“What the fuck were you thinking?!” exclaimed Kyrie.

  Posted in Gordona’s office, Silvayn convened after the meeting was dismissed. When he offered his neck to the executioner, their thoughts were screaming at Gene but they bit their tongues until they were gone and sure they weren’t being watched. Gordona left them to what she surely knew would be a heated discussion.

  “After all we warned you about, after telling you what happened...you still volunteer?”

  He was exasperated, they all were. Gene volunteered so quickly and without consulting them that they hadn’t had time to think about what he was doing. Gene himself struggled with the revelation he was going through. He looked up to the gathered adventurers who stared at him with pleading eyes. He tried and failed to smile.

  “I…finally got a mission from the hero system again.”

  Everyone froze. Kyrie’s anger deflated and he took a seat. All eyes were pinned on Gene.

  “I’ve been mulling it over since it spoke, thinking about the other instances where it gave me a mission. First time was saving your lives accidentally from the Forsaken, second was for helping you destroy the tower, third was evading the two generals, and finally the last time was to repel Tir. In each instance, lives were at stake. This time when it spoke, it directly told me to protect the adventurers and I think if I don’t go, people will die.”

  The room was silent but the tension in everyone permeated the air, overwhelming Gene’s senses for a moment. He raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose to calm himself.

  “Please, enough,” he said, trying to calm the group. “I understand how this looks. Back home, I was the type of person to jump to help others without any concern about how it would affect me. I threw my life away to save my friend, Sam. I realize that now. I didn’t have the strength to move debris or the power to put out flames, but I just had to be her hero.”

  Gene’s emotions radiated from him, sweeping over the room as he tried to steady himself. I didn’t have any real power back home and I thought the only way I could help was to throw myself at the problem. That’s not what I’m doing here. I was given this power by my system, and in New Venturis, I can use it to far greater effect than I could have if I’d ended up in the superhero world of my dreams. If I’d ended up there, I’d probably just be another costumed crimefighter but here, I can turn the tides of this war.”

  His words weighed heavily on the group. They knew his power, that if he pushed himself, he could possibly take the Spire on his own. But letting him go alone was not an option they agreed with.

  “Kyra, send a message to the Summer faction. We’re going too.”

  Eonis’s words struck Gene where he sat. He looked around the room at every member of Silvayn as they each began to check their inventories and secure their equipment. His stomach churned. With what happened to Marcus and Shauna, he thought he couldn’t ask this of them.

  “Wait, no. You don’t have to–” He jumped up but Eonis’s hand shot out to silence him.

  “We’re going. End of conversation. You need to focus on what’s to come. Once the Summer faction sees what you can do in person and Derek figures out how to skew the events of the battle in his favor, news will spread rapidly.”

  Gene was touched. He had never experienced people rallying around him like that, let alone for something so dangerous. Suddenly he heard the system chime in.

  Hero System Notification: Secondary objective updated…protect adventurer 24 of 24.

  Something crystalized within him in that moment and he was determined to protect them no matter what happened.

  Winnie walked over to him, securing her hat as she asked, “Have you thought more about spending your unallocated points? If ever there were a time to pull out something fantastic, it would be now.”

  “No time.” Kyra cut their conversation short. “Just heard back from them and we need to move now. The operation is commencing.”

  Gene’s eyes shot open wide. He knew they were moving fast but this timeline made no sense. It felt clear as they rushed out of Gordona’s office that he had underestimated how combat driven the Summer faction were. Sounds overlapped as they ran to the teleportation circle. Winnie was right, he needed to use his points and find some way to ensure the survival of everyone there.

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  He wracked his brain, thinking about his current capabilities. He could blast the mind of a single person in his mental range, detect the thoughts of creatures in a vast area, and communicate up to 100 feet away. Without using power stunts, he knew this wouldn’t be enough, and after just seeing the costs for communication abilities, he knew 5 points wouldn’t go far. He wished more than anything that he had the rulebook for his system to know how this was supposed to work.

  When they reached the door to the teleportation circle, he had an epiphany and stepped into the margins.

  In the blink of an eye, the world was gone and Gene heard the system speak.

  Hero System Message: Welcome to The Margins.

  “Um, thank you. How are you doing?” he asked, unsure of the system’s level of sentience. It didn’t respond immediately. He could feel a pressure in his head before it spoke.

  Hero System Message: I am well, Name: Gene Grey. I am here to assist.

  In Gene’s mind, he was delivering an awkward smile but in the Margins, he was only a disembodied consciousness and he wasn’t even sure if they were conversing with speech or thought.

  “Right…well, let’s get to it. I need to view my Character Profile.”

  The second he thought of it, a box depicting him and his abilities appeared.

  Character Profile. Name: Gene Grey, Codename: GreyMatter. Archetype: Psychic. Power Level: 8. Abilities: Might: 2, Toughness: 4, Agility: 3, Awareness: 6, Presence: 5. Powers: Psy Bolt 8 - Unleash an explosive bolt of psionic energy to damage the mind of your foe. Mental Communication 1: Project your thoughts and hear the thoughts of a willing target within 100 feet. Thought Sense 6: Sense the presence of minds and surface thoughts within half a mile with diminishing clarity the further targets are away from self. Language Absorption 1: Temporarily learn the language of any being you’ve been in active mental communication with. Unallocated Power Points available: 8.

  “Right right, I got that. You can skip the explanations for my current powers. I know them pretty thoroughly by now.”

  Gene felt a sense of amusement from the system. For some reason it felt pleased.

  “Are you…happy I’ve figured this stuff out?” He heard an affirming chime in his head before the system replied.

  Hero System Message: Yes. You have done admirably with the lack of guidance you have been given. A normal denizen of the Hero System would have received the basic tutorial to know how to interface with their abilities and the world. You, Name: Gene Grey, have intuitively learned to access the system and use aspects of it appropriately.

  He wanted to take the system’s words as a compliment but he thought of the desperate power usages he’d come up with ever since he got to New Venturis. In light of his repeated incapacitations and wasted spending of his first power point, it felt like an insult.

  “Hmm. Thanks,” he said curtly. “Speaking of the basic tutorial, I kinda missed out on how all of this is supposed to work. Normally in rpgs, you gain experience for every kill in combat or completed quest but with you, I’m getting next to nothing here unless I’m–”

  Being a hero?

  The system interjected without notice, shocking Gene out of his rant.

  “Right. Being a hero. I get it. Hero system, heroic actions,” he sighed. “Unfortunately it’s starting to get harder to do that when I’m knocking myself out to use new powers. They’re just too expensive to buy.”

  The system was silent in reply, leaving Gene floating in the null space, staring at his profile before it spoke again.

  Hero System Message: We must apologize, Name: Gene Grey. You have missed basic instruction and must be informed. Please allow us to speak. Within the hero system, you are a part of the narrative, the tale of the hero. You must use your power to help those in need and when you accomplish your goals, you are rewarded Power Points based on the difficulty of said task. Unlike in traditional systems, you may use your points to gain new abilities whenever you desire or to increase one of your current powers up to the cap of your current level. Because of the expensive cost of building powers, the system has a built-in feature where you can convert one of your powers into an Array. This makes it a collection of alternate abilities instead that have a total combined value plus 1 for each additional alternate ability added to the array. Just be warned, while using your powers in an array, you will only be able to use one ability at a time.

  In his mind, Gene was nodding along as he tried to absorb the information he was being given. Both him and the Hero System could tell he wasn’t getting it. He was used to reading rulebooks but having the information just fed to him in an esoteric void made it hard to grasp the intricacies of the system.

  Hero System Message: Name Gene Grey, in time, you will come to understand all that we have to offer. For now, give us the courtesy to assist.

  Gene laughed in his head and asked, “Do I have a choice? I’m a total newbie here and I’m desperate. Please treat me like an idiot here.”

  He smiled and felt as if the system smiled in turn before they began parsing the Power Profiles. They looked at his powers and their costs, thinking about the system’s prior message on powers he used as Power Stunts reflexively earlier. Thinking about each, the system showed him the costs and impacts on himself. Beginning with the Psy Storm, he saw it was powerful but to make it cheap enough for him to access at his current level, the system applied a feedback limiter that rattled his brain as a result. He thought about the Illusion Casting, Synaptic Scramble, and Mind Control abilities in order next. Morally, he couldn’t see him using Mind Control. When it came to Synaptic Scramble, he felt his tried and true Psy Blast was a better option at the moment and would rather put his points towards expanding and improving his current powerset. He finally settled on adding Illusion Casting 8 that targeted only three senses to his Psy Blast ability and upgraded his Thought Sense to penetrate walls.

  With that, he stepped out of the Margins and projected his thoughts to the group.

  “Guys, wait!” they all stopped in place, feeling Gene’s thoughts shoot their minds. “I just spent my points. We don’t have much time but let’s come up with a plan.”