With Ell’s help, the math work had seemed to go downright smoothly. They’d asked her a few questions about |Merge| in the interim, as well, but it was a very short leap from the fact that they didn’t start going in a single direction to realize that her explanations must have been barely coherent.

Which was annoying, but difficult to deal with.

She spent the next class only vaguely paying attention, but it helped that the professor in question was mostly just lecturing for four hours. It probably would have been better to at least pretend to be totally focused on what he was saying, but she could tell within minutes of the class starting that it was a choice between doing something else and visibly falling asleep in class.

Some people would have been able to play with an AR implant and still stare forwards, but she’d never bothered to get hers fully connected in that way, despite her VR limit being long enough that she still would have been able to play games afterwards.

Plus, the school admin AI would have definitely seen that. While Lif was on the forgiving side, she had no particular desire to draw any more attention than absolutely necessary on that front.

Once the lecture was over, Alex made a distinct point of taking longer to get home than absolutely necessary. Geria– well, whatever her real-life name was– had gotten her phone number, and would probably be texting her a bit after she got home.

Actually being home was its own special kind of torture. She knew, completely and without hesitation, that it was much, much smarter to wait outside the game, get the message, then log in. In this case, it wasn’t likely to actually be an issue, but it would be habit-forming, when this current stage of difficulties could last days, maybe even weeks, as each phase of the rune quest had been getting more involved or difficult with every stage.

That didn’t keep her from nervousness nor tamp down at all on her staring up at the ceiling, trying very hard to keep from the desperate-seeming instant response that nagged at her mind.

Ultimately, she decided to move the phone to the other side of the room, turning up the volume on notifications enough that she’d definitely hear it and making a cup of tea to sit down with.

On the upside, the sudden break of time in her schedule gave her a little bit of time to just focus on drilling Gage’s name into her head long enough that she thought she’d remember it.

It was no guarantee, but with the fact that she’d had it confirmed again less than a day ago, she was making an active effort to remember it this time around.

Ten minutes in to that process, her phone dinged, and Alex made a specific effort to be intentional about walking over, not allowing herself to spring up and run over like her first instincts insisted was the correct course of action.

It was an unknown number, with an area code that told her that the person was “probably relatively nearby at the time the phone number was assigned.” Which wasn’t the most useful of information, and the sender ID coming up completely empty was a little bit strange.

      This is Lynn. Just got home, where am I checking?

Alex smirked to herself, then shook her head.

      I’ve never spoken to anyone going by the name Lynn.

She sent back, though she knew exactly who it was and was already composing a second message by the time that the first had gone through.

      Assuming you are who I think, though, I just logged out by the Runewriters’ where we were last. I’m Alex, by the way.

The response was long enough in coming that Alex was sure that Lynn/Geria had logged in before replying. It was the smarter decision, of course, but she couldn’t keep a note of disappointment from creeping up on her.

Twenty minutes later the expected message finally appeared.

      Embarrassing. I forgot we hadn’t brought up real names, just the number. Sorry. It’s clear, though.

      Don’t worry about it. See you in game.

Alex didn’t bother to hold herself back this time, almost jumping in her eagerness to get back into the game, only cleaning up the cup she’d used before logging in.

 

---

This time, she didn’t have messages from Don waiting for her as she appeared in the world, probably because she hadn’t sent him any information before she’d left– in part due to the tenuousness of her situation, and in part because she just hadn’t wanted to hit him with the absolutely insane level gains she’d made the previous night.

The first messages went to Geria, saying where she was, and LJay, asking about his progress, and the third was to Don.

‘Hey! Sorry for the radio silence last night on my level. I pushed my VR limit a bit overnight and have been moving around. Still want to meet up?’

‘Uh, yeah. You still owe me.’

‘Alliance showed up here again btw. Fucking weird that they’re crawling these areas when they’ve got that main group out’

Deyana bit the inside of her lip, debating how much she’d be telling him, but eventually decided a little bit of honesty would get him into the area better.

‘Yeah, I may know something about that. You get yourself over to LA central and I’ll explain.’

‘LA central is gonna be an hour or so. What’s your level? I’m at 52.’

’61. I’ll explain that when you get here.’

‘well fuck my leveling strats’

Don didn’t send any more messages, so Deyana focused on looking for Geria.

She wasn’t too difficult to find. Probably would have been for the Alliance members, given the departure from her former style and equipment, but Deyana had been with her as she dressed down.

“Hey! I’ve got Don on his way over, but we have a while.”

Geria nodded. “LJay is coming as well. The people chasing him were reassigned to the city we were in.”

“Good. Training hall or finding an enemy?”

There was a moment of pause before the response came. “Training hall. You made weapons?”

Deyana grinned. The tiredness made it harder, but couldn’t totally dash her enthusiasm.

“A few.”

 

---

The first few minutes of Geria’s use of the disks had been about what she’d built them for- summoning them into being with the binding slot and launching them at the targets that the room was set up to create at intervals.

After that, though, she was rather forcibly reminded that Geria was the only user of a unique specialist weapon.

Instead of continuing on that strategy or switching over to figuring out the Ji, she’d taken out the fire and lightning disks and started doing strange things with them.

At first, the purpose was unclear, until both of them started, with their respecting energies wreathing them moderately, rising from the ground. At waist height, they bounced up and down slightly for a moment, the energies intensifying when they went up and reducing went they down, before stabilizing in the air.

Then, with a slight intensification in brightness again, they started orbiting.

Fascinated, Deyana watched as the disks started on a series of more complicated motions, the only things staying constant a seeming lack of control over orientation and that the motion appeared to be inherently tied to the strength of the other effect.

“What’s the cost like on that?”

“Mmm. Significant, but not terrible. Ten to thirty per second just moving it around like this. Don’t trust the others as much though.” Geria explained, then the two disks popped out of existence. Next to her, a new one appeared, starting the same process the others had. Unlike those, this one grew in size as it shifted, significantly more wobbly than the others had been. Each time it changed direction, it would wobble up or down a bit, its size growing or shrinking in response to but slower than its momentum shifted.

It disappeared before its second time around. “This one is probably only going to work the way you thought. I can do things with it, but need more time than we have.”

Deyana nodded, taking in the spectacle as Geria swapped back to the others, this time adding the ones with [Impart Fragility] to the rotation.

Watching that practice was mesmerizing, but there was a limited period of time before Don’s message came through

‘Alright I’m at that training place. It’s not your name on it.’

‘No, it’s Geria. One sec.’

Explaining the situation, the invite was opened to him with only a minor hiccup in the movement of the disks striking through targets that were randomly appearing in the room, fueled through an array Deyana was powering on the wall.

When Don walked in, his wide eyes reflected Deyana’s feelings on the matter.

“What the fuck are those?”

Geria turned, the actions of the disks becoming less precise as she did and changing from directed strikes into a more generalized sweeping pattern. Don’s eyes narrowed to track them, bouncing back and forth between the disks and Geria’s face while she spoke.

“Deyana made them for me. Most like chakram, though not intended to be wielded by a person directly.”

Don’s eyebrow went up. “The fact that she can find the time while levelling like that… assume you’ve been power leveling her. Which guild, and what level are you?”

One of the disks finally drifted off course enough that it bounced of the wall with the sound of ringing metal. The sound hadn’t even stopped before Geria had dismissed it into the bound items space.

“One seventy-two, and… Alliance. Former.”

Don’s eyes went wide again. “What the hell’d you do to get kicked out at that level?”

“Ah. I didn’t get kicked out. I left. Not… that they would want me back, at this point. As for what, that is Deyana’s to tell.”

She nodded at the acknowledgment, taking out the bow and arrows she’d put together, along with the jacket. “These are pretty standard fare, mostly using meta runes, though you’ll need to manually manage the limbs’ [Durability]– not even Geria here can hand me everything. The other…” Deyana paused to confirm that she’d meant it with the system, then took the bracer she’d designed out of her inventory and tossed it over to him. “well, you’ll know why the Alliance is after us, at least. If you want to take that and run, I won’t blame you.”

Don stared at the bracer, twisting it over between his hands and finally shaking his head. “Best I can tell, this does… not a lot? Like it could probably move something, but delayed until it leaves a radius?”

Deyana nodded, but then shook her head, jumping into the more complete explanation of how his new items would work and, most importantly, how they would work together. He didn’t really seem to get how useful the bracer was, but it was possible that he just didn’t understand the portals or PvP. After a few minutes, at least, she did convince him to at least try using it every once in a while between his more typical practice of the bow.

While he was practicing, she began to walk him through exactly what was going on and what her plan was going forward. She left out some of the specific details for her plans, and the specific measures that she’d taken to get the guilds mixed up with each other as much as they were after her, but otherwise made an effort to loop Don into the way that things had been going.

Finally, he responded. “I don’t see why you’re not just going to one of the big guilds. Smurfs, Third, or Arrow Keys would take you, and those first two would even help you stay out of the Alliance’s hands.”

Deyana was silent for a few seconds, warring with herself. It was technically true that they’d do that.

At the same time, she was under no illusions about her anonymity.

If anyone from the leadership of those guilds dealt with her for any significant length of time– and, given what the situation would be were she to join them, they would– she’d be identified extremely quickly.

“I was Novsha,” she said, finally. “Which doesn’t preclude them taking me, obviously, but also means that I’d be under them, and that they’d expect the sort of thing Novsha did. That activeness, responsibility and… well, the awe? The presence? Notoriety? I... don't care for it.”

Don had gone through a complicated set of expressions while she explained herself, finally ending on the sort of uncertain incredulity she’d seen so much of over the years.

He didn’t get it, and that was fine.

“So, are you still in?”

He nodded, slowly. “I guess I am.”