Engineering the time and pce to have a chat with both Tara and Regina was no simple matter. We spent all week not in a position to meet one another. Regina was in and out, and when she was in, she was being more careful about getting into my dorm room. Tara had duties that kept her elsewhere, though she would periodically show up at my side during my training with Rainer and nudge me.

  A ck of cell phones was ultimately a wonderful thing: no endless distractions, no zillions of ways to keep yourself occupied, and you weren’t beholden to answer the phone or reply to any text that came your way. There weren’t any of those.

  On the other hand, without cell phones, I couldn’t make a group chat with Regina and Tara. I couldn’t just let them figure out between themselves whether they could both sex me at the same time by messaging each other a million thousand times and becoming best friends. That wasn’t an option at my disposal.

  The runners were kept around as messengers, but there was no way in hell I was going to trust one of them to deliver one of those fourth grade notes ‘do you like me? Circle one: yes no’. Because in this case, the note in question was going to be ‘do you have prior history with Regina. Also when are you avaible for a threesome?’

  Not happening.

  So Tara kept popping in. I told her that ‘this other girl’ wanted to be there. It was exciting, of course, but also terrifying. Imagine you could have the ten million dolrs you wanted, but if the slightest thing went wrong you’d have to watch every single bill go up in fmes right in front of your face. I couldn’t just take Tara back to my pce and have sex with her, as Regina might pop in at any time.

  Also my training was rapidly coming to a close. Rainer had showed me methods for sussing out what sort of mady a Nakamamon had. Physical was both easy and incredibly complicated: it could be a sliver in a paw… or any kind of infection. Mental or emotional problems were much more difficult to figure out, but once you ruled out physical and magical, you pretty much had to find out whether your Nakamamon was haunted. Spiritual madies were the least common, at least as far as Rainer was concerned.

  “You’re going to see more of these rainbow madies,” he said, while I watched for his mouth to appear. “That will make it easier and more difficult. The rainbow sickness, we don’t really understand it. We got lucky with the cure. It requires a different cure each time, depending on how far gone your patient is.”

  I nodded, and took down notes on the thin wooden board we were using. As long as you scratched the letters in there instead of inking them on, the words were less likely to be altered by the magic.

  “I know it seems like I’m rushing things,” Rainer said, and sighed. His shoulders slumped a bit. “I don’t know as you’re ready, even despite what happened with the Footfalls god.”

  I wasn’t about to tell my direct superior he was wrong. I didn’t have enough information, experience or supervision to go it alone, that was for sure.

  “The problem is, there are more reports of this illness, and other stranger things going on out there. Nakamamon and the gods. We don’t have enough boots on the ground. I’m going to have to cut you loose.”

  “Could I make a suggestion?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips (I thought anyway… his face scrunched further into the main mustache) and nodded. “Go on then.”

  “I’d like to take a small group of recruits to help out. Having one of the runners to help in procurement was a big help. Having runners and one of the Nakamamon Guards come to help develop the cure was also enormous.”

  “Non-healers.” He clearly didn’t like the idea.

  “Rangers mostly,” I said. “If I have to gather ingredients over and over again, it will be better to have people conversant with the wildlife, and the terrain. They’ll speed up the process. And also, it was a huge help to have that fire Nakamamon… it was much easier to keep the temperature steady that way than by constantly feeding a lit fire.”

  He continued to chew this over, with his mustache twitching on one side.

  “I could use a Guard or three as well,” I said. “Probably a Wizard, too, though I have no real idea what it is they do.”

  Rainer burst out ughing. “That makes two of us, boy.” He held his big gut and guffawed for a while. “Ahhhh… those fools, they seem like their only goal in all this is to turn a profit for the corporation. They’re almost all of them holed up in bs in the castle, doing frack knows what, probably trying to enchant items that won’t turn to pixie dust on the other side of the portal.”

  “Oh…” I didn’t know what to say to that. There was a lot of money being poured into this project, and I wasn’t entirely sure where that money was coming from. Really, once I’d gotten here, earth fell out of my mind almost completely. I did want to check in on Sarah and see my mom again, but not right now.

  “Could I make a second request?” I asked.

  “Heck, why not? What’ve you got for me?”

  My heart was racing here, and I hoped he couldn’t see straight into my brain. I didn’t think his Nakamamon gave him telepathy, but these creatures had some strange abilities. “Could I hand pick my group members? I’d like people I trust with me… I’ve had a couple of bad encounters and I want to make sure the people with me are, let’s say, on my wavelength about the work I’m asking them to do.”

  Crossing my fingers behind my back, I silently sent out prayers to all the gods that might hear. I tried mentally expining that I wasn’t just trying to create a sex… squad. That was a secondary objective.

  “Let me run your two requests up the chain and see what I can do.”

  ***

  Rainer paved the way for me to be able to pick my own team members. This is also how I was able to sit Regina and Tara down in the same room with a reasonable amount of retive privacy.

  Dumbass me, I didn’t see it until I was two days into interviews and applications. I had had Regina in as soon as she got done escorting a new hire in, and she recommended the new hire as well, a squirrelly little guy called An.

  They gave me a small office on the inner portions of the castle, with a small window overlooking the courtyard, so while I was waiting for Tara to deliver my summons and for Regina to show up, I could peer out at the mobs of people zing around with their Nakamamon. One guy had a nd octopus type thing. It wasn’t made of soil or anything, but was brown and green, and didn’t seem to have any trouble moving over the ground to py fetch.

  It was actually kind of sad, because he couldn’t throw very well, and the octopus creature sometimes just caught the stick by vaulting up and wrapping a tentacle around it before it went anywhere. I was chuckling about this when Tara returned with Regina… and this other dude.

  “Fletcher,” she said, “I want you to meet An.”

  It would certainly have crossed my mind to have Regina and Tara have their little conversation right here and now, except that An stood here. Five and a half feet of intense awkwardness. He looked so intimidated it wasn’t even funny.

  “Hello, An.” I gave Regina a significant look even while reaching out and shaking An’s hand. Why was she including another guy in this situation? I hadn’t intended to pack my little Divinity Rescue Team with only women, but I had wanted some time to speak with her alone.

  “F-fletcher, sir,” he stammered. “I-I’m gd t-to meet you.”

  “An has a stammer, but is a genuinely great person,” Regina said.

  “Has Regina told you what I’m proposing? Because while I’d be thrilled to interview you and have you along, if you haven’t gone through the training, it won’t really matter. You’ll need to stay at the castle and get a few levels in before venturing out.”

  “Oh! Of c-course,” he said. “I-it won’t be a-a-a p-problem.”

  “An said he’s interested in being a Wizard, which I know you need,” Regina said, “and also that he’s not interested in just cataloguing artifacts and magic resonance measurements. So I suggested he join the team and get out of the castle and the bureaucracy here.”

  Major curveball.

  I stared at her, mind whirling.

  “Okay, you have mentioned to An that I’ve already had two near-death experiences, correct?” I asked. “We’re not doing something safe.”

  An suddenly straightened. “No problem! I-I-I won’t back down, s-sir.”

  I thought about telling him to stop calling me ‘sir’ but couldn’t defte this exuberance. He was feeling what I’d felt two weeks ago, and really, what I still felt about this world.

  “The most dangerous job,” I told him, “is Healer. Which is what I’ll be doing. And everybody around me is going to face that kind of danger too.”

  He puffed out a scrawny chest in adorable defiance. “I-I’m ready.”

  “I tell you what,” I said. “You put in officially with the Wizards who train you, and I’ll see that you’re on the team. I don’t know what their training entails, but you’ll need to be done and given leave to join us in about a week.” Then I turned to Regina. “Are you interested in joining up?”

  “Oh? Hm, I hadn’t really given it much thought,” she said, and I had to stop myself from snorting. Tara certainly didn’t. She knew exactly what was going on, because I’d told her who Regina was. She definitely snorted, then coughed several times to cover it up.

  “It does seem like a lot of work a Ranger would do,” she said.

  “My team will have several Rangers on it, I think,” I told her, then pointed my chin over her shoulder. “Tara will be joining us.”

  Regina turned, eyed the tall and bronze-skinned Tara for a few seconds too long, then turned a pointed, questioning look my way. I gave her a tiny nod, and watched in amusement as her eyes widened even further. And most amazing of all, her tongue darted out, licked her lips, and she bit her lower lip after that.

  “I think I’d be very interested in joining your team,” she said. “Grabbing newbies is a great job, but it’s getting tedious. In the castle, out of the castle. In the portal, out of the portal. In and out, in and out.”

  “You want something with more of an adventuresome thrust,” Tara suggested, and Regina vacantly nodded after darting a gnce at my midsection. “That’s exactly what I was joining up for. I’m burning with need… to get out of this castle.”

  “I l-love this team idea!” An burst in, breaking up the increasingly steamy vibe that was starting to circute.

  I shook Regina’s hand too, and she rubbed her finger on the inside of my wrist. Yep, I was definitely going to get a hard on if this kept up.

  “I’d be thrilled to have you.” And Tara. Out under the stars. All sharing one sleeping bag… zipped in together with another sleeping bag so it’s big enough.

  I had to stop that kind of thinking right away so I didn’t get myself horny.

  The remainder of the interviews went off well, with only a few exceptions. Timmy brought Wendell to his interview, with the little storm ferret sitting on his shoulders and staring at me with eyes like the void.

  “What makes you think you’ll be a valuable member of my team?” I asked, the same question I’d asked all the rest.

  “We know each other!” he blurted out. “I showed you around the castle… hell, I cleaned up your messes, bro. You owe it to me. And you know you want Wendell along for the expedition. Little guy is an amazing hunter and perfect for scouting.”

  “I have several Rangers in mind already,” I told him, to mitigate the sting that was to come. “It’s going to be a difficult choice, honestly.”

  He looked panicked. “Who’ve you got? Is it Regina? She is hot,” he admitted, as if choosing her was based on her looks rather than her experience and her own companion creature. And while it was a little of column A and a little of column B, he made it sound cheap, like I would only have her on my team to ogle her. “I would definitely pick her if I were you.”

  He chewed his lip and nodded. “Maybe I can get on guide detail after she goes.”

  “I can’t say anything is certain,” I told him. “I just want you to know that choices are being made based on a number of different factors. Can I ask what level you are?”

  He grew angry, his blue eyes bulging and the cord standing out on his neck. “They won’t let me out of the castle! I barely get any actual Ranger-ing done. It’s not my fault the administration won’t let me do my actual fucking job!”

  After being in this pce for several weeks, the use of an actual swear word hit me like a hammer blow. Pying with the nguage and pretend swearing had given this pce a kind of cute sheen of innocence and purity that I quite enjoyed. This one word, more than anything else, disqualified him from being on the team. It told me he couldn’t control himself. He had a temper, and I wasn’t going to have somebody on my team with a temper… and an electric ferret that might obey him implicitly.

  No violence.

  “What level?” I asked him quietly.

  “Sixteen, okay? Is that what you wanted to know?”

  I held out my hands to ward off attack. “I only reached level ten the other day. It’s all right.” It wasn’t all right. He’d been here for months. I definitely wished the administration would take this kind of frustration into account with these newb runners, but I wasn’t in charge. I didn’t hire people.

  Except for right now.

  “Hey,” I told him, standing and offering a hand. “Thank you for helping me out when I got here. And I appreciate you helping out with the cure failure messes. I’ll be in touch regarding the expedition squad choices.”

  He shot his hand forward and ground the bones in my hand together painfully. It was clear bro had put his points into Physicality. I actually took several hit points worth of damage, and saw the little red bar in the corner of my vision dip. Timmy pumped my hand up once, down once, and stalked out of the room.

  This is Christopher not liking the leadership role one bit.