The first time Hudson Valentine's Unique Trait activated, he was twenty-two years old, three beers deep, and getting his head cradled against the volumptous breasts of a woman who had, forty minutes earlier, introduced herself as "Brunhilde, Third Seat of the Einherjar, but you can call me Hilde, sweetheart."
He had not, at that point, known what an Einherjar was.
He had not, at that point, known that Unique Traits could activate outside of combat.
He had not, at that point, known a lot of things.
But what he did know was that the System notification hovering in the corner of his vision was not going away, no matter how hard he blinked.
> [UNIQUE TRAIT ACTIVATED: Nurtured by the Divine Feminine]
> [Donor Classification: Valkyrie, Veteran Tier]
> [Assessing compatibility…]
> [Assessing compatibility…]
> […Oh.]
> [Oh, Player. Oh no.]
---
Forty-three minutes earlier, Hudson had walked into the Drunken Hydra with the specific intention of drinking until he forgot that his guild application had been rejected for the third time this quarter.
The Drunken Hydra was one of Manhattan's twenty-one registered Awakened-only bars; a basement establishment on East 9th, wedged between a ramen place and a tattoo parlor, with rune-warded walls, a bouncer who was technically a dwarf from the Third Tower, and a cocktail menu that listed alcohol percentages in mana units. Hudson had been coming here since he'd awakened at nineteen. He knew the bartender's ex-wife's name. He knew which booth had the wobbly leg. He knew, with the bone-deep certainty of a regular, that nothing interesting had ever happened to him in this bar, and nothing interesting ever would.
He was wrong about that, but only by about an hour.
"Rejection letter?" the bartender asked, sliding him a beer he hadn't ordered.
"Rejection letter..." Hudson confirmed.
"Which guild this time?"
"AshGuard."
The bartender winced sympathetically. "AshGuard's a C-rank guild."
"I am a C-rank Player."
"Yeah, but AshGuard's the bad C-rank guild. The one that rejected that guy last month for having what they called 'an insufficiently serious face.'"
"I have a very serious face."
"Sure, buddy."
Hudson drank his beer. On the wall-mounted screen above the bar, an MSNBC anchor was cheerfully recapping the latest exploits of Mark Bennett; rising star, twenty-two, already a mid-tier A-rank at an age when most Players were still grinding tutorial dungeons. The footage showed Mark cutting through a Floor 47 boss in the Chicago Tower.
Mark was Hudson's childhood friend.
Mark was, as far as anyone on Earth knew, a once-in-a-generation talent who had awakened with perfect instincts, a legendary-grade weapon affinity, and a work ethic that bordered on the concerning.
Mark was, as far as Hudson knew, a man who occasionally stared at middle distance like he was watching a movie no one else could see, and who six months ago had gotten drunk at Hudson's apartment in Jersey City and muttered the words "I'm not going to let it happen again" to a bowl of ramen noodles.
Hudson had filed this away under None Of My Business. Hudson filed a lot of things under None Of My Business. It was the closest thing he had to a combat skill.
He was halfway through his second beer and deep into a spiral about his character sheet's pathetic Strength score when the woman sat down across from him.
"You look..." she said, "...like a man who has recently been told he is insufficient."
Hudson looked up.
The woman was tall even though she was sitting, she had six inches on him and built like someone who took punching as a serious academic discipline. Her hair was the pale blonde of old gold, braided down one shoulder in a style that had gone out of fashion on Earth somewhere around the ninth century. She was wearing a leather jacket over what was very obviously a piece of ceremonial armor. Her eyes were a shade of blue.
She was a tower-born. Interdimensional. Not from here.
"Um..." Hudson said.
"I am correct?"
"About the insufficient thing? Yeah. Professionally and personally. It's been a whole quarter."
She nodded once, as if he had confirmed a military report. Then she reached across the table, picked up his beer, and drank half of it in a single pull.
"I am Brunhilde," she said, setting the glass down. "Third Seat of the Einherjar. Retired. Currently registered with your Department of Awakened Affairs as a combat consultant, Tier Two residency, primary dimensional origin listed as Asgard-Variant-B. You may call me Hilde."
"Uh.. hudson," said Hudson. "Hudson Valentine. Primary dimensional origin listed as, uh. Jersey City."
"Jersey City," Hilde repeated, with the faint smile. "Jersey City. Hudson of Jersey City. Why are you drinking alone on a Tuesday, Hudson of Jersey City?"
"Because AshGuard Guild thinks I have an insufficiently serious face."
"Ah..." Hilde's expression did something complicated. "...Show me this face."
Hudson, who was three beers deep and had not been looked at by a woman like this in months, showed her his face.
Hilde studied him for a long moment. Long enough that Hudson started to worry. Long enough that the bartender, across the room, began very deliberately polishing a glass he had already polished whilst staring at them with a smirk.
Then Hilde said, in the tone of a woman making a professional assessment:
"Your face is fine. AshGuard Guild are fools. Come sit next to me."
"…What?"
"Come sit next to me, Hudson of Jersey City. This booth is too wide. I cannot comfort you across a table."
"I don't need comfort...."
"You very much need comfort..." said Hilde. "I have been a Valkyrie for six hundred and forty years. I know a man who needs comforting when I see one. Come!."
Hudson, helpless against whatever this was, came.