Safe Zone, The Emperor’s Ascent - 10:14 AM

  Just like Mama Callie’s, Bethany’s Maid Cafe was a huge hit with just about everyone. There had been some issues on the first day due to the communication barrier between the girl and others, but it was something that we were able to clear up. Not only that, but the members of Gemini who received her tea for free back in the cooperative challenge made sure that there was someone nearby if we weren’t able to stick around.

  While I appreciated their help, it was even less of a problem now that the kiosks were in place. A small fraction of the people stuck in the Emperor’s Ascent knew ASL, but everyone else could order off of a computer and have their tea delivered to a table. Whether it was a simple cup or an order in bulk, within reason, it was working out marvelously.

  I watched from my corner booth with a smile as the Tea Witch ran back and forth behind the counter with supernaturally enhanced speed. The frilly black and white maid outfit she wore was tastefully made and had been handcrafted for her. Luckily, the tailor from Sagittarius didn’t mind the rush job and had found her bashful enthusiasm for cosplay to be highly energizing.

  The industrial kitchen she had here was larger than her workplace back on the Angel Express and allowed her to batch brew the amount of tea required to keep up with demand. Her class abilities made this simple as well. She could make more with less materials without losing out on taste and efficacy, which helped tremendously.

  While the greenhouse car I had picked up back in Pittsburgh allowed us to remain sustainable, I always made sure to point out where the guild could pick up more supplies on our journey. Bethany had picked up even more during Aries’ story floor, as well.

  One could never be too prepared, and that mindset was really helping now that the Tea Witch had customers and a high demand for her product.

  Callie provided what she could and even wanted one of her alchemists to help out so that he and Bethany could compare notes, but it required having a translator. That wasn’t too much of a problem as Cancer had a couple of people on the team who could fit that role.

  The biggest issue was that the Tea Witch insisted that anyone working in the cafe was dressed according to the theme. She didn’t mind that the male alchemist would be dressed as a butler instead of a maid, but the female translator had to wear the proper attire if they were going to be behind the counter. Mercury and I had tried to talk her into making an exception, but she wouldn’t back down.

  “My cafe, my rules,” Bethany had signed, and that was the end of it.

  Now those two were getting fitted by the same tailor, who continued to enjoy the Tea Witch’s spunk. Their outfits should be done by the morning.

  I was pulled out of my thoughts by a message popping up in front of me.

  <<<>>>

  [[Patron Quest: The Orb!]]

  Heads up, Jamie just walked into the café for your meeting.

  This one’s really simple. Sometimes you’re too busy to help train people. It’s just a fact of life at this point. That’s what Jamie and Jeff are for. Teach Jamie how to use the Orb of Amarii so that she can use it to enrich the others.

  Objective: Show Jamie how the orb works.

  Reward: 1,500 points.

  <<<>>>

  Jamie slid into the seat across from me. She wrinkled her nose as she looked around, clearly unhappy with how busy it was. “Why are we meeting here instead of on the train?” she asked, looking around.

  “Because I wanted to see how Bethany was doing and show some support,” I answered, waving at the Tea Witch. She beamed before pouring two cups of tea and delivering them to us. We thanked her, and she returned to work. “Besides, it’s good to be out and about. You know, seen.”

  “Maybe for you, Franklin,” Jamie snorted.

  I shrugged and placed my hand over the table. An orb appeared in my palm. Although it didn’t move, the red and black streaks inside swirled around on their own. “The Orb of Amarii,” I said, making my voice mysterious on purpose. Then I let it fall and rolled it to her. “And you’ll be the one using it, Summers.”

  The Weapon Master picked up the orb and read the description.

  <<<>>>

  [[Item]]

  The Orb of Amarii

  Target any creature in line of sight to activate this orb. Both of you will be sent to a mental world of shared memories. As the activator of the Orb of Amarii, you can choose which memories to dive into. These memories must be ones that you and the target have both experienced. You will see things as a third party observer from their point of view, and they will see things from yours. Pain can be felt, but your hit points will not lower.

  The length of time the Orb of Amarii can be active depends on the will of the user.

  <<<>>>

  “What first, then?” Jamie asked once she was finished.

  “Let’s start with something easy. How about when we met for the first time in Branson’s makeshift office?” I suggested.

  Nodding, she put the Orb of Amarii down on the table but left her hand on it. Her eyes focused on me as the object was mentally activated, and I felt my consciousness get pulled away from the cafe. There was no reason to fight it, so I went willingly.

  The Glenn Hotel’s Skylounge in Atlanta was just outside the Merder Stadium safe zone and had been the perfect hideout for the man who fancied himself a mob boss. Jacob Branson planned to fix the Chaos Cup in his favor with the powerful mercenary Jamie Summers at his side. She hadn’t cared what happened so long as she was getting paid for it.

  I floated behind the memory of her, practically looking over her shoulder as she stood at ease beside her boss. There was a woman tuning a guitar behind us, a bard. By the balcony there was a man tied up and hanging upside down. That was Howard the Coward, the gambler who became my manager. Across the room, where everyone else was passing time playing cards, my past self had just thrown a man through the door.

  Just as I was hovering behind Jamie’s past self, her incorporeal body hovered behind mine. Our eyes met, and I grinned. “Cool, huh?” I asked. There was no need to shout despite the distance. Because this was happening in a shared mental space, we could hear each other loud and clear.

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  “I’m here for him!” the past version of myself yelled, pointing at Howard.

  “You knocked out Lars, you son of a bitch!” one of the men shouted, taking offense to my violent entrance.

  “I can see where this can come in handy, yes,” she replied as the memory version of me and the goons bantered a bit.

  Jamie watched carefully as the fight started and started playing with the features more. She learned that she could control where her consciousness was hovering around my body so she could see from multiple angles. However, she could only see what I had seen at the time. Entire swathes of the room were shrouded in darkness simply because her past self hadn’t been looking in that direction, and I knew she was running into the same issue.

  Every so often her eyes would flick to the woman trying, and failing, to play the guitar.

  A growl escaped her throat as a bullet grazed past me, and she reached up to grab the spot on her astral body where it connected even though she was uninjured. The description had warned her that pain could be felt even if hit points weren’t lost. Reacting to this, the memory slowed to a stop.

  “You were the reason Sally was having such a hard time playing her guitar,” Jamie stated, pointing from my head back to the instrument in the distressed bard’s hands. “I can see this wispy flow of power between your head and her, picking the strings and turning those little tuning knob things.”

  “Guilty as charged,” I replied with a grin. “Anything else you notice?”

  The Weapon Master pursed her lips and let the memory play out. “Your field of vision is huge,” she noted. “Not unnaturally so, but you never let anyone out of your sight for more than a couple of seconds. The only ones you’re actively ignoring are me and Branson. Did you not think I would jump in?”

  “You already know the answer to that,” I teased. “He wasn’t paying you to lose, remember?”

  “I remember,” Jamie grumbled, wrinkling her nose as the memory sped up.

  She looked surprised, like she hadn’t expected it to. It went back to normal speed when my past self was sitting on the back of a chair in front of Branson’s desk, not at all looking like I just fought off a bunch of mobsters.

  “I didn’t jump in because that’s not what you pay me for,” her memory said.

  “Kicking the shit out of people is what I pay you for, Ms. Summers,” Branson replied.

  “Yes, you pay for me to win.”

  “Yeah, there it is,” I stated, pointing down at her. “You also wouldn’t talk bad about Branson, too.”

  The memory sped up again to where I had stood up and spooked the goons. Memory Jamie was trying to hold in a smirk, but wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  “Anything I say would be disparaging my employer, and I can’t be doing that,” she stated.

  “And then you disparage me just about everywhere,” I sighed dramatically, holding my hand over my heart like she had just broken it. “It’s almost enough to make a grown man cry.”

  “Get over it, Franklin,” she scoffed, though not without a hint of amusement. “Branson was a man with delusions of grandeur and hated anyone thinking poorly of him. Talking bad about him, especially in front of him, would have seen my pay get docked. You’re a lot better boss than he was.”

  I perked up at the praise, and she rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Summers. That means a lot to me.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Jamie replied, waving her hand dismissively. Her eyes landed on the scene in front of her. “I’d take great joy in watching myself snipe you again, but I’d rather not feel it.”

  “Good call,” I told her honestly. “I don’t remember feeling anything before dying that time, but I have a storied relationship with pain so I can’t recommend it no matter how fast it would be over.”

  She gave me a strange look before smiling maliciously. “I know the perfect memory to check out.”

  Darkness enveloped the room as a new scene was set before us. While I could change between them with very little effort, it was clearly giving Jamie some trouble. She just wasn’t used to the mental exercise yet, but she’d get there.

  Eventually, the memory settled in the Department of Motor Vehicles in Pittsburgh. I gave her a thin smile knowing exactly what was going to happen next. We stood behind the counter as a tall, morbidly obese zombie full of sloshing liquid appeared. This was the boss, Acidic Allen.

  Jamie’s memory shot twice despite being out of turn, and I watched as two geysers of disgusting, greenish black liquid shot towards her and, by extension, me. My past self put up a Force Field to stop the counterattack from landing and melting the flesh off of her hands.

  “You just have to check yourself, don’t you?” my memory asked.

  “Always,” hers replied.

  Then the boss roared and the fight started.

  “Why did you disregard my orders?” I asked earnestly as my consciousness was forced to follow Jamie’s memory. Acidic Allen had gone after her for pretty much the entire fight, and if I had bones in my neck I was pretty sure I’d get whiplash.

  “Testing the waters,” she answered. “I wanted to see how you would react while checking the boss’ resistance to damage. It wasn’t very smart, I’ll admit, but I had a hunch that you would step in.”

  “Uh huh. Alright, I see you,” I replied with a shake of my head. “Are we here because you’re petty and you’re going to make me feel what it’s like to have my toes get eaten away by acid?”

  “Do you think I’m capable of being that petty, Franklin?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. Jamie was trying to keep a smile off of her face, but she had to keep shifting to watch me as I was forced back and forth across the room, following the path she had taken when being chased by the boss.

  “Absolutely,” I answered, sounding out the word. “But if you want to see something cool, you should skip ahead to the four on one fight. You’ll learn a lot there.”

  Jamie glanced at the puddle of acid, clearly thinking about what she wanted to do, before nodding. Seeing that fight from my point of view was something she would find worthwhile, even if I did almost lose and the pain of getting skewered and losing a foot was something she’d end up feeling.

  The transition was smoother this time, though it still took visible effort. We had fought in the training car after I had gotten out of the Golden Dream, and I watched Kayla, Jeff, and Mercury square up against my past self. The men were nervous while the Double Agent was simply along for the ride, but there was something new in play right now.

  Stopping the scene, Jamie looked around the room with a confused expression. “How come I can see more than just what’s in your vision?”

  I grinned. “I have a passive called Absolute Awareness. Synthesized it after I woke up in Pittsburgh. What you’re seeing is everything within my awareness aura. Gives me 360 degree vision and allows me to use my abilities, skills, spells, basically everything as if I had line of sight. This is my biggest advantage, aside from the one that we can’t talk about.”

  Jamie’s consciousness spun around my memory’s body, taking in everything that she could. She started floating towards me and looked surprised when she realized that she wasn’t tethered to my body anymore.

  “I don’t have to hover over your shoulder?” she asked.

  “When you’re looking at my memories featuring my awareness aura? No,” I answered. “The third person view is to make sure that the person watching can see everything that the memory can. However, when the other can see everything, there’s a lot more leeway. I am stuck behind you because you only see with your eyes. You can go everywhere because I have sight beyond sight.”

  “This is going to make replaying the fight and seeing all the nuanced details will be easier than I thought,” Jamie remarked. The wonderment on her face froze before she coughed into her fist and glared at me. “You don’t use this power for evil, do you?”

  “No, and I make sure I don’t look into anyone’s rooms when they expect privacy,” I answered. “I can change the size fairly easily, which means I can stop myself from being an accidental peeping Tom.”

  “So you say,” she replied.

  Without warning, Jamie grasped her forehead and nearly fell to the ground. She grimaced as the memory around us started flickering rapidly before we were deposited back into Bethany’s Maid Cafe. Nothing had changed, and our teas were still warm. She wasted no time grabbing hers and downing it, her fingers of her free hand rubbing her temples.

  <<<>>>

  [[Patron Quest Complete!]]

  I’m glad I’m your Patron and can see what happens when you go into the Orb of Amarii’s mental space, otherwise it would be boring. Coyote was taking a look around, apparently the gathering wasn’t fun enough for him, and he complained that you and Jamie were just sitting, silent and still. He constantly needs something to throw his attention at, doesn’t he?

  Either way, good work.

  Reward: 1,500 points.

  <<<>>>

  “The more you get used to it, the longer you can stay inside the orb,” I told her as I snapped away the message with a smile. “The first time’s always a bit of a kick in the head. You’ll find yourself picking up the signs of imminent collapse as you get more experience, too, so you won’t always end like this.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” she said sarcastically.

  I shrugged. “It’s something that should be experienced regardless. Call me old-fashioned if you want.”

  “Sure, that’s what I’ll call you,” she grumbled.

  That put a smile on my face and I looked up at the clock. I picked up my tea and knocked on the wooden table. “I’ve got to get going so I’m not late for my appointment, but I appreciate you skipping the gathering floor to come practice this.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Jamie groaned as she raised her hand towards Bethany. The Tea Witch nodded and prepared another cup. “We should fight again. I want to see more through that awareness aura of yours. Feels like I can pick up on a lot.”

  “Someday, sure,” I said with a smile. “Not in here, though. Helping out the factions comes first. Got to make sure we leave New York better off than when we arrived.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Go on and get out of here, you bleeding heart,” she said. Even though she rolled her eyes, she wore one of her rare smiles.

  “Will do,” I replied, nodding as I left while I was ahead.

  It was time to meet with Jeremiah once more.