Addy was dead. A life lost. She had more, but still, the mere thought lit a fire in me that wanted to burn and break something.
An ambush. We were targeted specifically. Not a dumb opponent.
The crowd of party-goers recoiled from the explosion on the first floor like a wave. I swam against the stream. A cloud lit by blue fires was belching from the intact wing of Clem’s family home. Out of it, something akin to an alien terminator emerged, the barrel of its weaponized limb glowing with waste heat as its many senses scanned its surroundings for a target.
Those targets were Addy and me. Because of course, joyous things could only last so long.
I had to fight back, but if that thing started firing on the crowd, forget about extra lives, just matching the right limbs to the right bodies was going to be an agonizing task. My backpack had all my weapons in it, but I’d left it in Clem’s room. That was the last place I wanted to lead this murderous robot.
Still, I always had at least one weapon ready.
“Summon: bazooka,” I whispered with bile in my throat.
The robot instantly zeroed in on me. Supernatural hearing, or magic detection. A way to pinpoint me even among a crowd of a hundred people. A lethal weapon. Yep, these things were definitely assassin robots.
I popped out of the crowd, aim steady thanks to a quickly chanted [Arms & Arms proficiency], and fired. It was… not an armor piercing shot. Also not a high explosive round. The boomerang round I had been trying to get to work during training left the barrel and immediately flew off to the side and into the sky.
The concept of reusable bazooka ammo had intrigued me since ammo for it was getting expensive. The boomerang ammo… was more of a training round, something someone tinkered up as an April Fool’s joke, rather than to deliver a lethal payload. Alas, it was what the bazooka was loaded with, and it was going sideways.
Except, I’d enchanted my bazooka, hadn’t I?
I glared at the robot as scattered shots ate into the grass behind me.
You stupid robot. You ruined the moment. You killed Addy, which sucks even if she’ll get better. You're being a nuisance. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The magic boomerang turned aboutface and cracked it across the back of its head. While the robot didn’t die from a broken neck, it sure as hell suffered from debilitating injury. Its triple cameras couldn’t look anywhere but down.
It reeled, staggering around, sending shots into the ground as it failed to adjust to unexpected parameters. From behind, a second figure rose from the smoke.
A man-sized blob of orange-red engulfed the robot with a hiss of steam.
[You have assisted in killing: Murderbot Infiltrator: 50 Soulcoins]
That was… that was Becca.
You go, girl! Judging by the volume of fire I thought there was a second one, but looks like you took care of that as well.
I caught the boomerang as it returned to me, like a good boomerang. Then a crackle rang out and my outstretched hand was vaporized, boomerang included.
AAAAAH — Ow, Ow, Ow, shit, OW!
[Vampirism I] meant that the pain was only agonizing instead of mind-breakingly insane, but the heat of that blue plasma-fire still ate at the core of my bones. The shot had come from one of the neighbor’s houses — there, on top of the slant roof was a glint of metal. Something was sitting there, half camouflaged, shooting measured, thin shots instead of spraying foot-wide cones of energy like the thing before.
“System, I need something that can actually get past the armor on these things!” I yelled as four copies of me spread out in every direction while the real me rolled behind a solid stone wall for cover.
[Engaging autobuy. Parameters?]
“Pistol, armor penetrating, below 500 coins with extra ammo and instant delivery, NOW!”
[Search failed]
[Matching weapon outside of budget found. Would you like to see it?]
“I…” Dammit, not the time to be frugal. “Sure, why the heck not?
A familiar icon popped up, a single letter embossed in gold. D, the weapons collector slash merchant slash lazy bum. The last time I’d bought anything off of him, I got a gun that shoots antimonic acid. The stuff melted through solid material in moments, and after an ivory upgrade, it actively burrowed inside its foe. If his interests were anything to go by, things were about to get weird.
[Buying: Lucky 7]
[Lucky 7: Aptigen’s debut product, the only iron you’ll ever need. Created as a sidearm for the now defunct C4Y9 special forces unit, this sidearm is part of the modular S7VEN product line: S7VEN, reconfigure and redefine, to ward and watch against forces malign. Prototype product, all terms apply. Only accepts S7VEN rainbow rounds. Requires emotions to fire. Channeling incorrect emotions may lead to wear, fouling of the barrel, jamming, misfires, and short-term injury of the soul. Aptigen will not be held responsible for any injury, maiming, emotional scarring, etc. that occurs as a result of mishandling equipment or miscasting spells. Price: 700 Soulcoins]
[Cost per seven-shot quickloader (all colors): 21 Soulcoins]
My money! My hard earned money! Oh, the pain!
I gnashed my teeth. “Buy the gun, and three quickloaders!”
[Soulcoins: 854->91]
[ETA: 2min 15sec]
The fine print would’ve challenged anyone without a zoom function in their eyes. Instead, it only made me nervous.
“Not held responsible for any… It’s another prototype, and it’s a revolver? Really?”
At least I was solidly into magical gun territory. Hopefully it delivered on its promise. I already had issues just hearing the word revolver.
Revolvers are the friggin prima donna's of modern-day pistols. They aren’t sealed as well as a magazine-fed pistol, so sand, dirt, heck, even water is a constant problem. Their cylinders can lose alignment, their high-round-count lifetimes are shorter, and for everything besides firing dubious ammunition, their tolerances are way tighter than, say, a glock. Sure, they are more reliable per shot than really any other type of gun, but I wasn’t just firing one shot, and I wasn’t washing out my barrel every six bullets either.
Was I a bit biased because Dad swore off of revolvers ever since a cracked forcing cone on a newly bought .38 almost took his eye out? Maybe. But that just meant I had a reliable source to back up my claims, even if the source was ‘my Dad said so’.
[At current rates, instant delivery will require an additional (87) Soulcoins]
“Screw it! Gimme that gun now so I can scrap some damn robots.”
[Soulcoins: 91->4]
A gun like no other appeared right in my hands, and the first thing I noted was that it was heavy. It felt like a pure metal brick intended for hands larger than mine, with screws as large as my finger nail. The second thing I noticed was the style. The grip was carved in the shape of a gaping wolf’s mouth that looked like it was either gorging on or vomiting forth the rest of the frame. The front sight was two tiny wolf ears that, when aligned with the pinprick eyes on the rear sight, created the impression of a grinning face. Someone had liberally spray painted the entire weapon in every color of the rainbow, which didn’t hide the proud logo artfully embossed with a swirly font the side of the barrel. ‘S7VEN’ it said on one side, and ‘LUCKY’ on the other.
It looks so magical girl-y.
I can totally vibe with this.
It came with three quick-loading cylinders filled with rainbow-colored rounds. I popped one in, felt the grip in my hands, and poked over the top of the stone wall. The camouflage haze in the air wasn’t where I’d seen it previously — the sniper obviously relocated once his position was revealed, like a good sharpshooter.
A streak of blue caught one of my body doubles across the shoulder, evaporating it immediately and promising me the same grizzly fate should it guess correctly the next time. But now I had its number.
“Arms & Arms proficiency,” I said with a promise of vengeance on my lips.
The sniper was some nine-hundred feet away, well beyond the reach of any normal pistol. Pistol barrels were short, the lower velocities increased bullet travel time and invited more drift, and the shorter sight radius — the distance between front and rear sights — increased angular error while aiming. While using my spell those problems were all mitigated to an extent, though at some point the ugly bitch known as physics reared her head. My hands had to move with utmost certainty, my mind had to be clear.
The two mixed together with senses and instincts into a melange that felt comforting, almost perfect.
One of my illusions was running at the sniper, drawing its next shot. It had to shoot it first, because if that wasn’t an illusion, it would be in trouble within seconds. The sniper robot’s arm unblurred for a brief moment, giving me a window to extrapolate the position of the rest of its body.
Index two, my magic spoke to me, channel trust.
The cylinder clicked two spots to the left.
It’s too far. [Arms & Arms proficiency] says it’s a near guaranteed miss. Magic is cool, ballistics are cruel.
I pulled the trigger anyways. One of my eyes twitched as the gun didn’t fire. Not enough trust-charge. The downside of magical weaponry.
Can’t channel trust like this.
—Index one, channel anger—
Oh, you bet I can do anger.
Aim, sight, breathe. Fire.
The gun barked, and the shot flew, trailing a streak of crimson red. For a split second, it zipped across the chaos like a sped-up Blaster shot from Star Wars. Then it hit at the foot of where the robot was standing and exploded like a grenade of angry hot lava. Red heat and hot glowing shrapnel shattered shingles and blasted the robot sniper off the roof. I watched it hit the ground two stories below, its smoldering features barely solidifying before its backpack exploded in an electric fire.
[You have killed: Murderbot Farstream: 150 Soulcoins]
[Soulcoins: 4->154]
My heart stopped for a moment before returning with a euphoric beat.
Oh, this is like sex, but better. The look, the sound — wow.
I looked down at my gun.
I love you. Almost as much as Addy. Probably more than Tanya. Definitely more than Tanya.
All in all, the ambush lasted less than a minute. Three out of four of my body doubles were gone. The focus of the assault had been entirely on me, and since I’d been avoiding the throng of people that were now well away or cowering behind cover, I couldn’t see a single dead body. Which… really shouldn’t be a measure of success, but I’d take it!
Wait, what’s that rumbling sound?
The ground split open in multiple places. A muddy drill the size of an entire pickup truck emerged from the now torn lawn, then two more. In the same breath, a set of lights I’d mistaken for a plane grew closer in the sky, whirring and whirring with many bladed rotors. It was a drone, but drones didn’t get that large, nor did giant tunneling vehicles just emerge from the ground.
A shadow of something Addy-shaped hit the top of the giant drone, which immediately began bobbing and sparking. I was already running back towards the house, shooting two more anger shots to stop one of the drill-vehicles in its tracks, but then I was out. Every quickloader came with one of each color. I had zero ways to harm that armored vehicle right this instant, besides maybe disgust.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
C’mon, disgust.
Click.
Disgust, please!
Click.
Goddammit. I'm almost back to the bedroom. Oh god, am I going to find Addy’s body?
The gun barked, a purplish glob of a bullet hitting the door of the first drill vehicle just as it swung open. A robot much like the one that had interrupted us, except more wiry and armed with a smaller weapon, took the hit to the chest. Immediately, the glob expanded, melting and fusing the metal robot with the hull as it was knocked back into it.
[You have killed: Murderbot Grunt: 15 Soulcoins]
Anger equals explosion, disgust corrosion. So many colors, so little time to experiment.
More robots began pouring out of the other vehicles. Something on the giant drone above exploded as it lost altitude.
Shit, I need my backpack, I need some armor piercing bazooka rounds — wait, I can just buy those.
That was of course the moment one of the partygoers decided to crawl out from behind the pulled pork smoker. The murderbot grunts either didn’t have the optics to differentiate between him and me, or they didn’t care as they leveled their guns at him.
No time to charge shots.
If only I had trained better.
I moved. Elastic tendons added stored energy to Body-enhanced muscle as I rocketed across the lawn faster than any human could blink. Snagging the civilian in a way that didn’t break his neck required me to slow down just a hair as I reached him.
That was all it took.
I felt it as the bluefire shots blasted around and through me. The smaller guns didn’t evaporate literal fistfuls of dirt, but they exploded rock and snapped tree branches clean off. My momentum came to a stop behind an old oak.
“Blurgh,” was the only sound that came from my mouth as I tried to ask the civilian if he was okay. There was a fist-sized hole in my chest where my heart ought to be. And there were the makings of a similar-sized hole in his abdomen. I could see past his guts and… ugh.
Also, did I mention the exquisite pain?
Aaaaaah!
You have ten seconds of oxygen left in your bloodstream before you fall unconscious. Now seven.
AAAAAAAH!
System, Instabuy two time bandaids.
I created a body double and sent it running away to draw fire, then slapped the bandaid on his stomach and keeled over.
“Blurgh?”
[You have died]
[Extra lives: 8->7]
Space. I was in space again. The angry tear in realspace was much more closed now, edges tucked together and scabbed, leaving only a jagged line with a glimpse of pink behind it. Besides that, I’d hoped that everything would look normal, but of course it didn’t, because someone was building a massive structure on the moon.
It wasn’t much more than three half-finished concentric rings glowing where the sun didn’t illuminate Earth’s number one companion. Even zoomed in I couldn’t tell much more besides that there were lights growing in between the rings, like roads in a city, or veins growing on the surface of a fetus.
This is exactly the kind of problem I don’t want to have to deal with now.
There was more. Mochi, the yellow bundle of sweet joy, was hovering a ways away from me, seemingly talking to a living, burning meteor.
“Oh, it is her!” The sapient computer program said as it turned towards me. “Heyadoodle, my favorite spider-noodle. Lemme introduce you to a good friend of mine, the illustrious and even-tempered RANCOR—”
The red comet sped towards me, growing tens and tens of times in size. Its face was a set of barely coherent, jagged lines forming the image of an angry buddha.
“YOU LITTLE SHIT YOU DIED AGAIN AND YOU DIDN’T EXPLODE I WAS PROMISED AN EXPLOSION WHY ARE YOU SO BORING SO INCOMPETENT SO MEEK SO FUCKING—
“Instant revive!” I yelled and my soul was tugged back to earth.
[Soulcoins: 154->67]
I landed right in front of the guy whose life I’d just saved. We blinked at each other awkwardly. He looked at my corpse, then back at me.
“Believe me, it doesn’t get any less weird from my end,” I said, snatching my gear off my dead body while my body doubles frantically dodged and weaved in the background. Turns out, they didn’t dissipate just because I was dead. Useful information, that.
I had one magical revolver, an empty bazooka, and not that many soulcoins to my name. The robots had spread out by this point, the burning wreck of a house-sized octocopter drawing one flank’s attention while a skirmishing Addy drew away the other flank. That still left over twenty bots advancing on Clem’s home where dozens of partygoers were hiding out, twenty bots that could each kill me with a single shot.
Fear was setting in again as the only emotion I could possibly think of channeling. Addy had pointed out that personal flaw, but real talk? Fear was the only thing keeping me alive most of the time, and fear was the one emotion my Lucky 7 couldn’t use.
Alright, new plan: Distract the central column with a bazooka shot, then distract the rest with more body doubles. Whittle them down shot by shot. You have infinite ammo, they don’t have infinite bots, but every minute you take increases the chance they blast someone who's hiding.
That was when I spotted a lone figure standing atop the ruins of the east wing of Clem’s manor. It was Clem herself, standing in the open without even a little bit of cover to hide behind.
“All who have spilled precious blood on my home, CEASE.” The blue crystal on her forehead gleamed in a bright light. Suddenly, I couldn’t move.
Wait, what?
She pointed at one of the murderbots. “You have slain my best friend. Kill yourself.”
The murderbot aimed its gun-arm at its head and pulled the trigger, slagging it.
She pointed at one of the drill vehicles. “You disrupted the party and destroyed my lawn. Perish.”
The drill vehicle exploded. I flinched, and her fell gaze turned to me.
“Did I say you were allowed to move?” Her hair billowed ominously, floating skyward. Suddenly, despite being a Custodian and magical spider girl with extra lives, I felt very, very small.
“Sorry, bestie.”
“Apology accepted, bestie” she said and it was so. Her hair rose until it was a single pillar of gleaming golden blonde. “All ye machine invaders, trespassers, murderers, hear me. This land has belonged to my family since time immemorial. There lie the ruins of my ancestral home. For this disturbance, I claim compensation.”
The air was silent. One of the robot grunts walked forward, and when it spoke, it was in a distorted, machine-like English.
“Unit A-415, responding to local alien representative, temporary designation R-1. Request: allowance for withdrawal.”
“Denied.”
“Request: Allowance for withdrawal, with promise of deferred repayment.”
“Denied.”
“Offer: Immediate destruction of all units present in this theatre as payment for this debt.”
“Acceptable.”
The crackle and fizz of electric fires filled the air.
[You have assisted in killing: Murderbot Grunt. +5 Soulcoins.]
[You have assisted in killing: Murderbot Grunt. +5 Soulcoins.]
[You have assisted in killing: Murderbot Sergeant. +10 Soulcoins.]
[You have assisted in killing: Drill vehicle Mk IV. +7 Soulcoins.]
[...]
[Congratulations! You have reached level 34]
[+4 Body, +2 Sense, +2 Mind, + 4 Soul, + 1 Free Stat Point]
One by one the robots toppled to the ground in heaps of slag and fused limbs. Just like that, there was not a single one of them left. I felt the hold on my mind and body drift away. Clem staggered, then tipped backwards into Akira’s arms.
What the hell just happened — scratch that, is Clem alright?
“Fucking fae,” Addy muttered, appearing out of the darkness smelling of fire and brimstone. “You didn’t tell me your friend was a freaking fae.”
“She isn’t!”
“Then how did insulting her hospitality end in this?” She gestured across the field.
“... I suppose we ought to ask her ourselves.” Maybe Clem’s self-diagnosis was off, like, waaay off. Worrying.
Akira didn’t look any less worried and-slash-or unnerved than either me or Addy as we joined him in Clem’s parents’ former room.
Clem was convulsing, muscles cramping as she bled from her eyes, nose, and mouth.
“Shit, what is—” I asked before Addy interrupted me.
“Soul damage. Sam, bandaid, now. Here, here, and here.”
I grabbed my bag and slapped bandaids on her face and neck. Slowly, the cramps subsided and she glided into an unnervingly quiet sleep.
“Will she be alright?” Akira asked.
I looked to Addy. “I… don’t know. We should take her to see a soul doctor, at the very least. Soul damage is hard to catch if you don’t have a high soul stat yourself, but it’s treatable as long as you get to it quick enough. Or, that’s what my mentor said. She was talking about level 80+ threats.”
“That means we need a Society hospital, or at the very least a licensed professional,” I said. “That’s gonna cost soulcoins.”
There was a pause as everyone digested all this in their own unique way. Addy’s face was neutral with contemplation. Akira was busy stroking Clem’s hair.
“So,” I started, “fae?”
“Very fae,” Addy confirmed. “Increadibly fae. I haven’t heard of a power on her scale crossing the boundary between Earth and fairyworld since… ever, really. The peace treaty forbids movement of individuals above a certain power level due to the problems that might ensue.”
“Think that’s related to the incident at the Lodge?” I asked. We had a pixie from there, and the poltergeist had also been some sort of fae.
“I hope not. But I’m not one for hoping.” Addy bit her finger. “I don’t get it. That wasn’t a spell, that was just raw magic in the shape of a fae retribution. Wording matters. Everything she said had to be true for it to work. Even ‘since time immemorial’, which is odd since she is… American.”
Addy looked at me as if she was waiting to see if I’d judge that as an insult.
Akira spoke up. “She has some Ottawa ancestry. I saw her family tree once, hanging in the old study.”
“That’ll do it,” Addy said.
I stared at my friend, who wasn’t doing so well, then at Addy, who was also sown with rotorblade-shaped cuts. “So what now? These bandaids won’t last forever. She needs treatment.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you know someone who might be able to help?”
“I do, but… contacting them is going to set things in motion neither of us have any power over.” Addy looked into the distance.
“Addy, please.”
“I wasn’t going to say no. Just… mentally preparing myself for a terrible phone call I’ve been avoiding for two years.” Woof, yeah, I was familiar with that type of mental load. I placed her hand in mine and rubbed my thumbs over it in gentle circles.
“Would you like me to make the call instead?” I asked, to which she frowned.
“I’m not… I need to do this myself.” A text field popped up in front of her face. After two silent rings, Addy’s face shifted. “Doctor Hua Tuo, this is Adelaide. Yes, the very same. Yes, I… no. No, there wasn’t… yes. No. Yes. Yes. Of course. Thank you. No? Maybe.”
She gave me a look and I understood that this was going to take a while to explain. I left her and Akira at it while I checked up on Becca. She’d been morphing unsteadily in a corner.
“Heya, you doing alright?”
She created an arm that looked like it belonged to a robot. Its joints were fused and non-articulated while its fingers creaked with knuckles of mismatched sizes. But it was still the most intricate thing I’d seen her create since, well, ever.
This is huge.
“You think you can get a whole body made like this?”
Wobble wobble.
“But you need more practice?”
Wobble.
“I saw you eat one of those bots. Good soulcoins, probably good experience too. Bit annoying that they didn’t drop anything like an essence gem. They probably scorched whatever their equivalent to those are when Clem told them to go and die.” Though I was totally going to go looking afterwards. Having something like a sniper essence would be a powerful statement, build-wise. Heck, just getting any essence from something that actually used guns and technology was practically guaranteed to synergize with my build.
“Alright. Let's see if we can’t help with the post-battle cleanup. Wanna help?”
I didn’t even have to count her wobbles to know the answer.
The immediate area in and around the house had patches of fire that needed putting out, there were dangerously sharp shards of metal and grass everywhere, and ooh, right, there were people too.
“Heya, uh, party’s over I suppose,” I announced after climbing onto one of the few intact tables. “You can go home now. If you’re injured, call for me and we’ll get you sorted out. Everyone who isn’t, we’d all appreciate a helping hand or two in fixing this place up.”
One of the many chimneys on Clem’s house chose this exact moment to topple over and crash from the building.
“... I’ll pay everyone who helps a silver soulcoin?”
Three people stayed behind. The rest was too shocked, afraid, or just tired, but still, I’d expected more. Apparently the supernatural and magical Custodians were only fun and interesting until they actually had to do their job. Clem’s performance also hadn’t helped. It was a bit saddening to see so many people go without so much as a muttered thank you. I’d probably see more of their reactions in the coming days over social media clips than I would in person.
I turned to the three people who did stay behind — a pair of me-aged girls with stars in their eyes, and hey, there was the guy whose life I saved.
“Addy, can you do your combo heal-thing?” I asked.
A short while later Addy had exhausted her pool of wounds for [I’ll be fine], shuttered the boy’s wounds closed via [We’ll be fine]. The gaping wound in his chest was closed on the outside, but he still needed a sip of regeneration potion to regrow most of his intestines and kidneys. Addy’s healing was great for bruises, tears, and flesh wounds, but entire missing limbs or organs were a no-go.
Good. Only have like one or two sips of it left.
The boy, and the two girls, stared at Addy with wide eyes.
“It’s magic. Magic!” One of the starry-eyed girls said.
“Pleeease take me in as your student, senpai,” the other said clasping her hands. “I don’t want to become an accountant so bad!”
“Have you considered not studying accounting then?” she shot back.
“I have! But it’s what my family wants. If I became, like, a superhero with magic, I wouldn’t have to listen to them at all.”
“I mean, I can give you a few tips,” I hedged.
They turned to me, eyes losing a notable part of their luster. “Why? No offense, but turning arms yellow is so much less cool than healing. And I, like, totally don’t want to turn into a spider. Feels icky, y’know?”
“I, uh…” Ouch. That… really hurts.
Addy clapped her hands. “Alright people. Brooms.”
Cleaning up with six arms was only marginally faster than with four or two. Becca did her best at playing the giant slime-roomba, but even then by the time we finished with the roughest patches it was well into the night. The wreckage of the giant drone was still smoldering, and the drill vehicles were going to need about two to three tow trucks to remove, but at least nobody was going to skewer themselves on an errant piece of twisted metal.
Becca dealt with the machine corpses quite nicely. No letting alien laser weapon arms lying around where people could just steal them. They probably couldn’t get them to work. Worst case they’d probably just sell the copper inside.
It was the end of a long day. Even with my magical enhancements, I could feel my strength waning.
I am… so tired.
Luckily, despite the trashing of the west wing and now the east wing, Clem’s house still had one functioning bathroom, one bedroom, and a living room with couches aplenty.
I kicked my pants off and crashed on the couch, wrapping myself in a blanket that had no business being this soft and fuzzy. Opening one of my many eyes a crack, I noticed Addy follow after, except now she was just standing there looking at me.
“I’ll go find a second blanket.”
I rolled my eyes and lifted my blanket, beckoning with a leftover arm.
“C’mere you.”
There was nothing the world could offer that was better than a lovers’ cuddle, not in magic, not in the system shop, not in any place my imagination could reach. It was rudely interrupted by the odd system message, but by the third one I silenced the notifications and snuggled my face into the crook of Addy’s neck.
“We’re going to be busy in the near future.” She mumbled it like someone headed for the gallows. “Peace never lasts. I warn you, some of my rivals at the academy might still be around—”
“Shhh. None of that. Sleep time.”
And so, sleep time it was.
[Doctor Hua Tuo Prof. M.D. has scheduled an appointment in (15) hours on (Madagascar). All fees covered by Custodian Premium Insurance. To see your rights as a Premium member, think ‘continue’.]
[Direct message from user (D.): “academy has taken an interest in you. the air is abuzz with gossip. it’s annoying. don’t listen, take care.”]
[Direct message from user (Associate Poppy): “Oh Em Gee, a new Custodian! Welcome to the fold, sister. Here’s a coupon in case you ever need your clothes adjusted. I also do armor, accessories, and gadgets. Best of luck!”]
[Direct message from user (Custodian Kathrina, Bloodbound Duelist.): “Your mutt is a liar and a cheat. Consider this a warning.”]
[...]
[97 unread direct messages]
[107 unread direct messages]
[134 unread direct messages]
[…]
[The Academy has sent a formal request for your enrollment. The Academy offers the world’s only Custodian diploma*, a place to network with fellow protectors of Earth, and form bonds that may last through lifetimes. Become a hero, become a weapon, become… Custodian of Earth**.]
[*Custodian diploma vetted by The System.]
[**A completed education is not necessary for deployment as a Custodian. All services offered by The Academy and The Society at large fall within the free market of services condoned by The System.]
