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  Gen stared at Francine's text for a moment before pocketing her phone and exiting the dungeon observation mode. Morna and her reappeared in her room where they'd been hanging out prior to Sarah's "friends" entering the dungeon.

  Morna took the dimensional transition seamlessly, immediately starting to roll around on Gen's new bed while giggling.

  "He abandoned her and still got crabbed to pieces! Could you imagine?? Being such a dirtbag and still not getting anything from it!?"

  Jasper nodded his head in affirmation, and Gen suspected that he was likewise offended by the poor display of teamwork. She threw herself onto the bed next to Morna, enjoying the soft pillow-top. True to his word, Jacob had delivered it for free to her dormitory. The actual delivery process was not what she expected, with the bed suddenly appearing in a separate "house" inventory and allowing her to place it. The king-sized Victorian masterpiece had transformed her sleeping experience from torture to bliss. Despite their best efforts, the iguana pile failed to use the bed in its entirety each night, and Gen could actually comfortably sprawl out for the first time since being generated.

  Gen watched Morna still giggling about the dismal performance they just witnessed. She said, "LEO actually seemed pretty amused, and I finally hit level 3 on the dungeon. Your idea of having fresh meat test the dungeon seems like a winner."

  Morna cheered, but then groaned, "Wait, does that mean you're not going to let me run it anymore? I need my snacks!"

  Gen laughed and shrugged, "You can still run it some… At the very least, once it levels again, I'll need to test it again, and you can get the first run. But…. stop attacking Gregor whenever you see him, I think it's hurting his feelings."

  Morna harumphed, "Gen, he's literally a quack. His whole purpose is to trick people into letting him perform medical malpractice. Being rude to scam artists isn't being mean, it's a public service."

  Gen glanced at Jasper, and he shrugged, not seeming to care in the slightest about the humanoid iguana. Despite their similar base, Gregor wasn't one of Jasper's kin and certainly didn't have the teamwork augment. Interestingly, Gen couldn't seem to actually talk to Gregor directly as she couldn't run the dungeon herself, and Gregor didn't respond when in design mode. She couldn't tell if he was sapient or an NPC, and had some concerns about the ethical implications of having him trapped in her dungeon. If his glee when amputating Hon's arms during a test run had been any indication, though, he was having a good time.

  Morna rolled off the bed and sprang to her feet, "So, Gen, your delivery job is all wrapped up now, right? The dungeon has been fun, but starting tomorrow, you're back at the gym, right?"

  Gen groaned, "I'm sore from running all over, though…"

  Morna shrugged, "That's what your healing bathtub is for."

  Gen felt unsure, "Is it really fine to use it every night? I'm not going to get like healing-induced cancer or something?"

  Morna frowned, "You really think LEO would do that? Give you cancer from something that is a reward?"

  Gen hesitated, "Umm, yeah, he probably would think that was hilarious."

  Morna laughed and looked wistful, "Yeah, he probably would… But don't worry! That's almost definitely not the case! If you end up with cancer, I'll pay for your treatment, deal?"

  Gen's brow wrinkled, "I'm afraid to ask, but what is cancer treatment like in this fucked up reality? Do they like yank it out of you with millions of tiny tweezers and it's incredibly painful, good old-fashioned chemotherapy, or like someone dances around you in a toga and it turns into confetti that sprays out of my butt?"

  Morna paused to think, "Probably any of the three, depending on how much you pay… But don't worry, I'll splurge for you and get the butt-confetti!"

  "Wow, thanks."

  After a few more assurances that Gen would most definitely go to the gym with Morna the next day, Gen let her friend show herself out before pulling back out her phone and showing Francine's text to Jasper. He immediately focused on the message, looking a bit more tense. She'd been getting better at reading his body language and interpreting over the last week, but he was obviously still hungry for a more direct and reliable form of communication.

  Without further preamble, Gen texted back.

  Gen: Nice! What did you find?

  Francine: It took some digging, as it's a bit rare and the demand is actually surprisingly high. But there will be a bracelet up for auction in two weeks. While wearing it, you transmit a sentence's worth of thought at a time as an audible sound to everyone within earshot.

  Gen shared a look of excitement with Jasper and quickly responded.

  Gen: How much?

  Francine: It's an auction, so I can't say for sure, but doing some digging on past items, these things can range wildly from 200 to 1500 emmys depending on the exact specs.

  Gen frowned. Aside from whether or not they wanted to, even if she and Jasper pooled their money, they didn't even have 1000 emmys between them. Another message from Francine arrived.

  Francine: I know you said your budget was 300 emmys, but I have high hopes that this will end up on the lower end of the spectrum due to some issues that are probably fine.

  Jasper hissed, and Gen dutifully typed.

  Gen: What do you mean by "probably fine"?

  Francine: So, like all our auction goods, it's been evaluated, and the description is "Who needs text-to-speech when you can have THOUGHT-to-speech! May run warm." Obviously, it's a LEO-level description, and we got the actual specs for it by testing. Basically, the bracelet overheats based on each word that is transmitted, and it becomes dangerously hot if used too quickly. For an iguana's skin, I would hazard he could manage 8-20 words per-hour without worrying about scalding himself.

  Jasper rolled his head in exasperation. Gen stroked his scales to calm him and said, "Well, we can always upgrade it later? With our finances right now, it being defective might be for the best, as otherwise we might not be able to afford it."

  Jasper was somewhat mollified, and Gen responded.

  Gen: Thanks, Jasper will appreciate being able to communicate to any degree. Everyone is looking forward to hearing his voice again.

  Francine: No problem, I'm glad to help. How is Jasper doing? We haven't seen each other since the event. Tell him I said hi.

  Gen glanced at Jasper, who looked bored with the conversation and more in the mood for food than smalltalk. Rolling her eyes, she said, "Go eat, I'll catch up."

  Without further discussion, he flung himself off the bed and slapped across onto the floor before scurrying away as fast as his three-inch self could run. One benefit of being so small he was effectively immune to fall damage and took liberal advantage of that fact.

  Returning to Francine, she messaged.

  Gen: He's doing well. He beat Hon in a fight last week.

  Francine: Hon never stood a chance.

  Gen: Obviously…

  Gen: How does the auction work, btw? Is it online or in person?

  Francine: It's in person. I don't know if you've been online much, but the internet here is seriously a mess compared to Earth's, and that's saying something.

  Gen: Haha, yeah, I tried there first and almost had a panic attack. G2n was the one who pointed me to auctions.

  Francine: He steered you in the right direction. Fortune Wardens have our own tech experts, but the internet is more of a battlefield than a tool… Regardless, the auction needs to be in-person. If you're not available, I could be a stand-in for you?

  Gen: No, you've already done so much. Jasper and I can go. If you're free, though, you can join us as it's been a while since the event and we haven't talked much.

  Francine: That would be perfect!

  They finalized a few more details about the place and time, and Gen turned off her phone. Her stomach rumbled, forcing her to follow after Jasper in search of food. To manage their budget, she and the iguanas were eating the free bread with various toppings for most of their meals, but had compromised on getting a proper meal at least once a week to keep Jasper from eating anything sapient.

  Entering the clubhouse's dormitory room, she saw Aubrey to the side, analyzing one of the constantly rotating motivational posters that she had been rewarded with from the zombie event. Gen stepped next to her and looked at the picture.

  It featured a velociraptor with explosions in the background, with bold text that read, CHOMP FIRST! SO YOU CAN CHOMP SECOND!

  Gen stared at it quizzically before asking, "Is the implication that you should attack first so you can still be alive to eat the body…?"

  Aubrey jumped at her voice, having not noticed her approach before, giving her a quizzical look, "Gen! That's so violent! I think it's saying that you have to take each meal one bite at a time…"

  Gen shrugged, she still liked her interpretation better… "Speaking of violence, you should do a run of my dungeon sometime. I still haven't seen your finger guns in action, and it's starting to bug me."

  Aubrey laughed and shook her head, "Pali told me all about it already, I think I'm good skipping out… I'll leave it to battle-nerds like Morna and conventional nerds like Twen."

  Hon popped out of nowhere, beaming and said, "Oh! What about me? What type of nerd am I? A vehicle nerd?"

  Aubrey stared at him and shrugged. Gen leaned in and whispered to Hon, "I think she's thinking you have to be good at something to qualify as a nerd."

  Hon gave Aubrey an outraged expression, and Aubrey lightly hit Gen in the back of the head as she exclaimed, "That's not true! You're as bad as Morna Gen!"

  It was Gen's turn to look outraged as she playfully started wrestling Aubrey, "Take that back!"

  Their wrestling was interrupted when the clubhouse's cleanerbot bumped into them as it attempted to vacuum the area. Pulling away from each other, Gen saw that Waldo was sleeping on top of the roomba-like device, completely oblivious to the loud vacuuming noise. Of the seven iguanas living with them, Gen was still struggling to keep them straight, but Waldo was always the easiest to distinguish by his perpetual tan color.

  Gen had done some research on iguanas over the last week in an attempt to be a better caretaker, but the research hadn't exactly been fruitful. Iguanas could apparently change color to a more limited degree than a chameleon, but none of the iguanas had actually displayed the ability. Quizzing Jasper about it, she'd only gotten vague shrugs and was forced to conclude that the iguanas either couldn't or didn't know how. She was still a bit vague on what the iguanas were from a soul perspective, but judging by their insane diets, which definitely weren't possible for a conventional lizard and apparent unfamiliarity with their own bodies, she was forced to conclude that, at the very least, they weren't normal iguanas.

  Her tangential thoughts were pulled back to the present when Hon asked, "Speaking of the dungeon, you did a test run today with Morna's friends of friends, right? How'd it go?"

  Gen smiled, "Total wipe! Next time, we should make a watch party of it. It was pretty fun watching them die horribly, and the dungeon even leveled up."

  Hon looked excited and cheered while Aubrey looked a bit ill and mumbled something about excessive violence.

  Hon and Gen continued chatting about the dungeon and her new polls while she went to the kitchen. Jasper was still there, along with the majority of the other iguanas. They were crowded around a table playing what looked like poker, but had potato chips instead of money for chips.

  Gen had been practicing the iguanas' names and looked around the table, identifying them. To help her memory, she'd been giving them parallels of the dwarves from Snow White to help make it easy. Jasper was obviously Grumpy, Waldo was Sleepy, Ash was pretty shy and usually stayed in the garden so he could be Bashful, and… it kind of fell apart there. She couldn't exactly talk to them and hadn't spent enough time with the others to identify which one was the happiest or smartest or dopiest… Jet suddenly sneezed, knocking over the playing cards that matched him in size.

  Chuckling, Gen quickly made a peanut butter and honey sandwich and devoured it in short order, finishing up just in time for the familiar ding~! as her polls resolved.

  Her eyes flickered over the results. The saws were evidently an unpopular option, but at least she didn't have to worry about violating any copyrights by theming her dungeon after a certain horror franchise… The flavor poll was tied, so she wasn't surprised when LEO's voice appeared in her ears.

  "Ah, my resident psychopath, I'm so glad that you're leveling up your murder-lair by spreading it to the general populace, and I get to break more ties! That was sarcasm by the way, Gen! Anyway, let's see here Cyber or Haunted House, well I'm an AI so how could I resist picking Cyb--"

  His voice cut off abruptly mid-word, and he didn't finish the sentence. Gen stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, waiting for him to finish, but he never did. Shrugging, she entered her dungeon and inspected the updated menus.

  Unsurprisingly, the maximum number of runs per week increased from 10 to 15. Unfortunately, she hadn't unlocked any additional dungeon essence or the ability to make a 3rd room in the dungeon. Still, though she had a new trap section available for placement and saw her reward waiting for placement.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Glue Trap: 1 dungeon essence.

  She eyed the suspiciously cheap placement cost for a second before selecting the new tab in the menu labeled "Flavor".

  To her surprise, this section showed the text Haunted House. LEO hadn't finished his sentence, but she could clearly hear that he'd been about to select Cyber before being cut off, so seeing the opposite option here didn't make sense. Not dwelling on what was wrong with the obviously defective AI managing the universe, she selected the Haunted House button and revealed a new menu of… nothing.

  The panel was blank, and there was nothing to select.

  "Did he seriously brick my dungeon?"

  Frustrated, she repeatedly opened and shut the menu before complaining, "Shouldn't there be like spiderwebs here or something?"

  The menu flickered, and the text Spider Webs appeared, causing her to freeze. Hesitantly, she selected it and immediately could mentally sense that she could arbitrarily place spider webs wherever she wanted. She would make small ones, long ones, fresh ones, dusty ones; the variety and options were more or less limited only by her imagination, so she immediately set to work piling them on thickly between two pillars.

  During the last week's worth of testing, she'd found lots of important limitations when making her dungeon's walls. First, she couldn't entirely block the path between actors and the creatures they were supposed to be fighting, and likewise, she couldn't place things too "unfairly". Basically, if she put actors in a pit and surrounded them with crabs, the whole dungeon editor would freeze up on her. She'd pushed it to its limit with her current setup in her second room with swiss cheese walls and the surprise crabaggedon attack, but…

  She could further cheese the difficulty with spider webs! A single web wasn't that strong, but it was well established that spider silk was incredibly strong when layered. If she used it correctly, then maybe she could crush even someone like Susan with a level 3 dungeon!

  ***

  "Stupid dungeon."

  Morna laughed while they rode the trolley to the gym. Controlling herself, she replied, "Why are you trying to make the dungeon unwinnable to begin with? No one will want to enter if it's just a death trap."

  Gen rolled her eyes, "To prove I can! I've got to find the limits of the ruleset so I can design around them, but how am I supposed to do that when it's all so complicated and arbitrary!?"

  Her impromptu design session the previous night had been a frustrating experience. Trying to make impenetrable walls of spidersilk had quickly proven to be impossible. Just like blocking the pathways with literal walls, the dungeon editor wouldn't let her box things in too much. Not only that, but trying to make tripwires from spider silk was also restricted. As much as she tried to game the system into making traps and obstacles, the Haunted House flavor seemed limited to setting the ambience and aesthetics of the dungeon, and any attempts to use it to directly harm or inhibit actors were met with roadblocks.

  Gen, of course, took that as a challenge.

  Her first success was finding that the spiderweb was able to inhibit vision as long as she didn't go too crazy with it. So, of course, she went a little crazy with it, filling room 1 with as many crazy cobwebs as the dungeon would physically let her. There was a hard limit, but it was pretty high, and she smiled smugly at the altered setup. The whole design of room 1 currently was that distracting iguanas would run around, and the single giant crab would eventually get a lucky sneak attack. The pillars in the room were present to disrupt vision, and the new spiderwebs greatly enhanced the design.

  Feeling accomplished, she tried to think what she could do next. The spiderweb option hadn't even been available until she thought of it, so she tried to think of other things one might find in a haunted house and see if they appeared. This mental thought process was somewhat hampered by the fact that in none of her lifetimes she recalled actually being in a haunted house, but Victor had played Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Kyle had seen a number of horror movies.

  True to her theory, her flavor menu was quickly updated with an impressive list of options. Candle, mirror, broken mirror, framed painting, coffin, rusted chains, wallpaper, banisters, floor planks, squeaky floor planks, rotten wood, fog, bones, pipe organ, tombstone, body bags, bloodsplatter. The list was endless and only got longer when she found she could add sound effects such as a child crying or a high-pitched scream. She eventually had to stop herself as the available options didn't seem to have a hard limit, and anything that would fit in some semblance of a haunted house or the surrounding area was fair game.

  There were several limiting factors she couldn't add anything alive, like a zombie or a vampire, or anything with trap potential, like an activated bear trap or a raised guillotine. Interestingly, she could add beartraps that weren't activated and a guillotine that wasn't raised.

  Putting that altogether, she now had an absolutely insane amount of options and ideas to the point that she rapidly reached decision paralysis and had no idea where to go with things, and hadn't even gotten around to testing her new glue trap.

  Morna gave her a pitying look, "You sure think a lot for someone who makes such bad decisions."

  Gen stuck her tongue out at Morna, ignoring her as the trolley rolled to a halt and they returned to her nemesis, the gym. Seeing the rectangular building with the nondescript sign that read Mike's, she shuddered.

  Warily, she asked Morna, "Robo dogs again?"

  Morna gave her an appraising look before shaking her head, "Your cardio is definitely trash, but let's focus on reflexes instead. No amount of running will help you if you die from freezing up."

  "Wow, thanks."

  Following Morna, they scanned their badges and quickly found themselves in a private room. Selecting from a menu, Morna configured the workout session, and Gen started stretching. Feeling her heartbeat already starting to accelerate in anticipation, she couldn't help but ask, "So what is reflex training? Clearly, this isn't a normal gym, but it's not going to just start shooting at me with guns, right?"

  Morna rolled her eyes, "Gen, that would be pointless, you're too slow to dodge a bullet." With a final click, Morna finalized her selections, and a mechanical monkey walked out of a doorway holding a bandolier of daggers. It stared at Gen, and she stared back. The next thing she knew, she had a dagger impaled in her stomach, and blood was gushing out.

  ***

  "Are you still mad?"

  Gen stared at Morna while soaking in her healing pool and wearing a swimsuit, but didn't reply.

  Morna nervously wrung her hands together, "I did tell you not to freeze…"

  "Morna! You keep telling me how terrible I am, so I do not understand what is not clear. I am a beginner! Dagger monkeys are not beginner-friendly! Does the gym not have less lethal options for training that don't need emergency stitches!?"

  Morna looked a bit cowed, but still was being obstinate as she said, "Yeah, but I'm trying to help you learn faster… You don't have a lot of time before the next scenario… The whole training philosophy is that the more dangerous it is, the faster you'll get results!"

  Gen groaned as she sank deeper into the pool and felt her dagger wound slowly healing. Collecting her thoughts, she calmly said, "Morna, I appreciate it, I really do, but if I get killed during training, then it's kind of putting the cart before the horse, isn't it?"

  Morna shrugged, "It's set up to be non-lethal… Like the monkey aimed for your gut for a reason, gut shots suck, but worst case, you'd have thirty minutes, and that's plenty of time to get treatment."

  Gen raised a finger, glaring at her friend. "That. Is. Not. The. Point." Taking a deep breath, Gen continued, "To be direct, having to come back here and soak after five seconds of training is not productive, and getting monkey PTSD is not helpful. Either you turn the difficulty at the gym way down, or I'm going to ask Twen for training advice instead."

  Morna looked devastated. "You wouldn't."

  Gen looked away, shrugging, "I would. He seems like he could recommend something sensible at the very least."

  Morna's face flashed through a dozen emotions before settling on resignation. "Fine. I can set it to baby mode… I was just trying to train you the same way I was trained."

  Gen gave her a hard look, "Who trained you, exactly, sadists?"

  Morna shrugged, "My family… they're traditionalists…"

  Still staring at her, Gen felt there was something more there. Morna was obviously brilliant and seemed to think Jacob's family's wealth was paltry. Whoever her family was might be a bigger deal than you'd expect from Morna's normally flippant attitude, but she'd never really talked about them.

  Deciding to push her luck, she said, "I'll forgive you about the knife monkey, but… tell me about your family."

  Morna collapsed on the ground next to the bath and started swinging her limbs around while whining. "Nooooo, I don't wanna!"

  Gen stared at her while continuing to soak and waited for her to exhaust herself. After a surprisingly long time, Morna stopped and peeked at her before frowning. "That usually works…"

  Gen shrugged, "Jasper can't talk, but he's built up my tolerance for people complaining by a lot. So hurry up and tell me your dark secrets. Let me guess, your family is rich and powerful, but you didn't conform to their standards, so you ran away from home."

  Morna gasped, pointing at her, "She's a witch!"

  Gen rolled her eyes and waved at Morna impatiently.

  Morna groaned and leaned against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "You're more right than you're wrong. I didn't run away from home exactly, though. I'm an adult, even if people want to act like I'm immature. I just moved out. I was living alone for a while and didn't have any friends really until I stumbled on one of old Gen's fliers and found the club."

  Gen didn't want to interrupt, but couldn't help herself. "You didn't have any friends? Like you're one of the most sociable people I know…"

  Morna sighed, "Yeah, I knew people, but most people I interacted with were very stuffy or were just talking to me to get something. I'm an observant person, so it was obvious they had ulterior motives, and I just couldn't make any friendships when the whole premise was inauthentic. To be honest, that's why I still don't really want to talk about my family with anyone… I like the people here, and I don't want them to treat me differently."

  Gen hesitated before saying, "I know I'm bullying you into talking about it, but you don't actually have to… I don't think I'd treat you any different, but I don't want to make you uncomfortable even if I am curious…"

  Morna shook her head, "No, you're fine, I don't think you're the type, but some people have a hard time looking past details like family history. Generated and genlings face a lot of discrimination, and I wouldn't ever say it's equally bad being rich, but…"

  Gen smiled, "Some people start proposing marriage out of nowhere?"

  Morna pointed, "Exactly!" She sighed and continued, "So yeah, I just wanted to be myself and make friends without all the baggage. Grandpa is cool about it, but my parents and most of my family are all acting like I'm going to bring down the dynasty or something… Some people in the club are observant enough to notice something is up, like Twen or you, but most people haven't pried."

  Gen laughed, "Yeah, yeah, sorry for prying, but this is my revenge for getting my stomach eviscerated!"

  "Technically, it's your own fault for not dodging…"

  Gen glared at her, "Just get to the juicy part and tell me how rich you really are. Also, explain it in a way that I can understand with my nonexistent social knowledge."

  Morna groaned, "Ughh, you have no flair for drama… fine… my grandpa is… well, he's not really my grandpa, more like great-great-great---"

  "Morna!"

  Morna rolled her eyes, "He's Sun Tzu."

  There was a moment of silence, and Morna looked pretty smug before continuing, "Didn't expect that, did you?"

  Gen frowned, "Who the hell is Sun Tzu?"

  "What!? How do you not know who he is… He's literally the most famous strategist in history! He wrote the art of war!"

  Gen shrugged as she rose from the tub, feeling mostly healed, and reached for a towel, "Doesn't sound familiar. Maybe he's not as famous as you thought?"

  Morna looked like she was having an existential crisis as she floundered, "He was one of the originals when LEO made the new reality! LEO literally only picked the most famous people from history to maximize viewer interest!"

  Gen finished drying, "Like maybe my soul fragments just happened to not include him? I don't remember the bulk of my past lives… I did expect it to be someone I heard of, though, with you making it such a big deal. Someone like Genghis Khan or Einstein… Were they in the original group?"

  Morna pouted, "Grampa is way cooler than those damn Kahns. Genghis was one of them, but I have no idea who Einstein is."

  It was Gen's turn to look shocked, "You don't know who Einstein is… I thought you were smart."

  Morna lost all sense of control as she leapt forward, trapping Gen in a chokehold.

  ***

  Two weeks passed in a blur. Morna cooperated with Gen's ultimatum, and their gym sessions turned from literal hell to just figurative. She still ended up bruised and exhausted more often than she'd like, but didn't feel like her life was on the line at least. Her rate of improvement was impressive by her own metrics with the aid of the healing pool, but Morna seemed to be comparing her progress to something superhuman and became increasingly irritable as the scenario date drew closer.

  "Heeey, Gen, want to start going to the gym in the evenings?"

  Gen glanced at her friend. They'd had an exhausting morning running from mechanical hounds, and after a soak in the healing tub, she was happily browsing Internet videos while buried under a pile of iguanas watching along with her.

  "No."

  Morna grabbed her leg and started dragging her out of the soft bed, and Gen was forced to pull out her trump card as she quoted, "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."

  Morna recoiled like she was being burned alive. "Stop it!"

  Gen smiled happily, "It's a pretty good book, thanks for the recommendation. I've got plenty more quotes ready unless you're done?"

  Morna frowned, "How can you be so carefree!"

  Gen shrugged, "I'm just following the advice and practicing looking weak?"

  Morna pointed at her accusatorily, "You are weak!"

  Gen shook her head, "I believed you at first, but after these last few weeks, I've realized that, actually, you just have unrealistic standards. If Hon can enter a scenario without being terrified, I'll be fine."

  Morna threw herself on the bed, sending iguanas scrambling, "I love Hon, but he's an idiot. Do not use him as a supporting argument."

  "Well, how about Sarah's friends. I'm definitely cooler than them."

  Morna shook her head, "Surviving by the rule of cool only works when you reach my coolness level. For a dork like you, you need actual skill. That loser group might be lame, but their equipment is actually good enough to make up for their incompetence. What are you even entering the scenario with?"

  Gen thought for a second, "Assuming we win the auction tomorrow, I'll bring the translation bracelet, which is one plot point, so I've got 9 left. My swimming pool is a bit situational, but I don't know how to live without daily soaks anymore, so I'm bringing it. That leaves 5 points, and that's exactly enough for my minefield scepter. My boomerang is neat, but I'll just have to leave it behind."

  "You're hopeless."

  Gen frowned, "You're literally just bringing snacks so…"

  "Yeah, but I've been trained my entire life to handle anything that comes at me, so I don't need equipment! You've got no defensive equipment, no ranged attacks, no lights, and no escape tools!"

  Gen looked at Jasper and said, "Is it just me, or is she sounding more like Twen every day? I feel like there's some sort of role reversal going on here, Morna. Why are you being so serious… I honestly expected you to be trying to get me to bring something crazily impractical instead of recommending standard equipment."

  Morna looked deadly serious, "Gen, I know I can be goofy and love LEO, but a lot of people don't come back from scenarios, and I don't want to lose you."

  Gen shifted uncomfortably, "I'm not planning to die, Morna, and worst case, I have my viewers…"

  "How many?"

  Gen checked her app and frowned. "37." Left unsaid was the fact that it was one lower than it had been a few weeks ago. She knew she'd been busy designing the new haunted house layout of the dungeon and working out, but what did her viewers expect from her?

  Morna nodded, "You're a fresh-generated Gen. If you go on hiatus, what do you think happens to your viewers?"

  Gen shrugged, having no idea.

  "They are forced to observe nothing until you are successfully regenerated, and with just 37 viewers, that could easily take over a month. Do you think these people who hardly know you and exist only to be entertained will stick around staring into the void for at least 800 hours? Not only that, but every time one gives up on you, that just means the time increases for those still viewing! Viewers are fickle, Gen!"

  Gen frowned. She hadn't exactly considered the specifics of how hiatus worked… Alfred still wasn't back. He'd died because of her, and she had no way of knowing if he'd ever actually be regenerated.

  Staying serious, she said, "We're going to an auction with Francine tomorrow… I could switch out some of my equipment. Is there anything you'd recommend?"

  Morna thought for a moment and sighed, "Keep the pool and translator. Healing is invaluable, and I've seen you use the pool to good effect. Ditch the minefield scepter, though its plot cost is too high. Maybe in the future you could get it enhanced, but for now, especially with you being level 1, you can't use half your inventory on a weapon that, honestly, is highly situational. Your boomerang isn't much better. I'm all for fun weapons, but until I get time to give you actual weapon training, you would be better off with getting a shotgun, body armor, a flashlight, and a force ward."

  Morna gave her a bit more advice before leaving for the evening, and Gen passed her phone to Waldo to flip through more Internet videos while she thought.

  The iguanas crowded around the phone, hissing with laughter except for Jasper, who lay on her face.

  "I wish we had the translation bracelet already… I could use some advice."

  He licked the side of her face, and she smiled, wiping away the spit.

  "Thanks, Jasper… I know Morna is worried about me, and I'm trying to take this seriously, but everything really is so new and confusing. Am I making a mistake rushing into another scenario? I could wait another month and train more… but if I do, how many of my viewers will stick around? I don't even know what they like about me…"

  She stared up at the ceiling of her room. She had friends, and with the dungeon, she potentially could end up rich even without ever doing another scenario and risking her life, but…

  Her mind flickered back to Susan in the zombie event. There really was something about seeing someone so powerful and confident that she was envious of. People like Aubrey, who'd given up on leveling, seemed happy, but she didn't think she could be satisfied with something like that. Jasper and the iguanas were part of her now, and she was excited to find out what other abilities she could get in the future, and if she stopped now, she had a feeling she'd never be able to get moving again…

  Focusing, she created a new poll. Losing a viewer honestly scared her, and it had been a while since LEO had given her one, so it felt right to give her viewers something to engage with. Morna's advice wasn't bad, and she definitely knew what she was doing, but Gen didn't know if it was actually the right decision. As long as they were at the auction, she could let the viewers shape at least part of her equipment.

  Nodding at the options, she felt satisfied. She didn't think Morna was wrong, and having the right equipment could save her life, but Morna herself was the one who had taught her the power of just being entertaining. She hadn't done so well in the zombie event by playing it safe, and if she didn't believe in her ability to adapt to anything her viewers threw at her, then she'd never be able to deal with whatever twisted ideas LEO came up with next.

  Looking at the iguanas reading memes, she stood up and called out, "Lights out, lizards!" A chorus of hisses came out in response, but she ignored them as she stole back her phone. If she'd learned anything about being a lizard mom, it was that bedtime discipline was important.

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