A/N: Well, now that our heroes have been set on fire, it's time for a light, fluffy chapter.

Once again, Sun-il and I walked through the darkness towards his family home, fleeing from a parahuman conflict where we were on the losing side and just barely survived.

I really hoped this wasn't the start of a pattern.

As we got near the end of an alleyway, I put a hand on Sun-il's shoulder to stop him. "Hey, hold up. We should change our clothes."

Sun-il looked down at the burnt ruins of his hooded jacket and blue jeans. "What's wrong with these?" He joked. "I get your point though. Worried about cops?"

"And about what'll happen if someone from the gang sees us with burnt clothes and no injuries. Inventory." I pulled a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of thin air and handed them to Sun-il.

He raised an eyebrow at the air where the equipment had come from. "Hey, I can see the menus now." He leaned further over, looking at my inventory screen more carefully. "I'm surprised you only put a couple of outfits in there. If it were me I would be using it for everything I owned."

I nodded in agreement. "I was a little tempted to do that too. I didn't want my mom to go into my room and notice that my dressers were empty, though, so I just put like gym clothes and stuff for training in there for now."

Sun-il nodded in understanding. "Hmm, I wonder... can I pull stuff out of the window, since I can see it? ... No? Okaaay, how about... Inventory!" Sun-il waved his hand majestically at an empty patch of air, but the expected menu screen failed to appear. "... Damn. No luck."

"Hey, you're already ten levels higher than me and counting; you want to steal my whole shtick too?" I asked, pulling a second set of exercise clothes out of subspace or wherever my power was storing them. "Put your clothes on and quit whining."

It really wasn't fair. Sun-il had started as Lvl 13, but the text above his head already showed that he was a Lvl 17 Ki Adept and counting. I still wasn't entirely sure what was driving the transformations. It seemed unlikely that it was based on something as simple as quest and combat experience, because Sun-il had gained three levels while we were walking back to his house; at the same time, it didn't seem like it was just threat assessment either because the ABB gang members that I had seen didn't gain or lose any levels between being lightly armed at Lung's warehouse and being heavily armed while looking for the Undersiders. Also, that Taylor Hebert girl was about Lvl 16 when I saw her in school; did that mean she was about as strong as Sun-il? And if so, how? The whole problem was making my head hurt.

"You're one to talk," Sun-il teased. I blinked and noticed that I was still holding my change of clothes while staring off into space. "What's the matter? Is the great Jee-han so disappointed by being lower-level than me that he forgot how to use the equip menu?"

I snorted and pulled the spare clothes on, then put both of our Burnt Rags into my inventory to be disposed of later. "Just thinking," I said. "Is that the only menu that you can't pull up?" I asked. "Try Status." My own menu popped up, and I was about to close it down before I noticed that not only had I leveled up, a few of the descriptions had changed.

The Gamer Level 8

Han Jee-Han

Stats:

STR 10

- Affects melee damage, carrying capacity, and all STR-linked skills.

DEX 5

- Affects accuracy, reflexes, and all DEX-linked skills.

VIT 6

- Affects total hit points, health regeneration speed, and all VIT-linked skills.

INT 5

- Affects total mana points, the power of mana-consuming skills, and all INT-linked skills.

- Party Leader: Grants passive STR, DEX, and VIT bonuses to all subordinate party members.

WIS 6

- Affects mana regeneration speed, the execution speed of mana-consuming skills, and all WIS-linked skills.

- Party Leader: Grants passive INT and WIS bonuses to all subordinate party members.

LUK 5

- Affects the chance that new skills will be generated, the chance that effort-based bonuses to stats will occur, and the chance of developing new specializations.

- Party Leader: Grants a passive LUK bonus to all subordinate party members.

Stat points: 20

It looked like now that I had chosen a specialization, the data was not only a little bit more detailed, but some sections had been added to reflect my choice. After that, there were the tabs for health and mana, skills, faction reputations, etc. as normal; none of those appeared to have changed from the last time I looked at them. I looked up to see that Sun-il did have his own status window; it looked more or less the same as mine except that there was no second line for his class, and everywhere my screen said 'mana' his screen said 'ki', with a green-colored 'mana bar' compared to my blue.

Also, his stats were way higher.

Ki Adept Level 17

Shin Sun-il

Stats:

STR 20 + 2

DEX 21 +2

VIT 26 +2

INT 13 +3

WIS 8 + 3

LUK 14 + 2

I whistled. "You're twice as strong and four times as tough as me? That's ... impressive."

"Not really a big change from before getting powers, though." Sun-il said archly. I elbowed him in the ribs, but he kept going. "Oh, and I'm three times as smart as you, too!"

"Oh look, you're done healing. Guess it's time to drop you out of the party," I threatened.

Sun-il held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'll be good!" He said. "Seriously, though, this feels incredible. My whole body feels light, and - " as he spoke Sun-il threw a jab at the wall. Tiny flickers of a green flame-like aura enveloped his hand as he struck out, and the impact sounded more like the high-pitched crack of rocks tumbling against each other than flesh hitting concrete. It didn't exactly leave a mark on the brick wall, but it hadn't been a serious blow, either. " - there's power welling up inside of me that lets me do things like that. This is amazing!"

I smiled at my best friend as he kept talking in an excited voice. If I was going to be perfectly honest with myself, I was a little bit jealous; ever since I was a kid, I had always dreamed of being the hero. Right now it felt a little bit more like I was the hero's white mage best friend or something. I did my best to push that feeling away - I wasn't going to begrudge Sun-il for having been healed by me! "You'd better be grateful," I said. "I had to give up my ability to learn Omnislash so you could have this power."

"Praise be to the almighty Jee-han!" he immediately replied. "Seriously, though. I owe you big time."

"Well, you can start repaying me by calling your sister and letting her know we're okay. I don't want to get punched again." I joked back.

By making good decisions, your WIS has gone up by one!

We both looked at the text box floating in mid-air for a long second before breaking down into simultaneous laughter.

"Hahahaha! Oh man! Even, haha, even your power agrees! Sure, I'll call - " Sun-il patted his pocket for a second before drooping. "Oh yeah. My phone melted. Mind if I...?"

"Borrow my powers, borrow my phone; jeez Sun-il, you're so needy." My phone didn't get reception when it was in my inventory, so I usually just kept it in my pants pocket. Luckily, I hadn't been burned nearly as badly as Sun-il had, and it was more or less undamaged. I handed it over to him, but stopped before I let it go. "Wait. What are you going to tell them about why you're using my phone?"

He stopped for a second. "Um. Yeah. 'It melted' might be kind of alarming. And they'll notice the fact that I'm wearing different clothes..." After a few seconds of thought, he shook his head. "Screw it. We'll have to tell them I triggered."

"What?" I couldn't help myself. "I said I didn't want to tell anyone, but given the circumstances..."

He took a few practice swings at the air. "Your powers are too crazy to just let a supervillain know that you have them, and they're subtle enough that we can hide it. It's not worth the risk."

"I mean, are you sure? I can..." I trailed off as Sun-il shook his head.

He shadowboxed a few more times, sparks of green flame flying into the air at the end of every punch. Amusingly, his black hair turned greenish as he exercised his power, only going back to black slowly as he let the energies fade. "First fight I get into like this, it's going to be obvious something's different. And it's not like I can represent my dojang in competitions or spar with people if I'm a parahuman."

My heart broke. "I - I'm sorry, I didn't realize..."

He grinned at me, doing his best to appear as if nothing was the matter. "What? I was going to have to drop out anyways. Can't have the heir to the dojang be someone affiliated with a crime syndicate, right? Besides, if I'm one of Lung's lieutenants, it means I can keep you from being bothered by anybody else."

Sun-il, I take back all of my jealousy! You're just too much of a good guy!

The funny thing about video game characters is, they almost never get tired. Sure, that's mainly because most players don't want to take time away from exploring and adventuring to watch their digital avatar sleep, but the fact of the matter is that even in roleplaying games where you get direct benefits from sleeping such as regenerating HP and MP it is usually possible to go through an entire game without sleeping more than a couple of times when the plot demands it.

That night, not having to sleep really came in handy.

First, there was the fact that Lung had us out hunting the Undersiders starting at eleven PM - on a school night no less, not that he cared. Then we didn't actually run into the Bug Cape, whoever they were, until well after midnight. Then we walked home. I left Sun-il outside of his house at about half past one, then walked home to my place, and by that point I was well and truly ready to just lie down and pass out.

I opened the door at a quarter to two in the morning only to find every light in the house on.

"Jee-han?" My mother's voice was filled with panic and concern. As she stood up from her spot on the couch I was struck by how haggard she looked; the bags of sleeplessness under her eyes and the lack of the makeup that she habitually wore made her look... well, older than I usually saw her. "Jee-han, is that you?"

"Yeah, mom." I gave a sigh of exhaustion. "What are you still doing up? I called you and told you I was safe and on my way home."

She snorted. "Han Jee-han, if I don't kill you from frustration before you manage to reproduce, you will eventually understand just how hard it is to sleep when your child is out and in harm's way." She motions to the window overlooking the street. "There have been police cars going up and down the street, fire engines, ambulances... every single one I heard I was convinced that something had happened to you." My mother stopped lecturing me long enough to look me up and down. "What happened to your clothes?" She asked, "that's not the hoodlum outfit you went out in."

I didn't really have a good response to the question that wouldn't make her panic more, so I just shrugged. "They got set on fire, mom. I was standing a little bit too close when the cape fight started. It's okay, though! I'm okay! I managed to put them out before I could get hurt. See? Not even a burn."

I held out my arm to her, and she grabbed it in a tight grip, pulling it up to her eyes roughly before breaking down and throwing her arms around me. She broke down and sobbed into my shoulder, wailing in Korean, and now that she was this close I could smell the stale odor of alcohol clinging to her breath. "I don't want my baby to die. Please, Jee-han, I don't want my baby to die." She kept saying it over and over.

My mother was never drunk. She never cried. She had never shown this side of herself before, and I had never been in anything like this position of trying to comfort her. Ever since I was born, she was the one who had comforted me, who had been there for me when I was sick or hurt or depressed. It was the sort of situation that should have horrified me, should have made me acutely uncomfortable, should have had me breaking down and crying with her despite being a teenager, supposedly too old and proud to cry.

It was like watching a maudlin cutscene. I felt sad for her, wanted to make her feel better, felt guilty that I had put her through this - but all on that sort of detached, intellectual level you get when you're watching something rather than participating in it.

My powers let me go through life as though it were a game... but they also were stopping me from going through life as life.

I somehow managed to get my mother into her bed at around two thirty in the morning. I lay down into my own bed soon after. It was the sort of night that should have left me sleepless but just like in a game, I barely had to lay my head down on the pillow before I was asleep.

I was shaken awake far too early the next morning.

You have rested in your bed, but not for nearly long enough! Your HP and MP are restored by 50%.

"Bluh?" I said coherently. "Too early. Not goin' t' school t'day." I burrowed deeper into the covers, pressing my pillow more tightly around my face to block out the light.

My mother kept shaking my shoulder. "Jee-han, get up, you have to see this."

I groaned and pried my eyes open. The clock blinked 06:41 balefully, and I groaned louder, but managed to pull myself up to a sitting position. As I did so, the clarity of Gamer's Mind washed over me, and I found myself alert and ready for action. It was convenient, if nothing else, but... I wasn't ready to forgive my powers just yet. "What is it?" I asked my mom.

She looked a little bit peaked from last night, but surprisingly happy; even joyous. "Come see," she said, and practically dragged me into the living room.

On the television the news was playing. The picture showed a reporter in a suit standing outside of the PRT building, and for a second I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Then I read the ticker tape going across the bottom of the screen - in big bold letters it read 'LUNG CAPTURED?'

"Holy shit," I said, "That cape managed to take down Lung with bugs?"

My mother looked at me with a confused expression on her face. "Bugs? The PRT is saying that the arrest was made by Armsmaster."

"...Huh. Yeah, that makes more sense." I ran my fingers through my still-scorched hair. Pretty much every Asian person in Brockton Bay knew that Lung was just about unstoppable. Heck, he was half the reason that Brockton had so many Japanese and Korean refugees; some people wanted to move to his city just so Lung would be around to fight Leviathan if it ever showed up again. He was a one-man army, one cape who could stand against basically the entire Empire 88 on his own. "When the cape fight started, it was just some bug controller ambushing us, probably a new member of the Undersiders or something. Sun-il and I didn't really stick around to find out how the fight ended, but the Protectorate must have shown up later and taken Lung by surprise."

My mom turned to me with an excited expression. "Isn't this wonderful Jee-han? Now you don't have to stay in that awful gang, and -"

I was shaking my head. "I can't! I can't quit yet - not until Lung is in the Birdcage, not until the gang itself is done for. There's still Oni Lee, and that new cape Bakuda, and all of the just regular thugs. It's not safe."

"Oh." Her face twisted in disappointment and despair. "You're - you're right. I got excited, that's all."

Not for the first time I considered telling her the truth; that I was a parahuman, that there was a better than average chance of me surviving this criminal lifestyle. It was tempting, but I knew that she would want me to join the Protectorate, or maybe not go out and fight at all, and as selfish as it was I didn't want to deal with those arguments yet. When the ABB dissolved, I'd tell her. Probably. I eventually just sighed. "Thanks for letting me know, mom. I'm going back to bed."

"Oh no, you're not." My mother said sharply. "It's bad enough my son is in a gang, I'm not going to have him be a high school dropout too. You're not bleeding, you're not sick, and you may be sleep deprived but you're just going to have to suck it up and deal! You are going to go get changed, and then I am going to drop you off at school on my way to work!"

Quest Recieved: Stay In School

Go to school without missing any of your classes or letting people know that you have superpowers.

Rewards: 1000 xp, increased reputation with Winslow High, increased reputation with Han Jung-Sook, ?.

Failure: 0 xp, decreased reputation with Winslow High and decreased reputation with Han Jung-Sook OR decreased reputation with ABB and superpowers exposed.

Accept? Y/N

I looked at both the quest box and my mother with horror. Why doesn't my life have an easy mode?