Soulforged Dungeoneer

The next morning I got a formal email from a government address informing me that my presence was required the day after in Washington, DC at 8AM, and that a private charter flight had been secured at Bush Intercontinental Airport which would leave at my convenience. If I didn't confirm the email within four hours, they would "take additional action to ensure the message has been received".

I RSVP'd and wondered if the plane would have booze.

I told Louise, and she offered to come along, but she also suggested she would have to reschedule some things to do so. I wanted her there, and I said so, but I didn't need her to be there, and if she wasn't officially invited, I had some suspicion they wouldn't let her in anyway, even as a Priestess. She insisted at least that we would have lunch, and I eagerly agreed.

It wasn't much of a lunch, but she picked a place I wasn't overly familiar with, a Schlotzsky's Deli, and it was decent food. The company was good, and I felt better getting out and away doing something other than Dungeoneering or going to work. I was, at times, still the same problematic shut-in I'd been, but... well, I didn't want to be, and little things like this were good for me.

It was also nice that we held hands while we waited, and again after we ate.

I didn't have much to prepare, as far as I could tell, so I drove myself out to the airport, which was a good hour's trip. I didn't bother to call the charter until I got there, and they were quite polite, but suggested a little more warning would have been better. Still, they seemed to have been waiting, because I only waited another ten minutes before they let me board, and half an hour after that we were airborne.

It was definitely the most fancy private transport I'd ever been on, although there wasn't a lot of headroom when standing. It felt weird, for a lot of reasons; the plane was small compared to commercial jets, but it also comfortably dwarfed some of the smaller aircraft on the field, which I guess were one- or two-place private planes. The internal cabin would have seated six or eight people, but it was just me and a stewardess, who offered me drinks, and I took only a little. I was told it would be a three-hour flight, and then everything moved on around me, as though being cold and uninterested was professional. She sat in the back, the pilots were up ahead somewhere, and I looked out the window.

Once we were in the air, I couldn't resist thinking about being able to fly as fast as this jet. I spent a little of those hours envisioning myself standing on the wing as it moved by--obviously a bad idea even if it were possible, which I doubt it was--and mostly what I realized was that the force of the air at this speed was impressive and constant. My telekinetic sense didn't give me anything in terms of numbers, but it was more than the force I'd used to throw myself and Louise across a dungeon, except I had only used that power for an instant, and carefully controlled it. This was just air standing still while the jet barreled through it, though, and fighting against that force would be a heck of a task.

Well, maybe someday I'd be that strong. In theory, it was just a question of levels. In a few hundred levels, if I didn't have a teleport skill or whatever, maybe I could go superman-ing across continents, take Louise for lunch in Paris, whatever.

Landing was more interesting than taking off, mostly on account of there being a lot more traffic in and out of Dulles. I spent more time than I expected to using my telekinetic sense to get an impression of what was going on around me. A big complicated place like the airport was far too busy, for someone like me from the suburbs; there weren't just a couple threads of activity, but dozens, all seemingly independent while meshing together.

Anyway, I was directed from the charter plane to a charter car and taken to a hotel reasonably close to where I would need to be in the morning. I sent Louise a text saying I was there safely, and wandered around the area of the hotel.

Among the other interesting differences between this place and my own, most of the people with Dungeoneer levels that I saw while near the hotel all seemed... of a certain stereotype. If they weren't military, they were intense, military-esque people. Private security, maybe? Or certain specific kinds of people sent to the nation's capital that were chosen to fit in here? All I really knew was that I felt out of place.

I turned in early, but didn't sleep easily. I was stressed out already, and nothing of consequence had begun.

I was as ready as I could be when some very polite, stern-looking people came to get me in the morning. The hotel offered breakfast that included eggs and bacon, and that was more than enough for me. I wasn't sure what exactly they would want or need from me, and... well, I didn't know where I was going or who would be watching.

I didn't recognize the building offhand that I was delivered to, but all that meant was it wasn't any of the stand-out buildings of DC--not the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, etc. It was a place that had a placard by the door that said something about Homeland Security and Dungoneer Outreach, but I was honestly too nervous to be that interested in the specifics.

I was directed to a waiting room, and you can guess what I did there.

As I sat there considering things, I recalled with some concealed amusement the Class Feature that would make me, and other things "within range" more susceptible to a variety of snooping abilities--the Cursed Truth Aura. I suppose that meant that they could read me better, not that I planned to lie; it also meant if I had Telepathy or something similar, I could read others better than my current skill level of zero. Of course, I didn't--

It was on the list you could buy from Telekinesis. For, uh, 50. The mind-reading one, I mean; Telepathy.

Purely to amuse myself, I pulled up the window and purchased the skill. It was an active ability, not a passive sense, so I couldn't even use it alone in my room. Most likely, if I tried to use it, the High Priestess would notice and scold me for it. Still, if she was harassing me, maybe I could pry into her head a little and see if I could find a weak point.

It was a good half hour past the allotted time when I was finally brought out of the waiting room and into a large conference room, set up in an awkward squared-off donut where I was the monkey in the middle, flanked by two military men with Dungeoneer levels of 312 and 235, and surrounded in various directions by military men, obvious politicians, Dungoneers in expensive suits, and (I was somewhat astonished to discover), the one person in the room who I recognized without having ever met: the Vice President.

He was sitting at the center of the politician's table, and had his own guard, another high-ish level Dungeoneer who stood behind the man, I assume to block anything I tried to do or possibly teleport the man away in case of danger. The VP had a lot of gray hair, and he was clearly reading from a briefing packet before him, but I thought he was almost done with it, in terms of page count. When he looked up at me, he seemed to be taking me seriously, in the sense that whatever I told the assembled people, it would be some part of a large puzzle that he was tasked with solving, whether he could successfully do so or not.

I took a seat in the middle, after not-exactly-discreetly taking the time to examine everyone in turn. Nobody had anything really expressive on their faces, except one three-star general who looked pissy. Everyone else had an "office job" look on their faces, not too dissimilar to the Vice President's; they were here because they were told to be, and they'd do what they were told, and then move on to something else after we were done.

I would say High Priestess Cream as an exception, but she wasn't there. I still completely expected her to be an exception, of course; she'd been kind of a bitch, and I doubted she would just sit there with a bored face like everyone else, at the very least, not after the arguments we'd had.

Maybe five minutes after I sat down, someone from the politicians' group cleared their throat. "You are Jerry Applebee?"

"Yes, sir."

He moved a single sheet of paper from one stack to another in front of him. "Mr. Applebee, my name is Stephen Flour, and I was put in charge of this hearing. This committee has a few questions before we get started. First of all, as far as I'm aware you were not told the exact purpose of this meeting, is that correct?"

Well, when you put it that way, "That's correct, Mr. Flour."

"You can just say yes or no. You have successfully bound a fairy, is that correct, Mr. Applebee?"

"Yes."

"And to the best of your knowledge it is not hostile?"

"Correct."

"Are you able to summon them?"

I shifted in my seat. "That does not seem to be possible yet. I--we believe that when she is grown a bit more, it will be possible."

Some glances were exchanged, but the man speaking didn't pause. "How do you interact with the fairy, then?"

"A kind of very close telepathic link, I guess. She seems to ...physically reside in my mind, and we communicate mentally in much the same way as we would talk, but... with some extra data channels."

He nodded, and I noticed some scribbling on paper. "Is it painful?"

I frowned. "The process of... binding her to me, I guess, was painful. That hasn't completely faded, but it's getting better."

"You don't find the actual interactions to be painful?"

"No."

"Was the fairy responsible for your abilities you displayed in the incident in the Armand Bayou Dungeon Security Zone?"

I raised an eyebrow at that. "No. Or, not directly."

Some frowns from the military side in response. Nevertheless, the one asking the questions--who seemed, mostly, to just be reading from the sheet of paper in front of him, looked up at me. "Would you mind explaining further?"

I frowned at that, and had a brief mental discussion with Merry. "I'm not well versed in these things, sir, but I believe that that level of Telekinesis is a matter of using a skill at S-rank levels. ...My fairy assisted me in maintaining my focus, but we don't believe she was directly involved in increasing my power."

"You believe that your skills with Telekinesis extend into the S-rank of skill growth?"

"They do."

"What do you believe the limits..."

For a while, they questioned me about the skill, and I mostly had to admit I had no way of putting things into words for them. In terms of what I could do if I went all-out, or in terms of what made me stronger than others, it was difficult to say. They also asked more questions about Merry, and I told them what I could. They also spent just a short amount of time asking about the Soulforged class, but nobody really seemed to be interested; it was mostly to make sure that there wasn't something hidden there that was the secret to all of my crazy power levels.

They didn't seem, to my surprise, to be even thinking of asking questions about Administrators. I didn't exactly bring it up, but I also didn't resist mentioning that I'd met an Administrator and had a discussion with them, when it came up in regards to my class. Nobody seemed to care, which I thought was wrong-headed of them. I also didn't go out of my way to discuss the new skill, since they seemed to not know about it at all, and why would they?

Anyway, the conversation wrapped up with a seemingly off-topic set of questions.

"Mr. Applebee, have you had any interactions with any of the Dungeon Gods?"

I was getting a little tired of the stress of the meeting at that point, but that question managed to rouse me. "What do you mean by interactions?"

"Anything worth noting."

"I haven't met one face to face, yet." I thought back to the sudden quest to meet Kalamitus, and its obvious knowledge of what I was doing. "I was recently offered a quest to meet one, with suspicious timing. I believe that I was being watched by one at that time."

"So you have not had any discussions?"

"No."

"Do you have any emotional attachments to any Dungeon Gods?"

I wondered if I knew where this was going. "No."

"Do you have any strong negative feelings towards any?"

"No."

He nodded, eyes still on the paper before him. "So if you were to be in contact with one, you don't believe that would be any problem?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Not unless it somehow conflicts with the quest to meet the other one."

"Do you believe that it would?"

I hesitated, only a moment. The seeming urgency of the quest, given that Kalamitus raised the reward when I said I'd go immediately, and then all of this... was there some kind of competition to be the first? "Maybe. I don't think so. To be safe, I'd prefer to complete that quest before I go to meet any other Dungeon God."

"But you don't object to meeting them here, through an intermediary?"

That confirmed what I, and Merry, had been suspecting, and I nodded my head slightly. "I suspect that would be fine."

"Very well. I'd like to open the floor up to questions, and then we will take a short recess."

The questions that came after were mostly brief repetitions, aimed at either making sure Merry wasn't evil, that I wasn't becoming twisted, or that they couldn't figure out some way to weaponize Dungeoneers that they'd missed up until now. Then, they broke for a slightly early lunch.

Apparently I'd been locked in there with them longer than I thought.