Strudel the Aquepup was studying Ondun intently as the night grew darker. The warm firelight made the Draconian adventurer look a little more imposing than he had in the lab when the two met.

  Ondun was rubbing his chin, considering how best to teach something to Strudel. Unlike most humans, Strudel could perfectly understand Ondun when he spoke. To the tiny monster, it was as if the adventurer's words weren't merely said with voice but instead were communicated on a more spirit-to-spirit level. Before Strudel had been separated from his mother, a proud Aquealpha, his mother had nurtured the tiny pup in a similar way. While Mons, as a general rule, growled to each other and, with context, made their intentions known, Strudel had never previously had such a connection other than that deep cub-to-parent bond, where a look speaks volumes, and a tiny yelp conveys as much or as little meaning as anyone needs.

  To Strudel, Ondun felt off. It wasn't because Ondun was a bad person; Strudel had been impressed by Ondun's willingness to defend the young. Rather, Ondun himself was struggling with pain and fear that made the small monster wonder just what the human who was teaching him had been through. The dragon-like man felt sometimes like a cub himself, other times like a veteran of a thousand battles, and sometimes like someone who was just playing everything by ear.

  Strudel didn't know which part of Ondun was the real one, so naturally the pup decided they were all him.

  Ondun slammed a fist into his other hand. "Alright, I think I know where to start."

  Strudel just looked up at his adventurer ally, eyes wide and tail wagging. To Ondun, it looked like he was saying, "I'm ready!"

  Ondun reached into his bag and pulled out a piece of jerky and some string. Taking a nearby stick, he tied the string to the stick, then the string to the jerky. "Since I know you like food, we need to start with your general conditioning. You handled yourself well at the lake, so let's take that up a notch."

  To the adventurer, the situation was notable not for the attentiveness of his young monster charge—though, to Ondun, this was nothing short of miraculous, given his previous encounters with monsters—but rather for the fact that Strudel wasn't drooling at the jerky but instead paying him attention. Is Strudel really paying close attention to this lesson? Ondun wondered.

  Ondun prepared the chew toy for his friend. "I'm going to move this to a few different places in a pattern that I think will help you improve your agility. At the end of the sequence, you can have the jerky. Then I'll prepare another one, and we'll repeat. What do you think?"

  "Aquepup!" Strudel was on his legs now, tail wagging excitedly. Thus, Ondun began.

  The actual sequence of direction changes was something that had been partially conveyed by the Shinobi Memory Gem Ondun wore on his chest but was also trained by Suzumi and his own battles against Imperial soldiers back on Arcanis.

  The general idea was to instill in Strudel a reflex to check his back, as savvy opponents would gleefully set traps or create effects that would manifest from behind. Further, it laid the groundwork for the most important lesson any fighter learns on day one: There is no more dangerous ground than the ground you're standing on.

  Ondun felt more than a pang of guilt at teaching what was essentially a puppy so harsh a lesson, that he had honed not just when playing with other boys back in his home village, but also reinforced and refined on the battlefield. Even still, Ondun thought as Strudel completed the first sequence and got to happily eat a sliver of jerky, both worlds are harsh when you stop and think about it. At least he's learning useful skills in a less chaotic environment.

  For a moment, Ondun reflected on the final blows he'd landed against the Empire at the Battle of Grimald Pass. Two Imperial commanders, suited up in custom animatech armor, had attacked him and his strike force in an alternating pattern. His allies were constantly dodging, waiting for an opening. When the chance had come...

  "Aquepup?"

  Strudel poked the string with his nose, his head tilted to one side. Ondun had gotten lost in his thoughts yet again. He shook his head to clear it, then grabbed another piece of jerky and began chewing it. "Good job, Strudel. This time, we're going to go a bit faster. Remember, focus on waiting for the correct moment to go after the jerky, OK?"

  Ondun had realized he'd been more easily caught up in thought than he had at the start of his career when everything was a fresh adventure. For some reason, that small, spherical creature's words rang again in his mind. I wonder, is there actually something wrong with me? I wasn't always like this.

  Ondun dismissed the notion, at least for now. Even as he made Strudel work a little harder for his dinner, he found he was having fun seeing the immature monster twist and turn, just like a more normal dog might. There was something...well, cute about it.

  When's the last time I actually let myself think of something as cute? Ondun wondered.

  It was getting very late. While most of the children were fast asleep by now, Dr. Eugene Wusiji's work had just gotten started.

  The odd, human-like man, Ondun, had been a treasure trove of valuable information. Even his blood was an education. Eugene had sent some copies of the data from the swabs to two nearby hospitals, and both had initially asked why he'd randomly sent them results from someone who worked in a mine.

  After he'd explained the situation—and they'd confirmed with the Guardian herself that, no, he was telling the truth—the implications of the man's biology, the odd DNA sequences, and most of all his ability to produce abilities that only humans at the apex of spiritual discipline could, left them with the uncomfortable conclusion that this man was not only very human, mostly, but had put to rest two theories about the expression of Auric arts in humans.

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  Eugene was now compiling notes from his tests with the few Mons he had, based on the idea of elemental types having a polarity. The man had, of course, been correct that opposing elements, with the same polarity, would fizzle out. When the polarities had been different...

  Eugene looked at the shattered table. Ondun had, in retrospect, not been kidding when he'd indicated he had been holding back.

  Shaking his head, the doctor put aside tiny inconveniences like needing a new table and focused on the email he was typing. A few cities over, one of the leaders—a brawny, brutish sort, not at all unlike Ondun—had recently claimed to have developed an affinity for the Auric arts. So it was that Eugene attached the recordings of the phenomena the odd, dragon-like man had produced and sent them to him.

  City Leader Lee Lee, the man known across Kongming as "The Martialist," would doubtless find these developments helpful in his own "cultivation" or whatever he was calling it these days. As Wusiji clicked 'Send,' he couldn't help but scoff. Either way, it'll make for an amazing monster battle. Better still, I'll get more useful data out of it!

  The hour was late, yet Alice straightened herself up and cleared her mind as best she could. She'd gotten the report from Yongqi about the incident with the child who'd been chased by a corrupted Gloomwolf. Unfortunately, the creature had used its signature ability, Packleader's Call, to amass a small army to help it attack...which Ondun inflicted serious and bloody casualties on.

  That's why she was here. Even as she raised her hand to knock on the door, the man inside called out, "Guardian Alice, there's no need to be so formal. We've worked together for a long time; your odd problem is so intriguing I can hear it from out here."

  Bolts slid open, and a thin, black-haired man in a Hypnonda onesie opened the otherwise unassuming apartment door. While the black-and-white outfit had seriously confused more than one Circuit challenger, Alice knew that was the man giving his opponents a clue in an effort to make a fundamentally unfair challenge a little more even.

  The man was a psychic, after all, and so were all of his Mons.

  He gestured her inside, and, with a quick and shallow bow, she entered. The man's apartment was spartan, with simple black furniture that gave just enough comfort for the city leader to relax in his all-too-infrequent time off. He pushed up his glasses as she thought all of this, though. "You know I like a clean aesthetic. It helps keep my thoughts in order."

  She favored the man with a genuine smirk. "Lowell, even if you couldn't read other people's minds, you would still be one of the most mentally disciplined people I've ever met."

  Lowell tapped his lip. "Of course, that's the problem. This Ondun you think of. You're worried because he's simultaneously very disciplined and really, really not." He gestured to a couch, preemptively feeling Alice's emotional weariness and wariness. She obliged.

  Alice thought before she spoke, so Lowell knew exactly what the woman voiced before she put it to speech. "Ondun isn't from this world. As far as I can tell, he's stuck here with us. I've got him studying with Dr. Wusiji..."

  "...who's at least five bottles short of a six-pack..." he added, rolling his eyes.

  The Guardian of the Kongming Province didn't even try to argue that point. "...But the fact is, I feel like he's a liability in the long run. I talked to him, and the world he's from...it's like ours, four hundred years ago, but in his world, humans and human-like peoples are basically the top of the food chain. They can use magic more or less freely, and in his case, he's singularly talented at, and practiced in, combat."

  Lowell nodded. "Indeed, it's highly unlikely anything but the highest-security prisons could hold him if he went rogue, if I'm reading these thoughts right."

  It was a sign of how dire the situation was that Alice didn't chide the man for looking deeper than he probably should have. While Lowell couldn't turn his powers off, he usually did a better job at keeping them in check. Lowell must be as worried about this as I am.

  Lowell nodded. "Of course. Sure, this man could be a noble hero, but he could also be a complete, unstoppable hooligan. Did he really press Sparkles so hard?"

  Alice just gave the man a nonplussed stare. "Sparkles is far from my strongest Mon, but he was able to inflict a wound. If Sparkles had been closer to the point where she could safely evolve into a Faeblade, there would've been nothing to worry about, probably. This man is stupidly strong."

  Lowell thought. "Which is why you've come here, to me. You need a solution."

  Alice nodded. "Just so. You're really good with people, and these days it's all I can do to keep Yamato and Choson from going back to naval skirmishes. I need some options."

  The room was quiet for about half a minute. About twenty seconds in, Alice got very apprehensive, but Lowell ignored that. He was busy thinking and, with the impressions from Alice's mind, putting together a set of priorities. When he broke the silence, he gave himself two-out-of-three odds that he could do something constructive for everyone, including this Ondun fellow.

  "Guardian Alice...Yongqi is the closest town to here. If you—or that science-nut Wusiji—can send Ondun my way first on the circuit, I think I can help. This Ondun unironically called himself a hero, yes?"

  Alice nodded.

  "All I will require is some time and some trust. Those who have great power need great guidance to use that power well. You, of course, know this truth as well, if not better than I. After all...you are the strongest."

  There was a pause. Alice was not going to dispute what was a well-proven fact.

  "This Ondun seems inclined to brute force because it works for him. I'm going to make it stop working for him."

  Alice's eyes opened wide. "No...you wouldn't."

  "That's why I asked for your trust. This is going to be absolutely awful for him. Yet, if he can get through my little trial, he may be a little easier to work with going forward. If not, he'll be in no position to make trouble. I just need some legal cover, which should be well within the realm of the Guardian herself to provide."

  Alice stood and sighed a deep sigh. Between the man's impatient jailbreak and hot-blooded and bloody rescue of a child, she simply couldn't find it in herself to say no. Worse, for Lowell himself to jump straight to having Ondun brave the trial that everyone in the Advanced Recon Coaches called the 'Mind Maze' was a confirmation that he had agreed with the Guardian: Either Ondun needed to choose to stop being a threat or be made to stop being a threat.

  "I will. Ondun's not the only person I can bend the rules for, after all."

  Alice nodded to the city leader and swiftly left, softly closing the door behind her. Lowell gave the situation another thirty seconds of deep thought, as he felt her teleporter get released from her capture capsule and spirit them off to Olympus-knows-where.

  Then he stood, straightened out the black-and-white bear-motif onesie, and grabbed his smartphone.

  "This is Lowell. There are some circuit preparations around the city we need to make some changes to. We're going to have a very unusual participant this year, and security for both him and the city needs to go to another level entirely. First, the Circuit trials are going to work a bit differently this year..."