Change what you can, live with what you can't.

  "C'mon, kiddo, we're going."

  Brom felt damn good all the sudden, and he had no idea why. Maybe it was the hot shower. Maybe it was digging his favorite old denim jacket out of the closet and discovering it still fit. Or maybe it was the fact that the sun was still shining bright as anything, and he was still here to see it. An attitude of gratitude he'd been lacking when he'd woken up this morning. He had a plan, he had a goal, and he was going to snap anyone who disagreed over his knee. Fuck other people, it was his turn now.

  The look on TJ's face was priceless. It was that look teenagers got when they realized that their parents weren't just inert blocks of wood that stocked the fridge and paid the bills. Or well, parents was the wrong word to use in Brom's case, but it still stood. He blinked, once, twice, and then shook his head. "Uh, are we going to fight something, or am I supposed to help you impress the ladies. Like, uh, proof you're like stable and dependable or some shit." He flicked a hand up and down, gesturing to Brom's entire look. "...that's a hell of a fit. You look like a rockstar, a vintage one, but still a rockstar."

  He looked over the top of his sunglasses at his nephew, raising an eyebrow. That was the nicest way anyone had ever called him old at the ripe age of thirty-six. "I wasted enough time trying to be one, guess I nailed at least one aspect. And no, I don't need an underage wingman, thanks for the offer though, kiddo. Means a lot."

  "I mean, I was the one encouraging you to hit the gym and clean up." TJ grumbled a little bit, falling in behind Brom. "I guess you turned your mood around. Happy looks good on you, Uncle B."

  Once again, Brom had to admit TJ had a way with words sometimes. "...feels good too. I mean, sure, I could keep wallowing after last night but if you can whoop and holler and get excited about your shiny new passive after almost dying, I think I can stop being a bitch about my emotions." That was a massive deflection, downplaying his own issues, but now that he'd chosen to change his attitude, he was committing. Healthy or not. His boots crunched on the gravel, and he huffed out a half-laugh. "For an afternoon at least, that is. I think I'm going to be unpacking all that emotional luggage for a while still."

  "Are you really? Not going to pack it back in the closet?"

  He had to stop himself from making a closet joke. Some aspects of his life were not suitable for sharing with his nephew at their current stage of relationship. Instead, he rolled his eyes, the motion lost behind the polarized lenses of the aviators, and changed the subject. "You wanted to hit Instances, right? Works out for me, there are some confirmed to drop weapons as rewards. I figure I'll pick one and see if I can feed the reward to the Grip."

  "Smart!" TJ's bow had already been stowed, his hands gesturing with excitement as he punctuated his words. "I could use a new weapon, too. The tutorial bow is okay, but if I'm going to go places with you, I'm going to need something stronger." He hesitated a half step and then jogged a couple of paces to catch back up with Brom. "I am going places with you, right? You offered before..."

  Brom had offered before. He knew once upon a time he'd never have allowed it, but things had changed. Keeping TJ out of danger would cripple him. Managing the danger and the risk to lower and more acceptable levels was the way to keep him safe. Giving a man a fish versus teaching him to and all that... "Yeah, I'll take you places. I was going to go to the cemetery and punch skeletons, but that might not be so good with your bow, even with your shiny new passive."

  Skeletons had a lot of gaps for an arrow to slip through without doing any damage after all.

  "What are the options? We could pick one together?" The teenager was incredibly excited, almost enough to hide the hint of nervousness that threaded through his voice. The way his shoulders tensed and relaxed had more to do with anxiety than eagerness. He might have had a good cry at breakfast, but TJ needed more than that.

  Brom penciled in the difficult conversation for after dinner, before homework.

  "Well, there's one at the library, the mobs sound easy, but it's got a puzzle attached. Do you know the Dewey Decimal System?" If his nephew knew it and could give Brom a digestible crash course, then maybe they could tackle that one first and go from there.

  TJ's first response was an incredulous look. "I don't know how to break it to you, Uncle B, but I barely used the library. Reading isn't really a hobby I made time for, and if I needed to do research for school, I used the internet, guess I'm going to have to change that." While there was clearly an internet-like infrastructure woven into the System interface, nobody had really started navigating it with the ease of the former world wide web.

  And scrying orbs only seemed to get public access channels. Good for information, but bad for teenage entertainment.

  "Okay, so we'll put the library at the bottom of the list for now. That leaves a playground with hallucinations and creepy doll minions, a greenhouse full of angry plants, or the animal shelter with were-animals." He ticked their options off on his fingers as they reached the end of the driveway. Sure, they could have teleported from the porch, but Brom had a weird pet peeve about people popping into existence or vanishing from it on the lawn. It just seemed rude. It was also a double standard since he didn't hold himself to that when he was stumbling home in desperate need of sleep and a shower.

  "Well, in order, " TJ took a breath and raised his fingers to count off his opinions on the instances, "fuck that shit, I've seen enough hentai, and I guess that leaves the shelter by default." He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, a gesture he was picking up from watching Brom do it, highlighting that he also needed a haircut soon. "Did your source tell you whether the silver is provided? I'm fresh out if we have to bring it ourselves."

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  "Doesn't say. I'll go in first, scout levels, check details, and see how doable it will be for you." It wasn't an insult to TJ but a practical consideration. TJ didn't have a health pool in the triple digits and punch that could powder brick. The risk versus reward ratio had an entirely different set of numbers for the teen. Numbers a new weapon could make a huge difference in.

  TJ's only answer was to bump a fist with his uncle, even the light impact leaving his knuckles smarting like he'd just smacked his fist on a rock.

  "Alright, where's your closest Waypoint to Bayside Animal Shelter?" Brom pulled up his own Waypoint map. Outside Cold Bay, there were only a few location points he could transit to. Most 'wilderness' zones only had one or two teleport points. Inside Cold Bay, though, it was thoughtfully mapped, better than any city bus, as long as you'd visited them. Thanks to his work with city officials, Brom had touched all of them at least once.

  "Uh, Pearson Field? There's a training Instance there that gives you a permanent increase to one stat." TJ glanced at Brom. "If you haven't done it yet, you should swing by. I mean, you don't need it, but stats are stats?"

  "Stats are in fact stats and I need them like everyone else, TJ. Only my Body and HP are crazy high." That was entirely because of his busted passive giving him ten times the HP and three times the Body Stat per level. As near as Brom could figure. He still hadn't sat down and attempted to figure out the math behind XP, Stats and progression. He'd wait for smarter people to figure it out and tell him. All he knew was that those two numbers, those were big numbers now that he was level eight.

  Having reached the end of the driveway with their destination set, the two Jones men first used the Travel Network to get to Cold Bay and from there, the more detailed points inside the city to warp to Pearson Field. There was a hubbub around the field, a neatly curated line of folks lined up for the Instance to get their crack at the free points. It warmed Brom's heart to see that the programs he'd heard the city officials talking about were actually getting implemented. They needed them. They needed to get people used to using their powers and integrating them into everyday lives. The System wasn't going to pull its punches just because people ignored the signs.

  "Man, has anyone figured out if the interface can stream music? I really miss not having headphones." Brom's life had been a little devoid of music of late. He'd been thrilled to find out that his record player still worked, but he hadn't gotten around to hauling all the vinyls out of the attic just yet. Plus, it wasn't like he could carry a record player with him everywhere he went, not and have it powered. Damn, was he actually considering the logistics of carrying around a record player? And he'd laughed at boomboxes back in the day.

  TJ shook his head. "Not that I've been told about."

  "Kinda sad when you think about it. So much human creativity wiped out." He'd ask the System later if any of it had been preserved.

  TJ made a noise of agreement. "Wait, this means I'm never going to get to hear anything from your band, doesn't it?"

  A flush climbed up Brom's neck. "Yeah. Well. While losing that discography might be personally devastating, I can't exactly say we're a loss on the grand scale of things. Black Channel was here for a good time, not a long time." Idly, he wondered how the others were getting on. He'd seen some of them in the chat, sending messages, when the sky clock had ticked down, but he had no idea where the other guys were now. If they'd even survived.

  He laughed after a moment. "Look on the bright side, we also lost a lot of bad things. Like Furbies!"

  TJ rolled his eyes, but his smile was warm as they turned down the needed side-street.

  The squat brick building of the Bayside Animal Shelter was obscured by a greenbelt of semi-wild flora. As in when they'd built the place, they hadn't finished clearing the lot, allowing a small strip of forest to border the building on all sides untouched. Cars were rusting in the parking lot, it took time to scrap them after all, and an eerie quiet had descended over a place that should have been full of animals.

  Inside the building, a bored Guard sat at the desk along with a person wearing a Ranger insignia, formerly known as Animal Control. Both of them looked up from the sad game of cards they'd been playing as TJ and Brom walked in, glancing at each other before looking back to the odd pair. "Welcome to the Bayside Shelter... are you here to report a roaming monster or the Instance in back?"

  "The Instance." Brom and TJ answered in unison before TJ raised a hand and yielded the rest of the conversation to his uncle. He'd gotten excited.

  "The Instance," Brom continued, "to get my nephew a new weapon. I'm just going to scout it for him first and give a detailed breakdown of what he should expect."

  The Ranger shrugged, going back to looking at her cards, clearly handing them off to the Guard. The man rummaged around on the desk for a bit before handing them both clipboards with forms on them. "Just fill it out. Fairly simple. Name. Class. Level. Leave the 'after' section blank for when you get out." He extended his hands to take them back, glancing at the names on the forms. His whole posture changed, eyes going up and locking onto his reflection in Brom's shades.

  "Brom Jones? Like... the Dungeon Ringer? The dude that steered that boat monster into a building?" The Guard was surprised, the Ranger now paying attention again, her cards forgotten.

  TJ answered before Brom could, pride in the teenager's voice. "Yeah. He's that Brom Jones."