World Souls and Shitty Politics

The Archive is the most important tool an agent can have. Along with collecting, recording, sorting, and analyzing data and many other functions, it is a representation of the agent's esteem, skill, strength, and career.

Each mission an agent chooses to undertake, each leaf and branch of the multiverse tree they change and claim, alters their Archive bit by bit. The extensive and longer the mission is to the world, the more the Archive absorbs the world's energy and characteristics. Furthermore, although two or more agents may reside in the same branch or even leaf for the same mission, no two Archives have the same gain, just like no two dragons and phoenixes are the same or no two Ollivander wands are the same. Ah, sorry. Wrong fandom.

Once successfully entering the world, its world spirit will treat the agent as a foreign entity to undergo symbiosis with. It will give out mission types called Quests and react with positive or negative reinforcement (reward and punishment, carrot and stick) to steer the foreign entity into the right direction. Each world spirit (or commonly known among agents as Quest Giver) is different and can also behave differently according to the Quest Recipient and Quest Completion. Just as the world spirit changes the agent, so does the agent change the world spirit.

The primary goal of each agent is to establish some form of a working relationship with the world spirit, and the world spirit treats each agent's relationship separately. Eventually, after many missions, the world spirit may enter into a very basic working relationship with the entire faction. When that is achieved, that segment of the multiverse tree is Reclaimed. As in land reclamation.

"And yours, specifically, is to make it more hospitable for the more important life forms in there. Usually humans and such."

She nodded slowly, trying to digest his answer. "But why did I fail to enter..." She counted mentally. "Three times? And that was as a pokémon!"

The teapot let out a high-pitched sound, and the Gatekeeper rose to make their tea.

"Remember what I explained just now? The agenda of agents and world spirits?"

"Yes, you were talking for two hours."

He sat down on the sofa again. "Well, that didn't matter in your case. The world you were assigned to was stronger than average. It's above your pay grade."

"Then assign me another one."

"We can't."

"What?!" The second stress ball he gave to her burned into ashes. At least the blue flames were pretty.

He shrugged. "Nobody gets to change their missions after accepting, its in the policy."

"But it's my Tutorial!"

"True, and normally it'd be fine, but remember what I said about it being stronger than average?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes. It was literally 74 words ago."

"What?"

"What? ...Wait, what did I just say?"

"Huh. Anyway, the world spirit never worked with an agent before. That's like getting the First Clear of a dungeon." He sipped his tea. "It also means that you're playing on higher difficulty. And if you give up, the next agent that comes along has it even harder as you soured the rep of all foreign entities for the world spirit, which probably causes them to give up, which sours the rep even harder, you get the idea. But the harder the world makes itself for the agent, the more bonuses and rewards the world spirit grants to even it out.

"Your world was supposed to be on Tutorial difficulty. It is now Normal. Normal! Do you know how large the distance is between the difficulties? Let me answer for you, it grows exponentially. It went from Tutorial to Very Easy, which isn't so bad, then to Easy and to Normal. The world spirit probably thinks that all agents are moronic little shits who decided to play hockey with their brains to fuck up Tutorial to Normal."

"...And now I'm supposed to overturn that view. It didn't even let me go as a human!" She sighed. "Please don't tell me that we actually have such morons in the ranks."

The Gatekeeper shrugged. "Either that or somebody purposefully soured the world to gain larger rewards in the end. That's in the grey side of things legal here."

"...Great. Now you're going to tell me some all-powerful clan is going to send assassins after me for ruining the birthday present of their heir."

He hid his face in his tea mug.

"Fuck?"

---

They decided to take a small break from that talking. The air in the office even went stale, not that it was very fresh in the first place. The Gatekeeper gave her another (the third) stress ball after closing the windows.

"Every Chaos Cycle, which is an incredibly long span of time, a Minister is elected to head the Afterdeath Ministry. At the beginning of this Chaos Cycle, unlike the four cycles beforehand, one of the challengers won." He sipped his tea. "The former minister and his faction weren't too pleased about that. The top changes people, and their change, uninterrupted for four entire cycles, wasn't pleasant.

"To cut it short, their core belief of 'we have to protect the multiverse trees from zergs' became 'only we are qualified to do shit'. Fucking elitist bastards."

"...That's quite a dramatic shift."

He looked at her, face blank. "Four. Chaos. Cycles. Four."

She put up her hand in defense. "Woah, okay. But why am I targeted?"

"One of the most important promises the new minister made during his campaign was 'Less paperwork and trauma; better work hours!' And his plan was to employ average people with decent morals, which isn't that hard to come by if their dimension was up to standards, to improve the settings of other worlds to standards, creating more average people with decent morals, which… You get the picture. Of course, we don't actually accept the average decent joe but look for those predisposed towards certain areas."

She nodded, thinking. "And the ex-minister faction didn't like that, because…?"

"Because they are full of themselves and don't believe in the potential of a common person given the right tools and situation. Granted, qualifications are important, but!" He slammed the table, agitated. "Why do they make it so hard to get qualifications in the first place if you're not rich and their ally, huh? HUH?!"

She handed him the stress ball. The Gatekeeper didn't knead it, he stretched it like those rubber bands at an aerobics course. It miraculously didn't snap.

"Corruption in the workplace, promotions went to those who didn't have the ability but connections, discrimination and classism against those who worked their way up, newspapers embellishing their faction and slandering everyone else, and those FUCKING SMEAR CAMPAIGNS!"

The (third) stress ball slash aerobics rubber band snapped. The old man's spittle flew as he roared.

"THOSE FUCKERS! The very day we opened doors videos, documentaries, articles, any media you can possibly imagine! Even the curriculum was changed. Suddenly everyone was convinced that the multiverses were ruled by their own destinies, protagonists having plot armor, and the pointlessness of fighting against your own fate! They made the ministry look like headless chickens running around accomplishing nothing while the rich bastards elegantly point out their amateur mistakes! FUCK!" He threw his cup out of the window, then turned to her, breathing heavily.

"..."

"..."

"...So basically I am fucked over by some elitist people who got used to staying in power and couldn't handle change?"

He sighed. "Yes. I mean, no. But yes. Of course, the new faction is backed by their own elite and rich people, it's just that everyone has grown up with them in power, they've grown up since forever in power, and now suddenly, they aren't."

"But," she frowned. " You are literally responsible for the continued existence of countless beings? Why does it sound so simple?"

"It's not simple!" He snapped at her. "Everyone is so used to solving convoluted answers to riddles and the mysteries of the universe! And now we are supposed to handle the mentality of spoiled yet somehow educated grown-up brats?! We're severely underqualified!"

"Ask some parents."

"We did!" He moaned, rocking back and forth. "They said to give them a good spanking. Spanking! Have they not looked at the studies proving that it is detrimental to a child's emotional development? And they're adults! Adults who'll get offended. Offended adults are never mature. Granted, they are never mature in the first place but if they are offended, which they already are, they'll just content themselves with whatever chaos and inconveniences they can cause. Let me tell you that on Thursday, a drugged honey badger was..." Were those tears she spied in his glassy eyes?

"There there," she rubbed circles on his hunched back. "Hold on 'til the worst of the storm has passed."

"Oh," The Gatekeeper mumbled darkly. "It did. And now nobody is world-hopping anymore. The elite forces are slowly dying out, and the former ocean of recruits became a trickle." He fixed her with his glassy, bright blue eyes. "And you're a drop. Probably the last."

"What?!" She thought of the pictures of the zergs and their terrifying swarms consuming solar system and galaxies provided in the introductory pamphlet. "But, but! Zergs..."

"Yes, exactly. We're digging our own grave, as people mumble about the incompetent industry is rightfully dying out. Industry?! This isn't an industry. The last thing we want is to commercialize ensuring the continued existence of multiverse branches, and in some cases, trees. But that's what we're going to do."

The Gatekeeper slid a thick stack of paper towards her.

"We're going to beat them at their own..." He grimaced, spitting the word out. "Game. Girl, gal, agent. Whatever your form of address is. Please allow your missions being recorded and distributed."

---

"...Are you making me a reality tv star?"

He winced. "It's for the good of the space-time continuum."

"...Are you messing with me?" She looked him in his glassy blue eyes.

"...Yes."

She continued to stare at him as she burned the stack of paperwork they've been working on for the past five hours.

---

"No, but for real. We will review during and after each mission how to make it public-friendly for good PR. You will, of course, have a pretty big voice about that. Just sign this here."

She did. "Anything else?"

"Nope, that's it."

Oh thank the continuum, her wrists were starting to ache from the five hour session earlier. And was that a cramp in her fingers?

He then put a box on the table. It landed with a thump.

"And all this as well."

She tried very hard not to scream and reached for another (the fourth) stress ball.

---

"About that all-powerful clan with their birthday present for their heir…?"

"Of course not, that'd be cliché. An entire faction of powerful old coots is bad enough."

She eyed his appearance balding head, hunched back, and wrinkles skeptically.

"That's just an avatar to stop people from making small talk with me. I'm actually really hot."

"If you say so." If he actually wanted to and was hot, why didn't he wear a terrifying mask, huh? What about purposefully putting on ugly make-up, hm?

"I do say so, young grasshopper."

She rolled her eyes as she massaged her hand.