John hadn't expected to find himself with a new dilemma so soon. The train was supposed to grant him a moment of calm to take stock of things and decompress after a stressful few hours, but life could never be that easy.

The realisation that he hadn't given his name after all this time was mortifying. He tried to tell himself that there were extenuating circumstances, and it was perfectly normal for some basic social rituals to drop in priority, but that didn't help when they'd already told him their names.

Worse, the implication behind her question demanded far more than his name. Obviously, she wasn't just asking him to identify himself. From her perspective, a guy with a higher quantity and quality of magical abilities had come out of nowhere and helped her out for no apparent reason, and she wanted to know the backstory behind that.

John couldn't imagine any scenario where he bumbled his way through that conversation without massively jeopardising the image he'd miraculously managed to cultivate with these people. No matter how much he planned out his words, it was only inevitable that he'd get distracted, or his mind would go on a tangent, or he'd get tongue-tied, or they'd ask a follow-up question he wasn't prepared for, and he'd end up stuttering and sputtering his way through a non-answer until he was red-faced and sweaty.

So either way, he was going to commit a mild faux pas. The best way forward, in his mind, was to minimise interaction in general. He'd keep them around for now so they could witness his monster kills and help boost his Aura, but he was going to stick to the mysterious, quiet stranger persona no matter what.

You're unconcerned about any of this. It's just another day to you. Monsters? Who cares. You could kill them all with your pinkie finger, but it wouldn't be worth the effort for a gigachad like you. A bunch of blues are beneath your notice.

Years of awkward social encounters had beaten into his skill an instinctual desire to fade into the background, but he resisted it. Crossing his arms, John lounged in his seat and closed his eyes like he was trying to nap. Mana Sense told him the monsters who'd gotten on the other carriages weren't getting any closer, so he felt comfortable dropping his guard a fraction.

+400 Aura

Holy shit. 400 Aura for that is crazy. Pretty much confirms that there's a bonus for acting cool in front of people, too.

Which, naturally, was quite the poisoned chalice. Being around people could mean a massive increase in Aura gains, but it also provided more opportunities for losses.

Then it occurred to him that a good few seconds had passed since Jade's question, and he still hadn't answered. He cracked an eye open fractionally and found the three of them were staring at him again. Would it be too awkward to answer now? He hoped not.

"John," he said, and left it at that.

The train clacked along on its tracks. There was only darkness outside the windows, with maybe some hints of shapes blurring past. If nothing else, he had to commend whatever had made this impostor train for its accuracy; it felt just like the real thing, if you ignored the uncanny valley advertising boards, the incorrect station and line names, and the complete lack of passengers aside from themselves and the monsters waiting in the adjacent carriages.

Lily and Chester exchanged a look, but Jade nodded. "Nice to meet you, John. And thanks for saving us."

There was a beat of silence, and John realised a reply was expected of him. He gave only a nod.

"Right. Cool," Jade said. She muttered something to herself, but even John's improved hearing didn't pick it up. Hopefully, she wasn't grumbling about how weird he was. "Okay. Sorry. I have to ask, since you seem like you've really got it together a lot better than us. Do you have any idea what the fuck is going on here? Broadly, I mean. The whole fucking apocalypse thing. These… systems."

A question he'd dearly like the answer to, but he had no deeper insights himself. Theories abounded, but none of them could be confirmed. That was too long an answer to risk, so he just shrugged.

"Yeah. That tracks. I had to ask, just in case."

John shrugged again.

Lily spoke next, soft but even, "I was only in London for the day. When this all started, part of me hoped it was just isolated to the city. Like, some crazy shit escaped from a lab or something like that. But there's no way, right? That black hole, and the fire in the sky, and these weird magic powers we've got… This is gonna be everywhere, isn't it?"

"Probably," Jade said. "Where did you say you were from, again? It kind of went in one ear and out the other, like."

That gave John pause. He'd assumed these three knew each other before all this, but that question implied they'd just met today.

"Florida," Lily said. "And it's okay. There were bigger things to worry about at the time. I don't remember almost anything you two told me about yourselves either, to be honest. Apart from what you can do."

"That's fine," Chester mumbled. There was a hollow note to his voice, and his eyes were vacant as they stared up at the ceiling. "You wouldn't have heard of the place I'm from anyway. Tiny little town called Weobley."

"Yeah, never heard of it," Lily said.

"Me neither," Jade agreed. "I'm from Inverness, myself. In London for uni."

"I remember that much, actually," Lily said. "I struggled to understand what you were saying, earlier."

"I get that a lot. Got to remember to tone down the Scots lingo," Jade said with a small smile, the first positive emotion John had seen from her. It was a brittle expression. "I wonder how home's doing. Mum and Dad…" she trailed off, swallowing, and no one had any answers for her. They lapsed into silence, most likely all wondering the same things about their own families, friends, and homes.

John had an easier answer to that than the rest of them. His family lived in London, technically. And most of the people who could've maybe been called friends, once upon a time. His school, local library, park. Everything. If monsters were so abundant this far out west, they were going to be swarming out to the east of the city, too. There was no way the people he knew had escaped it all. The best hope he could cling to was the possibility his parents and sister had gotten potent superpowers of their own, or at least had run into someone who'd decided to protect them. Maybe Sophie's little shithead dudebro boyfriend had got something, even.

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John surreptitiously swallowed past the lump in his throat. There was no point speculating about this shit, it would just send him into a crippling doom spiral. All the feelings went in a box that got stuffed away at the back of his mind as he took a long, deep breath to centre himself.

Jade broke the silence this time, clearing her throat and saying, "Sorry, but it looks like I have to be the one to ruin our little break." She eyed them all one by one, then turned her attention to the station list printed above the nearest carriage doors. "We all know we're not in a real train, right? You all saw the signs in the station?"

"Yeah," Chester said breathlessly, despairing.

John opened his eyes fully and nodded too when he realised he was expected to contribute directly.

"We're on the Blizzard Line, apparently," Lily said. "Not a real line. And none of the stations on that list are real. Seems like there are a bunch of other lines, too. All similarly bullshit. Acid Line, Death Line, Inferno Line, Blood Line, Plague Line. No idea what any of them mean, but they don't sound appealing."

"So what the fuck is going on?" Jade asked.

"No clue," Lily said.

Chester made a small noise of distress, screwing his eyes shut and covering them with his forearm. He was splayed out over a full four seats, and the Londoner in John was raging at the horrendous breach in train etiquette. But it seemed even the apocalypse didn't grant him the courage to do more than shake his head in disapproval.

Jade saw the action and shot him a thin smile. "Any ideas?" she asked.

John thought about that. He did indeed have ideas, but he was wary of trying to communicate them. Best to keep it simple, he decided: "A portal."

"Right. There was some kind of blue light screen at the station's entrance. So faint I could barely see it."

"Blue portal, blue monsters," John said.

Lily looked at him. "Blue monsters?"

Ah, crap. How was he going to explain that while keeping up the Man of Few Words shtick? He activated Soul Vision and looked at Lily, marvelling slightly at the silver nimbus that radiated off of her. The same hue lit the others' souls, while John's was now green. The implications of that were beyond him right now; he'd need to use it on more people to get a clue of what it meant.

Lily's eyes widened, and Jade stilled.

John frowned, unsure what had provoked that reaction until he saw his reflection in the window.

His eyes were glowing a deep blue.

Oh. That's kinda cool though, right?

He tapped his cheek beneath one eye. "Monsters have souls. Coloured. Weakest to strongest, as far as I can tell: blue, green, yellow, orange, red. The ones that chased us were all blue."

Jade nodded slowly, still staring at him. "So we're in some kind of blues-only zone?"

He nodded at the station list atop the doorway. "Lines all correspond to those colours, too. Probably more dangerous at other stations."

"How are you doing that, anyway?" Jade asked. "Off the top of my head, I've seen you use six powers. You moved fast, you made a sword out of blue energy, shot arrows of white energy, spewed black smoke from your hands, threw around goddamn fireballs, and now you apparently have some kind of monster soul sight ability."

"And all I have is some shitty D-rank spell," Chester lamented.

John blinked. "D-rank?" he repeated, baffled.

Chester moved his arm and turned his head, shooting a sour look John's way. "Yes, Mr Awesome, I only have a fucking D-rank. Sorry for being such a pleb compared to you." Then he winced and muttered a quiet sorry before turning away.

John opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, figuring whatever he said would just make things worse. He didn't even understand what he'd said wrong in the first place. He'd just been surprised by the use of a term he hadn't seen before, and somehow Chester had taken offence to that, for reasons John couldn't even hope to fathom.

That happened to him, sometimes. He'd say something he thought was completely innocuous and harmless, only for someone to get mad at him, and then people would take the mad person's side. It never made any sense. He'd hear other people make similar comments, and they'd get a laugh, or at the very least they wouldn't earn any ire. For a while he'd just assumed it was down to the disparity in looks and general position on the social hierarchy, but it seemed even when the Aura system had scoured away his acne scars and packed a little muscle onto him, he was still going to blunder his way into these situations.

And it was still going to hurt every time it happened, apparently. That familiar feeling of humiliation was aching in his heart and burning behind his eyes and clogging up his throat.

That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? No matter how many superpowers got bestowed upon him, no matter how much badass shit he did or how many monsters he killed, he would still be John. There was no escaping that.

"Are your abilities higher than D-rank, then?" Jade asked, eyeing him curiously.

John didn't actually know. Delving into the Aura system gave him no answers on that front, either. Even after unlocking and upgrading Spells and Skills, all they told him was their name and level. Did Levels correspond to the ranking these three were on about?

"No ranks for me," John said, frowning. "Only got Levels. One to ten, for all Spells."

"Really? Only Level I see is my main level, as far as I know." She shifted a little, and a dark look entered her eyes. "I get something called Soul for killing monsters, and it fills up a bar until I gain a new level, where I get to choose one power out of a bunch of ranked options, and put some points into stats."

Lily spoke up with a voice barely above a whisper, "Mine calls it Bullseyes."

"Attention," Chester volunteered, deadpan.

Jade nodded, "Something tells me you're not actually five or more levels ahead of us already, like I thought. Our shit isn't exactly the same with the Classes and all that, but it's similar enough."

At this point, John was deeply regretting saying anything. It sounded like they were working off a different system than he was, but also… not. If their systems caused them as much discomfort as Aura inflicted on him, then they were at least working along similar lines. Still, he felt his was the most embarrassing, and he was near certain it would be a bad idea to tell them about it.

All three were watching him now, and it was all he could do not to fidget under their attention. It felt like bugs were crawling over his skin.

"And what Level are your powers?" Jade asked.

"Two's highest so far," he said at length. His lips thinned when he closed them.

"But you have multiple already." Jade crossed her arms and sat back in her seat, brows furrowed in consternation. "That's nothing like what any of us have got. Look, I'm not gonna interrogate you or anything, mate, but I would definitely like to know—"

John was saved by sudden lurch of the train carriage. The familiar squeal of breaks filled the car, far louder than it typically was, and all of them slapped their hands to their ears on reflex. The sudden bleeding off of the train's momentum tugged them all to the side. Chester tumbled off his spot, hitting the ground with a yelp.

Moments later, red light peeked into the carriage as the train pulled into the next platform. A crackling tannoy speaker announced the station, but John couldn't make sense of it. He didn't need to, anyway. It was one of the smaller stations, with only a single platform, leaving a few metres of room for waiting passengers on one side of the tunnel. The Underworld logo was painted on the wall, beneath it reading the station name: Elephant and Dungeon.

His Mana Sense pinged out, and John grimaced.

The monsters were moving, bunching up at the doors in their carriages.

This was going to be a shitshow.

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