I frowned as Thorn and Okeria hashed out some location details I couldn’t make sense of. Ambus was relatively silent through everything, and Gloriosa chimed in whenever her expertise was applicable, but it was mostly the Thorn and Okeria show. After a few minutes of watching them go back and forth, I finally noticed why that was.

Thorn wasn’t okay. Not even close. He shook and shuddered all the time, and it grew a lot worse when he stopped moving or talking. His face got so much more sullen the quieter he was, and I saw him rub at his middle more than a few times with an extremely pained look on his face.

It was probably far too much to expect his armor to help him that soon, but from what I’d seen, leaving him alone to his own devices would be a lot worse than letting him help out. And from how Okeria brought him into every little thing to get his opinion, he’d noticed it too.

Jun tapped on my shoulder to get my attention. I turned to see what she wanted, and found myself staring at a popout of her interface. Her stats were there plain for me to see, and that included her hazard tolerance and core mastery. Which were now quite a bit higher than mine.

{Just in case you were considering giving me a less important job than Okeria or the others.} She said through the communicator. {If anyone should get the safe ones, it should be you, Mortician, Ambus and Thorn. And maybe not even Mortician, depending on how their strength coming back to them translates into stats.}

I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair. {Okeria’s the leader here, not me. You should be convincing him to get you the best post.}

Jun snorted and shook her head. {Come on, Seb, I know you don’t actually think that. Okeria trusts you more than he trusts himself. Besides, I don’t think he fought in the same war Nia did. Nobody here has. So if you’re going to say he has seniority, then you have to accept that he’s going to use it to give you all the decision-making power.}

I shifted uncomfortably at the thoughts I’d had for a while now being thrust out into the open. Okeria hadn’t been as kleptomaniacal or as selfish as I knew he could be, and unless he’d taken to hiding his urges for some reason, he was actually getting a little better. Maybe the threat of his kids coming to see him was forcing him to change, but something told me there was more to it than I could see.

And honestly, I’d already sort of settled into a pseudo-leadership role. Okeria was still the face, and he held all of the power, but he trusted me a whole fucking lot. More than I deserved, but not more than I could handle.

{I know you’re right.} I ceded. {Okay. If I’m Okeria’s second in command, then you and Mortician are my advisors. And The End too, but that’s kind of on another level. So what do you think we should do here? Focus on the city, the people, or Endra?}

{All of them.} Jun said seriously. {I know there’s some way to get everything we want, and I know that’s selfish. But if we can pit out enemies against each other, then we should be able to do more than we think.}

{You… want to use Keratily. I don’t know about that.} I said reluctantly. {There’s still a good chance she’s side with Endra against us, and I don’t want to risk that.}

Jun shrugged. {Keratily’s only one person. But she has that power-sucking matrix, right? If we can destroy that, I bet it’d weaken her a lot and give power back to all the citizens. We wouldn’t have to save them if they can save themselves.}

Now that–that was a good idea. I nodded vigorously and shifted my plans from a binary outlook to a more… scattershot approach. Instead of thinking of it as three objectives we needed to fulfill, I needed to look at it as a lot of little objectives that could unite the main goals into one singular possible victory.

Keratily’s power matrix could get rid of our citizen problem. One broadcast in addition to the burst of experience could easily turn the entire city against Scalovera, even if it wasn’t quite the truth. And that also had the bonus effect of nearly completely helping us, since Scalovera was only using hired mercenaries instead of people who’d lived in Rainbow Basin for years. Of course I couldn’t count on it working out perfectly, but if I didn’t at least make a plan for the absolute best scenario, then that was the same as admitting defeat.

Which left the Endra problem and the city itself. Even if I gave the citizens their power back, Endra could still very much have control over some of them. But that was a fact I had to accept. We could screen everyone after the fact with something Okeria would whip up, and then… well, I didn’t know if there was any way of helping them. We might come off as horrible monsters, but it would be a terrible necessity.

As for the city… well, I really didn’t care as much about that one. I guess Gloriosa needed a home base for her contacts, and having an important foothold in Staua culture would be nice, but we could always rebuild. That one was by far the most malleable option of the three, and I mentally marked it down as the thing I would let get destroyed if everything came down to it.

“How ‘bout ya, Sebastian? Got anything ya’d like ta add?”

I blinked and focused on the miniature city as Okeria looked at me expectantly. I’d missed some part of the conversation, but Mortician chimed in to quickly bring me up to speed as I pretended to study the model.

{The current consensus is that there will be many key areas in the city which need to be fought over. The reservoir, the reserves, the market district, and the various civilian districts.} Mortician explained, and I scanned the map to pick out those places. {Okeria has set forth the idea that Scalovera will attempt to defend the commerce and political centers in greater numbers, so we will launch attacks on those places while clearing out the civilian districts furthest away from them at the same time. The rest of the conversation was specifics you do not need to know.}

I nodded to myself. {Thanks, Mortician. Was there any mention of Keratily?}

They gently wiped their fingers in two horizontal lines across my back. {Not in the way we assume you are asking, but as a possible danger to the entire operation if she decides to ally with Scalovera.}

Well, that was partly how I was asking. But they were right in that it wasn’t the entire story. “Okeria, do you remember anything about Keratily siphoning experience away from everyone in Rainbow Basin? And have you had any communication with Inopsy since Keratily got back?”

Okeria shook his head, then thumbed at Gloriosa. “Her functions mess with my memory, so all I know is that it exists. And Gloriosa’s the one who's been tryin’ ta get a hold of our little undying flower, but to no avail. All she’s been able ta confirm is that he ain’t been confirmed dead.”

Good. Inopsy had to hold one hell of a grudge against Keratily, and if we were lucky, an even bigger grudge against Endra. We just needed to find him, wherever the hell he ended up.

“Ambus, can you scout the area around the city for any signs of Inopsy?” I asked.

She blinked slowly, then narrowed her eyes in concentration. “I can. Anything to get out of these drowned walls.”

“Well, then, that’s your job for the next thirty hours.” I reached for her figure and set it outside of the city. “Don’t engage if you find anything–just call us and we’ll try to smuggle him into the city without Scalovera knowing.”

Ambus sat up a little straighter. “Okay. What if I find someone that isn’t Inopsy?”

“I really doubt it, but if you do, take note of the armor they’re wearing and have Gloriosa run it through the Staura database. If they show up as mercenaries, and you’re confident you can beat them, then you can take care of the problem for us.”

“That I can do.” Ambus confirmed with the smallest of confident smiles.

“Perfect.” I said with a much wider smile. “That’s one possibility we’re narrowing down. Now, for the others–we need to destroy Keratily’s matrix, which’ll weaken her and strengthen everyone in the city. Okeria, can you find out where the crystals are?”

Okeria shrugged. “It’ll take a lot of mind-power for that, but yeah, I can cook somethin’ up ta help jog my memory. Only problem is I can only ever remember findin’ three of em–that fourth, and maybe even more than that–ain’t got anythin’ in my mind ta latch onto.”

“Not a problem. Mortician, can you do some exploration of this place and see if there’s anything like a city blueprint? We can cross-reference current blueprints to see if anything major’s changed.”

Mortician nodded and turned to leave. “We were looking for an excuse to explore more of this facility, and we will gladly take the one you have given us! We will return at the thirty hour mark, just as you have requested Ambus to do.”

Before I could get another word in, Mortician bolted away. We all sat there in silence for a moment, then Ambus donned her armor as well and hurried after them.

“Well, I really hope she’s gonna get someone ta help her outta here.” Okeria noted. “I don’t wanna waste any more teleportation anchors than I already have.”

“I wasn’t really expecting her to leave yet, but I guess it’s fine.” I said slowly. I still hadn’t given roles to Jun, Thorn, or Gloriosa, so I… huh. I guess I really had settled into the leadership role pretty damn well.

I shook my head and recollected my thoughts. “Thorn, can you go and talk to everyone who you think would be strong enough to not die if they fought Scalovera’s mercenaries? Okeria has the rest of the guards off somewhere, and I know you just saw all the people I brought in.”

Thorn nodded without hesitation. “I can even go out and talk to some people I know will be happy to fight for us when it comes down to it. We left them alone for a while, since we didn’t want to make everything public, but they’ll fight for their city.”

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but if you’re certain, then do it.” I said without moving Thorn’s figure. “Get them outfitted with armor and weapons if they need it, and make sure they know there’s a chance they won’t get to go home if they fight with us.”

“That won’t be a problem.” Thorn said with grim determination and a faraway stare. “A fate far worse than death is waiting for them if they sit back and do nothing. And if they don’t want to fight… well, then we don’t want them fighting with us in the first place.”

Thorn’s intensity brought the meeting to a halt, and it only resumed once he put on his armor and took Jun to let him out of the facility. Leaving me, Okeria, and Gloriosa at the table.

Gloriosa cleared her throat and summoned a slate. “I’ll see what I can purchase or convince through the connections who are still willing to work with me when there isn’t a city backing me. If I find anything, I’ll report to Okeria and he can relay it to you.”

“Perfect.” I said as I pushed myself out of my chair. “I’m going to go talk to someone who might know something that could help us, and I’m taking Jun with me. Meet back here in ten hours and we’ll see how everything changes.”