7/22 Inside the Broken Crow The Hollywood Sign dungeon, 1st lot 8:15 AM

There's a bunch of Navy SEALS watching over this dungeon, and that means there's a bunch of people who have yet to eat too many of my Denver omelets. I am cooking at a modern stove inside a pirate airship, while wearing magical armor so I don't infect anyone. There are heavily armed men (and one woman) sitting around an Ikea table and talking to Ivy about metal bands. Typical Monday!

"Ivy can talk to pretty much anyone, can't she?" I say to Mercy, my sous chef. I flip an omelet.

Mercy finishes plating an omelet. It comes with a side of hash browns that she made. Hash browns are simple but labor intensive. Kind of. The Dracosys does, in fact, count cutting vegetables as attacking them, so I can dice a potato in seconds.

Mercy says, "yeah, you could learn some things from her. She treats everyone equally."

"I treat people equally," I mutter.

"Everyone except yourself."

I think about that with all of my super Intelligence and Wisdom and still don't get it.

"Uh, what?" I ask her, flipping another omelet.

She doesn't bother looking at me. That's one of the side effects of wearing a helmet all the time. People stop looking at your face. "You put everyone ahead of yourself, except when it comes to fighting. You think everyone else has it all together."

"I mean, compared to me they do."

"No, dummy. They mostly don't."

It's hard for me, an emotionally stunted idiot, to accept that. I'm... Look, I'm on the autism spectrum. I may not be as far down it as my brother is, but I'm like a 2 or 3 if he's a 7 out of 10. Mercy already knows all this. She says my ability to hyper fixate is a plus because I'm mostly hyper fixated on her. She's pretty great.

Mercy continues. "Ivy treats everyone like they're her friend. Like they're long time friends. That's how she gets by. She's... Have you really talked to her yet?"

"No..." I admit sheepishly.

"Okay, so ask her about her family some time."

"She has a family?"

Mercy elbows me for that one. It doesn't hurt, but does throw me off balance. "You could do better, you know. With people. Ivy could help you with that. You're actually kind of similar in some ways."

I turn my head and stare at Mercy. She can't see my face because of the dumb helmet. "I'm making an incredulous face right now," I inform her.

"You want to be seen as equals with everyone. You don't like command structures. You're both outsiders who want to be treated like insiders."

"She's an outsider?" I ask. Ivy is currently arm wrestling a SEAL and holding her own. People are shouting encouragement and taking bets.

Mercy takes another omelet from my pan and plates it, then takes four plates out to the hungry soldiers plus Ivy. She used to waitress so she's a pro plate holder.

That's it for today's omelets, so I start cleaning up. Mercy comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder, and beckons me to look back at the dining room. "Look at her again. Be a Sherlock for a minute."

Ivy's black leather jacket has spiked shoulders, and is currently on the back of her chair. Wearing a tank top exposes tattoos up and down her arms. This week her hair is a bright red Mohawk, with the sides of her head shaved. She wears rings on almost every finger, and a couple in her nose. I know only half of them are magical. Her footwear is black leather motorcycle boots with metal toes. Her pants are ragged black jeans. And her face is expressive, open and happy.

I turn back to the dishes. "Her look and personality don't match at all," I into the sink.

"She wants to be an individual," Mercy says. "Like you do. She doesn't want to be just like everyone else."

This is pretty much true. Even when I was in the Army I differentiated myself by being a "tech guy." I made my own damn drones to take with me into battle. I always got treated differently, like the nerd. I separated myself from the others most of the time, whenever I could. I'd be off on my own, tinkering with remote controlled vehicles while the others played Halo and shot the shit. While the others got to know each other, I put cameras on toy cars. And that's how I wanted it.

It took being trapped in a fucking cave to get to know just two of my squad mates.

And now? I'm the friggin Synergist Astral Pathbreaker wearing magic armor and trying to break the game. I might as well have a sign that says, "I'm not like the other girls!"

"Is it... Bad?" I ask. "To want to be different?"

"Jun," Mercy says to me in her serious voice. "Ivy uses her different to get in, to be an ice breaker. You think your different is something you have to hide from people. Something that makes you less than them."

I take a moment to contemplate that. Which, because of my accelerated brainpower, only takes a few seconds. The decision I come to is that I trust my Mercy and if she says I can change, then maybe I can.

"Okay. I'll talk to her later."

7/22 Top side of the Broken Crow 10:30 AM

I'm out by the prow of the ship, by myself. It's a place where I can take off my armor and just breathe without anyone accidentally coming near me. Since the Broken Crow isn't actually sailing, nobody has to be topside at all.

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I see Ivy come out of the lower decks. "Hey boss dude!" She waves at me from 30 feet away, then pulls out a pack of smokes and lights up. She inhales deeply, then releases smoke in a long, thin line. "Damn, that's good again."

"I didn't know you smoked," I say, since this is literally the first time I've seen anyone on my team light a cigarette.

She looks down at the cigarette in her hand. "I used to. But Constitution, if you boost it, it breaks addictions. So I don't need to smoke any more. I just wanted to."

"Something up?" I ask, knowing cigarettes are often used to relieve stress.

She takes a drag and nods with the cigarette still in her mouth. Then she takes it out, drops it on the deck and stomps it out. I do not to yell about fire on a wooden deck being a fucking bad idea.

"It's the Scourge, man." Her voice is suddenly huskier, and she coughs. "Sorry. I know you got it, and that sucks, but the whole world is pretty fucked right now."

She's not wrong. Certain locations have become Scourge infested. Brazil has hundreds of thousands dead. Croatia and Rwanda are hit hard and on lock down. Anchorage, Alaska is now under military rule because someone (or something) up there is purposefully infecting civilians. All told, estimates are roughly 1.3 million people have died just from Scourge.

"So I just need to blow off some steam," she continues. She looks at her pack of smokes, considering another, then puts the pack in her jacket pocket.

"You, uh, have family or friends outside of here?" I am very smooth and definitely subtle.

She smirks. "Mercy told you, didn't she?"

"Not anything specific. Just that it might interest me and I should ask."

"You first." She's still 30 feet away, so we're talking pretty loudly.

"Let's see, my mom died in 9/11, and that fucked my whole family. My dad basically treated my younger brother, who'd just been born, like a living treasure from her. So he got super spoiled and that fucked his head. My dad refuses to move on. I got essentially ignored and neglected. My older brother got ignored too, but was old enough to take care of himself. My older brother is on that cop show. The trashy one."

"Yeah, Smoking Guns. I've seen it. Your brother is uhhh..."

"Yeah, I know he's hot. He knows he's hot. He's kind of an arrogant prick but he also donates a lot of his money so it's hard to be pissed at him."

"That's cool, I guess. But you two aren't close?"

"Nah, I used to be close with Hak-Kun when we were younger, but that's not even a thing anymore. Even before..."

"Before he destroyed the world?"

"Allegedly."

"Dude."

"Yeah, I know." I lean against the ship's railing and look down at my feet. "He's the worst."

She waits for me to continue. "I don't have much else going on. Two distant brothers, one dad who is totally disappointed in me. Apparently I have relatives in Korea, but my dad never talks about them, so I don't even know their names."

I look up at her, sort of resigned to it. "Jose is my family now. Jose and now Mercy. That's all I've got."

She considers my situation for a minute, then talks. "So I broke with my family when I turned 18. My dad was a mean man, used to knock us all around. And my sisters had to choose to either cut ties with me or cut ties with my parents. And they chose to cut me out."

"Damn, that sucks."

"It does and it doesn't. Stuff like that, it shows you who people are. It took me a long time to get to there, but I know that I'm better off without judgmental people in my life. Even if they didn't judge me, they'd still be hating on others."

That's something I'd never considered. If my dad pulled away from me, especially when I was still just a little kid, then doesn't that mean he'd pull away from others? He did, in fact. After my mom died he basically never socialized again. And Hak-Kun, he pushed me away not when I joined the Army, but when I quit. He said I was too weak minded when I was really suffering from PTSD.

Pushing away someone who's just a kid. Pushing away someone who's in terrible depression. It's not me that wasn't good enough. It was them not being good.

"So what do you have now?" I ask. "Like for family and friends?"

She smiles. "Whoever is around. I took my rejection and decided I wouldn't let anyone ever feel that from me. So back in Pittsburgh I've got a crew of other weirdos I hang out with. Damn, like, I think old lady Bonnaparte wants to adopt me. She owns the bar I worked at. And there's Jess and Tommy, they live down the street from the bar, so I think I slept on their couch more than my own bed. Oh, and Gusto, he's always got some crazy stories because he's an art professor."

She rattles off half a dozen more names and traits to go with them. All with a huge smile on her face.

The thing that I realize is that she's got something that I don't. I'm not exactly sure what that is yet, but I feel like I'm getting closer to understanding something important.

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