I set the empty strawberry milk bottle on the table with a finality that made the girls flinch.
"I need a basement," I said, voice cutting through the heavy silence of the kitchen. "If you insist I stay, then I might as well do some equipment inspection."
Althea blinked at me, her blue eyes wide. "What?"
I rubbed my forehead. "A basement. Or a garage. Or somewhere with a lot of space. I need to take inventory."
Linda's brow furrowed. "Inventory? What do you mean? Are you going to take apart your weapon or something?"
"No. Just take stock of what I have left."
Maya's face was still pale from my casual dismissal of the Association's economic "tragedy." "The basement? Um, sure. It's mostly just laundry and my dad's old gym equipment. But Reimi, shouldn't we wait for..."
"I'm not waiting for anyone," I cut in, standing.
They didn't argue. I followed Maya down a narrow wooden staircase into a cool, dimly lit cellar. It smelled of damp stone and laundry detergent.
Disgustingly domestic.
"Will this work?" Maya asked, voice small. "It's not much, but my dad reinforced the floor."
"It's concrete," I said, stepping into the center of the room. "That's all I need."
I didn't wait for them to get comfortable. I closed my eyes and reached into the static-filled void where my reality used to be. My vision flared, the jagged, red-tinted interface of the Astra-Void system overlaying the mundane basement.
Once the other three had crowded in behind us, I centered myself.
"Interface," I muttered. "Bloom — Majalis of the Valley."
A low-frequency hum vibrated through my teeth. Then a massive, blocky slab of dark, matte-finished alloy slammed into existence on the concrete with a thud that shook the house's foundation. I smiled at the floral patterns etched into its surface with a wicked kind of fondness.
"Holy sprinkles!" Maya squeaked, jumping back. "Did you just pull a bunker out of the air?"
"Spatial Compression," I said, not looking at her.
I walked to the pod, my hand hovering over the interface. My vision flickered, and the red-tinted Legacy HUD synced with the local reality.
[SUBJECT 0042: STAR ZINNIA]
[STATUS: LEVEL 459]
[INTEGRITY: 71%]
[WARNING: CHAOS FRICTION DETECTED]
[ENERGY: 12% – REGENERATION RATE: 0.04%/MIN]
[NOTE: LOCAL MANA DENSITY IS CRITICALLY LOW. SUPPRESSION PROTOCOLS ACTIVE.]
The regeneration was a crawl.
In my original world on the brink of death, I'd be at full capacity in an hour. Here, the air was too thin to give back what I'd spent.
Figures.
"It's my armory," I said flatly.
The girls crowded at the base of the stairs as the internal racks slid out and the main closet opened. The racks slid out. Black iron and matte finishes. Nothing that sparkled. Althea's face fell - she'd clearly been hoping for staves and crystals and sparkling runic shields.
"Is... is that a chainsaw?" Althea asked, her voice trembling as she pointed to a massive, jagged-toothed motor-blade etched with wilting rose patterns.
I grinned and ran my hand over it, then moved to the firearms.
My Thresher of Thorns. It had served me well since I found it.
"Oh, it's that thing!" Linda said, pointing to the heavy, double-barreled bullpup on the next rack. Two matte-black barrels stacked over-under, the whole weapon compacted back toward the stock like a squat, mean thing. A pair of muzzle brakes flared at the ends like iron petals.
"The Withered Calyx," I said, pumping the action and checking the tubes.
Empty.
I ran a hand over the cold metal of the Cinder Bud — a shoulder-mounted launcher and the Burst Cannon. Every rack was bone-dry. Even my small collection of handguns.
I turned my attention to the flickering tally on my HUD. The Chaos beasts in the tunnel had been numerous, and the System Hephaestus left behind rewarded the harvest.
[INCURSION SETTLEMENT: NEW JERSEY TRANSIT BREACH] Chaos Entities Purged: 738 Merit Milestone: 241 Lives Saved in Proximity [POINTS EARNED: 18,450] [MERIT MARKS: 2]
Linda's scanner flashed. I turned in surprise.
"Weird…" she whispered. "I can see her screen."
"What does it say?" Althea asked.
"It's her point total, I think." Linda's eyes flicked between my interface and her own. "It's the same as what I just got from the news report. It says we cleared the dungeon. I didn't get much, but she's at over eighteen thousand?"
"What?" Valentina hissed.
Linda tapped a few commands on a floating holographic display, looking between the two. "My Nexus ID is trying to ping your terminal, but it's getting a Foreign Exchange error. It says — from what I can tell, that you have eighteen thousand credits? That doesn't make sense. A grueling B-Tier raid pays out a few hundred to a thousand in Association credits. Why are our systems even compatible?"
"Because your Association is a middleman, sugar lumps," I said, opening the store menu. "Hephaestus didn't build his Hero System to be a business. He built it to give tools to people who are too busy dying to fill out paperwork. He just leaves things running until shit truly hits the fan."
I tapped the screen. The catalogs filled my vision.
"H — Hephaestus? What?" Maya squeaked.
I ignored her for the moment, flicking through the glowing red menus. I had a lot of points to spend and a very short mental list of what I could afford to waste them on.
I glanced to the side and found the four of them staring at the same screen I was, mouths open.
"All of you can see this?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Linda can sync us up, but usually it's not worth the mana — easier to just have her read stuff out," Althea muttered, leaning closer.
I angled the screen toward them.
"Is that... is that a list of weapons?" Valentina breathed.
"Uh-huh."
"And is that a list of spells?" Linda whispered.
"Yup." I kept flicking through. There was a lot.
Althea pointed at a shimmering silvery plate armor that looked like overlapping petals. "Flowering Heart Armor: The ultimate protection. A boon from Sarasvati herself."
"To answer Maya's question," I said, flat, eyes still on the screen, "the gods are real. To an extent. But don't go looking for the versions in your storybooks. The few worlds I've been in tell the stories differently, and the real history of the pantheons is a mystery even to unlucky saps like me who've bumped into them in the dark."
I flicked past the Sarasvati-designed armor. Beautiful. Elegant. Wildly out of my price range right now.
"Hephaestus likely built the System your world uses," I said, scanning the lists. "Or — he used his Source function to build the one you have now. He's a god of the forge and of creation. The System Hephaestus made and the System your Association uses came out of the same workshop."
I scrolled. The girls were still staring.
"You can all stop gawking and say something."
Maya let out a nervous giggle, her cheeks pink. "Sorry, Reimi. It's all just so overwhelming. I thought this was a dream until you pulled out the bunker. I still kinda do."
I shrugged. "You're not dreaming, pinky. This is reality now. The old one's gone. The new one's here. Get used to it."
I turned back to the menus. I needed more firepower. The monsters were weak here, but there was no telling for how long.
"Hephaestus?" Valentina repeated. "The Greek god? You're saying a god built our World System?"
"He built the foundation," I said, my lip curling. "He's a cosmic architect with a penchant for automated systems and a complete lack of oversight. He built these frameworks as a last-ditch safeguard for worlds about to be targeted by primordial chaos. And he can be a utilitarian bastard about it. For the 'greater good.' A lot of good that was for a world already on its last legs."
"Okay," Valentina said, arms crossing. "Assuming you aren't a complete nutcase — why are you telling us any of this? Why are you sharing so much? We're just random people you met."
"Because you need to know what's coming."
"You want us to help you?" Linda asked.
"No. I want you to help yourselves."
"Why?"
I crossed my arms, scowling.
"Because it might not be tomorrow. It might not be next year. But you fished me out of an incursion, and it's not going to be the last one in your lifetimes. Not even close. I know it's hard to accept. It was hard for me to accept when I learned. But you need to be ready for when it comes."
"Why do you care at all?" Valentina asked, voice hard. "You're from some other world. Some other timeline. Why should you care what happens to us?"
A beat.
"Remind me what your names are, as these — Sentinels. Astras. Your titles?"
Valentina's nose twitched. "I'm Star Ruby. That's Star Morganite, Star Sapphire, and Star Topaz."
I rubbed my temples. "Of course. All of you are named after rocks. Are you the only team that does the Star-prefix-and-gemstone thing?"
"Um… to my knowledge, yeah. I cross-checked all active teams before we took up our names. Why?" Linda asked.
I looked at her. Didn't answer for a moment.
"It's just an interesting coincidence," I said finally. "A pattern."
"Reimi, what are you trying to say?" Maya asked softly.
I closed my eyes for a breath.
"I'm saying that I'm going to help you. Whether you like it or not. Because I feel like it. I'm going to help you survive. And if you're the best this world has to offer when the time comes, then dammit, it's going to need all the help it can get."