The forge had become a place of two distinct energies. When Emma was at the office, it was my sanctuary, a place of grimy, focused work. But when she was here, it transformed. She had carved out a corner for herself, a sleek island of corporate efficiency in my sea of controlled chaos. Holographic stock tickers shimmered next to my tool-strewn workbenches, and the crisp, authoritative tone of her business calls often mingled with the hum of the Synapse.
I emerged from the dungeon one evening, the thrill of my milestone still humming through me, to find her completely engrossed. She was surrounded by a constellation of floating legal documents and market analysis charts, her expression a mask of intense concentration. She didn't even look up.
This had become the new normal. In the early days, there was a novelty, a strange sibling-like rapport. Now, a professional distance had settled between us, a wall she had meticulously constructed. Every time I'd tried to get close, to make a casual joke or offer to help, she'd retreat behind a veil of "I'm working." My plan to get close enough to use [Template Copy] had hit a brick wall of her own making.
I grabbed a bottle of water and walked over, leaning against the edge of her designated territory. "Burning the midnight oil, COO Frost?"
"Some of us have to," she replied without looking up, her fingers dancing across a virtual keyboard. "Aura Innovations doesn't run on good intentions and workshop fumes."
The jab was sharper than usual. I could feel the stress rolling off her in waves, a stark contrast to the quiet of her mind. "Everything okay?" I asked, my voice softening. "You seem tense."
That's when she snapped.
She swiped a hand, dismissing all the holographic screens at once. She spun her chair to face me, and her eyes were blazing with a cold fire I hadn't seen since the alley.
"Tense? Of course I'm tense, Alex," she said, her voice dangerously low. "I'm on calls at 3 AM with venture capitalists in Tokyo. I'm wading through sixty pages of patent law to make sure some hack at Hammer Industries doesn't steal your compression algorithm. I'm building a corporate infrastructure, a brand, a future, from nothing."
She stood up, her frustration a palpable force in the room. "I'm doing all the work. The real work. And what do you do?" she demanded, her voice rising. "You vanish. You tinker with your drones, you lock yourself away for hours doing God knows what, and you emerge with a new idea. Ideas are cheap, Alex. Execution is everything. And I'm the only one executing anything around here."
The accusation stung. She wasn't wrong, from her perspective. She saw the results of my work, but she'd never seen the process. She saw the magic, but she didn't see the magician.
The old me would have gotten defensive. "You're right," I said calmly.
Her tirade stopped dead. Of all the things she expected me to say, that wasn't one of them. "I... I am?"
"Completely," I affirmed, pushing off the workbench. "You've only ever seen half of what I do. You handle the empire of glass and steel. But you've never seen my half. The half that deals with the things that don't care about contracts or stock prices."
I walked to the center of the room. "You think I'm just playing. You think I'm hiding. You're right. I am. But I'm not hiding from the work. I'm hiding the work itself." I looked her directly in the eye. "Come with me. I'll show you the other half."
Her curiosity warred with her anger. "Show me what?"
"Where I really work," I said, and then, focusing my will and my mana, I commanded, "CREATE INSTANT DUNGEON!"
The air ripped open. The shimmering, swirling portal to the Forest of Shadows bloomed in the space between us, casting an eerie purple light on her stunned face. The raw, untamed energy washing out of it was a primal force, a language of pure power that had nothing to do with finance or law.
She stumbled back, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and utter awe. Her internal monologue, usually a fortress of corporate strategy, was for once, completely silent. The quiet of my mind suddenly made a terrifying kind of sense to her. This was a power she couldn't quantify, a variable she couldn't plot on a chart.
"This is my office, Emma," I said, my voice resonating in the sudden silence. "This is where I train. This is where I test my limits, where I bleed, and where I get stronger. I made you a promise. I said I'd the one who provides the protection. This is how I do it. This is how I make sure I'm strong enough to protect you, and to protect Aura Innovations, from the things that are coming."
I gestured to the portal. "You have your boardroom. This... this is our real R&D department."
She stared at the portal, then back at me, and for the first time, the wall between us crumbled. The anger in her eyes was replaced by a dawning understanding, a profound respect for the side of our partnership she'd never seen.
I extended my hand. "Come on. I'll give you the grand tour."
She hesitated for only a second before her slender fingers slipped into mine. Her hand was cold, but her grip was firm. It was a gesture of trust, the first true one she'd given me.
And as our hands touched, I focused my will, not on a concussive blast, but on a silent, subtle theft.
[Origin Acquisition] Activate.