Once his hair was done, John stayed in his impromptu room for a little while longer. His stomach felt like it'd been tied in a knot, he could smell his own breath, much of his outfit was filthy, and his throat was dry enough to rub sandpaper raw.

Can't deal with social interaction like this.

Unfortunately, in his haste to rectify these issues, he opened up the Inventory menu without thinking. That was a mistake. There was no faster way to send his mood plummeting through the bedrock than to see three Human Corpse entries staring him right in the face, even if it was only text.

All of a sudden, he wasn't hungry. He ate anyway, chewing mechanically on a breakfast bar he'd looted at some point. A bottle of water chased it down. Brushing his teeth was a nauseatingly mundane experience, though the faint tremor in his hands made it a little more frustrating than usual. He found himself staring at those hands for a long time after it was done.

To sort out his clothes, he at least didn't need to go into the Inventory itself. Outfits were a separate thing. Still, somehow his inner gaze kept being drawn to that option, some kind of morbid mixture of fascination and revulsion pulling at his psyche, like standing at the edge of a cliff and feeling the urge to jump.

A burst of nervous energy shot him to his feet, and he was out of the room before he knew it.

John walked.

It was a simple act, one foot in front of the other, but it felt monumental. Each step gave a muffled echo. Convicted criminals on their way to their execution probably didn't feel half as nervous as this.

The wide, linoleum-floored hallway of the community centre stretched before him like a runway to his own personal judgement day. He had faced down giant monsters, battled eldritch abominations that defied the laws of physics, and fought against men with the intent to kill, but none of it had prepared him for the simple, terrifying prospect of rejoining his comrades with his new look.

He could hear them ahead, their voices echoing faintly from a room somewhere deeper in the building. Doug's low rumble, punctuated by Lily's clearer, more measured tones. They were just talking, a mundane sound that did nothing to soothe the frantic, hummingbird beat of his heart. It felt like it had been an eternity since they had been separated back at the school, not the handful of hours it probably was in reality.

In that time, something fundamental had shifted within him. Whatever fragile, nascent social confidence he had painstakingly assembled had crumbled to dust. He was back at square one, an awkward loser in a gigachad's body who had replied "you too" to a cashier wishing him a good meal only days ago. That incident felt like another lifetime, and yet closer than ever. He wondered about the cashier briefly, how she'd fared, but dismissed the thought. Didn't have it in him to be optimistic about that kind of thing right now.

His hand rose to his hair, his fingers ghosting over the sides of his head. He had spent the better part of an hour on it, a ridiculous amount of time in the middle of an apocalypse, but he had needed a project. Using the fine control his Biomancy afforded him, he had tweaked and re-tweaked it with obsessive precision, lengthening follicles by fractions of a millimetre, adjusting the precise angle of the undercut, sharpening the lines. It was a masterpiece of pointless, anxious artistry. If nothing else, he could be proud of the job he'd done, even if it turned out to look lame as fuck.

A fresh wave of self-doubt crashed over him. Was it too much? Did it look as stupid as he secretly felt it did? He focused, and a subtle ripple of cellular command flowed from his mind to his scalp. A few strands of the long fringe on top shifted, falling a little more artfully over his brow. No, that was worse. He reversed the change, then adjusted the messy shock of hair on top, giving it a little more volume.

+100 Aura

What does that mean, though?

A flicker of approval for the change, he supposed, but it brought him no comfort. The system had very, very different tastes to any reasonably human being.

He knew, logically, that this was absurd. He was their leader, for all intents and purposes. He was the one with the ludicrously overpowered system, comparatively speaking, the one who had single-handedly cleared a portal, and the one who charged ahead to face the dangerous enemies. He had saved their lives. They weren't going to mock his new haircut even if they thought it was the ugliest thing ever. Doug might give him some grief, but it would be good-natured. Jade would probably just raise an eyebrow. Lily would be too kind to say anything negative, and Chester… Chester would likely be too wrapped up in his own anxieties to even notice.

John sympathised with him there. At this moment, he wasn't sure he'd notice any differences in hairstyle for his comrades, either.

But logic had no place here. This was the realm of pure, uncut social terror, a battlefield far more daunting than any monster-infested suburban neighbourhood. He had built a persona of cool, detached competence, and he felt like a fraud. Now he had to walk back in and perform the part, and he was convinced he had forgotten all his lines. He was going to be booed off stage, he just knew it.

The doorway loomed. He reached the threshold and stopped, his body refusing to carry him through. His hand rose to the cool metal of the door handle, his fingers wrapping around it, but he couldn't bring himself to push it open. He just needed a moment. Just a second to compose himself, to slip the mask on so it sat straight. It would be fine. He knew them. Somewhat. Well enough to know they weren't dicks, at the very least. It was all in his head.

The choice was abruptly taken from him.

The door swung inwards, pulled open from the other side. Doug stood there, his muscular body filling the frame. He wasn't looking at John's hair, or his clothes, or the subtle tension in his shoulders. His gaze was fixed directly on John's eyes, and there was a wry, knowing curve to his lips that was entirely devoid of mockery.

The conversation inside had indeed stopped; John realised he hadn't even been aware of its absence until this very moment. He didn't know when it had paused, either. They could have noticed him approaching ages ago, and had known he was on the other side of the door the whole time. Was that a bead of sweat on his forehead, or just a phantom itch? An unnerving silence hung in the air, amplifying the frantic thumping in his chest.

Contrary to every single one of John's spiralling expectations, Doug said nothing about his appearance. He didn't even seem to glance at the meticulously crafted hairstyle. His inspection of John's eyes was brief but intense, as if he were searching for a specific crack in a façade, a particular shadow in their depths. Whatever he found, or didn't find, he kept to himself.

"Kid," he said, his voice a low gravel. He stepped back, holding the door open wider in a clear invitation. "Get in here."

The room was a small dance studio, or perhaps a yoga room. One entire wall was mirrored, reflecting the space back on itself. The opposite wall was a series of wide, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the overgrown green of the park surrounding the community centre. The still-veiled burning sky blazed through the windows, casting long shadows across the polished wooden floor. Lily was standing near the centre of the windows, one hand resting on one of the black pillars splitting the rectangular panes, her gaze distant as she scanned the perimeter outside. She turned her head as he entered, her expression placid. Carefully placid. Was that a bad sign?

John needed an anchor, a pose, something to ground himself. He tried for casual, aiming for a level of coolness that suggested he had just wandered in without a care in the world. He ambled over to the window, leaning his shoulder against the jamb and crossing his arms. It felt unnatural, a pantomime of relaxation. From the corner of his eye, he could see his reflection in the glass.

The hair was… a statement. With edginess standing paramount on the agenda, he'd gone for a style that could charitably be described as unorthodox. It was certainly a look he'd never imagined he'd ever wear. He needed a Herculean effort of will not to hunch his shoulders as his traitorous mind questioned what Luke Farnell and all the other dickheads from school would say if they saw him now.

An edgy undercut, the sides trimmed down to barely longer than a millimetre, but it wasn't a uniform length. Shorter at the bottom, minutely longer at the top, styled to look like a steady gradient was sweeping up from his neck to the top of his head.

The uniqueness of the style didn't stop there; back in the day, it had been popular to shave elaborate patterns into one's hair. Usually, this consisted of tacky-looking stuff like brand logos or stars. But John had a strong memory of seeing a random dude in the street with awesome tribal patterns swooping around his skull, all corners and dots and lines, and he'd tried his best to emulate that half-memory.

The pièce de résistance was the bit he'd left atop his skull. Long and thick, it was a chaotic black mess that he had deliberately styled to look artfully dishevelled. The fringe was the centrepiece, a long sweep of hair that, with a slight tilt of his head, would hang down over one eye in a curtain of pure, unadulterated angst. For now, he had it swept back towards the rear of his head, held in place with an elaborate knot that was barely visible unless you were really looking for it.

He hated it. It was the kind of haircut a fifteen-year-old would get to rebel against their parents. It was also, he knew with a deep, instinctual certainty, exactly the kind of thing the Aura system would adore. It screamed 'protagonist'. He completed the look, pulling his sunglasses from the pocket of his jacket and sliding them on, plunging the sunlit room into a cool, dark shade. The world felt safer from behind the tinted lenses.

He held his pose, waiting. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Doug closed the door softly behind him, the click of the latch echoing in the quiet room. Both he and Lily were just looking at him. It was a blank, expectant silence, far worse than any immediate joke or comment would have been. He could feel a flush creeping up his neck.

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It was Lily who finally broke the spell. A small, wry smile touched her lips, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. At least it wasn't a sneer of revulsion or a mocking smirk.

"It suits you," she said, her voice even. "It has a certain… tactical impertinence. Very bad boy chic."

+400 Aura

John blinked behind his sunglasses. Tactical impertinence? What did that even mean? He had been prepared for 'it looks cool' or 'what did you do to your head?', but this was entirely outside his predictions. Still, it leaned positive, and he'd got some Aura for it, which was a relief.

Doug let out a gruff chuckle, the sound seeming to vibrate through the floorboards. He walked further into the room, stopping a few feet away. "She's right, kid. Looks sharp. Like you're about to go brood on a rooftop in the rain." He gave a grin that was all teeth, but his eyes, like Lily's, held something else. Something knowing. He was playing along, but he wasn't fooled. At that moment, John felt less like a cool protagonist and more like a specimen under a microscope.

"Got a new Spell that lets me mess with my biology," he managed to say.

Lily gave a roll of her eyes that he hoped was playful and not exasperated. She was smiling, so? "I'm jealous. Sleep well?"

"In a manner of speaking." John frowned. "My Spell technically knocks me out, but it's hard to call it real sleep."

"I'm double jealous. Sleep doesn't come easy these days."

"There are trade-offs," John said, and left it at that. He glanced back towards the door he'd entered from. There'd been no sign of Chester or Jade since his arrival, but that was barely ninety minutes ago, in fairness. "Everyone's good?"

Doug shrugged, and his grin turned a little cheeky, in John's estimation. "In a manner of speaking. Any injuries we took have been dealt with by level ups, at least."

John carefully made sure his frown didn't deepen so far it became a grimace. "Injuries?"

"I suppose we should explain how things went down after we lost track of each other." Doug place his hands on his hips and gave a sigh. "Did you exit from the same portal we entered from?"

"Yes."

"Then you probably saw the aftermath of our little altercation with Daniel."

John just nodded at that.

Lily's eyes gained a flinty edge. "The sons a' bitches were waiting for us outside."

Doug, however, grinned. "But they weren't counting on what the birds could do, were they?"

Lily snorted. "Yeah, they definitely didn't see that coming".

"I don't know what happened before we got out there, but by the time we arrived the birds were already tearing them a new one. That crow is quite a vicious little bugger, isn't he? If it weren't for the armoured one, I'm pretty sure Daniel would've been scratched to shit"

John blinked. "The birds attacked them?"

"Yep." If Doug's grin got any wider, it would threaten to escape the limits of his face. "The parrots with their laser beams and ghost moves. The Dove shining like a disco ball. And that beautiful bastard of a crow. We're going to have to search out a pet shop to see if we can get them some special treats or something. Without them, Daniel's crew probably would've been able to pull off a pretty devastating ambush. Wouldn't have been fun for us."

"It was impressive," Lily said. "But most importantly, it gave us the upper hand we needed to drive them off. Managed to put a crossbow bolt right in Daniel's stomach, which forced them to use some artifact thing go get them out."

"Artifact?" John asked.

Doug nodded. "Didn't get a good look at it. Some pendant thing Daniel had around his neck, he smashed it on the floor, and a huge cloud of smoke erupted. It only lasted a second or so, and they'd vanished when it faded away."

"We're working under the assumption it was some kind of teleport thing, rather than just a smoke bomb to give them cover for their escape," Lily added. "Because why wouldn't they attack us while we couldn't see, if it was the latter?"

"And what about after that?" John asked, a little tentatively. If Daniel's group had been fought off, they should've been able to come back. He had an idea, but didn't want to make assumptions.

Dug adopted a contrite expression, bowing his head a fraction. "Took us until the fight was over to realise you hadn't followed us out. We intended to go back. Rushed, even. But the fight had taken us all the way to that big hall at the side of the school, and we were barely halfway through the school buildings before the birds started going mad up above us."

John closed his eyes and side. "Another monster horde came through didn't it?"

Lily answered, "It did. Came out out of nowhere, as far as we could tell. There wasn't enough time to make it to the portal. We had to run like fuck."

"Typical." John sighed. "It seems awfully convenient, doesn't it? The monsters come along just in time to prevent you backing me up."

"Scary idea," Doug mused. "It definitely makes you wonder."

Lily had her fists clenched at her sides, and there was tension in her jaw like she was keeping it closed through a serious effort of well.

John eyed them both, taking in their reactions. Intuition that had nothing to do with skills rose up and implanted an idea in his mind. "I don't think I need to explain what I'm thinking to you, do I?"

"That something, somewhere is watching at all times and manipulating the monsters to nudge us into conflict?" Lily asked, venomous eyes staring at nothing.

"Yeah." John swallowed. "That."

"I figure there's nothing we can do about it," Doug said. "So there's no use fretting too hard on the matter. Better off focusing on what we can do."

A few beats of silence passed. John took a deep breath before he spoke, "Fair enough. So what happened to you guys after the monsters chased you off? I don't actually know how long I was in there."

"It's been a little over two days since we last saw you," Lily said immediately.

"I'd say closer to three," Doug disagreed. He shook his head. "Night's come and gone twice since, but we entered the portal quite early in the day."

It took every bit of self-control John had not to flinch. Without the bodily enhancements granted by his upgraded stats, he was sure he would've reared back like he'd been slapped.

"That's… I definitely didn't realise it was that long."

Doug arched an eyebrow. "Enjoying yourself too much, eh?"

Sure, if you call being in such agonising pain that I was apparently unconscious for double-digit hours enjoying myself, John thought bitterly, knowing he couldn't say such a thing. Instead, he gave a half-smile and said, "I didn't realise how much the monsters in there delayed me. Felt much shorter, from my perspective."

+400 Aura

A pretty good evasion, if he did say so himself. Didn't even lie, technically.

"Well, a lot happened over on our end, too," Doug said after a moment, shaking his head. He put his hands on his hips and let out a deep sigh that made him sound his age, for once.

"Two days," Lily whispered. Then, louder, "Feels like double that, with all that's gone on."

"If it's any consolation," Doug said to John, "the birds stayed behind to keep an eye on the portal, though it seems like they didn't go in at any point, for some reason. Not sure what that was about. They were constantly going back and forth between us and the school, though, to keep us updated."

Lily gave a small huff of frustration, crossing her arms. "Any time we tried to go there, a swarm of monsters would show up and chase us off."

"It seems like you must have got out with real bad timing, because they got back to the school one time to find the portal gone, and no sign of you." He paused, rubbing at his chin and gaining a severe expression. "But can we put something like that up to bad timing? Believing in coincidence seems dangerous, these days."

"You think there was another… nudge?"

"It's possible. Time the arrival of a monster horde just right to make it take longer for the birds to find us, delaying them from getting back to check on the portal, so there's a gap that lets you inadvertently slip past."

John's knuckled popped as he clenched them. And if the birds had found me, I never would have gone towards the hospital.

Maybe Curtis and Claire would still be alive, or maybe they would have died a far more unpleasant death, but at least that way he wouldn't have the whole debacle hanging on his psyche like a leaden weight.

"Regardless," Doug said, eyeing him. "They rushed right back to us, only to see a fight going on right near the school. A meteor fell from the sky! Was that you?"

John nodded, lips pressing into a thin line.

+400 Aura

Doug barked a short laugh. "Your bag of tricks seems like it really is gonna be endless."

With only three more levels of Arcane available, the end was actually fairly close in sight. John wasn't going to tell them that, though.

"And then the birds finally saw you flying around and went to fetch you back here," Doug said.

"This place has kind of become our base," Lily explained. "When we return here, the monsters don't seem to come and drive us off. Not yet, at least."

"Return from where, exactly?" John asked.

"Portals, of course," Doug said proudly. "We've done two."

John blinked. "Damn. Good job. Blues?"

"We found a green as well, at the huge Sainsbury's down the road, but didn't want to risk it without you," Lily said.

"One was in a graveyard, and the other in an old, abandoned warehouse."

Lily shuddered exaggeratedly. "Spiders in the former, cockroaches in the latter. They both fucking sucked."

"They definitely weren't pleasant," Doug agreed with a nod. "And the elite enemies were no joke either. The spider queen made us all use multiple levels each to heal up, and the less said about that fucking bodybuilder cockroach monstrosity, the better."

"But you destroyed the portals, right?" John asked, gaze cutting between them both.

"Distracted the bosses long enough to take out the eyes, like you did in the depot," Lily said.

"Did you get any souls for it?"

Lily and Doug exchanged a look.

"Tough question," Doug said with a wince.

John stared at him. "How so?"

"Well, see, it was Jade who dealt the final blow both times, and… We've been trying to avoid asking her anything that might put her mind under stress, in the last couple of days."

John kept staring. "What does that mean?"

Doug's grin faded, replaced by a more serious expression. He clapped a heavy hand on John's shoulder, the weight of it both grounding and startling. "I need a hand with something. Got some gear stashed in a supply closet down the hall. Need an extra pair of eyes to help me sort through what's useful and what's junk."

It was a pretext, and a flimsy one at that. There was no reason Lily couldn't help, or that it needed to be done right this second. It was a clear, unambiguous signal, unmissable even to the most socially incompetent soul on Earth: We need to talk. Alone.

John's mind suddenly became very still and very clear. The fear of social judgement was instantly replaced by a different kind of apprehension, a cold dread that had little to do with hairstyles and everything to do with the look in Doug's eyes. This wasn't about him. Or rather, it wasn't just about him. Something had happened.

He gave a single, sharp nod, his own attempt at projecting gruff seriousness. "Sure."

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