Michelle Takoyaki woke up with a headache that probably shouldn’t exist. Being a Dungeoneer had meant many things, but it had definitely cut out a lot of the various stupid pains of being human. She had been disturbed when she had first learned Dungeoneer women could just switch their periods off and on. Many people wouldn't find that disturbing so much as a relief, but she couldn't help it feeling... unnatural, and that was far from the only example. Of course, it didn't stop her from switching it off the very next month.

  But this headache… on the one hand, it didn’t surprise her. It was a lot less than it had been when she went to sleep, and it made perfect sense that her head had gotten fucked up by what Jon did. She sat up in bed, noting that she’d gone to bed clothed without really meaning to, and swung her feet off the side, still half-expecting to see the view outside her apartment through a small second-story window, its curtains left half open. But this wasn’t her apartment, it was one of Jerry's Dungeon hotels.

  With a thought, she flicked her phone out of her Inventory, finding a message from Nin saying to let her know when she was up. She tapped a response out, just an unimpressed emoticon, before pulling a liter-size water bottle out of her Inventory and drinking half of it without pausing for air.

  She let herself recover for a moment, and by the time she got to the door, she heard footsteps on the other side. When she opened it, Nin was there, her face worried. “Chelle,” she said, immediately going in for a hug, with Michelle allowed, feeling only a little awkward. The Thai-American woman pulled back after a moment. “Are you okay? Any lasting effects?”

  “Just a headache,” she said, looking back into the room on instinct to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, but stepping out after only a moment. "Were you all waiting on me?"

  "Like there's anything else more important right now." Nin gave her a worried shoulder bump. She was about the only one nowadays that didn't make Michelle nervous to get close to. And yesterday's business... well, it had started to get bad before that.

  In truth, it might have started with Jerry. That encounter had been about the worst thing in her life... even if it had made her stronger. Even if that was, apparently, really the point of it, start to finish. Even if he'd said that all along, and even if he obviously could have done worse. He'd betrayed her trust, and clearly not thought much about it.

  It had been more than just an awakening about strength and weakness. It had made it hard to turn her eyes away from how cruel the world could be. And now this, in his dungeon. Even if he had saved her... again. He'd almost been too late, when he should have been watching. He had been watching.

  "Chelle?"

  "Right." Michelle shook her head. "Just... thinking."

  "That's what I'm worried about." Nin wrapped her arm around her. "There's... some news. Not about us, about Jerry. We were talking about it downstairs."

  Michelle nodded, adding a half-committed "Sure" a moment later, as an afterthought. "About what?"

  "So yesterday, around the same time the shit with Jon was going down?" Nin made a face. "Jerry's fiancee was kidnapped."

  Michelle didn't know what she was expecting in terms of news, but that wasn't it. But while she wanted to stand there and process it, Nin was pulling her arm towards the stairs at the end of the hall, and Michelle reluctantly let her.

  Midway down the straight run of stairs, they passed through a teleportation barrier, and suddenly she could hear the room ahead. It wasn't too loud, but it was obviously a bar and restaurant; the Restaurant, as it were. Applebee's.

  At the time, Michelle had just rolled her eyes at the politics of it, but while Jerry had been all but forced to adopt a restaurant chain just because it had his name on it, he had turned out to be game for it. He'd needed a lobby for people entering Alpha portals, and the chain either had to fall in line with him or change their name. Not because of pressure from Jerry, but from almost everyone else.

  Sure, Jerry had managed to be the first Earth Administrator after years of everyone wondering what the hell we were all supposed to do with all of these Dungeons, from an unknown source. Sure, he had helped publicly reveal something about... aliens, and some test for humanity to see if they were worthy of being given power. Or something. Sure, once he had taken over, his dungeons went from being deathtraps to training grounds, in spite of their apparently being some sort of incentive for him to kill Dungeoneers that enter.

  Despite all that, people freaking hated Jerry Applebee, especially in the US Dungeoneer's Association and the US Government. There had been a move to cancel the restaurant chain within weeks, and it had gained rather than lost momentum in the months that followed. And all of that had been before he made some mistake and got censured by the Star, whatever that even meant. It still did decent business, as far as she could tell, but given that portals all over the world led to the restaurant, who knows what level of business really counted as good? Or even what the total level of business actually was, given that Jerry could add and remove whole buildings worth of seating and kitchens on a whim. When Jerry had taken over as Administrator, all of the portals managed by the old Administrator became his – and those had been randomly sprinkled across every continent, even in uninhabited places. There were even some in midair, and some over and under the ocean. Applebee's was suddenly a global brand, as Dungeoneers and mundane people the world over had access to it from the weirdest of places. But since he was Jerry Applebee... even if his new thing weren't so damn weird, his Dungeon still wouldn't be popular, not in America. Not if you listen to all the commentary, at least.

  But as Michelle came down the last few steps into the restaurant, some part of her smiled at the wash of noise. She couldn't make out all the accents and languages in the room, even with a Neotech translator – and she hadn't put hers on. Nor would she want to; by the time Nin led her to the booth where Reese and Erik were sitting, she would have gladly shelled out the Experience to pay for a sound-deadening bubble, if someone else hadn't done so first.

  "There she is," Reese said, clearly trying to sound a little upbeat. "The sword queen herself. How'd you sleep?"

  "Eh. Pretty well," she admitted, as she gestured for Erik to move over more, not sitting down until she had elbow room to spare, and then she slumped down against the table. That wasn't doing her night justice, of course; she'd fallen asleep as soon as she hit the pillow, and hadn't woken up until just now. She'd never had trouble sleeping since becoming a Dungeoneer, but somethin--no, it wasn’t something. Recovering from that fucking trauma had taken a lot of out of her. In that way... her night hadn't really been about the sleep at all, and she supposed Reese knew it. But, how else could he ask? Politely?

  "So did you hear the news?" Erik leaned in, the look on his face a little manic. Michelle glanced at him, still not trusting the man, even though he, too, had turned against Jon. "About Jerry."

  "Nin said--"

  "I just told her the headline," Nin interrupted, first to Erik, and then turning to face her and leaning in. "You should see the videos. There was a thing going down in Brazil – you know how that whole region is fucked ever since Ventos took over – but there were a lot of random hostages, and it looks like Jerry's girlfriend just so happened to be there. And of course, the moment he hears about it, he's just fuckin' gone." Nin made a boom gesture with her hands. "That was right around the time shit was going down with us, which like... was just unlucky."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "That's not the fun part," Reese interrupted, gently nudging Nin with his shoulder, which she returned with a smirk. "Some jackass was live-streaming the hostage situation, right. Obviously because they had to prove what they were doing to make effective threats. And he's been saying for a while how there are dozens of people with hundreds of levels each all over the compound, and no Brazillian army was going to pry them out, and Jerry just kind of pushes in the door, kills all the bad guys at once, saving the guy with the camera for last, so he can get the last word in before the dude dies and his phone gets locked in his Inventory."

  Erik picked up the story thread. "The army comes in no more than a half hour later, and there's just a shit ton of corpse dolls all over the compound, most over 500, some over 800. They figure that Jerry didn't bother to get everyone who was there, but the ones that survived either didn't care about the dead or were too scared to go back for them. Or who knows, maybe there were just that many of them. Either way, those fuckers are all screwed."

  "And that's the thing," Nin said, slamming back into the booth seat. "The shit that's going down in Brazil isn't one-sided. They say Ventos is doing deals with gangers, drug lords, and other pricks, alongside South American government and army types, some of whom are probably worse than the drug lords. The assholes behind the kidnapping stunt may not have even been worse, they were just pissy at not getting invited."

  Michelle listened to all that, but was also turning her attention to the menu screen that showed up when she focused on the table. She triggered a remote call for the waiter, getting a video chat within moments, and held up one finger as she rattled off an order for pancakes. The waiter repeated the order back to her, and she nodded and closed the menu with a wave of her hand.

  "Sorry," she said, glancing around, though nobody seemed at all annoyed. "I'm just starving."

  "It's all good, girl," Reese answered with a shy smile. The big black man had more than enough mass and muscle to bowl people over if he tried, and sometimes if he didn't, but he was a softy at heart. That... among other reasons, was why he'd only been with the group a week and a half before he and Nin started going steady.

  Michelle's best friend had a type, which was big and gentle, and Reese was that. Despite her role as healer, Nin tended to be the opposite. The small woman could be a ball of barely-restrained fury when she got going.

  "Jerry also showed up at whatever event Ventos was doing," Erik continued after a beat, his eyes glazed over like he was looking at some interface. Michelle glanced at his hands, seeing that he had his forearm bracer on, his phone slotted into it... so, that made sense. More Chinese Neotech, with all its empty, decorative flourishes. "Apparently the two had a pissing match in front of a room full of politicians, before Jerry let his bitch pull him away. The whole room exploded into arguments immediately after."

  The casual misogyny washed over Michelle, as it usually did, and she looked at Reese and then Nin, wondering if either of them would add anything to that.

  "The whole situation is fucked," is all Nin had to say around her mug of coffee, with a rueful shake of her head, and when Michelle looked back at Reese, he shrugged and nodded.

  A moment later, a man – a real human man, without even a Dungeoneer level over his head, who looked perhaps European – dropped off a plate of pancakes and a cup of coffee, and Michelle thanked him automatically and turned her attention to her breakfast. It was, as she'd come to expect, just food. After a few brief rounds of experimentation, Jerry had found that that's really all people wanted from a restaurant, even one run by a Dungeon. Nothing special, just food... from humans.

  Though perhaps sometimes NPCs would fill some roles, if schedules didn't line up or something. It seemed to be his goal to have a full roster of human staff, but sometimes things didn't work out. She knew it had happened, though she wasn't clear on the reasons and hadn't cared much about the reactions and politics. She mostly just wasn't that curious about how some weird restaurant was being run; it wasn't her business or her interest.

  Michelle couldn't help being aware that the rest of the group got quiet as she started eating. Not that there was anything to say, not after all that.

  When she felt a little awkward with the silence, Michelle took a moment to finish chewing a large bite of pancake before asking, "I don't imagine anything changed with... you know..."

  "Jon?" Nin's voice sounded casual. Michelle nodded. "No, nothing changed. We can, you know..."

  Nin and her boyfriend both looked at Erik, not quite casually enough, and the man bristled. "Don't look at me like that," the white boy protested, his face settling into an ugly, glaring grimace. "I didn't side with Jon, and I'm not gonna. That shit was fucked." The grimace faded, but the glare didn't. "That said, killing him..."

  "You really think he's going to stop if we bring him back? Really?" Reese's voice was beyond dubious, like he though Erik was crazy.

  "I don't..." Erik hesitated, then leaned back in his seat, looking away. "No. Like I said, I'm not on his side. It's just... it's fucked up to have the power of life and death over a friend."

  "Yeah, well, we're not leaving that up to you, and I'm pretty sure Jerry wouldn't let you be the deciding factor one way or another." Nin glanced over at Michelle. "If you..."

  "Kill him," Michelle realized that she was tense, hunched over a plate like a weird pancake goblin, and her voice sounded very unlike her. Cold, with hatred and a buried fear she didn't dare admit to, even though she's sure her friends could have guessed. "I don't give a shit about his items and whatever else. Take them, sell them, whatever, I don't care. I just want his part in my life to be over for good."

  There was a long moment of silence, but Nin just nodded. "I'll send Jerry a message," she said, pulling out a messenger. "Assuming he wasn't listening, but it's good to, like... be at least a little official with things like this."

  Reese agreed quietly, and Erik kept looking away, but didn't object, and he didn't look like he wanted to object. The situation just seemed to not sit well with him. Michelle didn't care, and went back to her pancakes, though the food had already taken the edge off for her.

  "I think..." Erik said after a long moment. The others looked at him, but he kept looking away. "I think I'll find a different group. You guys are fine, it's just..."

  "You were always here because of Jon," Reese said, nodding at him. Erik finally looked down to meet the big man's eyes, and nodded. "We get it."

  Michelle didn't want to admit it, but the thought relieved her. Erik had been Jon's roommate in college and after; they'd had a long history, and frankly, Jon had been just as mean to Erik as he had been to everyone else. More, maybe. She couldn't understand why the man had stuck with him, but now that she looked, Erik seemed... lost. Perhaps not as much as she felt, but...

  "You'll find a group," Reese said, trying to sound positive. "You're a decent front-liner. When you're sober, at least."

  Erik responded to that last comment with another sneer, but let the expression fade without a retort. "Yeah," he said, finally. "I'll figure something out."

  Michelle looked back at her friends, to find Nin meeting her eyes. Michelle finished her bite and swallowed, then pursed her lips, and shrugged. "Recruiting?"

  "You want to go back right away?" Nin sounded a little concerned.

  Michelle considered. It was a difficult relationship she had, now, with Dungeons, but it was still a part of her. And Jerry's new thing was weird... mostly in a good way. But she was also, definitely, not ready to just go back. Not yet.

  "Not right away," Michelle decided, almost feeling like the words were automatic. If there was another real possibility in front of her, she didn't know what it was. Between this place and a regular Dungeon, she knew what she'd pick. At least the next time or two, to get a better feel for it. "But soon."

  Nin and Reese both met her eyes, and both nodded, a matching look of concern on each of their faces.

  "Into the Fool's Run, again?" Nin's voice was a little worried, but it didn't sound like any kind of accusation, just a confirmation.

  Michelle paused, and took a moment to confirm her own thoughts, but only a moment. In spite of Jon, she had found something in there. A little scrap of what she had been looking for, something that had been much harder to find in the regular Dungeons. It didn't make up for the emptiness before, and that emptiness only seemed vaster now, but there was just a spark in there, somewhere.

  "Yeah," she said, closing her eyes, somehow feeling like she was making some kind of admission. "Back into the Fool's Run."

  "Then I guess we'll need two more," Nin said, sighing. "I'll send out some messages. Again."

  Michelle gave her friend a weak smile, grateful that neither of them seemed interested in trying to force her to do any part of that. She could have… maybe. But with Nin, she trusted it would get done.