Josie and Elaine walked into the Hole in the Wall. They looked around the apartment,

  but the Ducklings and June were missing.

  Josie groaned.

  If they were getting into trouble, she was going to choke someone until their eyes

  bugged out.

  “I wonder where everyone is,” Josie said.

  “I’ll call Beatrice and ask her what’s going on,” said Elaine.

  Josie nodded, deciding that she need a cup of coffee and maybe a sandwich after what

  they had done for the sleepers.

  At least Mister Warner was keeping Jack out of trouble in the south.

  “Beatrice said they are out at the Hangar,” said Elaine. “Do you want to go out and

  round them up?”

  “No,” said Josie. “Let them play while we take a moment to refuel our mental

  batteries, and think about what we can do until Jack comes back to put the stargate

  in, and give us something to take the spines out of everyone without having to slice

  them open like fish.”

  “Madam Harp and Jane seem to have everything in hand,” said Elaine.

  “We are dumping a lot of responsibility on them,” said Josie. “I hope they don’t

  break.”

  “They are tougher than that,” said Elaine.

  “So we have a hospital, we have a partial staff, and they are getting used to the

  building,” said Josie. “The next problem is making sure we can transport everyone

  across the city, checking and healing everyone on staff, and then moving the sleepers

  in the tent city out as we work on them.”

  “And then we have to work on the injured on the Enterprise,” said Elaine. “That will

  present challenges of its own.”

  “It’s a separate but related problem,” said Josie. “The main considerations are the

  same, but the locations are different with a different time margin on it.”

  Josie found some ingredients that she could turn into sandwiches to eat. She worked

  on that, before she whipped up a cup of coffee to drink.

  Elaine cut herself a piece of pie and put some ice cream on it. She nodded at the light

  snack on its plate. She poured herself a glass of tea to go with it after stoking the

  cooking fire and warming the water.

  “Jack and Mister Warner are handling the goblins with the Enterprise,” said Josie.

  “They haven’t called for help, so I think we can assume they are handling things well

  enough they think they don’t need oversight.”

  “They picked up passengers,” said Elaine. “Handling that might be part of their

  problem at the moment.”

  “We should write some of this down on the Office board,” said Josie. “There’s a

  small chance that Juni passed her test. How do we handle that?”

  “It depends on what Boim Russ decides to do in the next few days,” said Elaine. “She

  might not want to stay with us, or June may be repositioned somewhere else.”

  They ate in silence for a moment, thinking about the future. June, as an auxiliary

  watchwoman, could handle smaller quests if she had the means to investigate

  problems.

  If Mister Warner stayed, they might be able to foist her on him as an apprentice. He

  had the means to investigate and find things with his watch. And he knew the lay of

  the land better than they did.

  They might be able to give him a copy of their model to help him find people that

  needed to be located to clear quests.

  He already could teleport like Josie. Showing him how to do a stargate, or the

  migratory firebird, should be a snap. Then he could cross the continent without their

  help, or the Enterprise.

  Josie frowned at the thought they still had to track down the rest of the Montrose

  while dealing with the remains of the undead army. On the other hand, the Enterprise

  could knock down some massive doors for them.

  And they had to be ready for new quests while working on everything else.

  “If Mister Warner stays, maybe we can foist June off on him as his backup,” said

  Josie. “He has a good lineup, and can cover for anything she messes up while trying

  to do the quests.”

  “Do you think the Shemmarians will still try to create super soldiers for their army?,”

  asked Elaine.

  “Maybe,” said Josie. “They outfitted their guys with spell books of some kind.”

  “So we might have to look at how they did that,” said Elaine. “Are we cutting them

  off from their source?”

  “We might have to,” said Josie. “As long as they are just a special unit, assassination

  may be the only thing they can do. Once they have enough of those books to outfit

  the majority of their army, they become a real threat to the rest of the continent.”

  “And you would get a quest to look into it like the goblin trees,” said Elaine.

  “It would be better if we could see what the right decision is before we made it, but

  what happens then?,” asked Josie.

  “We go through life like we do now trying to make the best decision we can with

  what we have,” said Elaine. “Even if there isn’t a good decision.”

  Josie nodded in agreement.

  “Should we talk to Jane about expanding the House?,” asked Josie.

  “I don’t know,” said Elaine. “We should wait for Jane to say something. She has a lot

  of responsibility. If she is right about Hilda, she will need a new assistant to help

  her.”

  “She’ll need a fleet of assistants,” said Josie. “She might be able to arrange for more

  managers to help her carry the load out of the people we are sending her.”

  “She might be able to get some people from the city if they want to work for her more

  than Duke Hent,” said Elaine.

  “Maybe we should cast out a net,” said Josie. “That’s another thing we will have to

  talk to Jane about. I don’t know how the Duke will take it that we are setting a

  mission up in the middle of the city to take in all the sick we can.”

  “We are going to have to ask him at a certain point,” said Elaine. “I doubt he will

  interfere, but a hospital will have to pay taxes and things will have to be assessed for

  the Duchy.”

  “The Society should have given you a watch,” said Josie. She took the cleared plate

  into the kitchen and put it next to the sink. She made herself another cup of coffee.

  Elaine worked on the rest of her snack. She frowned at the melting ice cream.

  “I think you and Jack are the exceptions to the rule,” she said as Josie settled into her

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  chair. “I don’t think they ask for people who live here to be their champions because

  we might do like the Shemmarians and become menaces, but they don’t want their

  champions to live here for the same reason.”

  “The more involved we are, the more we want to fix our way?,” asked Josie. She

  sipped her coffee.

  “Yes,” said Elaine. “The Society as a whole seem fine with the way you are doing

  things, but I think other champions have stayed and that is the basis of these stories

  that we have like Gowan Hand.”

  “I can see that,” said Josie. “I don’t have any reason to go back home. I don’t think

  Jack has a reason. I can’t say the same for Juni, and Mister Warner. Juni has her

  fighting until she gives it up, and Mister Warner has his shop. Juni coming here might

  be seen as a fresh start by her. Mister Warner has kept a lot of his moving back and

  forth secret so it might take something to have him move here after so long in the

  other world.”

  “Do you think Jack will be a good husband for me?,” asked Elaine.

  “You are asking the wrong woman about that,” said Josie. She tried to smile in

  reassurance. “I think he hid something inside, and he is coming to terms with it. I

  don’t know how that will look in the next twenty years. I think you are making him

  better whether he knows it or not. And I think he is making you better in some ways

  too.”

  “You never thought about finding someone?,” said Elaine.

  “I thought I had, but he got screwed up by his lifestyle,” said Josie. “I’ll find someone

  else one day. Until then, it’s okay if I walk alone.”

  The stargate buzzed in the living room, and the women looked up. They went to see

  their Ducklings coming home. There was some debate as they emerged one by one

  from the door.

  “You cheated,” said Angelica.

  “No one said I couldn’t use the watch,” said June. She grinned at the middle girl.

  “Cheat,” said Alicia. She walked by with her stoic mask, waving at Josie and Elaine.

  “Laura didn’t cheat,” said Melanie.

  “What happened, girls?,” asked Josie. She hid her smile as she stood by the door.

  “She cheated,” said the girls.

  “Did not,” said Juni. Her smile said otherwise.

  Boim and the other three girls came through the stargate. Aviras rode on Matilda’s

  head as usual.

  “Hello, Missus,” said Beatrice. “How did things go?”

  “We have a basis for things,” said Josie. “I think all of you should see the place in

  case we need you to work there after lessons. So Juni cheated?”

  “She turned into her dog form to chase us down during Seek,” said Matilda. “Then

  became invisible when we were seeking her. Then when Aviras figured out where she

  was, she turned into her fighter and used the trees to get away by bouncing between

  them.”

  “Sounds like a cheater to me,” said Josie. She almost smiled but the girls were in

  high dungeon, and she didn’t want to cause a fight.

  “Turned invisible?,” said Elaine.

  “Card Captor Sakura changes spells every time I use it,” said June. “I don’t know

  what the mechanism is.”

  “I knew there was some kind of trick to that one,” said Josie. “All right, so it

  exchanges powers. That’s good to know, but it leaves a hole that you will have to

  work around if you get approved.”

  “It’s the randomness factor,” said June. “I know. It’s a Ben Ten situation.”

  “What do you think, Mistress Russ?,” said Elaine.

  “You have a nice place here,” said Boim. “Can I stay here for a bit? I need to

  find a job so I can support myself.”

  “So does June,” said Josie. “We are waiting on Jack at the moment to get done. I

  think you guys should go over your letters and numbers after I take you over to the

  hospital to look around in case you guys will need to do something there in the future.

  Then you guys will have to get ready for dinner.”

  “Jack can carve out another room at the Hangar,” said June. “I could if I got the right

  spell, but I don’t know how many times I would have to switch back and forth.”

  “Jane will also need a gate back and forth from the House to the Hospital,” said Josie.

  “What’s next?,” asked Beatrice.

  “We have to get Jane’s Amazons cleared of any infections, get the goblin tree victims

  cleared from the growths inside of them, clear the victims and Shemmarians off

  the Enterprise, decide what to do about June if she doesn’t get the job of provisional

  Champion of Order, go through Mister Warner’s archives, take more Montrose

  targets, and help anyone who needs the help, and answer quests,” said Josie. She

  glanced at Elaine. “Did I miss anything?”

  “We need June to start her own archive for this first quest,” said Elaine. “And we

  need to know the result of Master Warner’s quest.”

  “Right,” said Josie with a snap of her fingers. “We need a report for the use of the

  stolen Enterprise by our guest and our youngest.”

  “Are you going to make me write a report too?,” asked Matilda.

  “I think so,” said Josie. “Aviras too.”

  “I have no thumbs,” said the dragon with a lizard smile.

  “You are too blue to be such a weasel,” said Josie. “Understand?”

  “I will need help,” said Aviras.

  “I will help you,” said Boim. “I know how to read and write.”

  “Thank you,” said Aviras.

  “How long does this report have to be?,” asked June.

  Josie gestured at Mister Warner’s stack of paper still on the middle of the table. That

  elicited three groans, and a murmur.

  “If I were you, I would not shoot for size, but completeness,” said Elaine. “You have

  Josie’s book of knowledge ledgers from her quests. You should be able to use those

  as a base of comparison.”

  “All right,” said Juni. “Let me get one for us to look over.”

  “Do not use my capture as the example,” said Aviras.

  “That’s fair,” said Juni. “I will be right back.”

  She went through the living room, the gate, and across the Hangar to her guest room

  to get one of the books.

  “I am going to take the Warner Archive upstairs,” said Elaine. She scooped up the

  pile of bound paper. “We might need to section this out.”

  “Maybe we can load it up for easy searching,” said Josie. “Jack has been wanting to

  recreate the Internet. He just needs an idea on how to do it.”

  “The Internet?,” said Elaine.

  “At once the greatest and worst tool of communication from our world,” said Josie.

  “Girls, get cleaned up and I will take you over to the hospital. We can do the tour, and

  show you around. Then you will have to do the rest of the day’s chores.”

  Beatrice gestured for the others to get cleaner clothes and start washing their faces as

  she went upstairs to get a clean set of clothes for herself.

  “Thank you for helping Aviras, Mistress Russ. I will take you four to the hospital

  tomorrow when we start trying to clear the Amazons,” said Josie. “When Juni’s

  situation is resolved, we will have a better read on what the Society expects her

  to do.”

  “Do you think they will let her stay here?,” asked Boim.

  “I don’t know,” said Josie. “They will let Juni know if they let her keep the watch.

  The tour shouldn’t take that long. Juni has to do her own work. Understood?”

  “Yes, Missus,” said Matilda.

  The other girls assembled as Juni arrived with the casebook from the first completed

  quest in hand. She put the book on the table so her group could read it.

  Elaine arrived with pens and paper for the four scribes. She placed one ink bottle

  close enough so everyone could reach it.

  “It would be better if the reports didn’t look like Mistress Russ wrote everything for

  Aviras,” said Josie. She gave Jack’s sister the eye. “Cheaters never prosper.”

  “I won’t copy the work,” said June. She squinted back.

  “Good,” said Josie. She smiled. “Do what you can while I give the girls the tour. If

  there are any questions, Elaine should be able to call Jack, or the Enterprise, for an

  accurate reading of the facts.”

  “When did you know Josie was your boss?,” asked Aviras. He sat in the middle of the

  table, looking at June.

  “She’s not my boss,” said June. “But when I was twelve and she was nine, she pushed

  an old lady down a flight of stairs. That was when I knew to not get caught on a flight

  of stairs with her when she was mad.”

  “Then I have taught you well,” said Josie. “Let’s go, girls. If you see anything that

  needs to be adjusted, write it down and let me know.”

  Josie turned into Zatanna and whisked the majority of her Ducklings across the city.

  “Did she really do that?,” asked Boim.

  “And then beat her with her own wheel chair,” said June.

  “What’s a wheel chair?,” asked Matilda.

  “Where I am from, some people might have problems walking,” said June. “So the

  medical people invented a chair on wheels so they could push the wheels and move

  around. We have a lot smoother roads and walks for pedestrians so it’s a small

  concession to the minority to make their lives easier.”

  “Josie did that?,” said Boim.

  “She was nine,” said June. She opened the case book and started reading it. She made

  notes on the top sheet of paper as she went. “Kids get angry.”

  She passed the book to Matilda and Aviras. She started writing out her account of

  her first quest in a free flowing hand. She referred to her notes to keep the general

  feel of the book without copying it completely.

  Boim walked around the table to read the casebook over the young girl’s shoulder.

  She looked up at the mention of the fish people and their fish god.

  “Fish people?,” said Boim. She frowned at June.

  “At least one, they didn’t confirm if the whole town was fish people,” said June. She

  paused in her writing. “The description of what was coming through the gate is fairly

  Lovecraftian so they might have lost a good section of the planet before something

  happened to turn the tide.”

  “A section of the planet?,” said Boim.

  “Worse would have been the changes in reality from corruption,” said Aviras. “They

  don’t see things the way other powers do. And their touch has a way of changing

  what is touched in ways they weren’t meant to be.”

  “That could have been an ongoing problem,” said June. “No one wants grass that tries

  to eat you.”

  “Can I see your notes?,” asked Matilda. She pushed back her frizzy hair. “That will

  make things easier for me.”

  “Sure,” said June. She handed over the notes. “This is like being back in school,

  writing papers for a stern teacher.”

  “That will push you down a flight of stairs,” said Boim.

  “What teacher hasn’t wanted to do that?,” asked June. She grinned at the group.