Divinity Rescue Corps
101- The J Word

The search didn’t conclude until after the HQ people showed up and started using the J word.

“We have jurisdiction now,” they said.

“Jurisdiction over who gets healed and who doesn’t?” I asked.

They were two dozen people strong, and it wasn’t just newbies like my team. I mean, most of us were now up around level 20 in our classes, but these people were beyond even that. They had been here more months, had adventured out into the wilds more, and I could see it above their heads.

The leader, Jacoby, was a Ranger, and that pleased me a great deal. She wasn’t a Guardian, though she had eight big hulking Guardians with her.

The remainder of the team was a strong mix: a bunch of Rangers, a handful of Wizards and Sorcerers, with one Bard and one Rogue. Though one of the Wizards or Sorcerers could’ve been a Rogue. They were sneaky like that.

Jacoby stood a few inches taller than me, an Asian girl with a tight black ponytail that seemed to wreak havoc on her face by stretching it out too far. She was dressed in the sort of outfit that screamed assassin: black, form-fitting, with obvious armored bits, and pockets for all kinds of assassin-ey stuff. There was not an iota of color on her anywhere, except in her reddening face as I gave her the new Fletcher special.

They landed off a pair of large flying Nakamamon mounts and immediately began issuing orders, like dicks. Jacoby, for one, operated like this was a military operation, which it one hundred percent was not.

“The first thing we’re doing is shutting down your operation until such time as we’ve debriefed your people.”

“Permission to speak, ma’am,” I said, giving her a bit of sass. She deserved more than a bit of sass, honestly.

“Denied,” she said.

Unacceptable. And, see, when Cinzy had left the team, there’d been a serious issue in which I attempted to be everybody’s friend. I worked hard at group cohesion, and that was mostly by attempting to please everyone. Well, I’d been abducted, deserted, betrayed, ordered around, beaten up, and Mr. Please Everybody was no longer in the building. My interaction with Rus and Allie showed me that I was going to have to fight for the Divinity Rescue Corps’s mission. Essentially, I had to save the DRC’s life.

“Well then I’m going to go ahead and speak anyway. We have—”

“That’s enough, expedition leader,” Jacoby tried, but I steamrolled her. Her pale complexion began to redden from here.

“—hundreds and hundreds of patients in there. We will have hundreds more if you pull my people off their duties.”

“You need to stop talking, expedition leader.”

 I didn’t. Instead I followed her around as she and her people scoped out my camp, informing her of exactly what I thought of her team’s interference. Maybe there was a tiny chance that her operation was more important than mine, but I was a Healer. I wasn’t going to stop doing my job just because they had a manhunt to conduct. I kept going, and going, describing first the state of the Nakamamon inside the town, and then the fact that we had found and liberated some ten different minor gods from the town.

At first, Jacoby tried to shush me, to stop me from talking, to get my people to stop working, but every time she issued and order, I went right on ahead and issued an order countermanding that one, which they had to follow or else they would lose experience points. They shrugged and went right back to work: Trent to his temporary housing outside of Glumpdumpkin, Alan assisting him in getting them access to clean water, the Guardians turning away Nakamamon before they got into the city. I was proud of them, and my heart swelled at knowing we were tight knit enough for them to work on DRC business before Agency business.

Most importantly, Jacoby’s people were on cover up duty, while the DRC was directly helping real people.

I failed a Persuasion check, which I found amazing. This gave me a temporary Physicality and Durability Token, using the Fierce ability from Ivy.

“Enough!” Jacoby said, whirling on me. “I thought you were a team player, Fletcher. I’m conducting a manhunt here, and that means I don’t have time for your malarkey. I need to get my people on assignment as soon as possible, and that means a full debrief.”

“Conduct your debrief while my people are on task,” I said. “I’m here putting Nakamamon society back together.”

“This is for the good of humanity, Fletcher,” she said, and all at once I understood.

This wasn’t about helping the people of this world; this was about Agency shenanigans. They wanted to keep Blake and other new fighting aspect Nakamamon from spreading. They wanted this perfect world for whatever it was the Agency was doing here, not to save the lives of this world’s natives.

“Humanity can eat my butt right about now,” I said. Honestly, I was beginning to like Nakamamon more than humans. I kept using the word ‘people’ for a very good reason: Nakamamons weren’t human.

“You are well out of your depth,” she said, “and approaching out of line.”

“I… don’t care?”

“If you keep going like this, I will have you incarcerated and shipped back to headquarters under armed escort,” she said.

“I’m going to need a word with you in private, expedition leader,” I said, pointing to my house. Finally, I scored another Persuasion check, got myself another Physicality and Durability Token, and grinned in satisfaction. I wasted no time in stalking all the way there.

She was furious, and I couldn’t really blame her.

“I don’t know if you people came here to intimidate me, but it’s not going to work.”

“This is the fate of the world we’re talking about here!” she urged.

“Cool, then let’s get this debrief over with and get your people out of here.”

Her face twitched. “Fine.”

“First, could you shoot me with an arrow? No? It was worth a try. Okay. Ask me anything.”

She grilled me for what seemed like ages. We went through practically my entire time since the creation of the Divinity Rescue Corps: setting out, hitching an unintentional ride on a water dragon that doubled as a lake, finding Slinktrickle, the no-clothes for weeks situation, resuscitating a god, healing that god, getting all our clothes back, facing Cinzy’s leaving, heading here to Glumpdumpkin, and then the whole Blake debacle.

“I’m just trying to help these people get back to a semblance of normality,” I said. “We’re going to have to rebuild some of their houses when the god is back to normal.”

“I get that,” she said, “I do. You don’t have—”

She froze, and stared at the doorway.

“Leader Jacoby, this is Vellenia,” I said. “Vellenia, this is the leader of the clean up crew from headquarters, who want to find all of Blake’s former people.”

Vellenia swept gracefully into the room and took Jacoby’s hand. She then bent and pressed a kiss to one knuckle. “Hello, friend Jacoby. It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance! I could not be happier that you are here with this objective in mind, for Blake and his people are bad emissaries for humanity.”

Jacoby, for some reason, seemed to have been struck speechless.

“What… this is your bond?” she asked.

“That’s correct,” I said. Vellenia flowed around the table, the long way, with Jacoby’s eyes tracking her the whole way. She came to a stop directly behind me, and placed her very non-human hands on my shoulders. Wasting no time, she began to massage my traps while giving Jacoby a benign smile and those adorable Nakamamon eyes.

“I wasn’t aware it was possible to bond a humanoid, sapient Nakamamon,” Jacoby said.

“I wasn’t aware it was relevant to your mission.” Oof, I really needed to dial the sass back a bit in order to have Jacoby and her people lay off, and let my team do their jobs.

“Vellenia,” Jacoby said, as though she were tasting the word.

“That’s right,” my bond mate said. “My bond mate was in distress so I came to soothe him. Have you caused him distress?”

Jacoby reacted as if she’d been slapped. “I… probably, yes. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause that, but our mission is very important.” She kept her eyes resolutely glued to Vellenia’s face. At first I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. It wouldn’t take long. The uptight Asian Ranger stood, eventually. “I’ve taken up too much of your time. My people are going to be around the town, out searching for Blake’s associates. We are sending the Wizards back to HQ. We may need your assistance on matters related to getting into and out of the town.”

Her whole demeanor had changed in a heartbeat, and all it had taken was Vellenia batting her eyelashes at her. Huh.

Vellenia came out from behind me and wrapped Jacoby in a tight hug. “It was such a pleasure to have you come and visit, friend Jacoby.”

Jacoby locked gazes with me, and I could tell she was confused. “Uh, thank you. It was great meeting you, uh, Valennia. I’ll try to have my people out of your way, Fletcher.”

It was great meeting you, Vellenia. It wasn’t great meeting us both, and it wasn’t great meeting you Fletcher, it was great meeting you Vellenia. I grinned at that.

“If you need to commandeer the services of my earth Sorcerer,” I told her, “I think I can spare him to generate a couple of these adobe houses each day.”

Jacoby nodded curtly.

“It was lovely meeting you!” Vellenia called.

***

Jacoby apparently felt as though we’d gotten off on the wrong foot. I couldn’t agree more. She waited some twenty-four hours before approaching me again.

In that time, I’d been out to tend the plants. I had Verdant Rejuvenation, so any cuttings I made and tended to would automatically sprout.

Verdant Rejuvenation

(Special Ability, uncommon, passive)

Herbs and plants harvested by you and stored by you will last twice as long as normal.

By placing cuttings of plants in the soil, watering and tending them, they will sprout if they remain within half a mile of your location over the course of 24 hours.

It was one of Vellenia’s greatest joys to behold. Since gaining the special ability, she had taken to spending hours watching the plants mature. Every morning we had a fresh harvest, so long as I stuck around. This needed some careful planning, as it was easy to get too far away while scouting the town, but I could count on Vellenia’s pure, joyous grin to lift my spirits whenever I returned from scouting with Tara or Regina. 

“Look at how big they are!” she gushed.

The sundrinkers were some of the most spectacular to behold, since like sunflowers they grew big disk faces to point at the sun. They weren’t nearly as tall as sunflowers, but a even a small garden of them popping up in a matter of hours was really something.

“I am told size matters,” I said off-handedly.

“It’s wonderful,” Vel said, and leapt onto me for a full-bodied hug.

For about the third time since the team had arrived, I was informed by Blissense that someone was having thoughts about me. The second level of the ability explained that if someone nearby was thinking about me, I had the opportunity to spend an Affinity Token in order to single out who that was, and get a glimpse into those thoughts. Now, this wasn’t an ability I had any use for… yet. Now might be the time.

Before I spent the Token, the person in question announced herself.

“Expedition Leader Fletcher,” I heard from off in the direction of the capital J Jurisdiction people.

Marvelous. Jacoby was on her way over here. I considered spending the Affinity Token anyway to get that read on what Jacoby was thinking. Ultimately I decided against it since I had a lot of ways to spend Tokens and I needed to hang onto them.

I didn’t ask Vellenia to detangle herself from the way she was wrapped around me, but instead slow walked out of the magical vegetable and herb garden to meet Jacoby.

“May I have a word with you?” she asked.

And boy did I ever want to petty my way out of this one. If I rudely said ‘well you’ve had your word, good day now’ it would only sour her against me. Better to use whatever Vellenia had done with her to our advantage.

“I have my morning brief, if you’d like to join in and see what we’re up to,” I said.

“I… that would be lovely,” she said, and I caught another glance at Vellenia. Although I wanted to ask Jacoby about her bond mate, or lack of one, I didn’t know her well enough to go prying. She was back in her too-tight ponytail and black covert ops suit this morning, pale skin contrasting against hair, eyes and clothes. Still severe, though something was measurably different.

The team was clustered at the central cook fire, which Trent had turned into a grand fire pit. Chrysta was presently on door duty, but the flow of natives trying to get into town had wanted.

“Team,” I said, “this is Jacoby. She’s part of the crew who’s been tasked with cleaning up the mess left over by Blake.” After cursory introductions, I told them we were going to go about the morning brief as normal, to just pretend Jacoby wasn’t here.

Trent presented his results first, explaining that he’d put up six identical small one room boxes for the refugees yesterday and would create some for Jacoby’s people if that was required. She seemed a tiny bit surprised by this possibility.

I once again thanked my lucky stars for choosing Trent to be on my team.

Drat complained that he was having trouble searching through the town in a thorough manner, because he had only about an hour of safe time before the god’s power would begin to influence him. However, he had discovered a minor god amongst the homes, a God of Secret Spaces, so once I got that god healed up, he would be able to find all the secret compartments, hidden doors, and secret passages in the town. Right now those were somehow offline.

“Magic,” he said darkly, while stroking McCauley Skulkins, who was literally made of the stuff.

He’d picked his moment with care, and I respected that. I ordered the Rangers to give over the Prismatic Apparel to Drat today, so he could search more thoroughly after I took care of this new god. First though, Larelle would have to accompany him to fetch said god.

After that, there was no news from the Rangers. They had been working mostly on the town, and everything they knew I already knew.

Alan stuttered his way through explaining that the water filtration system wasn’t his best work, it would need to be replaced every few days, and that would take up a lot of his time and spells.

“The pit toilets are nowhere near full,” Trent said darkly, “thank the gods.” Alan did not have a short range teleport. Yet.

“With the number of people we have settling here, we might need to add several more,” Chrysta said.

Nakamamon didn’t poop, exactly… they didn’t fart candy-flavored sprinkles either. The magical bundle of stuff they excreted did glitter, but was not especially nice to smell.

The Guardians shrugged when I asked if they had anything to add. Larelle was permanently on body moving duty, where she rounded up the comatose people of the town and settled them inside, where they wouldn’t face the elements. For whatever reason, the town hadn’t seen any rain since we’d arrived.

“Anybody need new orders so they feel happy about their experience gains?” I asked.

No one did, which was excellent. Most of us were cruising toward that first big milestone of level 25, when I was informed that Things Changed.

“Cinzy?” I asked.

The Bard looked haggard. For the first time, the gorgeous supermodel appeared as though she hadn’t spent several hours doing her makeup and choosing the perfect outfit combo. Still gorgeous, of course, but you could tell she wasn’t having a good one.

“Liaison to Jacoby’s people?” she asked.

All eyes fell on the Ranger and Expedition Leader. “I… am not certain. I’ll confer with my people.”

I nodded to Cinzy. “See me after the meeting, why don’t you?”

This is Christopher breezing through five minutes of morning briefing and getting everyone on task.

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