A/N: Sorry for anyone hoping for another update of The Butcher's Bill. I promise to get back to it eventually, but I keep having plot-bunnies for other stories. Here's one of them: a cross between Worm and The Gamer. (Which would have been done a month ago, but my writing time got eaten by Dragon Age: Inquisition. :P)

Wouldn't it be great if life was a game? If you could gain levels, assign points, and get stronger?

I used to think that way.

Maybe that's why I'm seeing floating cursors over everyone's head. My name is Han Jee-han, Jee-han Han if you use the Western convention - "G", to my American friends.

And I'm a parahuman.

From where I'm sitting in my classroom, I can clearly see text floating over everyone's head, invisible to everyone but me. Each person has a 'level' that reflects how strong they are, which is followed by their name. It's like World of Warcraft, basically, except the majority of people here at Winslow High are just students and teachers, not Paladins or Warlocks, and so are stuck at a 'Level' representing combat effectiveness from somewhere between 1 to 4.

My gaze falls on one of the few exceptions to the rule, and the reason that I'm in this situation. My friend, Sun-il "Sunny" Shin. We've been friends since we were kids. He's a pretty good guy - and strong, too. His family runs a tae kwon do gym in the Docks, and he's managed to win a few tournaments. Maybe that's why the cursor above his head says Chunbomoon's heir Lvl 12 Shin Sun-il.

As strong as he is, though, he's nothing compared to a monster like Lung. Sun-il has been trying to steer clear of the Azn Bad Boys - he just wants to practice Tae Kwon Do, not get involved with gang business - but apparently he got unlucky or someone took exception to that notion because a few nights ago the ABB visited his family's house, with Lung front and center.

And because I've been friends with Sun-il for ages, I was there too. I had gone over to hang out and play video games, not to stare down a crazy Chinese gangster with metal skin and flames radiating off of him, scorching the paint on Sun-il's ceiling. That evil bastard told both of us that we were joining his gang, or else he'd come back and finish burning the place to the ground.

Honestly, if I hadn't been there, I would have been fine. The gangs are technically interested in everyone that they can recruit, of course, but realistically I don't have much to recommend me to the criminal element. I wasn't strong, I wasn't scary, I wasn't even friends with a lot of people that I could sell drugs to. My talent, insofar as I could be said to have one, was video games. I played all genres, but my favorite was RPGs. World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy - there was something about exploring a fantastic world, starting from a humble beginning and eventually reaching the level of the divine, that really spoke to me. Not that it was a skill that was highly in demand, mind. No, when they showed up at Sun-il's house, it was him that they were looking for. I was just collateral damage.

We said we'd join, of course. It's not like we could really argue with someone who went toe-to-toe with the Endbringer that sank Kyushu. I still don't blame Sun-il for what happened; honestly, if it had happened to him when I wasn't there, I might have joined the ABB right after him just so he had someone to watch his back. He's like a brother to me, and that's a fact.

Anyways, after Lung and his posse left I just about had a nervous breakdown. Sun-il was swearing and punching the furniture, his parents were trying to calm down and calm him down too, and me? I just stared blankly at the television screen, the familiar figures of Dragon Quest, waiting for the world to make sense again. Eventually, I got up and staggered home. I couldn't fall asleep, so I popped in my careworn copy of Final Fantasy 7, wandering through Midgard until my heartbeat slowed down and my eyes were shutting of their own volition.

I didn't notice until the next day that something really quite strange had happened.

The first thing that I saw when I opened my eyes was a blue rectangle, like a status window from a game. I could faintly see my ceiling through it. In white letters, the message on it read: You have rested in a bed. HP and MP are restored by 100%.

'What the heck?' I thought, and I swatted at it until it went away, but my relief was short-lived. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw the fateful words over my head.

The Gamer Lvl 3 Han Jee-Han.

The heck of it was, even upon seeing those words above my head, I was calm. The fact that I was completely calm should have unnerved me, but despite how weirded out I felt, I was still able to effortlessly keep my cool. Even upon seeing that my mother, Han Jung-Sook, had similar numbers above her head (though she was at level 6), I was still able to calmly eat breakfast without letting her know that anything was the matter, and start the walk to school. As soon as I did so, another blue window popped up.

Quest received: The Morning Commute.

Make it to school on time.

Rewards: 100 xp. Maintain reputation with Winslow High.

Failure: Marked Tardy. Detention. Decreased reputation with Winslow High.

Accept? Y/N

I stopped dead at the front door for a second seeing this, but eventually gathered my wits and stabbed "Y". The text box vanished, and I sighed, then walked out into the streets of Brockton Bay. My family lived in the Docks. Not the nicest part of town, but it was cheap, and we were close enough to school that it was easy enough to walk there.

Everywhere I went, I saw that the people walking or driving by had their name and level hovering over their head - most of them, like me, had a level somewhere between level one and five. I was starting to wonder if I was crazy. Well, there was one way to test that theory; steeling myself, I stopped a random person on the street that I had never met before. "Um, excuse me, sir? Can I ask you a favor?"

"Huh? Uh... what is it?" He looked a little bit nervous. Well, thinking back, it probably didn't help that on that particular morning I had decided to put on a red and green outfit. Lung had told Sun-il and me that we were part of the ABB, and I didn't want someone at Winslow to snitch on me and tell Lung that I wasn't cooperating. In any case, I gave him my most disarming smile.

"Sorry, I have this school project for social studies," I lied. "Would you mind telling me your first name?"

He looked a little confused. "Uh... Jason. Is that all?" I looked over his head. Lvl 4 Jason Li.

"Yeah, thanks. Have a nice day!" I turned and walked away. If it was a hallucination, it seemed to at least be an informative one.

With a little bit of hustling, I made it to school on time. I ran into Sun-il at the gate - he looked about how I felt, half-dead from exhaustion and stress. It was then that I first saw that he was Level 12. Four times as strong as me, huh? That was about right. As I passed through the front door, I got a pop-up message saying that I had received 100 xp for my efforts. It was weird, but not as weird as what I saw when I was walking through the hallways of the school.

Lvl 32 Sophia Hess.

Sophia Hess, track star and raging bitch, was a more than twice as strong as Sun-il? That was what the text box over her head was telling me. I swallowed hard. Looking her up and down, I could see the tight muscles in her arms and legs (the subject of many a fellow student's fantasies), and, since I was looking for them, the calluses on her knuckles; so similar to the ones on Sun-il's fists. But no matter how in shape she was, there was no way that she had been trained in martial arts since she could walk. She had to be a cape. The Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB were out, so she was either a Merchant, an obscure independent cape, or a Ward. I'd never heard of her doing anything like selling drugs, so... A Ward? Was she Shadow Stalker?

I resolved right then and there not to tell a soul. Nobody unmasked capes without a really good reason, and anyone who did something like that would be a target for any cape group out there. Plus, if Sophia found out that I had unmasked her, I would probably get the same treatment as that Hebert girl.

Wait, was it really okay that one of the Wards was one of the school's worst bullies? I stared at Sophia dumbfounded for a second, only to notice that she had turned to stare back at me.

"What are you looking at, asshole?" Sophia - Shadow Stalker - glared at me, sneering as she saw that I was in ABB red and green.

"Nothing." I said, and headed into the school building.

Sun-il looked at me quizzically, but I was already being distracted by the message that had just popped up.

Through continuous observation, a skill to find the target's information, Observe has been created. I surreptitiously dismissed the status message as I walked past Sophia. On the plus side, I was starting to figure out that I probably wasn't crazy - or at least, not just crazy. On the minus side? I was a parahuman, and as of the day before I was in Lung's fucking gang. If Lung found out that I had powers, he'd probably throw me into fights against the Protectorate, or maybe the Empire Eighty-Eight. I'd have to keep them hidden.

So far, I'd been managing to do a pretty good job. I shook myself out of the reminiscence as Mr. Gladly walked in and began taking roll. Ever since last week when I woke up to these powers, I'd been quietly experimenting with them, trying to figure out what I could and couldn't get away with doing without anyone noticing.

According to what I had been reading on the Parahumans Online forums, my ability to see people's names and effective combat levels made me a "Thinker", someone whose powers gave them additional information on the world around them. On its own, it would have been a pretty useful power, if not anything particularly special. As I'd discovered, however, my powers seemed to do more than just that. Like a video game character, I seemed to be able to gain experience points. It seemed like I got them for every little thing - I had gotten the little notification for doing the dishes, for going for a jog, and for completing my homework. Just yesterday, I had finally gotten enough experience to "gain a level".

When the status window popped up, it had given me a list of attributes. It was like a character's statistic sheet, with Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Luck. Moreover, I had five points to distribute among them all, complete with little arrows on the right and left side. At the time, I had decided to test my powers by doing some before-and-after comparisons on Strength. I did a set of bicep curls with my dad's old weights, then assigned all five points into Strength. When I picked up up the weights again for a second set, I could feel that the resistance was noticeably less.

While it proved that my powers could affect my body as well (or at least that they could do something like release the limits on my muscles so that they could lift more) I was starting to regret having put everything into Strength. Could I have gotten smarter instead? It was the sort of thing that was more difficult to measure, but as useful as being stronger was, it was going to be a long time before I was physically strong enough to even think about taking on someone like Lung. If I were smarter, I could maybe have used that to figure a way out of the situation that I was in.

Through careful deliberation, your WIS has gone up by one.

I blinked as the message window popped up in front of my face. So, there were things like this too? Maybe it wasn't too bad that I wasted some points in Strength. I raised my hand and waved the status window away.

"Yes, Jee-Han?" Crap. Mr. Gladly had seen me move and assumed that I had a question.

"Uh, no. Just... swatting at a fly." I stammered. Curiously, I saw Taylor Hebert give me a weird look at that. She was another one of the few people I had noticed around the school who had levels higher than 5 or 6; she was actually Lvl 16. She didn't have a title in brackets like Sun-il or I did, though. Was that something that only happened with people that I knew well? Given how much she got picked on, it was hard to imagine that she was actually stronger than my friend Sun-il. Maybe she was secretly really smart, or something? Or getting picked on gave you extra levels? It seemed unlikely that she had a parahuman power. When I had used 'Observe' on her, all I had gotten was: A student at Winslow High. The target of a campaign of discrimination and bullying that recently left her hospitalized. My stomach churned as I thought about it - how'd she been found in a locker stuffed with bloody tampons and pads. Well, not like I could do much to help her right this minute - I had enough of my own problems to deal with.

"Right. Well, in any case... " He went back to his lecture on World Issues, going through the state of the world before the first capes had appeared. It was boring, so I tuned it out. What I wanted to do was to take a look at my stats, but the only time I had seen them was when I had leveled. On the other hand, a lot of games had menu screens... I decided to try it out.

"Menu," I whispered. Nothing.

Hmm. "Status." There we go. It seemed in addition to my stats, I had three abilities, two of which I'd never seen before: Observe, Gamer's Mind and Gamer's Body. It seemed that Gamer's Mind let me treat any circumstance calmly, as though it were a game, and Gamer's Body gave me the healing every night and let me ignore pain when I was damaged. So I had a Brute ability in addition to my Thinker ability? That would explain the ability to make myself stronger using points from leveling up. But, wasn't this ability a bit too broken? Sure, I was fairly weak now, but if I could somehow get myself to level 99... then again, I had to survive that long first.

There were parahumans dying every week in the news. Against something like an Endbringer, what would strength a little bit higher than human average do? Or the ability to see peoples' levels?

I looked up as the bell rung. While I had been examining my character status, the class had ended. "Sorry, guys, but there is homework for the weekend." Mr. Gladly said. "Think about capes and how they've impacted the world around you. Make a list if you want, but it's not mandatory. On Monday we'll break up into groups of four and see what group has the best list. I'll buy the winning group treats from the vending machine."

Quest: Think about the impact of capes on the modern world. Accept? Y/N

I touched 'yes' and sighed. Seriously? That was the kind of homework that he felt like he had to apologize for? As I put away my bags and turned to look at Sun-il, I saw him staring out into the hallway. I followed Sun-il's gaze and saw it - there was someone dressed in red and green waiting outside the door to the classroom. My eyes were drawn right to him, because there was a glowing question-mark over his head, to go with his name, ABB Gangster Lvl 5 Andrew Takaya.

As soon as the bell rang I walked up to him, Sun-il right behind me. "You looking for us?" I asked.

"You're Sunny and G-Han, right? There's a party tonight, 10 pm, corner of Fourth and Market. You've been personally invited to attend. Got it?"

I looked at Sun-il and back to the stranger in red and green. "I assume that our host doesn't really care if our parents refuse to let us out that late, huh?"

He snorted in disdain. "Do you want him to come by your house and convince your parents otherwise?" I blanched, and he seemed to take that as an answer. "Be seeing you. Oh, and - if I were you? I'd bring a weapon."

Quest: Attend The ABB 'Party' - Get to the corner of Fourth and Market by 10 PM.

Optional: Party Favors - Arrive with a weapon equipped.

Accept? Y/N

Despite the fact that I'd just been conscripted into some sort of parahuman gang war, my mind was still clear and calm as I watched him walk away. Sun-il, on the other hand, didn't have the benefit of my Gamer's Mind. "Fuck!" he shouted, punching a nearby locker hard enough to dent it. I surreptitiously tapped "Y" to clear the message screen away before walking over to him.

I put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, take it easy. We're still in school, you know."

Sun-il turned at me and glared. When he started speaking again it was in Korean; both of our families spoke Korean at home, and we had found it a handy way to speak privately in the past. "How am I supposed to take it easy? He as much as told us that we're going to be fighting someone tonight. What if we get hurt, or arrested?"

I nodded seriously. "Hurt or arrested is still better than being dead. That dragon-bastard" - I didn't really feel like using Lung's name where other people could be around to hear us - "goes after peoples' families if they don't join when he tells them to. You know the stories. Arrested is better than maimed and orphaned." It was a cold-blooded calculus, for sure, but if I had to indulge in dubiously legal activity in order to keep my parents safe I would.

He sagged. "Yeah. I guess I'll see you tonight, then?" He said, once more in English.

"Yeah. Actually, I haven't told my parents about all this yet. I don't want to worry them. Would it be okay if I stayed over at your place tomorrow night?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's fine. Come by whenever you like."

I practically ran home after school was over. If I was going to be getting into a fight later tonight, I needed to figure out some way of fighting first, and I had a thought as to how I might be able to do that. As usual, mom wasn't home yet when I got in. I left a note on the table to let her know that I would 'be at Sun-il's', and headed up to my room to dig in the closet. Sure enough, where I remembered it having been was an aluminum baseball bat. "Observe," I muttered under my breath.

An aluminum bat. Slightly lighter and stronger than a traditional baseball bat.

That was another thing that I had found - apparently Observe worked on more than just people. Anything from ordinary objects to animals to people to plants could be analyzed by the Observe skill. I didn't really know what it was good for, but in any case by the time I had made it home, I had already gained a level in the skill. That was something that surprised me, a little bit. You didn't often hear of parahumans whose powers could get stronger over time. Lung was notable for being one of them - though he tended to get strong until the fight ended and then he powered down, rather than getting stronger on a permanent basis.

Then there was also this. "Inventory." I picked up the bat and slid it into a hole in midair. Somehow my powers were allowing me to store items in some sort of dimensional space. But why was this the case? Stat gain, inventory, hit points and mana points - all of these were things that worked in the rules of video games, but not in the case of real life. It was like I was altering physics in the area around me in order to make the world a little bit more like a game. There was a word for people with powers like that - Breakers. Probably the most famous Breaker was Legend, the public face of the Triumvirate. He could turn himself into a living laser.

Somehow becoming a video game character seemed lame in comparison.

Either way, now that I had my bat, it was time to do some grinding. I took a few minutes to walk to an abandoned part of the Docks and pulled my bat out of inventory. Taking a deep breath, I swung the bat against a lamp post.

WHONG. Though there was a ringing sound, and a vibration that sent a shockwave through the palms of my hands where they gripped the baseball bat and up my arms into my back, I managed to keep a hold on my weapon. I kept swinging the weapon at the pole with all my might, and sure enough I shortly thereafter got a pop-up message. A skill has been created through a special action. A skill to deliver a strong blow, 'Power Strike' has been created.

Power Strike (Active) Lvl 1 0.0%:

Strikes the target with strong force.

15% increase in critical rate.

50% increase in attack damage.

Cost: 3 MP.

A skill to utilize blunt weapons freely, 'Blunt Weapons Mastery' has been created.

Blunt Weapon Mastery (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:

Allows user to freely handle blunt weapons.

10% increase in attack damage with blunt weapons.

5% increase in attack speed with blunt weapons.

I had hoped that this might be the case. It seemed like my Thinker power extended into the realm of granting me additional proficiency with skills that I used a lot. That was great, but it was the 'Active' power called Power Strike that intrigued me more. When I activated it, my swings hit harder than the force my muscles had actually put into the blow. It seemed that I could actually break the laws of physics, slightly. It was only for a limited time, though, as about thirty strikes later I had exhausted my pool of 'Mana', and the skill fizzled. Well, the lack of an infinite mana bar was inconvenient, but I at least had a way to fight, and it wasn't even too noticeable!

I just hoped it would be enough.

I wound up having dinner at Sun-il's place. The atmosphere was heavy, almost like a thundercloud was hanging over the dining room table. "I'm so sorry son." Mr. Shin said. He was a white-haired man, but until now I had always seen him as a bastion of strength and fitness, the invincible head of Sun-il's dojang. Tonight he just looked old. "If I hadn't insisted on you taking up the family style..."

"Hey!" After a second, I realized it was me who had spoken up. "Sun-il loves martial arts. If he hadn't known them, he probably would have gotten trapped into joining the ABB last year, when the gangsters were going around the school."

Mrs. Shin looked at Sun-il. "You didn't tell us about that." It didn't sound like she was blaming him - honestly, it sounded like she was blaming herself.

He shrugged. "A couple of gangsters tried to pressure me into joining. I managed to get them to stop." I had been there. He had kicked one in the jaw and laid him out in two seconds flat, and the other three had fled.

Mr. Shin sighed heavily. "At least you weren't home, Sae-Young. At least with your cousin, I know all he'll be doing is fighting. If you had been here..." My stomach twisted as I heard him say it. I thought of Sae-Young as a big sister - she'd been staying with the Shin's ever since her parents died, so I'd run into her quite a lot over years of hanging out with her cousin Sun-il - and I'd had a little bit of crush on her since I was fourteen. Two years older than us, Sae-Young was just as athletic as her cousin, with a wide mouth, bleached hair, and almond eyes. I couldn't help but picture Lung deciding that he wanted to do ... things... to her, and my hands tightened around my fork and knife respectively.

"Oi, Jee-han. You're going to be watching my cousins's back, right?" Sae-Young asked, a serious expression on her face. I looked up from my plate to meet her gaze. "Come meet me in the dojang after dinner," she said. "Sae-Young-Noona here will show you a bit of the family art." She looked to her father, as if challenging him to say something, but her father just sighed and nodded.

"Don't wear him out too much," he said. "He still has to actually make it to that meeting."

I gulped.

After dinner Sae-Young and I moved downstairs to the gym. Despite my fears of just what 'training' could entail, Sae-Young was remarkably gentle as she helped my body move through a couple of positions. Really, we didn't actually have enough time for me to learn much of anything, but I think the 'training' was as much to make Sae-Young feel better as it was to accomplish anything actually useful.

Of course, that was what I was thinking before taking into account my Gamer powers.

A skill to fight while unarmed, 'Basic Martial Arts' has been created.

Basic Martial Arts (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:

Allows user to fight while unarmed.

10% increase in damage while unarmed.

5% increase in attack speed while unarmed.

A skill granting advanced unarmed combat techniques, 'Chunbomoon-Style Taekyeon' has been created.

Chunbomoon-Style Taekyon (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:

Allows user to make attacks using the Taekyeon unarmed style.

10% increase in damage while using Taekyeon.

10% increase in attack speed while using Taekyeon.

A skill granting enhanced movement, 'Chunbomoon Foot Technique' has been created.

Chunbomoon Foot Technique (Passive) Lvl 1 0.0%:

Passively increases speed by 5%.

10% increase in defense while in a Taekyeon stance.

I could feel my punches striking much more quickly and confidently as I flowed through the motions behind Sae-Young. After a little bit, she paused. "Hey, you're actually picking this up pretty quickly. I didn't think you'd had any training in martial arts before."

I froze for a second, then kept going. "I haven't. Maybe I'm just naturally talented?" I didn't want to tell her that I was a parahuman. Maybe I'd tell her someday, but for now I was afraid that if I told any of Sun-il's family about it, they'd expect me to use my powers to do something against Lung. It's not like I wasn't going to try, but I didn't think that I realistically had any hope of success. Lung was an end-boss, and I hadn't even walked into the first dungeon yet. Trying to fight him would just wind up in a cut-scene battle where the hero lost miserably.

She looked at me speculatively. "You know, you should think about joining the dojang."

"Sure, if I survive working for Lung." I replied flippantly without thinking about it. It kind of killed the mood. Sae-Young turned and leaned on the padded wall of the practice hall, intermittently smacking her head into it with muffled thunks.

"You better come back safe," she growled. "And bring my cousin back safe with you, got it?"

I answered with a solemn nod. "I will."

Thankfully the moment was interrupted by Sun-il walking downstairs into the dojang before it could get too awkward. "We should probably get going, Jee-han. Did you bring a weapon?"

My eyes widened for a second. It wasn't like I could just pull my bat out of my inventory right there in front of them. "Ah, one second," I said. Luckily, there was a corridor outside of the gym area leading to the front door. I whispered "Inventory" as I went out of the room, and came back with the aluminum bat. "This should be okay, right?"

Sun-il looked back and forth from me to his cousin and eventually shrugged. "Yeah. It's not like you really know how to use a more dangerous weapon even if we gave you one."

I frowned. "I'm not really planning on hurting anybody tonight if I can help it. What about you?" I asked my friend. "Are you bringing a weapon?"

He raised his fists. "I'm bringing two."

WHAP! His cousin smacked him upside his head, and I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. "At least bring one of the wooden training swords, dumbass." She said. "Pure hand-to-hand isn't going to do you any good against a parahuman."

He rolled his eyes, but walked over to a closet and pulled out a wooden sword in a black canvas carrying case. "Happy?"

"No." There was a long silence, broken only when she sniffed. Sae-Young grabbed her brother into a tight hug. "Come back safe, understand?"

"Yeah. Got it." He hugged her back. I did my best to turn away and give them some space, feeling oddly like an intruder despite the fact that I considered Sun-il family.

I gave Sae-Young a solemn nod, and Sun-il and I headed out into the streets of Brockton Bay.

His parents watched us from the upstairs window until we were out of sight.

It didn't take us long to find the meeting place. It was an unremarkable warehouse a few blocks away from the waterline, marked by an unobtrusive red paper lantern hanging from the side of one of the doors. I looked around, but there didn't seem to be anyone standing on the street corner waiting for us. "Guess it's too much to hope that the meeting is canceled, huh?" Sun-il asked rhetorically.

"I guess we should knock?" I said. I took a deep breath, then knocked on the door next to the lantern. It opened almost immediately to reveal a man with a soul patch and a thin mustache, scowling at us through the space between door and frame. My power helpfully informed me that he was ABB Bouncer Lvl 6 Wei Zhang.

"What do you want?" Wei asked us, a sneer on his face. I had the sudden, incongruous mental image of a dialogue wheel popping up and giving me conversation options, and would have broken down laughing if not for my Gamer's Mind.

I motioned to our red-and-green clothing and to the bat that I was holding on one shoulder. "Andrew Takaya told us we were invited to a 'party'. You gonna let us in?"

After a second, he opened the door and stepped back. From inside I could hear the dim sound of club music, and the air smelled like tobacco and pot. I steeled myself and took the first step in, noticing that my eyes adjusted much more quickly than I was used to. At first glance the warehouse was fairly ordinary-looking; plain cement floors, harsh fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Some effort had been made to make the area more palatable, though - most of the overhead lights were turned off, leaving the area dimly lit, and cheap christmas lights had been strung up around some of the support posts to lend the area a festive air. The center of the warehouse space was dominated by several green-felted tables, the sort that you might see in a cheap casino. Surprisingly, most were devoted to more traditionally western games - Blackjack, craps, poker, stuff like that - rather than the mahjongg or cho-han I had naively been expecting, though I did see a mahjongg table off to the side. Almost everyone was smoking something, though not everyone was smoking tobacco. Luckily, the ceilings were high enough that the smoke just created a thin haze near the roof, rather than choking our lungs. To one side was a 'bar' area, a simple plastic table with some plastic coolers under it that were filled with ice and probably-stolen beer.

Overseeing the whole affair was Lung. A raised dais had been made from some of the shelving units left behind in the warehouse; he was sitting on top of that in what looked like a reclining armchair, watching the proceedings with a bored eye and what looked like an ivory pipe. It was calculated, clearly designed to impress. It was working. As I looked up I noticed Lung's gaze turn in my direction. He looked at us for a second, then beckoned.

I looked back at Sun-il and Wei. Wei gave us a brush-off motion with his hand, as if to say 'yes, he means you', then sat back down to guard the door, picking up what looked like a skin magazine as he did.

Sun-il and I looked at each other in one of those wordless glances that you only get between friends who have known each other a long time, then headed towards Lung, shoulder to shoulder. A few of the people gambling at the tables gave us curious glances, but we apparently weren't interesting enough to warrant full-on stares. As we got closer to Lung, I saw that there were other people wearing ABB colors loitering around the place, leaning against walls and sitting on folding chairs. They looked at us with either smirks of derision, or the occasional look of pity. Unlike the gamblers, they had little else to hold their attention, and so they kept watching us as we approached the raised dais.

"You're here. Smart." Those were the first words that Lung said to us. He took an affected pull on his pipe, blowing a cloud of harsh-scented smoke into our faces. I somehow managed not to cough. "If you had made me ask again, I would have been less kind." With that, he threw a pair of scraps of white cloth at us. "Put these around your arms. They show you're new. Someone without one of these tells you to do something, you obey. You can take them off when you're blooded." He paused, looking us up and down to see our reactions. "For now, you're on guard. If you have questions, ask someone else."

And with that, he turned away from us. We were that far beneath his notice. Peeking above his head, all I could see was ABB Leader Lvl ? Lung. If this were a game, that would effectively mean that his power was so far above mine that I couldn't even judge it effectively. As Sun-il and I backed away, a status message popped up in the air in front of me.

Attend the ABB 'Party' Complete.

Reward: 500 xp. Level Up!

Reward: ABB Initiate Title ( +1 to diplomacy with ABB affiliates ) available.

Quest: Guard the ABB Gambling Hall - Guard the ABB Gambling Hall against intruders.

Accept? Y/N

Absentmindedly I reached out to touch 'Y'. Sun-il gave me a strange look, and I shrugged. "Thought I saw someone else I knew," I said. I was starting to feel awkward about lying to Sun-il. I resolved to tell him everything just as soon as we got to a place where our status within the ABB was a bit more stable. As Sun-il and I walked over to where the rest of the 'guards' were, I began to see exclamation marks appear over the heads of the other ABB members. No doubt they were out to give Sun-il and I some suitably 'newbie' and embarrassing tasks.

They probably would have, too, except for the blood-chilling howl that echoed through the warehouse, too deep to have come from the throat of any ordinary dog.

I looked up, and the skylight shattered.