This meeting became a bit more complicated than I expected at the outset. As soon as I got to the briefing room, I found Taylor and the Undersiders seemingly at odds. Not only that, they were now a lot tenser around me than before.

  Understandable, I thought, at first. I did blast them with some sort of fear effect that I still knew nothing about. Gonna have to fix that once we’re done here.

  Naturally, the gathered heroes and PRT agents were also treating me with a noticeable degree of wariness. Also understandable. I’ll have to do more to make up for my behavior, if only to avoid issues that could spell trouble later.

  After a few more minutes, Legend appeared along with Miss Militia.

  The news that Director Piggot will be undergoing Master/Stranger isolation was met with frosty glances sent toward me. The Leader of the Protectorate chose not to comment on the reactions and instead proceeded with the meeting’s main agenda: Preparing for Leviathan.

  Many of the most common angles were discussed, including not evacuating Brockton Bay for fear of even greater destruction by the Endbringer. I was asked multiple times to confirm the oversized iguana’s heading. Each time, I answered that he was still on his way to the city. There were no deviations in either the direction or speed of his movements.

  When Taylor was brought up again, I had to actively tamp down the urge to growl, which was getting incredibly inconvenient. This was something that I hadn’t really noticed before for a multitude of reasons, but looking at things objectively, I’ve been acting irrationally when it came to the girl.

  I was already fulfilling my mission. There was no need for me to fly off the handle over every little thing.

  So, why was I?

  “Any of you guys have the answer?” I asked my passengers and got no response, which was yet another concerning development.

  None of them were answering since I lost my temper. Usually, even if they didn’t want to talk to me, I’d still get phantom sensations. That wasn’t happening anymore. It was as if they all went silent. Both the Spirits and the echoes of the users.

  If I don’t get them back by the time Leviathan gets here, the fight’s going to be infinitely more dangerous, both for me and everyone else.

  “Look, there’s no guarantee that he’s looking for her.” I really couldn’t afford this distraction right now. “I’m the bigger threat, which makes me the more likely target. So she can use gigantic creatures to fight. That still doesn’t make her a more potent opponent compared to me.”

  “Uh,” Taylor suddenly spoke up, and I saw the Undersiders go rigid. “That’s not entirely true.”

  Say what?

  With the room’s full attention bearing down on her, the girl appeared to subconsciously shrink into herself. She quickly rallied, though, and turned to me.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything until I knew more,” she said in a hesitant tone, “but with the chance of Leviathan coming after me, I might as well let everyone know. We’re all in this together, right?”

  Come again?

  “Yes, Imago. We’re in this together.” Oh, get fucked, you bearded asshole!

  “Thank you, Armsmaster,” she breathlessly expressed her gratitude to the Tinker, which made me unreasonably irritated. “I only recently found this out, but I can apparently access another dimension.”

  Judging by the resigned body language of Lisa and the rest, they already knew about this. Which begs the following questions: What the fuck? When did they find out? And why was I the last to know?

  I mean, I knew that her power tapped into dimensional fuckery courtesy of Astral Drain, but I thought Rose had already closed that. Looking back, though, I never really bothered to confirm if this was the case. I assumed that Taylor’s temporary nerfing was just QA undergoing a reboot. A Second Trigger was impossible since she had already gone through that in the locker.

  So, what gives?

  “Please explain, Imago,” Legend gently prodded.

  “Well, it’s like this. I can basically open small windows to send my bugs through, and if I had a pair somewhere else, they act like wormholes.” Her words caused a wave of murmurs among the attendees. “They’re about as big as my fist, so I can’t send anything too large through. But that’s only if I have two windows open.”

  Oh, son of a bitch. I can already see where this was going. From the way the senior heroes and PRT personnel straightened up, they were in the same boat. Lisa covered her face with both palms, emitting a high-pitched, whining moan. Brian sat straight and arms crossed. Alec’s lounging form became even more pronounced. Rachel looked bored.

  “If I open just one, I can make it big enough to fit a truck,” Taylor continued. “I’ve tried sending a few bugs through before closing it. When I opened it again, none of my bugs came out. I couldn’t even sense them.”

  “Do you know anything about this dimension?” Legend asked sharply.

  To which, Taylor simply shook her head. “No. I can’t even see anything on the other side. It’s completely dark.”

  “When did you find out that you could do this?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Last night,” she said, which threw me for a loop.

  I frantically tried to remember if I sensed anything during that time, but nothing came to mind. She and Danny went home after the man tore into Lisa in the most fatherly manner possible. Taylor was still angry, and with Rachel accompanying them, I saw no reason to get in their way. In my defense, why would it ever occur to me that she would start messing around with newly discovered dimensional powers that even I wasn’t aware of?

  “Imago,” Dragon cut in, “what you did was incredibly dangerous. For all you knew, those windows could have led to places with extreme radiation, exotic particles, extradimensional predators, or diseases for which we have no cure!”

  “Yeah,” she sighed in defeat. “My dad said the same thing when I brought it up this morning. I haven’t done it since last night, okay?” Then, she paused. “Well, I haven’t done it until, like, a few minutes ago.”

  The silence that followed was thunderous, punctuated only by Lisa’s elevated and more desperate keening.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Lock down the immediate area, now!”

  “Whyyyyyyyy did you have to say that?!”

  “Fuck’s sake, Imago!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  Shouts, barked orders, wailing alarms, and recriminations flew about. Everyone else was panicking, but not me. Oh, no. I was as cool as a cucumber.

  At least, on the outside. Inside, I was absolutely losing my mind.

  Taylor wasn’t supposed to have dimensional powers. Hell, she wasn’t supposed to have Lovecraftian powers! Now, she had both, and I had no idea what to do.

  Good job, Alfred, you idiot! What else did you miss? How much shit have you been flinging all over the place that’s gonna bite you in the ass later?

  The flood of self-recrimination made my mind swim, but I still had enough neurons set aside to worry about seeds of unseen danger that I had unintentionally been sowing. Why did I ever believe that this whole thing was going to be a breeze with Dragoon Spirits in my corner?

  I wanted out-of-context powers to give me an edge over the more constrained abilities in the setting. A clever choice, supposedly, allowing me to cheat without actually cheating. No Gamer powers allowed? How about Gamer-adjacent?

  Ho-ho! Quite the sagacious loophole, old chap! Pat yourself on the back for being so damn erudite without ever even considering the consequences of using untested abilities while going to a place that’s infamous for things ALWAYS. GOING. WRONG!

  Well, fuck you, past Alfred!

  I was so done with the world at that point that I didn’t even put up a fight when we were all quarantined. Leviathan could show up at that moment, and I wouldn’t even get up from the surprisingly comfortable bed in my cell.

  My earlier thought was wrong, I suppose. The meeting became more than a bit complicated than I expected at the outset.

  Yeah, I think I’m gonna take a nap.

  Just a short one.