"Hey kids, how's the work going down there?"

Isabel Albright looked up from the impromptu all-comers Lifting Heavy Things Competition that had broken out in the last ten minutes to see Dad leaning over the deck railing and looking down on them.

"Work's on pause for some impromptu testing, Dad," Isabel called up, sweeping a hand to indicate the current contestants. Dinah was right in the middle of heaving the mahogany bookcase up to about chin height. Luc was currently trying to lift an entire tree out of the sand–with limited success–and Olivia was crowing as she hefted a fallen log that must have weighed two hundred pounds all the way over her head.

"I thought I asked you kids to—Uh." Dad stopped talking and started staring as Olivia started running laps around the little sorting station Dinah had been working at before the competition had broken out.

"Yeah, turns out I'm not the only one that this magic stuff is affecting." Isabel turned away from Dad and watched the sibs. It wasn't even weird anymore. Luc had given up on trying to Hulk the tree out of the ground and was instead approaching Harry with a very specific gleam in his eye.

"Hey doofus," Isabel called out. "You said you were barely able to haul the dresser. There's no way you'll be able to lift Harry."

"Maybe it scales?" Luc called back, still looking speculatively at Harry. "Like how it did in that one Bruce Willis movie? Where they kept adding weights on and he struggled each time but could still lift it?"

"Okay, sure, give yourself a hernia. See if I care." Isabel rolled her eyes and glanced back up at the yacht deck. Mom and the new elf girl had joined Dad at the railing and were staring at the antics downstairs. "You guys might as well come down and try it out too," she called up. "They're gonna ask you to do it anyway here in a couple minutes, once the rush wears off."

"What in the world is going on down there?" Mom asked, eyes going back and forth between Dinah and Lucas.

"We're stronger Mom!" Olivia yelled, her face a mask of pure triumph. "Come on down, you gotta try it!"

"How did this happen?"

"I dunno! Come on!"

Isabel sighed and shook her head. I swear, sometimes my family just misses the most obvious things in the world…

"Bel, you gotta try now!" Dinah called, beckoning her over now that the dresser was back on the ground. "Let's see if you've gotten stronger too!"

"Uh, duh?" Isabel said, raising an eyebrow. "Of course I'm stronger." But eyes were on her now, so she sighed and moved over to the dresser. She vaguely remembered how Tomas and Dad had struggled like crazy to get this big ugly thing into their cabin–

Tomas.

An image of the kind old steward's dark features flashed into her mind. His perpetual five-o'clock shadow, his kind twinkling brown eyes, his salt and pepper hair that he always joked about being appropriate because he was a cook.

She'd liked Tomas. He'd practically been a third grandfather to the kids. Yeah okay he'd been Dad's hired help, but… but he'd been a good guy. He had never done anyone any harm, and he'd loved working for them. And he had the best stories about his wild younger days, and he always had an extra dessert ready for her, just in case.

And he was dead. Mom had said he'd been shot by that bastard Lucas. She didn't know why. They'd been cousins or something. But he was gone, another casualty of this whole stupid mess. She missed Tomas.

And that was all it took.

The rage in her gut, banked and simmering but never truly gone, flared to life and erupted into her limbs. The world started to go red at the edges, and she felt her heartrate skyrocket. Her breaths started coming in great burning heaves, and her entire body started to scream with the need to lash out and hurt something to make the hurting inside stop and–

She wrenched herself away from that line of thought–even though thought was the last thing it could be compared to. She rage boiled inside her, threatening to burst. Her family's voices faded into the dull roar echoing in her skull. It needed an outlet. It needed to hurt something.

So she let it.

She still didn't know exactly how the Hall Of Doors worked Half the time it seemed like it was just a dream-like space, with no grounding in the physical world at all. Sometimes time passed there, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes she was physically there, feeling the coolness of the air and the stale taste. Sometimes she felt like a ghost, brushing along its corridors.

But one thing remained constant. She always appeared right in front of her door. Her rock wall, the one that had taunted her time and again when she first came to the Hall of Doors.

Every other member of her family, even Dinah, had come to this place and gotten special recognition and powers. Every one of them had been deemed 'worthy', somehow. And Isabel?

Isabel got a rock.

It appeared in front of her now, as the red crept in closer to the center of her vision. She knew what would happen if everything went red. It had happened first in the fight against the bugs, and it had almost happened again in the fight against Onesie. The anger would take over, and she would just have to go along for the rid.

The second time it had almost happened, after the bugs but before Onesie, she'd tried to resist. She'd tried to escape. She hadn't wanted to go that crazy with her family right there. She had been afraid of what would happen.

And she had wound up here, in front of the rock wall. In front of this god damned rock wall.

Her fists lashed out, and the rage flowed down her arms and into her knuckles, making them glow red. They slammed into the wall, and chips of rock flew. One pinged off her nose, bringing a flash of pain with it. Isabel let out a shriek and attacked the rock, pounding it, hammering it, hitting it again and again, bleeding the rage out through her strikes, giving it something to destroy, giving it something to hate.

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She didn't know how long she battered at the wall, but when she stepped back the red was gone and she was breathing easy again. She drew in a breath through her nose and let it out slowly, looking down and seeing blood on her knuckles, then up again at the rock.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," she murmured. Then she took another breath, turned, and walked away from the walk.

She had to walk several feet before she reached where the original rock had been, stepping over fragments and gravel as she went. She used her feet to push some more of it out into the Hall, where she had already made quite the pile.

"And still nothing to show for it." She sighed and shook her head. Who was she kidding. There wasn't going to be anything on the other side of this thing. Just more rock, in perpetuity.

"At least it gives me a place to vent my spleen," she muttered philosophically. "Okay, I'm good now. Let's get back."

And just like that, she was once more standing beside the Dilligaf. This time it seemed like one of those 'not much time has passed' times, because no one was running around calling her name or trying to figure out why she had just vanished for ten minutes or whatever.

"Uh, Earth to Bel?" Lucas was looking at her with a grin on his face. "You gonna come over here or what?"

What had she been doing?

Oh. Right. Lifting heavy things and putting them down again. Sure, why not.

"Coming squirt," she said, and moved over to join in the competition. Seemed like the thing to do at the time, after all.

"Hey, what happened to your hands?"

"Dunno. Must have skinned them on something."

* * *

"How is this possible?" Mom asked as they all gathered around to watch the combination of Dad, Luc, Dinah, and Isabel finally manage to heft Harry up off the ground. It was like trying to lift a freight train, but they managed it. For about a half-second. Then as if on some unheard signal, they all let out a gasp and jumped back, letting the mammoth thump back to the earth.

Harry trumpeted and did whatever thousand-pound wooly mammoths did instead of gamboling, tossing his head and waggling his ears in what Isabel presumed was Mammoth for 'Again! Again!".

"Sorry big guy," Isabel said, patting the Mammoth's fuzzy flank and trying to calm her racing heart. "Not until you lay off the doughnuts for a while. Whoof. That was a rush."

"But we did it!" Luc was practically hooting. "Four of us, three kids and an adult–"

"Ahem," Isabel said, giving the squirt the Hairy Eyeball.

"Okay fine, two kids and two adults," Luc tried again, rolling his eyes at her. "But we still lifted an entire elephant with just the four of us! How cool is that! We're like Saiyans or something!"

"I hope not," Liv muttered. "That means our hair is gonna get really stupid, and we'll only gain power when we get angry and scream our lungs out."

Isabel coughed into her fist. Right. Yeah. That would be bad.

"I repeat," Mom said, hands on her hips and giving everyone The Look. "How is this possible? Olivia? Do you know?"

"I mean, I can guess?" Liv said, shrugging. "But I think Tori would probably know more. Hey, Tori, stop sulking, we've got a question for you!"

"What?" The sword, now leaning against the side of the sled that Dad had made from part of the Dilligaf's hull, buzzed and shook as though it had just woken up and was shaking her head. "I am sorry, I was in my own thoughts. Was there a question?"

"Yeah," Dinah said, flexing her bicep thoughtfully. "We've all gotten crazy stronger for some reason and we just now figured it out. Is that some kind of side effect from getting the System or something?"

There was a long beat of silence.

"Tori?" Liv asked, raising her eyebrows. "You with us?"

"You are getting physically stronger?" The sword asked, and everyone blinked at the weird tone.

"Uh, yeah." Liv said, frowning now. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"Let me see if I understand this correctly; you are getting physically stronger and wish to know if it is some sort of effect granted by connection to the system, or possible through the usage of coins. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Mom broke in. "Is that what's happening here?"

"Are you certain your strength is not merely a natural happenstance of your increased physical regimen since arriving on Seroco?"

"Tori," Luc said, "we just lifted an elephant. That's not anything that doing a few pushups in the morning is gonna help with."

"You lifted Harry? Just you?"

"No, four of us," Liv broke in again, frowning even more. "Tori, what's going on?"

Another long silence.

"I… I do not know."

"You don't know what's wrong, or…" Liv prompted.

"I do not know why your physical strength would have increased by such a degree."

"Wait," It was Dad's turn to cut in. "You mean this isn't normal? I figured that it just went along with everything else that's been happening here."

"No! M… Caesar, was a titan among men, but he required the use of Arts to increase his strength and durability for combat. When not actively drawing on Arts, his strength was that of mortals. So it has always been with Sojourners, and those they granted the system's power."

"Wait, you really don't know what's going on?" Luc blinked. "Isn't that, like, weird?"

"Very much so. I… I can hypothesize, I suppose. No other Sojourner before you has had the direct connection to the System that you now have. Perhaps, in manipulating the raw energies of the System–"

"The coins, right?" Isabel asked.

"Yes, perhaps because you are using the coins themselves directly, they are somehow interacting with your physical forms as well. It… It is conceivable that there is some kind of power bleed happening."

"Do you think it's harmful?" Dad asked.

"I… Consul Matthew, I do not know! I can only hypothesize, because I have no information on this kind of phenomenon. But… No, I would not think it would be harmful? The motes of power are… Are supposed to be benign until used by the system to transform into deadly energies. Prior to that, they are… Harmless. I… Cannot this moment foresee why utilizing them directly would lead to ill effects. But I do not know, Consuls. I cannot stress that enough."

"And it's not like we can just stop using them either," Liv pointed out. "I mean, they kinda saved our butts a few times, right?"

There was a general muttering of affirmatives.

"Alright then," Dad said, nodding then glancing at the sky. "I'd guess we've still got a couple hours of daylight left… Guys, let's start getting the stuff on the sleds."

"Wait, really?" Isabel raised an eyebrow. "That's it? No long speeches or calls to action? No long discussions of how weird things are and how we've got to be careful?"

Dad grinned. "I think we all know to be careful by now. Besides… 'weird' is kind of our new 'normal', isn't it? We've got a job to finish. We can lose our minds about it when we get back to camp."

Bel stared. "Who are you and what have you done with Dad?"

Dad grinned. "I'm learning to roll with it. Now go help your brother and sister before they hurt themselves trying to lift everything in one go."

Isabel glanced back at her sibs, who were trying to do just that.

She sighed. "On it, Dad. Hey, you twerps, lighten the load!"

And the day continued.

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