs. Also why James always took Alanna along when they were trying to pluck ratroaches out of the Akashic Sewer; she was already used to thinking the right way.

Here, now, he didn’t know what they were getting into. So he mixed and matched and hoped that the collective way of thinking would see them through.

He’d gotten them together, along with figuring out where Sarah went to and bringing her back for support, and checked back in with Ben, who JP had left on command duty for the remaining rogues in the field.

Ben, who James had been a little surprised to find directing things, like some kind of professional logistics spider. He was keeping up multiple check-ins with the other rogues, while drafting a schedule for the avatar source members, while checking Order inventory reports, while also regularly getting reports from Planner about something he had the infomorph keeping an ethereal eye on, and all while explaining everything he was doing to one of their interns who was looking somewhat overwhelmed. Ben was doing this at a desk that was more neatly organized and cleaner than JP and Nate had been able to keep their work station, together.

“Why the fuck does JP think you should be a field agent?” James asked him as he approached. “You’re in charge now. Put him in the field.”

“Okay, sure.” Ben nodded. “Except that’s a terrible idea, and I don’t want to be in charge.”

“That has literally never stopped us from putting people in charge of things.” James told him as he stole the folding chair blocking the aisle and took a seat. “I keep ending up in charge of things, and look how that’s working out.”

“What, exactly, are you in charge of?” Ben queried.

James paused. Then glanced back at the group of people he’d brought with him. “Danger?” He half-asked.

“You can’t put me in charge.” Ben informed him. “We’re assembling your kit now. Grab seats, get comfortable. El’s still tailing, we don’t have any updates yet.”

James shrugged, and passed on the news to his people, who assembled a somewhat more chaotic collection of chairs, beanbags, and in Momo’s case, just the hulking wooden table that she started out sitting on the edge of but transitioned quickly to laying flat against and probably napping.

He gave up trying to make small talk when he realized he was being nervous, and Alanna had flicked him in the forehead. Instead, he just took deep breaths, closed his eyes, and tried to relax as the voices of his equally nervous teammates flowed around him. Occasionally joined by drifting words from Ben or Planner or one of the avatar members as they came into the room.

Though he had to open his eyes at regular intervals as people filed in with equipment that he needed to know something about.

Their group got updated skulljack braids, Davis calmly repeating the specs of them as he handed them out to everyone and made sure they could establish a connection. These ones had their own short range wi-fi hotspots, though they were LAN only and just for brain to brain communications. Some of the programmers, Davis told them, had gotten in a one-sided competition with the emerald program chips, and had tried to design something better and more effective than could be grown. Which is why they had something with an incredibly robust method of backup connections, and then a back end that was a Byzantine mess for an interface for sharing audio, video, and thoughts within the group. Davis would not elaborate on whether it was the programmers or the magical nonsense material that made the well constructed part.

At some point, they were handed filter masks with an aerosolized potion dosage tool, an idea that they hadn’t even had to steal from the Alchemists; Nile had just straight up suggested it to someone, and they’d spend the last two weeks refining it. They still weren’t perfect, but they were as durable as they were bulky, and they were far easier to use than trying to drink something out of a flask mid-fight. At least, according to Simon and Dave, who had apparently been training with them already. They even had one that fit a camraconda.

Thought-Of-Quiet, also, got a prototype arm backpack. Not they weren’t all prototypes, but this one had a heavier motor, a lower battery life, and one side’s counterweight was a mount point for a rifle that apparently he could sight down using the tiny camera and his skulljack link. James asked why he didn’t get a cyberpunk aimbot system, which had caused some blank stares and embarrassed looks from the two people helping the camraconda secure the straps like they were squires.

Then more mundane stuff started filtering in. Or at least, less esoteric, from the Order’s perspective. Packages of orbs or magic items, especially the essential SQ stuff like bracers and gun bangles and earrings. Nate, who was absolutely not sleeping, wheeled in a crate that he cracked open and started handing out compact little bullpup rifles from. James had asked why they kept using P90s, when they obviously could get different guns, and Nate had just made a cryptic comment to ‘knowing a guy’, which caused Momo and Alanna to start a deep dive of a conspiracy about Nate having some kind of clandestine romance with a man who made guns by hand in his garage.

“Like that scene from Ghost!” Alanna said. “Except with an anvil instead of a pottery wheel, and one of these instead of a pot, and Nate instead of… Kevin… Bacon? Was that Kevin Bacon?”

James snickered as he listened to them while an intern helped him get the straps on his own body armor. They really were like squires, though it suddenly struck him as bizarre to be told by a teenager to go through some basic rotational motions, while his teammates did the same nearby, as he prepared to get into a fight.

A case of copied orbs was opened, and passed out. James took a couple purples he hadn’t used before, and absorbed another blue for Manipulate Asphalt, bringing him back to full on a spell he’d found to be frankly too useful.

[Shell Upgraded : -3 Broken Bones / Year]

[Shell Upgraded : Skin Durability - Tensile Strength - +114 PSI]

All of them got a telepad, with one page preset to bring them back to the Lair. The landing pad was going to be under heavy guard, just in case someone lost theirs. A dozen other magic items got handed out, with James being especially happy to get a stack of sticky notes that temporarily paralyzed whatever they were stuck on, and Alanna and Dave both grabbing copies of the USB stick that stored network connection in case their group needed to go online for anything when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Momo also had a bunch of pencils floating around her head, but James was pretty sure those were just her personal doodads.

More mundane, mostly, were the flight of drones they were brough. James was pretty good at piloting the things with his brain, but Simon was a fucking wizard with the things. He muttered something about splitting his focus, as he conducted three of the little quad-copters around the room. They tested the drones feeding them all shared video, and also passing off control as easily as they could. They did not test the weapons on the drones; all of them had a quartet of salvaged lasers from Officium Mundi 2.0s, the pseudo-organic laser pointers far, far more powerful than their weight should allow. Not the most lethal weapon, but something that couldn’t be ignored if they needed a distraction.

And then the flow of people bringing them stuff tapered off.

And then, well, then the fight didn’t happen. At least, not right away. James just… sat back down. And waited. For when Ben snapped his head up and told them it was time to go.

Waited.

Waited some more. Watched the avatar sources come in, the faces he mostly recognized but still didn’t quite feel connected to. Listened in as Ben checked up on El. Tried to talk to Momo about magic stuff before his brain kept skipping words when they tried to get into a conversation about adding new powers to Status Quo items.

“You seem… off?” Momo asked, almost politely.

“Eh. I’m nervous.” James said, his foot bouncing on the floor as they talked. “About this. About everything. Like, are we getting into a new SQ? How many of us…” He choked off his words, and looked away. Something caught in his throat, a surge of emotion he only mostly recognized flooding up through him, with a whisper of a warm breeze in the back of his mind offering reassurance as his navigator stirred.

Momo tilted her head off the edge of her table to look at him. “We’ll be fine.” She said easily. “What’s the worst that could happen? Our lives get destroyed?”

It took James a second of sudden anger to remember that Momo wasn’t being flippant. Not exactly, anyway. Took him that long to remember that she’d seen her life shattered around her multiple times, and that not even the Order had kept her perfectly safe. Momo was used to the world ending; she had experience.

“You doing okay?” He asked her, partially changing the subject.

“Oh, I’m great!” Momo said with a waggle of her eyebrows. “Actually been getting exercise, against my own better judgement. Doing the field practice for some of the magic stuff that Nate runs. Uh… going out to dinner with my g… friend? Later?”

“Momo.” James’ bad mood was swept away as he folded his arms and looked down at her upside down head with a barely contained grin. “Your what?”

“Nothing!” She said too quickly. “Besides, it’s probably not gonna work out. We are, apparently, both busy today.”

“Uh huh.” James reached down and patted her on the head, messing up the half-mohawk the girl was sporting. She’d dyed it orange today, and James continued to be jealous of someone who had the time and energy to make their hair weird colors. “I’m gonna wander around, stretch my legs. Yell if Ben needs me.”

“Got it boss.” She saluted, taking the escape route easily.

Shaking his head, James craned his back and rolled his neck as he started pacing away into the warehouse. He didn’t want to get in the way, exactly, and there were still people coming and going. But he wanted to move a little, try to shake out the lingering nerves that were creeping back in. Normally James’ fights to the death were less planned. He didn’t have time to panic before, only to regret everything afterward.

With that in mind, he zeroed in on the person best suited to talk to about that, and headed over to say hi to Sarah.

“Hey, you’re good for existential crises, right?” James said as he approached her, giving an ‘oof’ as Sarah flung herself at his chest in a low hug.

“James!” She exclaimed as she pulled back. “Perfect!” Sarah motioned to the man from the crowd of people she was arcanely connected to that she’d been talking to. “This is Steve, I have to go do a thing! I’ll be back before you start getting shot at!”

“Wait, Sarah, that’s not what I-!” James half reached after her as she ducked past someone, hopped over a stack of cardboard boxes, and was out the rear door into the parking lot in no time at all. “…I didn’t mean give me a new existential crisis, you… you…” He sighed, and turned back to Steve. “Hi. James. Nice to meet you.” He extended a hand to the other man.

Steve took James’ gloved hand in a grip that was still firm, and sharp. The guy was lanky, getting on in years and kind of bony but still with packed muscle on his arms that spoke of a life of hard work. “Same. Nice outfit.”

“Thanks!” James took the words at face value. “Also, thanks for the backup. I feel like the most I’ve gotten to talk to any of you guys was getting my ass kicked at volleyball when we were at the beach. So, you know, thanks for being here.”

The partly disinterested look on Steve’s face melted away into something more personal. “Oh, yeah, don’t mention it.” He said, turning and folding his arms as he looked after where Sarah went. “Think she’s coming back?”

“Eventually!” James answered. “Uh… are you okay with the whole… thing? That was an awfully quick ‘don’t mention it’.” He asked, with as much subtly as someone like James was capable of.

Steve shrugged, idly retucking the grey shirt he was wearing back into his belt. “It beats actually working, I guess.” He said, then noticed James’ worried look. “Oh, don’t give me that look,” he tilted his head back in a sharp motion. “It’s fine. Really, it’s fine! I get to help out, and it mostly feels… fine.”

“Fine, eh?” James prompted.

“I mean. Yeah. It also sorta just feels like…” He paused, and then stopped.

James looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Feels like what?”

“Nah, nothing. Forget it. It’s stupid.”

James folded his arms. “No no. Let me know, here. There’s only two real options; either it’s stupid like you said, or, you just feel awkward about being vulnerable. And the whole point here is that it’s okay to be vulnerable, so if it’s that, then it’s a great chance to prove that there’s no penalty for being open, because we’re getting away from that stupid way of doing things. But! If it is stupid, then the second point here is that when we do stupid things, we should be open about them so we can learn how to not fuck up all the time! So either way, I ain’t forgetting anything.” He ended giving the older man a pointed look.

Steve just stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. “I feel like my son would fucking love you.”

“Thanks!”

“He’s insufferable too.”

“…You know what, I’ll take it.” James said with a somewhat forced grin.

The other man just sighed. “This is it, mostly. This. You make it so fucking easy to talk, or to help, or whatever. So yeah, I’m here on my day off, I’m tired and sore from running pipe to all the fucking magical apartments, and somehow, it still feels fucking fulfilling or something.” He waved a hand around them. “All I do is sit on my ass, and be exhausted, while you go out and save the world, and it’s dumb, but I still feel… helpful. Good about being helpful. For no fucking reason.”

James gave a small, sad smile. “Seems like it’s a pretty good reason to me.” He said. “I dunno about you, but I basically got raised to think that everyone was supposed to be perfect on their own. But that’s fucking stupid, and I think we all know it. It’s okay to take pride in adding to something bigger.” He paused and had a thought. “Actually, though, if you mean you’re bored doing this, we could, like, get you practice and training so you could move to a field agent position? If you want?”

“Oh fuck no!” Steve barked a laugh. “I’m just bored with the waiting!”

“Oh, yeah, that I’m with you on. We should get a couple consoles in here and get some games of Halo going. The kids still play Halo, right?” James asked. “I hope the kids still play Halo.”

“I’d play some Halo.” Steve agreed. “But also, I-“

From across the room, Ben’s voice, amplified by Planner, rose up over the growing murmur of conversations. “Contact!” The single word silenced the room. Even Sarah, who was sprinting back in, muffled her steps as she hit the expanding zone of silence around the rogue at the center of the small operation. “Prepare for deployment, we’ve got a new problem.”

“Oh good.” James said, his voice suddenly loud in the quiet room. “I was afraid this was going to be different than normal.”

_____

El was bored of driving.

This, on its own, wasn’t actually that weird. She loved driving. Loved her car. Her car was her fucking baby. She’d modified it with mundane and magical parts alike, and it was one hundred percent hers, through and through. It was a little weird, because if you’d told teenage El that one day she’d be more into engine maintenance and tire specs than whatever world-consuming obsession teenage El had been into at the time, she wouldn’t have believed you. But literal magic had a way of making a lot of things interesting.

El was getting sidetracked in her thoughts. Which happened, when you were bored. The point was she loved her car, but that wasn’t enough to make focusing on a repetitive and stressful task for several hours ‘fun’.

They were somewhere in Pennsylvania, the guy she was following having dropped off the 80 and headed northwest on side streets toward an unknowable destination. It was a wonderful place to drive, if you were a middle aged couple that liked looking at trees; fall might have come late on the west coast, but here, it was changing colors and making everything look like splashes of red and yellow on the world.

El didn’t really care about trees. She cared slightly less about the farmland they passed, and far, far less for all the knots of traffic and headache that were the cities they went through.

They weren’t really cities at this point, though. More like townships. Little dots of people that sprouted along the highway like weeds, in an area that was developed to the point that enough stuff was close enough that you could live basically anywhere and have access to things. But they still had cars, and idiot drivers.

El was tired. She wanted to swap out with someone, but it seemed like the asshole who’d nearly killed Yin wasn’t stopping, so she stayed on him. It was entirely possible that the Order could have tracked him through traffic cams or drones or something, but El was right here, and bored or not, she wasn’t gonna be the one to fuck this up.

In the seat next to her, an ambiguously old guy named Jim with a perfectly rugged goatee and thick round glasses said something down their open line to Ben, before reporting that they had nothing to report, and setting the phone down.

“Hell of a day.” He offered, cracking his neck with a series of wet pops. “Did you lose him?” He asked as he looked around the road in front of them.

El gave an exasperated sigh, and spun one of her spells into the world. An Eye Of Steel And Glass was a fascinating thing; she’d mostly used it to take inventory and find where people hid things for a while, but the almost index-like way it presented the world to her made it excellent for keeping track of whoever you were following. Inventorying vehicles letting her pick out their target’s late model Kia Sedona about as easily as blinking. Point four miles ahead, matched speed; El didn’t even need to be in visual range of their quarry to stalk him. She turned to Jim, and gave him a look, before turning back to the road, small splinters of ethereal broken glass and metal shavings trailing off the corner of her eye as she did so.

“Fuck me I’m tired. Ask James to teleport coffee in when he joins us.” El said, only half meaning it.

“Gotta plan ahead, kid.” Jim said, shaking his own thermos. “Be smarter than the problem.”

“My problem is that this guy decided to flee for six hours, and I had a thing to do tonight.” El snapped back. “Also, aren’t you gonna have to piss? This seems like a terrible idea. I will kick you out of my car if you try to piss in a bottle.”

Jim ignored her jab. “Aw, look at you! Having a social life!” He said in the tone of someone condescending to someone they told their friends was their favorite niece, and that their niece thought of as their least favorite uncle.

“What… what the fuck, dude?” El wanted to stop the car and just stare at the guy, in a kind of primal form of disbelieving ire. “Why would you say that like that?” She felt her own voice take on a defensive tone.

Jim didn’t seem to notice. Or care. The older rogue just tapping away at his laptop as he answered, “Oh, lighten up. God, you kids are so easily offended.”

El really, really, did not like the rogue she’d been told to pick up on her way to this fresh problem. Intellectually, she understood that Jim was useful to them; the guy was good with details, had learned a variety of important skills quickly, and he was… well, not to be too offensive to his easily hurt old-guy feelings, but he was pretty fucking nondescript. He was the human version of background noise, which was useful to someone that the Order was basically training to be a spy. Also, El admitted, she knew that James’ whole thing about giving people a chance to get better wasn’t total bullshit. But holy fuck, did she not like Jim.

So instead of listening to him, she let herself fall into the kind of zoned out trance state she used when driving long distances. And as her breathing steadied, and she roiled her irritation into a ball in her head, she slipped down to somewhere within herself to whisper to a friend.

“I fucking hate that guy.” El said to Speaker.

They were in a car, still. It was the same car, on technically the same road. But this place was more faded. El was here, and up there, at the same time. James had just stared at her when she’d said she could do it, before muttering something about rampant envy. Here, the road was smoother, calmer. Around them weren’t wet townships and rapidly fading daylight, but golden tall grass, hot sun, and, in the distance, a weird fucking scarecrow that was always the same distance away from her car not matter how far she drove.

Next to her was a thing shaped like an Old God, wearing her face like a coat. All fins and scales and teeth and eyes, in a patterned jumble of blue and teal fish thoughts. That also looked like her. “He’s rude!” Speaker agreed with her in the voice of a kid who was trying really hard to be mature. “And he says things he doesn’t mean! That is wrong!”

“Wait, what?” El let the surprise wash past her, without breaking her driver’s trance.

Speaker nodded, the blonde curls El tried so hard to contain let totally loose on this version of her form. “Yeah!” The infomorph whispered excitedly. “He suppresses his compassion, and covers it with what he thinks he should say, and I think lies to himself?” She trailed off at the end, uncertain. “Humans are strange.” The infomorph told El bluntly.

“Don’t I know it.” El snorted a laugh, here and up top, where she was making a lane change. “You doing okay, kiddo?” She checked in with the creature that she shared her head with.

“I am fine! I am counting signs as we drive. It is entertaining. Are you okay?” The infomorph twisted around to encircle El’s presence down here with a long tail in a comforting hug. “You were excited for tonight. Now you are sad.”

“Hey, no reading my mind.” El grinned as she said the words. It was a weirdly layered joke between the two of them; she didn’t care if Speaky read her thoughts, because in a way, the infomorph was her thoughts. But the scolding itself was a lie, spoke, which was a strange source of dissonance for Speaker, who knew it was meant to be that, and so looped around to finding it to be powerfully honest. “Also I’m not sad, I’m just bored. And I… uh…”

She trailed off as the infomorph went shock still, the mask shaped like El cracking away and showing more of those deep teal scales and the flicking serpent tongues of a dozen hissing maws. “El…” Speaky said with wide eyed worry.

“Yeah, I feel it.” El said, borrowing the alarm Speaky was experiencing. “With me?”

“Always.” The infomorph whispered.

El closed her eyes below, blinked above, and dropped out of her trance. “Something’s wrong.” She said to Jim, cutting off whatever the man had been saying that she wasn’t listening to. El whipped her head side to side, noting that Jim instantly shut up and did the same. Asshole he might be, but he wasn’t stupid.

Jim flipped his glasses neatly into his pocket and replaced them with a pair of the affiliation glasses the Order kept on hand. “Nothing in the cars around us. Unless ‘senator’ is a problem.”

“I’ll run ‘em off the road later if we have time.” El said, jerking the wheel to switch lanes without signaling as she whipped the car past two people who both honked at her. “I don’t see anything. Speaky, what am I looking for?”

“I don’t know!” The infomorph now curled in her hair squeaked. “There are silencers nearby!” She shivered against El’s neck. “They came from nowhere!”

“Fuck me.” El said as she checked her internal supply of Velocity. The strange mana hummed in a rotating ball in her chest; contained motion and the teeth of perfectly refined gears growing back to full strength as she drove. “Okay.” She whispered, and then pushed her spell out again. An Eye Of Steel And Glass, her face again lightly transforming as she saw the world around her through a new paradigm.

Her target was still the same distance away. There were thirty eight other cars on the road between her and him, and another fifty six around them in various places. Some of them were trucks, but her magic didn’t go two layers deep, so she had no idea what the semi’s were hauling.

The sun was going down, but her Eye didn’t care. Streetlights and the growing patter of rain didn’t stop her from seeing everything around her.

Including the helicopter.

“What the fuck?!” El pitched her head up, staring through the roof of her car and absolutely ignoring road safety as she did so. Jim followed her gaze, but did so looking out the window. “What the fucking hell is an Mi-35?!” She demanded.

“Russian attack helicopter?” Jim answered, instant concern poured into his voice. “Where? I don’t see…” He stopped. “Doesn’t matter. Command?” He had the phone up. “We have a potential situation.”

El whipped her vision back to the road as a car slowed to turn off the road, swerving like an asshole as she cut someone off to pass by. She ignored the honks she was getting as she accelerated, nothing mattering now but staying on the target. The speed limit here was thirty, and she was… mildly ignoring that.

She’d checked the world not even ten minutes ago. The aircraft had either closed in way faster than seemed reasonable, or it had come from literal nowhere. Either way, El could sort of track where it was moving, her speed helping to replace the Velocity she was spending to keep her Eye active. And it was keeping parallel to the road she was on, lagging a couple stoplights behind her target.

Which meant it was here for her, or him. And neither of those seemed great.

“No visual on the craft.” Jim was saying, still looking out the window. El pointed, keeping one hand on the wheel as she drove, and Jim followed the line to where the aircraft was. “Nope. It’s either over the clouds, or something else. Glasses can’t spot it either, but that doesn’t mean much.” He glanced at El. “Yeah, she’s sure.” He said to whatever Ben asked him, and El nodded at him, pulling her hand back. “Okay. We can keep-“

“It’s moving!” El barked. “Dropping down, I don’t… oh!” The road took a slight bend, and suddenly, they were out of the rows of businesses and going past what looked like a sloped field and a public park. A big one, too. “Open space, and the road widens ahead. It’s coming down, and it’s absolutely on the other guy.”

“Oh fuck me.” Jim said. “That’s a big open flat field.”

“Oh… piss.” El barked. “They’re his ride, aren’t they?”

“Command,” Jim said slowly into his phone, “if you’ve got a way to chase an invisible helicopter, we’re gonna need that.”

Next to him, El’s grin got really, really wide.

_____

James and Alanna heard what Ben said, but the words took a second for them to actually run through their brains.

Then they looked at each other, eyes widening in a kind of smug excitement.

Then they turned and looked at Dave. Along with the rest of the team, and half of the people in the warehouse.

Dave stopped moving, the danish he was eating halfway to his mouth. Frozen like that, mouth half open, he looked back and forth between his friends. “What?” He said.

Then Alanna started moving, slapping James’ and Momo’s armored shoulders as she started running. “Roof! Now! Let’s go!” The others followed her, a line of armored figured moving in a jog across the warehouse space as everyone got out of the way of them and the ladder to the roof. Alanna paused to usher everyone up, before bringing up the rear with Thought-Of-Quiet wrapped around her as she let her powerful frame carry the two hundred pounds of camraconda like it was nothing.

“Why are we running?!” Dave gasped out.

“Because you keep parking your dragon on the roof, and we need to go!” James said, offering a hand down the ladder and helping Dave pull himself up quickly. “Go! Get Pendragon ready to fly! She can still cloak, right?”

“Right. Right!” Dave said, running around an HVAC unit and pushing aside the flap of a makeshift tarp tent. “Hey girl.” He greeted the increasingly bulky draconic form of Pendragon who was napping under it. The big dragon, formed out of laminated indestructible paper, aircraft aluminum, a few hundred pencils, a quartet of office chairs that had morphed into delicately wheeled claws, several dozen magic items, and god only knew what else, perked her head up at Dave’s words. “You feel like giving my friends a ride?”

The dragon looked down at him with shaded lamp eyes, before she craned a long neck up, nodded, and the front of her chest split open. Inside, a series of metal ribs framed a simple coat and a skulljack link, which Dave rapidly stepped up into, plugging their minds together. “Okay! Everyone in!” James called as Pendragon shivered, raising her wings and opening gill-like slits on her flanks that led to fairly cramped, but oddly comfortable, pods that a person could sit in. “We’re under the telepad limit, so get us in the air, and I’ll blip us where we need to go!” He called to Dave.

It took under a minute for everyone to file in, Nik and Momo cheerfully bantering about dragon rides while James and Alanna waited for everyone else before taking the last seats. “Ready?” Alanna asked him just before they stepped in.

He leaned forward and pecked a kiss on her. “Ready.” James grinned. “Let’s go ruin someone else’s plans for a change.”

Thirty seconds later, Pendragon took a running leap off the side of the building. Growing wings that had more in common with a bat than any commercial aircraft pumping as she hauled her magically reduced weight into the sky. Then, a shimmer of light as one of the magic items she’d folded into her body activated and she and all her passengers and cargo became transparent. And then, James pulled his telepad to the street address Ben gave them over their comms, and they vanished.

They felt ready for anything.

James felt like they’d need to be.