A/N: So, I'm back to writing, at least temporarily. I make no promises to resume regular updates or anything of the sort, but since it's November I'm going to try for FaNoWriMo and at least get a few of my stories further along. It seems like quite a few people are interested in this story in comparison to The Butcher's Bill, so I'm updating it first (and I have more ideas for it anyways). Please feel free to leave a review or a PM and let me know if there is a favorite of my stories you want me to try to write first!

The last time Sun-il and I met up with the ABB as a whole, they had been relatively relaxed, 'guarding' Lung's casino, but by no means on edge.

Tonight they were deadly serious. The porn mags and the cigarettes were nowhere in sight, and just about everyone was packing some kind of weapon; a few people even had pistols. People's eyes flicked over to us as we approached, but there were no jeers or jokes about the newbies. I'd maybe expected some of them to look angry or excited, to be looking for payback, but from the way that their eyes were scanning the rooftops and alleyways the predominant emotion I saw was fear. It was a little odd, seeing the gangsters who had terrified me for years looking so unsure, but now that I was one of them I could see how many of them were my age, or only a little older.

Most of them were... just ordinary people. Maybe the core of the group, the older ones, were the ones who were used to criminal work and violence and ganged up because it was more profitable, but a lot of the younger ones probably joined because they wanted protection from the Empire, or because they needed money, or because they were press-ganged into it like Sun-il and I were.

Normal people had good reasons to be nervous, doing what we were doing now. For us, deliberately attacking a Parahuman was sort of like going up unarmed to a guy with a pistol and picking a fight. Sure, if you were fast, well-trained, and lucky, you might be able to win, especially if they only had a small-caliber weapon or a weak power, but there was still a pretty good chance of getting hurt. Most sane, normal people wouldn't do anything of the sort... Unless, of course, they had a bigger metaphorical gun already pointed at their back.

Lung, biggest of the big guns, stood at the top of a half-flight of concrete stairs leading up to a warehouse, his face clearly illuminated by an overhead dome light. Though he looked impassive as always, occasionally a muscle on the side of his neck or in his massive shoulders would twitch with impatience. It wasn't like us, twitching with fear; he looked angry, and ready to kill anything that got in his way. As usual, he held no weapons and wore no armor, preferring to go bare-chested, the many tattoos on his chest and back on full display.

Flanking him were two other parahumans. Oni Lee I knew by reputation; from the leering demon's mask to the bandoliers of knives and grenades that he wore, he looked every inch the stone cold killer that rumors painted him. Over his head, my Gamer powers proclaimed him as Lvl ?. The other person on the makeshift podium I wasn't as sure about - they wore a black armored bodysuit and a gas mask, and were possibly female. A new cape, maybe? Their name, Bakuda, sounded slightly feminine from an Anglicized point of view, but who knew what it meant in Chinese or Japanese. My Gamer powers said they were Lvl 35, but it didn't really give me any hints towards their capabilities.

"Observe," I whispered, hoping for a little bit more information.

Bakuda - Lvl 35

Bomb Tinker

HP ? / MP ?

A mysterious figure, new to the ABB.

Oni Lee - Lvl 29

Clone/Teleport Mover

HP ? / MP ?

Lung's right hand man. Can teleport, leaving solid clones of himself behind to fight for him.

"You see something?" Sun-il asked me. He was standing on my left side, close enough that we could hear each other if we whispered.

I nodded. "Observe gives me more information based on how close to my level someone is and how much I already know about them. I didn't get anything I didn't already know about Oni Lee, but Bakuda's a tinker. One who focuses on bombs. And apparently they're more dangerous than Oni Lee."

I heard the indrawn breath hissing between his teeth and didn't have to look over my shoulder to know that Sun-il had winced. "That's ... not good, is it? Regular bombs are bad enough, but super-science bombs?"

"Yeah, well. At least they're on our side. Now ssh! I think Lung's getting ready to say something." I had fallen afoul of the draconic villain's temper once already, and I really didn't feel like getting sucker-punched a second time.

"You all know why you are here." His voice boomed across the narrow alleyway like thunder before a storm. There was a metallic, inhuman note to his basso growl, a harbinger of future violence. "The so-called Undersiders thought that they could steal from the ABB! Thought they could get away with disrupting our business, hurting our brothers! Tonight we will show these... children... the error of their ways." He motioned with both of his arms, carving out a central portion in the small horde of people wearing red and green. "You in the center will head with me, to the center of the territory claimed by these children. Oni Lee will take the group to the right, and Bakuda the group to the left, and head in their directions to flush out the Undersiders - and when they surface, I will strike."

I looked at Sun-il, my heart in my mouth from trepidation. On the one hand, I didn't really want to go out looking for a gang of parahuman thugs - especially not with a serial killer like Oni Lee or with Bakuda the Bomb Tinker at my back. On the other hand, being in the central group where we were meant that we were stuck with Lung. Sun-il met my gaze and nodded, his hand gripping tighter on the wooden practice sword over his shoulder. I nodded back, and adjusted my bat from where it rested on my shoulder.

Looking around, though, I was starting to feel underdressed. Most of the other people in the alley had some kind of gun, either carried in a holster or just tucked into a waistband or jacket pocket. We... had blunt objects. Never mind fighting supervillains, if we got into a fight with any of the gang members around here, our brains would get splattered all over the alley walls in short order. Not for the first time, I wondered what the hell I was doing in a place like this. I don't think I was the only one, though; Sun-il looked like he felt the same way, and even a few of the other gangsters were looking sick to their stomachs, their brows beaded with sweat.

"Move out!" Lung's voice jolted me out of my reverie, and I fell into line with the other members of the ABB, heading into the abandoned section of the docks. The trip to the 'center' of the Undersiders' territory took about ten, maybe twenty tense minutes; excepting Lung, all of us had our eyes peeled, scanning the rooftops and alleyways for any hints of those globs of darkness that Grue threw around, or for Bitch's monster dogs.

Eventually Lung held up a hand to stop us. We were next to a two-story building, out of easy view of the street. "We'll give Oni Lee and Bakuda a chance to get into position," he declared. Nobody seemed particularly inclined to argue. Instead we all just kept a watchful eye on the rooftops, waiting for the sound of monstrous dogs. Maybe Lung noticed how nervous everyone was, because he started giving... a pep talk, I guess, though it was long on 'what to do if you see the Undersiders' and short on 'actual sympathy for his subordinates.

A chill goes down your spine. You feel like you are being watched. You have created a new skill, Danger Sense!

... Shit! I minimized the notification window as subtly as possible and started looking around at the rooftops, but didn't see anything. Were the Undersiders looking at us right now? Or had it just been that Lung had remembered me as a smartass from the other night and started keeping an eye on me? Dammit, I couldn't tell. When I looked back at Lung, though, I realized that I had managed to tune out most of his speech entirely. I winced internally and focused on the last few words. "…the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"

I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to shoot them with, but I nodded my agreement anyways. After his pronouncement, Lung went back to glaring at the skyline, and the rest of us stood around a little awkwardly. A couple guys lit cigarettes. One guy tied his shoe. Someone coughed. And through it all, my nerves were on edge, screaming at me that I was about to be ambushed.

Danger sense has increased in level! Your awareness increases!

I didn't know what to do! I couldn't tell Lung that we were being watched without explaining how I knew that, and I couldn't just make a run for it without, you know, being horribly maimed by an angry dragon. I just sat there, feeling increasingly helpless, staring at the rooftops like they were going to turn into horrible wolf-things any second. I dimly heard someone ask a question in Chinese -Lung responded to it by reaching out and grabbing someone's arm, twisting it so that he could read their watch. It perversely made me feel a little better; Lung was psychotic to everyone, not just me. I could see the guy who wore the watch wince as Lung let him go. As Lung turned away from the guy with the watch, a car drove up to the curb closest to our group. A few more gangsters spilled out of it, one of them heading to Lung straight away. "No sign of any enemies on the east side, Boss. Bakuda thinks they might be closer to you or to Oni Lee."

Lung thought about it for a second, nodded decisively, said "then we head west," and that was when the bugs hit.

Calling it a swarm didn't do it justice. Bugs in a natural swarm will naturally keep a little bit of space between each other to keep from hitting each other. These bugs were coordinated, and they came in a swarm that was layers deep, gnats and mosquitoes filling in the gaps between bees and beetles. Behind them came a ground-bound wave of cockroaches, spiders, and ants that was more like a sentient flood than anything biological. Even the sound of it was disconcerting, the drone of thousands of wings coming together with the tiktiktiktiktiktik of chitinous shells bouncing off of each other. It was like something out of a nightmare. Out of the worst nightmares.

I panicked, and so did everyone else in the ABB. All of a sudden, my face was covered in crawling, biting, buzzing things, working their way into my ear canals and up my nose and up my pant legs and down my shirt. There was pain, prickling and burrowing and stinging, and violation as the creatures squirmed into places that living things weren't supposed to go and panic as they crowded my nose and mouth and made it hard to breathe -and all of a sudden, under all of the yeugggh, there came a thought.

You know, I bet this isn't doing very much HP damage.

And my Gamer's Mind kicked in. All of a sudden "OHGODSPIDERSGETTHEMOFF" turned into "Hmm, an AoE WK DOT +Conf, problematic." (That's an Area of Effect attack that does Weak Damage Over Time and causes Confusion, for the less gaming-minded). That was a solveable problem. I just needed to either run fast enough that we got out of range before I ran out of hit points, find the attacker and hit them hard enough to disrupt their debuff, or lead the attacker into the range of someone who could damage them. I couldn't see the attacker, of course, which made option two pretty much impossible, and option 3 at the very least more difficult. Maybe their attack didn't need Line of Sight? But if we could make it to Oni Lee, he could teleport somewhere up high and scout the area, and Lung could...

Oh. Oh Crap. Lung. I was standing next to Lung and a bunch of gangsters with guns when they were under a confuse effect.

I risked opening my eyes long enough to see what Lung was doing, saw his entire body rippling with flame, and without hesitation I hit the deck. The cockroach, spider, and ant-covered deck. For a split second as the bugs burrowed into my clothes and skin I wondered if that had been a good idea, but then there was a thunderclap explosion of heat and sound above me, and a bellowing roar of rage from Lung. I rolled on my side away from the heat, doing my best to squish as many of the bugs crawling over me with the weight of my body as I put as much distance between myself and Lung as possible. The second explosion was even hotter, and I opened my eyes again to look.

I saw a shining metal beast in a holocaust of fire, roaring at the night sky. The rest of the gang was running from him, some of them completely on fire from standing too close to Lung as he burned the bugs off of him.

... Shit! Sun-il!

For the first time, I was actually, legitimately grateful for my Gamer powers, because they let me pick my best friend out from the panicking crowd by the name floating over his head. Without a second thought I stood up and charged back toward the rampaging cape, heading for my friend on the other side. "Sprint!" I shouted, and for a second the scenery blurred past as I combined Chunbomoon foot techniques and Gamer powers to dart past the bonfire of a man and get to my friend. Sun-il was actually on fire by the time I got to him, flailing to try to put it out even as the bugs still clung to his face, so rather than try to convince him to calm down I just hit him in a flying tackle and knocked him to the ground. "Stop drop and roll! Stop drop and roll!" I shouted, beating at the fire with my sleeves to try to help him put it out.

The elementary-school mnemonic seemed to actually help, because he went from panicking uselessly to thrashing around on the ground trying to get the fire out. Behind us there was a scream of rage, another explosion louder and hotter than the rest, and I grabbed Sun-il under the shoulders and pulled him to his feet. "Come on!" I shouted. "We need to leave!"

Sun-il shouted in pain, but he managed to get his balance and stumble after me. We sprinted away down the alley, shouting in pain and fear and out of sheer adrenaline, the fwooshes of flames growing brighter as Lung did battle with an invisible enemy. Even as we ran I felt my fists tighten with frustration. Was this what being a parahuman was like? Desperately running through dirty back alleys, trying not to get killed by filthy bugs and monster dogs and your own allies? Then and there I decided. I was going to level up. I was going to get stronger until I was winning these fights. Until I wasn't the one running anymore.

We didn't get as far from the fight as I would have liked before Sun-il's adrenaline ran out and he started to stumble. I put his arm over my shoulder and we limped into an alleyway together. "Haah. Haah. Haah. Auugh." Sun-il's breath was coming in strained, panting gasps, and his whole body was shaking from the aftermath and the pain of having been set on fire.

"Inventory." I reached into the screen that popped up and pulled out a flashlight to look at him. It was... pretty bad. The left side of his face was bright red and swollen, with bits of yellow and black where skin had seared away to reveal fat. The arm was worse; the synthetic fabrics of his sweater had melted as they burned, sticking to his ruined skin in a painful, red and black-oozing mess. His leg was burned too, though not quite as badly - at least the jeans he was wearing had burned instead of melting. "Shit, Sun-il. Lung got you pretty bad."

"Haah. Haah. Damn him! And fuck whoever set those bugs on us! And the fucking Undersiders! Shit!" He cursed. "How bad is it?" He asked. "It feels like I'm still on fucking fire."

"It... looks pretty bad. Observe." I looked at Sun-il and winced. "You're down to... twelve hit points, and you have a DoT effect called System Shock that does... an unknown amount of damage over an unknown amount of time. Also a status effect called Burned, which I also can't tell what it does... Might be because I don't have a Medicine skill yet." I paused for a second, swallowing hard. My best friend was hurt, badly, and there was nothing I could do about it. "We have to get you to the hospital."

He nodded jerkily, his breath coming in pained gasps. "Suppose it's too much to hope for that you'd have some healing items, huh?" Sun-il asked, doing his best to be his usual snarky self despite the pain.

I did my best to grin back at him. "Not yet. What kind of shitty game is this? There aren't even any treasure chests. The only thing I've found that heals so far is eating food, and I don't think that'll work the same way on you -" I cut myself off.

"What?" He asked. "You look like you just realized something."

I smirked. "Status." The familiar window popped up, and I paged over to Specializations. Curiously, there were two more specializations available - Alchemist, which appeared to be a crafting specialty, and Escapist, which let you quickly flee from combat, albeit with an experience penalty. Once again, the menu icons were a little strange; Escapist had a picture of a ninja using a smokebomb, while Alchemist had a picture of an explosion. That... was interesting, and the crafting specialty was looking pretty tempting if I ever got another specialty point, but I was already committed. My finger stabbed the air triumphantly as I touched the phalanx of ants.

Party Leader - This specialization allows the player to add other people to his party, allowing them to get similarly game-related benefits. Are you sure you want to choose this specialization? Y/N

I took a deep breath, then touched Y. The picture of specialization on the menu filled in with a cheesy gold-looking color, and all of the other specializations greyed themselves out. Other than that, though, there was no notable change, or at least I didn't feel any different. Going back to the menu, though, I saw a subsection for Party Members. I looked at it - empty. No buttons for adding someone. Guess that meant it was a voice command.

Sun-il was looking at me curiously as I basically poked the air, from his perspective anyways, and he chuckled as I turned back to him. "Let me guess. You have some kind of healing power now?"

"Better." I smiled triumphantly, before raising one finger into the air, dramatically lowering it to point at my best friend, and finally shouting. "Add Sun-il to party!" After an expectant second, I drooped. "Damn. Nothing? Okay, how about Invite Sun-il?" A box popped up in mid-air inviting me to name my party or else it would be generically called 'Jee-han's Party', but I waved it away. "Thanks. Thanks, game engine, for ruining my moment," I grumbled into the air.

Sun-il chuckled at my antics before grimacing as laughing caused him pain, but I noticed he was looking at a spot in front of him where a game window hung. "So if I touch this... it's going to make me like you?"

I nodded. "Yep! And then you, too can experience the joy of eating a whole loaf of bread to regain your hit points. Plus I have ordinary drugstore burn cream that might be able to remove your burn effect, because game logic is weird like that."

He laughed again. "Okay, sure. Why not?" And touched the Accept button. Immediately, a whole host of pop-up notifications showed up in front of me.

Shin Sun-il has joined your party!

Because Shin Sun-il doesn't have a character class, he will automatically be assigned a class based on the most compatible of your available specializations!

Shin Sun-il has gained the Dragon Ki specialization!

The Limit Break has been adapted to one of your followers and is no longer available!

"It feels... warm." Sun-il said as I inspected the windows. "Holy crap, I can see my arm healing. Maybe I get a full heal from joining your party or something?" I looked down, and sure enough his arm was slowly looking less red and angry, burn wounds shrinking to reveal clean skin.

"Your face, too." I said, noting how the blackened bits of skin were flaking away and dissolving into the air. "It could be the joining the party, but I got some weird messages when you hit accept - I think you might have a healing power now. Like, a parahuman healing power. Observe."

Shin Sun-il

Lvl 13 Ki Adept

Trained from a young age to be a martial artist, he has recently gained the power of 'Dragon Ki', which grants increasing passive benefits to strength, durability, and healing the longer it goes unused or can be expended all at once for a dramatic increase in short-term power.

"Hey, I can actually see your windows now. That's kind of cool. Wait, it does what? I can do what? Jee-han... did you just turn me into a parahuman?" Sun-il stood up and worked his way behind me to reread the message, his jaw dropping further with every second.

I turned around met his eyes, stunned. This was... this was huge. A power that could grant other people powers? And good ones? That was... that was ridiculous. For a long moment, neither of us said anything, until Sun-il finally broke the silence.

"Jee-han OP, plz no nerf."