Yu Kunpeng stared into the empty air where the portal had been. Too much had happened for him to comprehend in the past ten minutes, and he felt like he was on autopilot as he dealt with the aftermath. Two phone calls were placed to the police department, one to a general line reporting the incident and the other to one of his second cousins to review the local surveillance footage.

He silently comforted the mother and daughter as he stared at Lidong's body. The corpse before him no longer shocked him as it would have before he started playing World of Falan, his job requiring him to lead armies at times. He had seen each of F6 die at least once, but the body before him was far more final. The knowledge that Roland was with his soul on the other side of the portal was dissonant, failing to reassure him of his cousin's survival.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, sharing the news with the rest of F6 when they arrived at the bar. They toasted the two of them grimly, promising to wait for the two to return.

The game was a relief, the comforting scenery of his residence in the Holy Land of Fareins putting him at ease. Nonetheless, he stood up and left the room, intent on finding Andonara to relay the news. With his status as a Saint Samurai and a Golden Son, it was simple for him to meet with Queen Stephanie and ask if she knew where Andonara was.

The two met in one of the various sitting rooms scattered throughout the palace, and after spending a moment centering himself he began to speak. "Andonara, what I'm about to say might be upsetting to you. I promise that everything's okay, but could you refrain from killing me and hear me out?"

The taller woman smiled. "Of course, I would trust you of all people to inform me of why my Roland wasn't able to be here today, Schuck." Her smile shifted towards the end of her sentence, one hand creeping towards her sword. "However, if something has happened to him at your hands, I can't promise that you'll make it out of here alive, no matter who tries to stop me."

Schuck shivered. He had only interacted with the queen of Hollevin a few times while participating in guild events, and he had always felt that sense of danger from her. She was one of the few women that were entirely unaffected by his appearance, and with a Charm growth of ten that number entirely consisted of professionals stronger than him. When they first met, he had just barely reached Elite, and she had already been level eleven. Now he was a Legend, but even with all of the protections and equipment given to him by the Goddess of Light she was one of the few people who could kill him on this plane.

The difference between a Demigod and a Legend was equivalent to the difference between a Master and an ordinary person – no matter how many of him there were, he would never even scratch her in a true battle.

"I'm here today and Roland isn't because something happened in the plane where we Golden Sons live. Roland is still perfectly fine, but Betta is not. You may remember him, the mayor of Wetlands City?"

At her nod, he continued. "Betta was struck by a car- a carriage made of metal that moves at high speeds. He was attempting to push a mother and her daughter out of the way of the collision and succeeded, but was killed in the process. Roland made his way to the scene quickly enough to prevent Betta's soul from dispersing, but a portal formed and was pulling Betta's soul into it. To ensure Betta's survival, Roland jumped into the portal alongside him, but he left me a message for you."

Andonara was no longer sitting peacefully, and he could hear the wind tearing as she spun her sword in one hand. "If you were not a Saint Samurai, honor-bound to tell the truth, as well as one of Roland's friends, I would have slaughtered you then and there. Where is he? What was his message?"

Schuck took a moment to choose his words before replying, well aware of the fact that she was one slip away from taking action. "He scouted the other end of the portal with a magic spider, but I was unaware of what was on the other end. I can only assume it was not the Netherworld, or he would have not given me this message. He told me that he would be back in around three years, but accounting for time dilation between our planes it would be closer to six years here. He told me that the majority of that time would be accumulating the strength to return to our plane, though some part of it would be either creating a new body for Betta or binding his soul to the world in another way.

His words for you were to tell you to bind the floating city to you and, I quote, 'kill a few evil gods for me while I'm gone.' He told me to tell everyone that he loved them, and to not let what he or F6 built collapse. I'm sorry that I have to be the bearer of this news, but I was the only one there and he wouldn't want you to worry. If you want to talk to me or ask me about anything you can find me in the Holy Realm, but I'll give you some space for now."

With that, he left, not noticing the determined look on Andonara's face in his haste.

Andonara, queen of Hollevin, was conflicted. Before she had met Roland, she was far less independent. Even for the first year after she had run away with him, only the knowledge that he would resurrect if he was killed let her allow him to go off on missions by himself. Now, the knowledge that she would be unable to see him for the next six years a blow to her, though not one that she could not overcome.

His message for her, at the very least, gave her something to do and focus on while he was away. Bind the floating city to herself, kill evil gods, and protect what he had built. It was a poor substitute for him in her life, but secure in the belief that he would return she could focus on those three requests.

As she walked through the palace to the teleportation array linked to the floating city, Andonara focused on the various means of connecting with Roland that she had. She was unable to reach him through her faith, and though she was tempted to cast Language Proficiency with a prayer she didn't want to drain Roland of magic that he likely needed to keep Betta alive, making their separation pointless. She could feel that their marriage bond was still holding strong, which was confirmation enough that he was still alive, and her connection to his Mystra's Mansion was still as strong as ever.

Her flames burned in the teleportation array, sending her to the floating city where it rested above the capital. With her bare hands, she dug away at the earthen surface until it gave way to stone, pursuing the core of dense magic that powered the city.

Upon reaching the intricate magical engine, she took a deep breath before stepping into the center of it. The familiar feeling of Roland's magic and mental power surrounded her, and she could almost feel an intelligence within questioning her presence. With her limited control over her mental power, she tried to broadcast the feeling of Roland's message to her. After nearly an hour of attempting different variations, something clicked. The magic power within the core stopped circling her and began flooding into her body.

The only way she could describe the sensation was euphoria.

As a Demigod, she was far and above almost any other being in the world. The Pope of the Church of Light was dead, the World Tree was weak to fire, and the Water Goddess was famous for not intervening in mortal affairs that did not concern her. All other gods and goddesses were restricted by the main plane due to their lack of complete Divine Sparks, and even as a Legend she could have taken on any of the non-major divinities.

As a warrior and a Hero, she had little use for mana besides manifesting the flames that came with her bloodline and performing several of her abilities. The infusion of magic power should not have affected her this much, but there was more to it than simply magic.

Roland had explained the concept of attributes and attribute growth to her, and though it had been hard to comprehend at first it had given her a better sense of the way he viewed the world. Her growth attributes, as far as he could tell, were above and beyond the norm. Strength, Agility, and Endurance were all at ten, Charm at nine, and Intelligence and Willpower were both at five. Five was considered average in this world, while ten was recognized the peak of what mortals were capable of.

Awakening her heroic bloodline had increased her Charm and Strength by one each, and her Willpower and Intelligence by two, but at that point the ripple effects of the increase of the growth attributes changing had only affected her as a Master.

Bonding with the magic core had given Roland a special title, 'Ascent to Godhood as a Mortal', which increased all of his growth attributes by two. Now, she was experiencing the same baptism of magic, elevating all of her abilities respectively. Oddly, the attribution of the mana did not change from Roland's to hers, which could have been caused by their marriage bond or the nature of the floating city itself. Nonetheless, with the limitless magic flowing through her, she felt that there was no longer any threat that she could not conquer.

Mere minutes after she had finished refilling the tunnel she had carved out earlier, a glowing figure flew through the sky and landed before her on the floating city. It was Nia, an angel of the Church of Light sent to monitor Roland after he had created his god-slaying spell.

"Do you know where Roland is? I was in Delpon when his magical signature simply vanished, without any of the tells of teleportation. Do you have any idea?"

Andonara stared down the angel for a moment before replying. She had never liked the woman, a distraction and interruption of her time with the man she loved. It was hard to dislike her with how innocent she was, and before today they had almost been friends. Now, however, she could only look back and see the time she had prevented her from spending with Roland before he disappeared.

"Roland is incapacitated by an event in the realm where the Golden Sons come from. A friend of his said that he won't be back for six years, and brought me a message from him. Go to your goddess, and leave me alone."

Nia pouted. "Anna, you can't just-"

"I said," Andonara continued, coating her body in flames and drawing her sword, "leave me alone. You have five seconds to leave before I find out how well you burn."

Nia panicked, a beam of golden light descending around her and vanishing, taking her with it. With one of the three requests Roland had for her complete, Andonara was free to think about the other two. Killing evil gods would be easy, there was a portal open to the Realm of Devils that Roland had discovered a year ago. Maintaining F6 and his work, however, was a far more complicated task.

Upon discovering his disappearance, every Magic Tower and organization other than the Red Magic Tower would turn on his work, seeking to take it for themselves. If she was vigilant and prepared, she could consolidate his assets in Delpon and park the floating city there as a deterrent, annihilating all who came personally.

The problem, as she saw it, were the other Golden Sons. They held no respect for anyone, least of all Roland. Throughout their time together, she had heard the stories of and personally experienced their animosity. The group he had worked with to take over Delpon, their name lost in her memories, had turned on him as soon as there was nothing more to gain by cooperating. Cornucopia, the merchant guild, had sought to sabotage his progress and control his development. The Spell Breakers, who had ambushed him with the intent of killing him and ruining his reputation. Those who had worked with the Liches, the few who allied with the Vampires, the conspiracy of rich players seeking to dethrone him, the list went on and on.

Golden Sons were the true threat to her husband's legacy, and if it meant that she had to kill all five hundred thousand that were not a part of F6 until they were barely professionals to preserve it, then so be it.

Server Announcement: Player 'Roland' is taking a leave of absence from the game.

Server Announcement: NPC 'Andonara' has bonded with the law-level magic device, 'Floating City Core'.

Server Announcement: Server-wide quest: Survive. In the wake of Roland's departure, Andonara has decided that all Golden Sons not affiliated with him or Guild – F6 are a danger to his legacy. All players who have worked against Roland previously, who are capable of threatening his legacy, or who actively begin to work against his legacy in her judgement will receive a 'Black Phoenix Mark', allowing her to know their location at all times and negating alignment changes from killing them.

Mission Requirements: Stay above Level 5

Mission Duration: Variable (Until Player 'Roland' next logs on to World of Falan)'

Mission Remarks: May the gods have mercy upon you, for Andonara will have none.

After finishing her patrol, Miss Militia called for a meeting with the rest of the Protectorate and Director Piggot. It was a rare privilege that senior capes were given, and there were a limited number of circumstances that called for one. In this case, where she had concerns about a new trigger and one of their own Wards, one would be hard-pressed to call it unjustified.

Emily Piggot was the first to arrive in the conference room, giving her a nod as she made her way to her seat at one end of the long table. Velocity arrived shortly after, Assault and Battery following him in. Triumph was slightly out of breath as he joined them, nodding to everyone present before taking a seat next to Velocity. Less than a minute before the meeting was scheduled to begin, Dauntless and Armsmaster entered the room and took the remaining two seats. If she remembered correctly, the two had been working on a collaboration project, which would explain why Dauntless was following Armsmaster's habit of arriving just barely on time.

Without further ado, Miss Militia began to speak. "Thank you all for getting here on such short notice. I called this meeting to talk about a new cape going by the alias Betta, spelled B-E-T-T-A, as well as one of our own Wards, Shadow Stalker.

As Director Piggot is already aware, the Protectorate non-emergency line received a call from a pay phone yesterday afternoon from a minor who claimed to have 'gotten powers', or more officially triggered, that morning. The employee in the call center transferred the call to me, as I was on patrol at the time. I arranged a meeting with the new cape at the Docks, inviting them to come to the offshore facility colloquially known as 'The Rig' for power testing and an introduction to the Wards in preparation for joining."

The heroine pressed a button on the remote in her hands, and the projector switched from a blank screen to an image of a glowing blue figure, covered in an odd mixture of light armor and formal attire from the waist down. The head notably lacked a face and hair, looking more like the head of a mannequin in a store window.

"This is the first image we have of Betta, taken from my costume's built-in body camera at four fifty-nine and twelve seconds yesterday afternoon. Though the projection appears male, her voice leads us to believe that she is, in fact, female. After confirming that she was Betta, we boarded the ferry and set out for the Rig. I asked her for a brief description of her powers, some of which were later quantified during testing on-site.

First and foremost, she has her projected suit of armor. It is far weaker than Crusader's projections, ranking at a Brute two for endurance alone. Other Brute tests such as strength were foregone in the interest of time, allowing her a brief meeting with the Wards before we had to leave on the last ferry of the night.

She demonstrated a fire-breathing ability similar to the independent villain Spitfire or a moderately ramped-up Lung, though without the additional pyrokinesis that either of them possessed. We have rated her a Blaster four, as the ability seems limited by the amount of time she can exhale and appears to require focus to use.

Two of her abilities remain untested but have been given provisional ratings. She reported what may have been a weak Stranger ability that allowed her to return to her home from the location that she triggered unmolested, though from her words it only prevents people who have no business with her, are not looking for her, or are otherwise unaffected by her from noticing her presence. I did not experience any effects despite it being constantly active, and neither did any of the non-parahuman technicians involved in her power testing. I have since gone through limited Master/Stranger screening and have been found clean. She has been assigned a rating of Stranger 1 pending further investigation.

Finally, this ability is untested and the only information we have on it comes from Betta herself. She claims to be able to affect land that she owns or has a claim to in a variety of ways, including increasing transportation speeds within and between land that she owns and hastening the growth of crops. As she owns no land, she was unable to test or demonstrate this ability.

The prevailing theory from the technicians and scientists involved is that she can speed up the flow of time by a factor of less than two within land that she affects with her power, or 'owns'. A provisional rating of Shaker five has been given due to the temporal nature of the ability, and plans to acquire a small plot of land for testing were made should she choose to join the Wards."

As she spoke, she changed the image on the projector in correlation with the topic. A recording of her testing her fire breath played, showing both the small stream and the larger cone. An image of the reading of the hydraulic press cracking the shell of the armor and revealing pale skin beneath appeared, quickly replaced by a summary of the testing.

"This brings us to the second part of her time on the Rig. Her introduction to the Wards was fairly standard, with Aegis, Gallant, Clockblocker, and Vista all present for her arrival. They all introduced themselves and shook hands, ending in Clockblocker using his power on her."

A wave of groans erupted from across the table, each of them having been subjected to the same treatment the first time they met the comedic teen. "Shadow Stalker arrived in the room unmasked while Betta was frozen, only donning her mask after I directed her to. When Clockblocker's power wore off, Betta let go of his hand and rather suddenly mentioned the need to return home. I escorted her out of the building and discussed her time on the Rig with her, trying to get a sense of how she felt about joining the PRT in general, and more specifically the Wards.

On the whole, she appeared to have enjoyed her time learning her capabilities in power testing and her first contact with the Wards. I apologized for Clockblocker's use of his power on her, but she appeared to shrug it off, sharing that it had revealed another aspect of her shell's capabilities. Although her physical processes were frozen due to the link between her armor and her body, her mind was still working while frozen.

This is where things went downhill. I'll play the recording of the scene for everyone, along with the analysis of Betta's voice by Armsmaster's lie detection software."

She pressed two buttons on her remote, and a video began to play on the screen as the sound of waves came from the speakers.

"However, I don't think I'll be joining the Wards in the near future. It's not that there's anything wrong with most of them or that I have any problems with being a hero or the PRT as a whole. It's just that I saw Shadow Stalker's face and heard her voice while I was stuck there, and I'd sooner burn this city to the ground than work with the girl who assaulted me and left me to die this morning."

At the end of each sentence, a box appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen with the output from Armsmaster's lie detector. Although the hero claimed that it was still a work-in-progress, anyone who knew the man knew that the program was working perfectly but took up too much processing for his helmet to accurately use the software while on patrol.

'True: 97.13%'

'True: 96.85%'

'True: 99.37%'

The judgements and numbers were damning, and the room was silent for a moment as the heroes present considered the implications of that. The video continued as the boat reached the Docks, the cameras showing Betta stepping off of the boat before speaking once more.

"It's nothing personal, Miss Militia, and I won't spread any word of who she was or what she did as a sign of goodwill. I'm sorry for any trouble you may get in for this, for letting me go, for letting me see her face. Still, it's better for everyone for the facts to be clear, and the simple fact is that I'd like to live the rest of my natural life without seeing her."

'True: 96.99%'

'True: 98.06%'

'True: 99.54%'

Miss Militia spoke up once more, making the only noise in the room.

"By the time this recording started, we had left the effective range of the forcefield surrounding the Rig. I briefly considered restraining her at the time, but dismissed it for several reasons. It would not endear her to the PRT should her claims prove to be true, and I also lacked the means to restrain her short of covering the boat in containment foam, which would be a prison for everyone there that would heat up should she use her fire breath, boiling everyone on board except for her.

Upon later review, I believe that this was entirely intentional on her part. After the revelation that the person who caused her trigger was one of the Wards, her entire personality seemed to shift. Far from the relatively shy impression that I got from her, Betta was happy to talk about even the most mundane things until she was sure that there was no way that she would be restrained. Furthermore, she was unnaturally calm after being faced with the individual who caused her trigger so soon after the fact, leading me to believe that there is a Thinker aspect to her powers that prevents her from getting too emotional."

With that, Miss Militia clicked the remote one final time, changing the slide once more to a summary of Betta's ratings with the addition of a Thinker 1.

The first person to speak afterward was Assault. "Well, out with the old and in with the new? This is just short of confirmation that Stalker's breaking her probation, and if it looks like we're doing something about the only problem she had with us then Betta might be willing to join once she's gone."

Armsmaster shook his head. "Though I agree with your train of thought, the results from the lie detector are limited in several ways. The results are based on voice alone, and are inadmissible in a court of law due to their origin. Previous cases have overturned the use of polygraph tests, and unless this iteration of the lie detection software is passed by the Tinkertech Approval Board, it will likely be the same. I will look into incidents at Winslow High School, seeing as that was the location of the tracker on Shadow Stalker's phone, and see if there's any more evidence against her."

Several other capes at the table voiced their opinions, most agreeing that someone who caused a trigger event should be punished, but Piggot interjected with a sigh. "As much as I agree with the sentiment, we all know that this isn't going to pan out. Without hard evidence we have no way of removing Shadow Stalker from the Wards, thanks to the Youth Guard, and even with evidence we may find ourselves unable to.

You all know how many requests I've put in for additional parahuman support and staff transfers into the Bay, and if we're seen transferring one of our Wards away for any reason then the odds of us ever receiving any of that diminish. If we try to pass this by the higher-ups, they'll take Betta's heroic nature into account and argue that it's better to have more heroically inclined capes in the city overall rather than swapping one who may well return to her vigilante ways for an unknown factor.

I'll do my best to push things along, and if you could get back to me with reports from your investigation, Colin, then I will do my hardest to get Shadow Stalker locked up in-city and Betta signed on with the PRT."

Armsmaster nodded and left the room, causing a wave of people to follow him over the next few minutes. Eventually it was just Miss Militia and Director Piggot left in the room, and the director began to speak once more. "I don't fault you for any of this, Hannah. Capes are difficult, and I didn't see any better options there. In a way, Betta is right – it's better for everyone for the facts to be clear, and I would greatly prefer this to her signing on and then having conflicts within the team.

There isn't anything we can do to change what happened, but armed with this knowledge we can now do our best to change the future."