Serenity didn’t laugh for long before he answered the implied question. “Firefly’s a good show, but it’s not where I got my name.”

The reporter put her hand over her ear as she returned to her fake smile. “Everyone, keep tweeting questions! I’ll ask them while we’re in the dungeon, so make sure you get them to us quickly!”

She turned towards Serenity before she continued. “We have two more questions for you, then we’ll be packing up to head into the dungeon! These have both gotten a lot of retweets, so we couldn’t pick just one! First question: Why is the Tutorial here? Why now?”

Well, it seemed she could speak without exclamation points. Serenity wasn’t convinced her questions were really better, though; they still have far too much energy. He turned his attention to the question instead of the person. “I don’t know. All I’ve been able to find out is that Earth’s population is unusually high for a Tutorial, but the magic level is unusually low. A number of the instructors have been through several Tutorials; some were even in one when their planet went through it. The only entity that would actually know is the Voice.”

“The Voice is alive?!?” The reporter looked both shocked and worried. Serenity was sure that wasn’t one of the questions she’d meant to ask.

“I’m not sure. Alive is a hard question to answer.” Looked at the right way, he wasn’t alive - at least, not if “alive” meant the Life Affinity. “Magic makes things complicated. I think it’s closer to a very smart magical computer.” Serenity deliberately didn’t say that it was an AI. Artificial intelligence was both a buzzword and something many people were afraid of; it was complicated, and he didn’t want to drag it in explicitly. He was sure that many people were already thinking it anyway.

“How can alive be hard to answer? It is or it isn’t! Alive or dead!” The reporter seemed to have suddenly figured out the concept of “follow-up questions”, but she’d picked a bad question to begin with.

Serenity already disliked this reporter, and he’d never seen her before.

“Is a virus alive? Or a zombie? How about an elemental? It depends on what alive means.” Serenity smiled and faced towards the camera instead of the reporter. “You said you had another question?”

The reporter seemed to wilt a little before she pulled herself back together, her hand over her ear again. Serenity wondered exactly what she was hearing from her studio. “Y-yes. The next question is: Who are you really? Serenity’s obviously an alias, what’s your real name!” The reporter was leaning forward as she finished her delivery.

Serenity blinked. Had she really made the final question a declaration instead of a question?

Serenity looked towards the camera instead of the reporter. It seemed to disconcert her a little, which he had to admit didn’t bother him at all. “I’m Thomas Rothmer. I’m fond of the name Serenity and plan to keep using it. I’m a network engineer; I live here in New York City. Before you ask, yes, Alexander Rothmer is my father. No, he didn’t know anything about the Tutorial or the Voice before it started.”

He’d discussed certain questions with his parents before heading home, and his name was one of them. They’d decided it was far better to declare it proudly than try to hide their relationship. As long as he was an unknown, not mentioning it worked well, but the moment he was in the public eye that wouldn’t work anymore.

Serenity wondered absently if he still had a job. He supposed it didn’t matter, but he’d given a lot of his life to it; he wasn’t going to stop thinking about it any time soon.

“Why should I care who your father is? Do you think you’re someone special because your father’s wealthy?” The reporter was in his face. She was actually close enough that Serenity could faintly hear someone shouting through her earpiece - or maybe he could hear it because they were shouting?

He couldn’t believe she’d taken that tack. He blinked slowly. It didn’t make him unable to see her, but it did make him feel better. “Lex Rothmer is the Secretary of Defence.” Shouldn’t she know that? “Don’t you remember the jokes about his appointment last year?”

All of the news channels, even the ones that favored the current President, had been unable to prevent themselves from calling him Lex Luthor at least once. Serenity suspected some were by accident, but most had clearly been deliberate jokes; they’d paid more attention to his nickname than his background.

Serenity wasn’t sure how to handle this disaster of a reporter. He turned towards Lancaster, hoping he’d be rescued, but there was no rescue coming. Lancaster was silently laughing as he watched.

Fortunately, the reporter did back off. She turned back to the camera, smiled painfully wide, and went back to her overstated acting. “That’s all we have time for before the Dungeon, but keep those questions coming! We’re making a list of everything you want to #AskSerenity, and we’ll ask it either in the dungeon or once we get back out! Remember that the full stream will be posted on our website!”

Serenity looked over at the cameraman and saw as she flicked the camera off. He turned back to the reporter. “What are you thinking?”

He wasn’t sure she was thinking. It seemed almost like she wanted to be a stereotype of three or four different reporters, without any clear idea of who she was or what the point of the interview was.

“We’re going in a dungeon! It’s going to be so much fun! Just like last time!” She’d changed personalities again and was nearly bouncing.

Serenity looked at the cameraman, who was carefully slipping her camera into a padded bag. He pointed at the reporter with his thumb and gave a questioning expression.

The cameraman sighed. “That’s Madeleine Fulton. She’s the only one of our reporters who was willing to go through a dungeon on no notice. She’s only been through one, and she was carried through it. She thought it was lots of fun.”

“HEY. It’s MADE Fulton! M-A-D-E! Get it right! And I walked, no one had to carry me! The only person who was carried was John, when he got bit. I killed the critter that bit him!”

What was with that reporter? She wasn’t just over the top, she seemed positively hyper.

“He was bitten on the side of the leg, it didn’t go through his armor until you hit him with the flat of your…” The camerawoman trailed off. Serenity wasn’t sure why until he saw what “Made” was pulling out of the bag on the ground.

It looked sort of like a sword. It had a hilt, at least. It would have been a wide-bladed overly fancy sword if the middle of the blade weren’t missing, leaving it with a strange cutout between a pair of fragile-looking “blades”. There wasn’t a proper crossguard; instead, it looked like a fancy piece of useless metal was tacked onto each side of the blade, without being joined together. The hilt itself looked like it was simply the tang with a spiked piece of metal tacked on at the end. Serenity didn’t want to think about what the pair of points on the inner part of the “pommel” would do to a hand that tried to hold it near the end of the hilt.

It wasn’t the most impractical weapon Serenity had ever seen, but it was close. He wasn’t sure if he hoped she was a mage of some sort so she wouldn’t have to use it or if he wanted her to not be a mage so he wouldn’t have to worry about her hitting him instead of the enemy.

That was what it sounded like had happened to John, after all.

Serenity took a deep breath and turned to Made. “Have you been through the Tutorial?”

“Yes! I even almost finished my first Path!” Made held herself proudly.

“What is it?” Serenity tried to keep his skepticism out of his voice, but he didn’t think he succeeded.

“Human. Unlike you, bird-thing.” Made stuck her nose in the air. It looked positively silly, since she was holding the ridiculous “sword” on her shoulder.

Wait, her Path was Human? Didn’t the instructors make it clear that people should pick other Paths, that Human was the Path for children?

“I don’t see what’s so special about that Tutorial anyway. It’s not like it was hard, it was full of babies.” Made headed over to the dungeon entrance, then looked back at everyone else to see why they weren’t following. “Well? Come on, let’s get through here. I don’t like insects, I’m only doing this because it gets me on camera and they wouldn’t give me a regular show.”

Serenity could see why they wouldn’t give her a regular show. He looked at the camerawoman. “Do we really have to take her?”

At her nod, he asked, “What’s your name, anyway? You seem a bit more … adult than Made.”

“Natalie Freeman. Call me Nat. I’ve been working for Six for years, and I haven’t seen anyone quite like Made before. She’s pretty and very good at sucking up or I’m sure she wouldn’t have any time on air.” Nat didn’t seem to have a weapon or any armor, just the padded case for her camera.

“So what can you do?” Serenity wanted to plan how they were going to do this. He needed to check on what everyone could do to plan it properly - and also find out exactly what the dungeon was like. A Giant Wasp Dungeon could be anything from swarms of three-inch bugs to a handful of bus-sized enemies that could somehow still fly. They also might or might not have poison.

“Fire and cold magic. I can quickly change the temperature in an area, it’s so-so as an attack in most places but it does work well against the swarm rooms here. I have a firebolt and I can throw ice balls, but neither is terribly effective. My newest ability can create a quarter-inch sheet of ice; it’s mana hungry and I haven’t quite figured out how to use it. I want to use it like a shield, but there’s no way to hang on to it and it’s not anchored to anything.” Nat shrugged. “Not the best for fighting; there’s a reason I’m still working as a cameraman. It’s great for everyday life, though. My drink’s always the right temperature and I don’t have to heat my apartment anymore.”

Of course there were swarm rooms. Well, at least it wasn’t spiders.

He hoped there weren’t spiders. Just because the dungeon was named after wasps didn’t mean there weren’t other bugs. “Is it just wasps?”

“Yeah. Didn’t anyone walk you through what we know?” Nat looked puzzled.

There was a yell from near the dungeon entrance Serenity glanced that way and saw Lancaster was heading over towards Made, then turned his attention back to Nat. “No, we haven’t had time. I figured we’d go over it when we got here.”

“It’s pretty simple. Eight rooms, all connected by tunnels. Most of the rooms each have one to three person-sized wasps; there are wasps as big as your hand in the tunnels and sometimes the rooms as well. The fewer big wasps there are, the more likely it is that a swarm will join in the fight.”

Nat stared at Serenity for a moment, as though she were making sure he was paying attention. “There’s a very small chance that a red wasp will be in one of the normal rooms - I think it’s only been seen twice. One group ran, the group that beat it said they got a special prize but wouldn’t say what it was. The eighth room is larger, some people find it without going through all of the small rooms. It always has a gigantic wasp and two person-sized wasps. If there’s a prize, it’s behind that room, in front of the exit.”