7/26
Field hospital outside of Denver International Airport
11:30 PM
Ms. King tells me to get some sleep. There aren't going to be incoming patients for the next 6 hours. I lie down in an empty stretcher. I don't get sleep.
I finished reading Jo-Ho's Mom Memories a bit ago. It was tough, sometimes. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it was sweet.
I didn't know my mom was a forensic accountant for the FBI. Ji-Ho had this memory where she explained it to him.
...
Mom opened the bag of M+Ms and spread them across the table. She said her job was to look at information, like this, and figure things out. She showed me that first she would organize it, and sorted the m+ms by color. Then she counted each color out, and arranged them by number of m+ms. Then she asked me what I could tell her about the bag of m+ms. I just grabbed one and ate it and said they were tasty. Jun walked over, looked at them and said that red and blue had the most, that blue was his favorite color, and maybe they put more of people's favorite colors in. Mom picked him up and hugged him, and pointed at the small brown pile. She loudly yelled, “and nobody's favorite color is brown!” From the other room dad yelled “that's racist” and mom laughed for a long time. I didn't get it at the time, but yeah, that was pretty funny.
...
I'm reading with Memory and Wisdom at superhuman levels. Reading about my own past, and about stuff that happened before I was born. And it does actually change things. Well, it changes how I'm thinking about things.
I see someone approach. It's Ji-Ho. He's got two plastic bags full of take-out. I smell tacos.
“Hey, Jun, you still like mex-” is all he gets out before I rip the bag out of his left hand, crack open a Styrofoam box and shovel tacos. “I will take that as a yes,” he says as he sits down across from me.
I swallow the third taco and open another box (enchiladas!) before I say anything. “Yep, still love tacos. Thanks for this.” I hadn't eaten much all day. These tacos are pretty good. La Morena Mexican Restaurant in Denver: Highly recommend.
He's sitting on an empty stretcher. Most of the stretchers are empty. The only ones occupied are filled with medical personnel or Han brothers.
“I read your thing,” I say, dumping salsa on the beans and rice, then mixing them all together. “Your prose is barely there, your sentence structure is atrocious, and it was very lovely.”
“You read the whole thing already? It's like 50 pages!” He seems incredulous.
I raise an eyebrow. “You were gone an hour and a half. I could have read that fast before the Dracosys.”
“Well it took ages to write.”
I shrug. “Yeah, that's how it is. You write for an hour to make one page that someone reads for 45 seconds. Then they say it's derivative of something more famous and give you a two star rating.”
“That got weirdly specific,” Ji-Ho says, raising an eyebrow.
I shrug. “I wrote some garbage back in high school. Anyways, I want to thank you.” I get serious and try to be genuine. Which involves putting down my plastic fork. “Reading about mom and dad, I think it really is something I needed.”
He nods. “And I needed to write it.”
We're silent for a minute, just sitting across from each other.
I finish the enchiladas, take a deep breath, double check to make sure there's nobody who needs healing, and then stand up. “Come on, let's go for a walk.”
-----
7/27
Denver International Airport
12:15 AM
It takes a while to really explain to Ji-Ho what Hak-Kun had done. And explain that yes, we were certain. And by “we” I mean higher ups in the government, and probably other governments too. There isn't an Interpol wanted poster or anything, but it's real all the same.
As we come close to finishing our lap around the airport, his phone buzzes. He checks it, gives a chuckle, then shows me his texts with dad.
---
>Ji-Ho: Did you know about Hak-Kun making the dragosys?
>Dad: that's what they said but you can't trust the feds!
>Ji-Ho: Dad, Jun showed me proof. Files he found in your house.
>Dad: planted evidence!
>Ji-Ho: I get that he's your favorite son, but he did something horrible. He's a mass murderer.
>Dad: You can be my favorite son now. Hak-Kun is the new number 2. Jun is still number 3. Happy now?
---
“That guy really doesn't like me,” I say with only a slight amount of bitterness.
“He really does not.” Ji-Ho looks up into the night sky. “Can we both be right?”
“About dad?”
“Yeah. He used to be better. He used to love all of us. And now... You're right. Now he's not a good dad.” He says it with sad acceptance.
I've seen sad acceptance too often recently. People looking around at fucked up situations and just having to admit it's real, and there's not much they can do about it.
In some ways the Dracosys is easier to deal with than my dad. I can punch monsters to fix the problem of them existing. I can't punch my dad into being a better person.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
...Wait.
I quickly check my power list. Okay, I have confirmed that I cannot punch my dad into being a better person.
“You said you wanted to hang out, right? Go with us to other countries and help with Scourge?” I ask Ji-Ho.
“Yeah, if it's okay with you.”
I give a small but genuine smile. “It is. It really is. Had to ask because my ride is here.” I point to our right as Air Force One touches down and rolls to a stop.
Ji-Ho's face is priceless. After a full minute he shakes his head to return his face to normal and says, “okay, we can continue this tomorrow. You probably want to get back to your fiance.”
“OhcrapIforgotaboutMercy!”
-----
7/27
Denver International Airport
12:20 AM
There was a sudden gust of air and Jun was just gone, leaving David Han standing alone. David looked around, saw someone from the CDC, and rushed over to him.
“Hey, sorry, something just happened to my brother, Jun! There was a gust of wind and he was gone! We have to call someone!”
The man in an orange fluorescent safety vest looked at the genuine concern on David Han's face and just gave a chuckle. “You don't spend much time around leveled, do ya?”
“I do not.”
The man smiled. “Weird stuff happens. Especially around someone like Jun Kyung Han. There's hundreds, maybe thousands of spells and abilities.” The man's smooth, deep voice rumbled with confidence and experience. “Unless someone is bleeding, assume whatever happened is something they intended to happen.”
David Han calmed down a bit. “So he's fine?”
The man scoffed. “Yeah, he's alright. Your brother is crazy strong. You know he ran like a hundred miles in 10 minutes, right?” He checked David's face for recognition. “Earlier today? Were you not here for that?”
David looked genuinely surprised. “That's impossible.”
A bookish woman in a lab coat stepped towards them. “I did the math on it. He has to have over 400 Agility.” She whispered the next part conspiratorially. “Maybe even 500.”
David said, “and that's a lot, judging by your tone.”
The man and woman looked at each other and exchanged several glances that said “you want to explain to him” and “not really” and “I did the last one” and “fine.”
The woman said, “human average stats are 10. 400 means forty times faster than a normal human. Add in that your brother combined three different 5th step classes to cure Scourge. He's got to have at least...” She thought for a minute. “250 levels? That sound about right, Thad?” She addressed the last part to the man, whose name tag labeled him as Thaddeus P. Dyson.
Thaddeus said, “naw, Hideo and I think he's got Synergist to skip a lot of prerequisites. He could do it with 150, easy.”
The discussion continued on without David Han. The two debated the difference between his brother being one of the strongest humans on the planet or the strongest human on the planet. His little brother. A kid he'd held as a baby. He was a super hero? He was a super hero!
David spent the next hour talking to CDC people about his brother, getting the full breakdown of exactly how powerful he had to be to have three different 5th step classes. It was, as it turned out, very, very, very powerful.
David considered going to bed. He considered it, and then looked around at the CDC team still up. Some people were madly typing on laptops. Others were restocking pain killers. Three people were talking in different languages on their phones. They were still working. Still helping people, in their own way.
In their own way. He didn't have magic powers. He didn't have medical experience. What did he have? David Han, actor, had a lot of experience talking to professionals about how they did their jobs, so he could be a better actor. He also had a butt load of followers and an iphone in his pocket.
David walked over to the man in the hard hat. “Hey, Thaddeus, can I interview you?”
-----
R/Dracosys
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What's up with those Scourge points?
Post by DoublesInYourArea
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So, In my menu:
Season Of The Scourge
This season ends in 77 days. Bonuses will be awarded based on objectives cleared.
Bonus Objectives:
Get infected by Scourge: 1 pt (not repeatable)
Get cured of Scourge: 3 pts (not repeatable)
Kill someone infected by Scourge: 3 pts
Become a Scourge Spreader: 5 pts (not repeatable)
Spread Scourge to 10 people: 10 pts
Find and kill a Scourge Spreader: 3 pts
Find and destroy a Scourge Source: 5 pts
Gain the class “Scourge”: 10 pts (not repeatable)
Points: 4
I got cured (thank you spork guy!) so I have 4 points. What exactly do they do? Are we going to be given loot?
---
Reply from StillWaitingForHotElfBoisToShowUp
It's the first “Season” so we have no guarantee. BUT the fact that it's a “season” and that the Dracosys is “based on video game shite” points at possibilities. The most likely rewards are currency and materials, followed by items, and maybe some souvenirs.
Usually, in video games, there's a season pass progress chart and you go up it, unlocking stuff as you do. Scourge season (rabbit season!) is a “rewards at the end” thing, so we're probably not going to get anything that would be useful against Scourge. And knowing that the Dracosys is a huge peen, it'll probably be stuff that's not particularly useful next season.
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Reply from Sass_Backwards
Also, did anyone notice that “Spread Scourge to 10 people” used to have (repeatable) at the end, but now these other ones say non repeatable?
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Reply from Flow-ride-ah
It's fucked that the Dracosys changes shit without telling anyone. It could literally delete our levels and everything and we'd have jack shit to do about it.
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Reply from StockMarket_John
If you read the Dracosys system resource document, you'd know it does have limits. It can't hurt us directly, only through monsters and dungeons, etc. It can't revoke something, but it can change its effects or effectiveness. And both classes and abilities have minimum capabilities based on their step or tier.
It has total control over things that don't directly harm or help us, like made up points for a seasonal quest that wasn't in the original SRD. Or the rewards for that quest.
I'm also expecting those rewards to be hot trash. The Dracosys wants death. It doesn't want happy user experiences. It doesn't ask for user reviews.
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Reply from Flow-Ride-Ah
I ain't giving this thing 5 stars, I can tell you that. Fuckin 2 stars, tops. And that's mostly because having an inventory is balls deep good.
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Reply from Marissa_To_Me
The Dracosys wants death. Always remember that.
The points aren't about loot or rewards. They're about incentivizing us for infecting others.
High tier monsters infect high level people. Who are in a better position to infect lots of others with their power.
I'm not expecting a cure. I'm expecting an outbreak.
---
