“Hey Gus, you know how I saved all of those lives yesterday?” asked Artyom as he leaned over the wooden desk covered in paperwork. The bags under the late twenty-something man’s eyes only accentuated the harried look he gave.


    The man on the other side let out a sigh and looked up from the document in front of him with a bored expression.


    “And they were all children too!” Artyom continued, forcing an uncomfortably wide grin that showed gnashing teeth. If the sleeves of his white dress shirt were pulled up any tighter, the flexing of his lean yet well-defined muscles might have ripped the fabric. “All forcibly taken from their homes and ready to be turned into child soldiers by a jackass king who wouldn’t have lost any sleep at their deaths.”


    The other man looked directly into his friend’s eyes, not letting any sort of reaction show through his schooled expression. “Please get to the point, Artyom,” said Gus in a near-monotone.


    “So why the hell am I being assigned punishment duty?!” asked Artyom in a shout as he flexed the corded muscles in his arms and slammed his palm onto the desk.


    The resulting thud sounded through the room despite the heavy wood absorbing most of the blow. Several loose sheets of paper on the desk jumped into the air before falling back ever-so-slightly out of place.


    Silence reigned for a long moment after as the two stared each other down.


    Eventually, Gus blinked, and began to move the documents back in order. “Whatever do you mean by ‘punishment’?”


    “Come on Gus, I’m not an idiot. I’m supposed to be out there keeping kids safe when they get brought over to hellholes, that’s kind of the point of this whole organization.”


    “And is that not what you’ll be doing on your next mission?”


    Artyom narrowed his eyes and gave his friend a sneer before taking a deep breath. As he finished exhaling, he began to slowly speak. “I save kids from hellholes, Gus. Places where the people in charge have no morals, and definitely no qualms about turning a bunch of children into meat shields. You know, Gilded and Grimdark Worlds, where everyone is scum.” His voice dripped with malice at that last sentence.


    Gus didn’t reply, and merely continued to listen.


    Artyom pointed his thumb behind him towards a poster on the wall featuring five rows, each different colors starting from bright green working its way to a bloody red. A simple cartoony facial expression, name, and description was neatly arranged in each row.


    Gus craned the neck set on his skinny frame and followed Artyom’s gaze. He raised an eyebrow as if to ask “what’s your point.”


    Looking into his eyes, Artyom replied, “This mission is in a Fairytale World! You want me to ‘save’ a kid from a cushy summer camp!”


    Gus betrayed no emotion and merely blinked once.


    Artyom turned back to him with a face warped into a mockery of a smile barely holding back a well of rage. “What’s going on, Gus? What did I do wrong? We’re friends, you can tell me.”


    “Artyom,” began Gus, his voice ever-so-slightly lowering in volume. “This isn’t punishment, it’s a vacation.”


    “A vacation, is this some kind of joke? I can’t take a vacation now!” An errant fist slammed into the desk again. “How many kids are going to get killed while I’m out… dancing in a field of flowers with a bunch of peasants or something? I should be out there in the field saving lives!”Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    “Artyom, you’re not our only agent,” replied Gus, voice back to his previous vim and vigor. “And if we end up getting swamped with people that need saving, we’ll call you back. But… you know very well what happened on your last mission.”


    “All I know is that I did my job, fulfilled my duty, and saved lives. So no, I don’t know. Please enlighten me.”


    “As we were narrowing down the location of the children, you became impatient.”


    Arytom rolled his eyes, practically asking if that was some sort of crime.


    “And resorted to torturing one of the enemy soldiers.”


    “I threatened him, Gus. I barely laid a finger on him, just cut his cheek a little to prove a point.”


    “An unnecessary point. We had everything we needed, Artyom, you just needed to wait another minute.”


    “And what if it took more than a minute, huh? Or what if that bastard of a king found those kids first? Those children would be dead, and their blood would be on our hands! I took the call and I would have gotten that information if our techies failed.”


    “Are you willing to say that to their face?” asked Gus.


    “Sure, call them up right now so I can tell them, or would you rather I say it in person? Better yet, I’ll just shout it over the headquarters intercom system! Let the whole of TOAL know!”


    Gus said nothing for a moment before looking Artyom directly in the eyes and spoke, “Artyom, torture is against the policy of the Terran Otherworldly Advocacy League.”


    “I wasn’t torturing him. I’d never torture anyone. Even other world scum! They might endanger kids from Earth, but even then I’d never.”


    Gus raised a single eyebrow.


    Artyom stared back at him for a second before replying, “What?”


    “‘Other world scum’,” said Gus, quoting his friend. “How many of your last missions have been in Gilded Worlds?”


    “About a dozen or so. It was more before that, but having to deploy to a Grimdark World broke that last streak.”


    “Gilded or Grimdark, then.”


    “Eh, I lost count after a hundred.”


    “Each of your missions take two weeks on average, so that’s over four years.”


    “So call me a workaholic, what’s the big deal? I still make sure to take some time off for R&R on base, you don’t have to send me an entire two weeks away on a waste of time.”


    “I don’t mean four years of work,” said Gus. “You’ve been facing off against the worst of humanity for four years straight.”


    “If you can even call them human,” said Artyom in a mumble.


    “What was that?”


    “Because that’s who’s going to take advantage of children,” said Artyom, rolling his eyes and hoping the other man didn’t notice the bead of sweat forming just next to them.


    Gus slowly stood up and leaned over to look at his friend more closely. “Artyom, the multiverse is massive. The number of Gilded and Grimdark Worlds are miniscule compared to what’s out there. You’ve only interacted with the absolute worst kinds of people in all existence for four years straight, your perception of humanity has become utterly misanthropic. That’s why you’re being assigned a vacation.”


    Artyom’s features began to soften as Gus’ words began to work their way into his mind. And then they returned to stone. “This isn’t just your decision, is it?”


    “Some of the executive council asked me to set this up. I agree with them, however.”


    “Figures,” Artyom said with a shrug. “Damn shame we didn’t give ourselves veto powers.”


    “Artyom,” said Gus, placing a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “This honestly isn’t a punishment, it really is a vacation. We want you to come out of this happier.”


    Artyom let out a sigh and shook his head. “I’ll be happier once the multiverse is safe from the kinds of people I fight. Trying to make me love them isn’t going to help anyone.”


    “Please Artyom, I’m coming to you as your friend. Do it for me.”


    Artyom looked his friend in the eye and threw off the hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready to accept the blood of everyone I won’t be able to save while on this little ‘vacation’ on your hands?”


    Gus looked down at his desk and remained silent for a long moment before finally speaking. “One month. I’m increasing your mandatory vacation to one month, with mandatory nightly check-ins.”


    “You son of a-”


    “The org’s psychologists wanted to make it this long originally, and I talked them down to making it two weeks. But I can see that they were right. You need this.”


    Artyom stared at the other man with a look of disgust and spit out one final sentence before turning around. “Some friend you are.”


    “And don’t even consider ‘speedrunning’ your mission,” said Gus before Artyom could leave the room. “We’ll send you on another vacation if you come back before the month is-”


    The door slammed shut.


    “The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can get back to saving lives,” said Artyom as he headed towards the portal room, not bothering to look back.