James woke up early the following morning, starting his day by setting up a download of sorted files that were processed throughout the night onto a tablet before moving to make breakfast for himself and removing a magnet and another steak for his new pets. Leaving the watch-shaped digivice on the table to allow Kuramon to remain physical they continued their games from st evening.

  Once they were taken care of, he moved to continue tempering a few more ribs for a couple of hours. This time, he was less successful than his st attempt, but he felt that two ribs were close. However, his efforts would have to be halted for now.

  He needed to return to the family home today and occasionally in the future even if it was a short while otherwise someone would eventually come looking for him.

  After showering and removing the accumuted impurities from cultivating, he made it just in time for the 9 o’clock news.

  Ronald was busy with work in James' old bedroom, and Diana was busy getting started on her daily chores, leaving the two brothers alone, sitting on opposite sides of the L-shaped couch. James y his head on the arm while lying down on the longer side, while Danny sat on the shorter end, trying to watch the News. Keyword: trying.

  James disappeared into his new house only three days ago, but he returned looking slightly different, again! He looked a little taller and brawnier but with his pretty face, he looked like he belonged in a boyband or was a male beauty model. Danny was especially disturbed by his face, which was deeply disturbing to him. His eyes were naturally drawn toward him as he scrolled, reading through something on his tablet.

  “What the hell did you do this time?” Danny asked trying to deal with the unease.

  “What?” James asked looking up from his tablet briefly.

  “It’s only been three days, what did you do to yourself? What did you do to your face?!”

  “My face?" James said with a curious look on his face. "Nothing. I just cultivated some more.”

  “And that entails?”

  “Stabbing my bones with Ki until it penetrates and infuses. Or burning out the impurities in my flesh using Ki.”

  “...Impurities?” (Stabbing himself with Ki?)

  “You remember that pill I tricked you with the other day? It’s called a Purging Pill. The intent behind it is to naturally purge the body of things, like poison or Impurities, (Pill buildup, etc). That stinky bck gunk you spent an hour on the pot getting rid of." James said as he continued scrolling through something on his tablet.

  “Don’t remind me.” Danny cringed (The smell will follow me for a lifetime).

  “Actually, I came up with a theory on why we have so much, it’s probably reted to pstic. Since microparticles are floating around everywhere now.”

  “We? You took one too?”

  “It was my first attempt at Ki. I took a tiny spoonful of special fluid and spent the next hour leaking from every orifice lying in the shower in my apartment. Afterward, my complexion cleared up. Among other things.” James was rather nonchant about it while he continued reading, recounting how it all started.

  “That still doesn’t expin the muscles.”

  “All Ki-based; I had no hand in it (directly). Sure, I've worked out a little more now but it’s all because of Ki and magic pills. If it weirds you out to know, my teeth are now perfectly straight and it’s not just my face. As I said, my skin's cleared of any blemishes (except for a couple remaining moles), and my fingers and toenails are now uniform, and both can be moved individually at any joints.” To demonstrate his cim James began moving his ring toe on his left foot and middle toe on his right.

  Rolling his eyes at his brother, “And your hair?” (Are you ever going to get a haircut?)

  James had noticed that it had started growing faster than normal, now hanging at his neck. He assumed it was likely an effect caused by Ki or his increased vitality. “Are you jealous of my luscious locks?” James gave a wave of his hair.

  “Sure, Fabio.” Danny retorted dismissively.

  Several minutes of silence passed as the two sat on the couch. Danny watched the news, and the weather forecast while James continued to skim through the mostly sorted documents on his tablet (going to need another update) he noted skimming through some more (At least I'm not dealing with family photos or junk mail).

  Eventually, Danny got curious, “By the way, what are you reading?”

  “Government communications and assorted cssified files,” James said with a small smile growing on his face.

  “…are you serious?” Danny asked fbbergast and half-jokingly. Unsure if James was really telling the truth.

  Taking a deep breath James began, “Bill proposals, personal communications, and batches of other stuff. I already found several serious crimes and I’ve just been going through them this morning.”

  “Where did you…” Danny sat up in his seat.

  “I can pull things out of images; extrapote.”

  Danny went silent, thinking about what James might have done to get so many documents. His mind filled with thoughts before, driven by his own curiosity, “What exactly did you find?”

  “The usual you'd find from government officials, Emails, correspondents. Bckmail, Espionage, Drugs. Some serious embezzlement, and dozens of other dirty deeds. You know everything people usually bme them for. I wonder how the public would feel if I released some of these..." James said as he scrolled back through some of the files he bookmarked. "Aside from that, I found one email that possibly confirms the appearance of ‘dungeons’ in December of st year. But the wording is a little strange, and tiptoes around the subject using code words I can't understand."

  “And they didn’t say anything?”

  “Again, Highly Cssified Documents. Why our congressmen just get access to them is beyond me. Anyway, they didn’t want to start a panic, which is understandable, but now look where we are?”

  “Have you found anything about the tree?”

  “Please specify, we have had to deal with two of them around here.”

  “You know what I mean! The big one in DC!”

  “No, nothing on it yet. As I said I only started on these this morning. Ah, here’s a good one. Ahem," James began reading in a deeper more military voice.

  "TO Senator: []

  To answer your questions, the strange doorways you mentioned have appeared within some of our bases around the globe. After the initial expedition teams were sent inside, we discovered they led to various ecosystems. Some unforgiving to human life.

  The samples taken from these locations have so far shown no retion to any known Earth flora or fauna.

  After taking the initial steps to secure them, the privates and many of the younger soldiers have begun calling these strange doorway Dungeons.”

  “So, the military has them appearing in bases across the globe?” Danny asked.

  “According to this message, and it’s a rge sample size, too bad it doesn’t specify the numbers. I might be able to determine the number of spawns then." James said scrolling through a few more messages, “Oh! There’s a part two." James said with glee before continuing in a deep voice.

  "TO Senator: []

  After discovery, we have determined that these ‘dungeons’ appear behind doorways that haven’t been opened for a long time. While the details are still being worked out, we have attempted to remove one of these doors and found that, while they can be removed, the space behind them remains.

  We have determined that removal of the door does not deal with the problem…”

  James' efforts to put on a voice were stalled by his impatience with the correspondence, “Bh bh bh…While the door can be removed, this does not deal with the... With the removal of the entire doorway the ‘dungeon’ was removed and access to the original area behind it was restored...

  After putting the door in a shredder. . . the door and the area behind was destroyed.” James finished as he sat up.

  .

  .

  .

  The brothers sat in silence after James finished reading the st sentence.

  Danny spoke up first. “So, they work like the doors from Monsters Ink?”

  “…apparently...” James affirmed while rubbing the bridge of his nose and eyes at the thought “Leave it to the military to throw it into a woodchipper. And here I thought they were going to be a serious problem...”

  “Would something else have happened?”

  “If a tear in space was destroyed, what do you think could happen?”

  “It colpses?”

  “Or it explodes. Their lucky to have not caused an even bigger problem. Honestly why not just keep it and use it for mass storage or troop deployment…” James was getting a headache just thinking about it. (Was it really that dangerous?)

  “If they have more than one, they probably tried it to see if it would work.”

  “I know you're probably right but that doesn’t make me any happier that they did something so stupid. Haa~" James said with a sigh. "At least they can be removed and destroyed so it's not going to turn into a major issue. Until people start exploring them.”

  “Are they alr...” Danny trailed off.

  “We're probably not going to see any success for a month or two, until then maybe some small groups running around hunting things on the inside. But it’s going to be a while before any major success.

  “I meant in the head. Why would you want to enter a pce filled with creatures that want to eat you?” After satisfying his curiosity and encountering the Dogemen in the Wolves Den, Danny was content not to explore another dungeon for quite some time.

  “Money” James stated bluntly. “What other reason do people do things? Fame and fortune.”

  “Yeah, but- “

  “People will do lots of crazy things for money and once the dangers cleared out then you will start getting more attention from the general populous. Without any dangers, researchers could study the various things inside. If the resources are useful, they will be farmed. If they’re deemed worthless the nd itself might get used somewhere. They’re probably even groups out there right now that already figured out that dungeons can be removed and set up somewhere else.”

  “And probably some throwing them into woodchippers.” Danny chimed making James cringe again.

  “Idiots...” James couldn't help but feel his whole body stiffen just thinking about it.

  Once their conversation died down the two went back to their respective media.

  That was until the test news story, “As you can see here-“ a reporter was going over the test in stock drops as the world was entering an era of uncertainty. The different stock options buzzing by; it was a sea of red.

  “What happened to the stock market?” James asked finally properly looking away from the tablet screen since he got in the house. His heart sank in his chest.

  “Is this the first time you noticed? The stock market’s been burning ever since people started getting powers. Now everything’s just tanking.” Danny was quite bummed that the little nest eggs he had just recently started to grow had become worthless because of this.

  (Okay then. That makes a new number one on the list.) James thought to himself quietly.

  END