The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Mission Start

Luck's a funny thing.

So is poker.

And my life, I guess, considering how the former led me to the latter.

A few hours after I started gambling, I'd found myself at a table being dealt cards. All around the table were older men in suits that made me feel young and underdressed. And, given how they all seemed aware of those facts as well, outnumbered.

I didn't start the night at the poker table, of course. I didn't even intend to go there at first. I didn't know precisely how Luck was trained in the beginning, so I started with the options that depended solely—or almost solely—on luck. I played some baccarat, craps, and took a few turns on the roulette wheel. I won some, I lost a few more, but I kept the individual bets small and in the end I didn't lose too much money. Better yet, my Luck began leveling up gradually, improving as I won, which I did a lot more often than I thought I would, though that wasn't saying much.

But then, that's why I'd put five points into it, wasn't it? What had held true before held true again; if I needed to get lucky to improve Luck, I'd need some luck to build off of, first.

With that confirmation of how Luck improved, however, I started experimenting. I began with higher bets, going from a hundred lien to a thousand where I could and making the highest legal bet when the limit was lower. As I still lost the same number of times, that quickly dropped my cash from near sixty thousand to below forty in about an hour—more money than I had ever personally spent in my life before today, down the drain like nothing. And yet, in that same time, I earned several levels of Luck, which itself began to show in my favor, though it wasn't enough to make me win more then I lost or even breakeven.

Until I started playing blackjack and counting the cards. That was the next thing I wanted to check, after all—if there were things other than luck involved, could it still be improved? The answer turned out to be 'it depends.' It was possible so long as luck still played a major role; that is, being good and lucky was fine, but there came a point where it wasn't really luck anymore. I could use Observe to see the cards I was about to be dealt or even those inside of the deck. I could also use it to read the dealer's emotions and many other things, to a point where I knew exactly what to expect and could plan around it.

But at that point, it wasn't really a question of Luck anymore and the stat didn't seem to improve.

There was, however, a balance. If I simply kept a running count of all the cards that had been played, thus giving me a fair idea on whether the remaining deck leaned towards high or low value cards…that was something else, sort of. I was shifting the odds in my favor, but I didn't know the specifics of each card, of each move. As long as I restrained myself, I couldn't be certain of winning or losing, and luck had its place.

However, the degree that Luck improved varied—I figured it depended on how much a specific win had to do with knowledge and skill compared to how lucky I was—and it made luck slow to improve, even if I could win far more often that way. I found it worked better if I played high-stakes games around the rest of the casino until I had been chiseled down to about half my funds and then winning them back with blackjack, again and again. Though the dealers had gotten suspicious and had seemed ready to complain or ban me from the games after a while, Junior had stepped in and that had ended that, leaving me to buckle-down and grind tediously.

At least until Junior himself had interrupted me with an offer to try my luck at what he referred to as 'the big boy's table.' I was understandably suspicious and about a hundred percent certain he was pulling something over on someone, whether by trying to use me against the table or draw me in to get creamed.

I accepted anyway, simply because it had seemed like it might be a good opportunity and I was curious which, in time, had led me to the side room, Adam following at my back. My first hour at the table had been…

Have you ever heard the saying that if you can't spot the sucker within the first half-hour, you are the sucker? Yeah, well, I was the sucker. In that time, I'd dropped from near seventy thousand to barely hanging onto the edge of twenty. It had been pretty brutal—but also a learning experience, in several very literal senses. I'd learned that Poker was great when it came to improving Luck, as well as several different skills—including, unsurprisingly, the Poker skill I developed while doing it.

I also learned that, though I had no real attachment to the money I was spending, being made a fool of brought out the competitive side of me and all pretenses of fairness and mercy had spontaneously evaporated. I Observed their emotions, I counted the cards—which wasn't as effective as in Blackjack but still useful—and Intimidated them as best I could, and all around was an unabashed cheating cheater, allowing me to make a comeback and improve my skills.

But even if I could read people easily and was scarier then I should have been, Poker was just weird sometimes, which was probably why it was so good for Luck—alongside, I suspected, the nature of human competition, how it was a zero-sum game, and the probabilities involved due to the higher number of variables. It wasn't the merely game itself that was weird, though it had its fair share of oddness, it was just…

I'd climbed my way up to ninety thousand over the course of another hour, was dropped down to thirty half an hour later, went on a winning streak back up to seventy, got dragged down to forty, rose to over a hundred in a fairly amazing section of the game if I do say so myself, and fought every step of the way when they pulled be back to seventy again. It was just all over the place and in strange ways. It sounded really exciting when I spread it all out like that and it was, in a way, but there were a lot of silences, a lot of waiting, holding, and folding, and a lot of watching and staring. Parts of the game were twist after twist and other were empty and tense.

I'd gotten pretty good at it. I think it's because most of that had grown a lot more applicable to my life lately; preparations and patience and numbers leading up to an attack, no way of knowing if you were about to be struck down, and getting by on masks and lies. Getting by on wits and sheer dumb luck, that was my new life in a nutshell. And slowly, as the night dragged on, the odds seemed to shift in my favor as my luck gradually improved.

And then it was over. People had spent the evening sliding in and out of the game, whether because they were cutting their losses or wanted to quit while they were ahead, but I hadn't truly noticed how much time had passed until Junior returned to close up. I waited for the others to leave, Adam leaning against the wall behind me.

"Pleasure doing business with you," I said to Junior, voice polite as I held out his due. I still wasn't certain if he'd seen some skill in me or just wanted to bring in a sucker, but he seemed pleased whatever the case.

The larger man snorted as he palmed the money.

"You're a weird kid, Jian," He said. "But if this is your idea of gambling, you're welcome back any time. And if you want a more permanent arrangement…come by again and we'll talk."

"I'll do that," I said, bowing my head slightly. "Have a nice day, Mr. Xiong. Adam?"

My higher-leveled friend pushed off the wall, adjusting the glasses that had slowly slipped down his nose as we left.

"You get what you needed?" He murmured as we walked out into the darkness.

"Hard to tell with Luck," I replied. "But I think so; I was doing better there, at the end. We'll have to test what it actually does, though. But…"

I was feeling lucky, I didn't say.

He nodded as if he understood anyway and then, somewhere between that step and the next, Blake was walking beside us, dropping down silently from above. Adam didn't react and, thanks to the Gamer's Mind, neither did I. She didn't question why we had been inside a casino or a club, though, so I assumed Adam had told her what we were doing when he informed her of our location. She passed me a pair of small booklets that I held onto until we were inside the car, at which point I promptly devoured it, closing my eyes as the knowledge flowed into me.

And then I flashed back to some superstitions about black cats as I suddenly stopped feeling lucky.

I felt my face twitch down into a frown as I stewed in the new information for a time. I glanced at Adam and then back at Blake, exhaling slowly. I think both of them noticed the sudden change in me and though they didn't visibly react, there was a sudden tension in the air.

One of the books had been the schematics for the airship, if relatively brief, but I didn't need obvious details when my power gave me full understanding of everything written within something. The other had, of course, been the driver's manual. We'd found the former in one of the email account Blake had gotten, emailed there by an employee that wanted to go some work at home, and she'd gotten the latter from the computer of one of the pilots, once we'd had their names. There was some overlap between the two, but to give ourselves the best chance, I'd asked she get and print off both—and between both of them, I knew everything I needed. And it was…

"Give me a minute to think," I said, putting the car in gear and leaving the parking lot. Even this later, there were a fair number of people mulling about, but that's not why I was moving—as safe places to talk about stuff went, inside a locked car in a parking lot was actually fairly good. I just wanted to move and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have helped Adam and Blake's nerves if I spent a few minutes in brooding silence. I turned on the radio for the same reasons, shifting it absently until I found something tolerable.

I drove aimlessly for a little bit, though it may not have seemed that way since I'd memorized the streets, and simply mulled over the new information. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, but…

In time, I pulled over and finally sighed.

"It could be worse," I admitted, most because I didn't think they'd fall for a lie. "We can still do this, it'll just take a bit more work."

Reaching into my Inventory I drew out the schedule for the event and I took another glance over it to be sure I remembered it, filling in the blanks with the knowledge I now had. I pulled out my scroll next and placed it in my lap for the moment.

"Okay," I said, drawing out a pen and notepad as well and flipping the latter open to a blank page to start doodling. "The good news is, I can definitely fly the thing. I know everything it can do; I can put it through its paces. The bad news is that we're going to have a few things to deal with first, if we want to get it in the air."

I finished the drawing, sketching out a rough illustration of the airship's sleek design and marking out bits I thought were important, scrawling brief notes beside them.

"The first issue we'd anticipated; there are several security measures on the airship itself. Most of them won't be an issue, because they'll need to be taken off for the presentation, but there are several that…" I shook my head. "There's software on the ship specifically for this presentation, to make sure nothing goes wrong, and it's both inside and outside the ship. The stuff inside won't be a problem since most of it was explained in the books, but…that outside controls will be a bit tougher."

I added another drawing off to the side, this one of a man in a room.

"This is the control station," I said, tapping the new picture. "It's mainly in case of emergencies and to avoid any incidents in the demonstration. Among other things, it can remotely lock and unlock the weapons systems on the Airship, largely to make sure no accidents happen within city limits, and if something happens, it can activate the emergency landing protocols even if the controls within the ship suffer damage, causing the ship to lower safely to the ground. Actually flying the ship requires both a confirmation from within the ship and one from outside it to unlock everything."

"So they can shut us down any time?" Adam asked, tilting his head to the side. "That's what you're saying?"

"Yes…and no," I said, raising a hand to forestall them. "There's a few ways around it. It's all password or scroll activated, but if things are unlocked from both sides, I think I might be able to change which passwords and scrolls. They've had to go through a number of pilots and technicians, so I know it's possible, we just need to figure out a few things first. This is primarily an issue of timing, since it'll be hard to do beforehand, but we can do it."

"How?" Blake asked, surprisingly calm. I guess she wasn't surprised that things had gotten a bit more difficult.

"I'll get inside the ship," I said. "You'll need to handle the control center, because it'll need to be done quickly and quietly. I'll need to know the specifics about the system they're using to be sure of anything, but I can sneak in and wait until at least the flight portion of the system is activated. You get into the control tower, we disable whoever we need to, we change everything we have to, and we're fine."

"You think you can do that?" Adam asked. "Sneak in and change everything?"

"Probably," I said. "Maybe. Not enough information to say for sure, but it should be possible. If we walk in after they undo most of the defenses, it should be possible. Some of it depends on who controls what and how. If they're paranoid enough, then no, it won't work—but people will do what's most convenient, right?"

He huffed out a tiny laugh, tilting his head my way.

"We still have the advantage, because for all these precautions, they aren't expecting something to happen," I said seriously. "These security measures are just to ensure they don't make fools of themselves at such a big event, not to defend against attackers, which was why they prepared three different pilots. They'll keep the security measures simple, I guarantee it, because anything they make us go through, they have to go through themselves. Remember that, however things seem. For example, I know I can get on the ship, because of the second issue, which simultaneously makes things easier and harder for us—the ship won't be armed until shortly after it makes its appearance."

"I'd hoped to steal it as soon as we knew its location…" Blake sighed. "Why are they doing it that way? Why not before hand?"

"Vanity, I think," I said, lifting the schedule. "Part of the pilot's manual was a schedule for flying and refueling it and if I compare it to the activity schedule, I can make some guesses. A hundred lien says that whoever's in charge will give some speech and the airship will fly into sight over a building or something and do some tricks in the sky or whatever—something to show it off early on before the presentation and the main event—but they don't want to take any chances, so they won't arm it until they start preparing for the flight along the Vytal trade route. It'll land and everyone will have a chance to marvel at it while the presenter hypes it up, and then it'll refuel, take off, and fly to Mistral in record time for the other half of the demonstration, recording the flight."

Blake tilted her head to the side and her ears twitched.

"Ah," She said. "I see. That's when you'll sneak in."

I nodded.

"I should be able to sneak way and get on board, whether as cargo or one of the people refueling and loading. I'll lay low until it's time and we'll take things over from inside once they unlock things—which they should do about fifteen minutes to half an hour before they're scheduled to leave, to check things one last time. That gives me time to make sure they won't be able to shut us down with a push of a button and that should give you a chance to get back."

"Where is the command station?" Blake asked, to which I shrugged.

"I don't know yet," I said. "But I'll find out. I do know there's a range limit to the thing, though, and I can make some guesses."

"If I'm running late, don't wait up for me," She said, accepting that I would find it.

"You want me to be the distraction, then?" Adam asked.

"God, no," I said, drawing another piece of paper out of my Inventory and tossing it at him. "Have you seen the guest list? Let's try and avoid a fight if at all possible. No, I need your help with something else."

Adam glanced over the list and grimaced, nodding. There were a bunch of people on it I was sure even he didn't want to deal with—like the current Headmaster of Beacon.

"Our main objective is to go unnoticed as long as possible," I said, opening up my scroll and bringing up a map of Vytal. Vale was already marked, but I used the draw function to create an arc to the east. "So long as we're proactive and they don't even know they're supposed to be reacting, we have the advantage. Even after that, we want to keep them on the defensive and guessing. Since they don't suspect anyone's going to steal the ship—much less successfully pilot it—it should take a while to form a real response; call it a five, ten minute delay on reinforcements once we get passed whoever's guarding the area. We have an advantage in that the airship we're going to steal is very fast for its size and designed to fly between the kingdoms, but there are smaller craft designed for speed that may be able to catch up to us around here—unless something happened to delay them, of course."

Adam hummed, drumming his fingers on Wilt and Blush.

"If we can safely get passed here," I drew two arcs, one further out then the other. "We should be beyond their reach. And if we get over here, it'll be too dangerous for them to risk following."

"That's not on the trade route," Adam noted, sighing.

I just grinned at him.

"You really think I'm making a detour for some stupid Grimm?" I asked. "Hell no—the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, whether a few monsters are two stupid to get out of the way or not. Besides, didn't I tell you—we want to keep them guessing. If we fly on the trade routes, yeah, it'll be safer, but they'll know which way we're going and we'll probably meet some resistance along the way. If we fly off and vanish though…well, who's to say where we're going? Where we'll appear? That we're even alive? And if a few tracking devices get shut off suddenly a while after we disappear…"

I shrugged.

"Here's the plan…"

The remaining week and a half was a blur of preparation and practice. I hadn't been kidding before when I said we had a massive advantage simply by virtue of being the ones planning the attack—because that meant we were planning for the situation. Not only were they not expecting an attack like this, but the counter measures that the Schnee Company was taking had to be spread out to cover everything, rather they focused on stopping the plan we were enacting. More than anything else, the fact that we could make decisions and focus our attack was our greatest advantage, followed closely by the time we had to prepare.

So we made plans and back up plans and contingencies. We examined everywhere we thought might be relevant while it was still mostly empty, examining everything we could and making maps and marking short cuts and places good for disrupting pursuit. We found manuals and guides for me to eat and I used that knowledge to refine whatever I could. I practiced with Blake, sharpening my stealth and infiltration skills as much as possible, and I worked with Adam on my combat skills. I grinded my passive skills around the clock, now able to maintain them constantly thanks to the improved MP regeneration I gained from having more Aura and the improvement granted by Wisdom.

And, of course, we all trained, like we were doing now.

Adam and Blake flickered around the King Taijitu, blades cutting lightly into scales with each strike as they kept the beast distracted while I stood on the wayside wearing Lycaon. Both were members of the Party I'd made, partially for the passive benefits it offered and partially because the concept worked well with the Beowolf mask. We didn't say a word and we didn't have to, as used to this as we now were, so I simply stood back charging a Magic Missile as they kept both heads busy. Once I'd charged the attack fully, I slid into a throwing stance and paused for a beat.

Adam hit the white head with a sudden strike, knocking it into alignment while Blake shifted into a stream of images and flowing shadows that led the black head into my path and then was gone, my Magic Missile shooting through the space she'd inhabited mere moments before and driving deep into one of the dark creature's red eyes, through his head, out the back, and then into the skull of the other head. The creature's massive body convulsed for a moment before falling slack, black smoke slowly rising from it.

"Thanks," I said, rolling my wristed absently. Adam grunted while Blake just looked silently on at the smoking corpse. They'd been helping me this way for some time now, occasionally distracting larger targets while I charged my best attacks, allowing me to gain experience more quickly by relying on my much higher level party members. Most of the time it wasn't needed and I just fought any Grimm I encountered, but when one of the more massive creatures of Grimm lurked out of the shadows…well, it was better safe than sorry. I'd already gained three more levels this way, bringing myself up to level twenty-three—not bad given I'd been level thirteen less than two weeks ago. Adam and Blake were still at forty-two and thirty-six, though Blake might be getting close to thirty-seven.

Either way, though, the two were monstrously strong and I was glad to have them at my side.

"You get anything this time?" Adam asked after a minute.

"This is the first time I killed a King Taijitu," I said. "So there should be something; a mask at the very least."

"There," Blake murmured and I followed her gaze to see, unsurprisingly, a mask on the ground, with a book underneath it and some lien to the side. Walking over, I picked up the mask—

You have obtained the item 'Janus.'

—And placed it in my Inventory to experiment with later. Observation had turned up nothing but question marks, which didn't really surprise me, but considering that I could only wear one mask at a time, I'd stick to Lenore, as probably the strongest mask, and Lycaon, for its effect. Then I picked up the book and ate it.

You've obtained the skill 'Double Strike.'

Cool, though sadly there wasn't time to truly train it before the mission. The downside of random item drops. I picked up the twenty thousand lien and tossed it to Blake, since I didn't really need it and they had done most of the work anyway.

"What next?" Adam asked.

"Home," I said, which seemed to surprise him. "I'd…"

I sighed.

"Well, I'd hoped to get to twenty-four, but…I guess that's not going to be possible before the mission. My stats probably won't improve in the time we have left, either. We've done all we could out here so let's go home and put you two to bed."

Adam cast me what was probably an annoyed glare.

"Just because you don't have to—"

"Hey, it's not my fault you two aren't awesome enough to go without," I said, smiling even as I wrinkled my nose mockingly. "Such a waste of time. There's not supposed to be any rest for the wicked you know but there you guys are, whiling away the hours. Lame."

Blake sighed, storing Gambol Shroud behind her back as she started walking back to the ship. Knowing from experience how this would end if we didn't shut up, we followed her.

"But seriously, you two should get some rest before the mission," I said. "Everyone's clear on what needs to be done, right?"

Adam and Blake didn't even justify that question with a response, not even glancing at me. Over the week, we'd gone over the game plan something like fifty million times to the point that the two of them were probably going to have dreams about it. I lifted my hands placating at the utter lack of response.

"Once Blake does her thing, you two are gonna have ten, fifteen minutes to get to the ship before I finish reprograming everything. If you can't make it by then, I might have to leave without you," I said before pausing and looking at them both. "But seriously, make it there by then. I really, really don't want to have to do this alone. There's a little room for error, but if anything happens…"

"Prioritize the mission," Adam nodded. "Whatever happens, it'll be okay."

I shrugged at him, pretty sure that was a lie. If Adam and Blake didn't make it there in time, the only options I'd have were to abort the mission or go without them, at which point I'd be…well. I'd be flying solo. Which would be really bad, because a not insignificant part of the mission relied on them crushing anything that got in the way. If I didn't have my massively higher leveled friends along for the ride…

Well, I'd just have to hope it didn't come to that. We had a plan, we'd prepared for everything we could—hell, I'd leveled my luck up massively. I'd done everything in my power to make this plan go well, now all I could do was hope it would be enough.

And, of course, back hope up with everything I possibly could.

"Yeah," I said, nodding firmly as the Gamer's Mind kept me calm. "I'll wake you up when its time, okay? And hey, jokes aside, I'm thinking about catching a little sleep, too."

Adam gave me a slight frown but I saw understanding gleam in Blake's eyes as I sent the former a cryptic glance.

An hour and a half later, I stood in the woods by my house once more, black cloak around me, hood and mask covering my face. Dreary Midnight shifted slightly as a breeze rustled the branches and it felt fitting.

"I, Jaune Arc, call upon the ancient contract of ages past to summon thee," I said. In my disguise, my voice shifted to something calmly, firmer, assisted further by the confidence and power I'd found and clad myself in. "I hope that you heed my call. Come, Air Elemental!"

In Crocea Mores, there had been only a shift in my reflection and a slight rattle, so I wasn't certain what to expect from my second summon every. Not what I got, certainly. For a moment, the forest continued to rustle in the wind before the sound grew suddenly louder as the air rushed forth to spin within the circle as a miniature cyclone that sent my cloak flapping back in the wind. The air spun faster and faster until I had to brace myself against it and—

And then it was gone, leaving behind a pretty little girl with white hair and a light green dress, almost visible currents of air writing around her.

By the way, when I said 'little girl,' I meant she was maybe fifteen centimeters tall, tops. Yeah.

Still, as someone who'd spent so much time disguising myself, I knew that appearances could be deceiving—meaningless, really. As such, I knelt smoothly by the edge of the circle and saw her smile up at me.

I am here. She said and it actually took me a moment to realize she hadn't actually spoke, he voice seemed so real. More than that, she spoke easily and normally, more so then Crocea Mors had been able to before we'd made our contract. I figured the shift had had something to do with the rest of the ritual and had suspected something similar from other Elementals, but…

Then again, she was an Air Elemental and sound was a vibration through a medium such as, well, air, so perhaps it made sense.

I took a deep breath and felt something in that same moment, like something touching my lungs. It wasn't a physical sensation, thankfully, but it was still strange. I held the breath for a moment despite that and spoke.

"I'll begin in accordance to the ancient rituals. My real name is Jaune Arc. You have heard my true name; please tell me yours."

I came apart at the seams. I flew apart into a billion pieces—maybe a trillion pieces—each shifting and shaking wildly as I moved quickly. I rebound off of myself countless times in a dance that should have been, was, chaotic and yet came together as something else. I was gliding over mountains and hills, through the forests and across the seas, and it was…

It was amazing.

For a moment, I was flying and it was almost indescribable. Like anyone born on Remnant, I knew there were limits to where I could go, what I could do. So much of the world was hostile and cruel and so little of it was safe. Before my first trip beyond the limits with Adam, I'd never left the safety of Vale before and I knew plenty of people who hadn't left it in their entire lives. That was just how the world worked. The Grimm were a constant threat, an ever present danger, and if you wandered too far from the kingdoms…well, there were worse things than Nevermore and Deathstalkers. What would you do if you ran into a Nemean or a Leviathan?

Die, in all likelihood. Especially if you ran into a group of them.

We didn't let that stop us from living our lives. In the Great War, we had carved out civilization with Dust and Hunters and even now we could live in safety. With the trade routes and communication towers, we could reach out to other kingdoms, stand together against the darkness. Slowly but surely, we were growing, pushing the boundaries.

But…for now, we still had to stay within the kingdoms.

The wind, though, was free. Across skies beaten by massive dark wings, through fields stalked by beast like mountains that walked, and even in the Darklands to the North, the wind flew without a care for man or beast or the titans of Grimm. It feared nothing and went anywhere, everywhere.

For a moment, I was jealous but the feeling passed, because that freedom…it shared it with me.

I saw the circle, my body absent from its side. The trillion pieces of me began to drag slowly together, pulled back in by some terrifying gravity, and it hurt. Not so much the feeling of returning to freedom, though that was far from comfortable, but the loss that came with it was hard to describe. I felt like I'd been standing on top of the work and someone had decided to throw me off and see how far I'd fall. I fought against that pull, tried to resist it—

And then, there she was, standing on the back of my hand, forehead leaned against my arm. I was whole again, just like that, shrouded in the mask and hide of a Nevermore.

It's okay. She murmured and the feeling of simple, honest joy returned. I gasped for breath then, before my heart suddenly slowed. I am here. My name is Levant. You are Jaune Arc?

"Yes," I said, opening my eyes.

Let us fly together someday, Jaune Arc.

"Yeah. I'd like that." I told her. "Maybe even someday soon. You and me and Crocea Mors."

She looked up at me.

We are one, as the ancient contract dictates.

"Our souls are one."

I am Levant.

"I am Jaune Arc."

Until our souls meet their ends—

"We will be forever one," I swore for the second time.

Call me and I will fly for you. She said. Even if—

I don't remember what else she said, because I was already falling. I slept in the grass that night and dreamt of storms washing across the world. It stirred the seas in its passing and left forests uprooted in its wake. Mountains were ground down—not all at once, but by time, by a hundred years or a thousand or more, each storm fading only to be reborn. I felt power there in the heavens, power I'd never even dreamt of before, and marveled at it whilst I flew on dark wings.

But when I woke up a short while later, I was ready.

XxXXxX

"Just one?" The woman at the front desk asked.

"Yup, just me," I said, adjusting my cap. I was in disguise which I think, technically speaking, meant I was disguising the disguise that disguised the disguise that was disguising me, which I found amusing. I slide the woman some lien over the counter and took the ticket she offered me, as well as the currently empty name tag and printed schedule. "My friends are just gonna watch the flight."

She nodded absently, probably tired and bored and trying to pretend not to be. I felt a little bad for her, both for the tedious job and what was going to happen soon.

"Can I help you with anything else, sir?" She asked as I glanced over the schedule and the map on its back. She glanced at the map pinned to her desk. "If you'd like, I can direct you towards wherever you'd like to go. There are several presentations scheduled to start soon."

I pretended to think about it for a moment before shaking my head slowly.

"Nah, that won't be necessary. To be honest…" I said, tilting my head to the side. "I'm only interested in the ship."