The next day, Alex declared war on abnormality.
She did it over breakfast in the Tannenbaum clubhouse, where Emma had three tablets open, Selena had apparently slept for ninety minutes and returned to her research room with a face like a haunted librarian, and Rico was trying to convince one of Hans's staff that "espresso foam" was a necessary branch of hospitality.
Phong had just reached for a report labeled Saitama Foothold — Black Rabbit Behavioral Patterns when Alex's hand came down over the screen with the calm finality of a dungeon gate closing. She looked at him with the serene expression she wore when she had already decided the outcome and was allowing the world a moment to accept it.
"We are going out," she said.
Phong looked at her hand covering the report. "The black rabbits—"
"Will still be black rabbits in three hours."
"Selena asked for—"
"Selena asked for twelve things, three impossible things, and one thing that made Emma stare at the wall for ten seconds. She can survive without you until afternoon."
Emma, without looking up, said, "That is accurate, although I dislike being quoted so precisely."
Alex took the tablet from Phong's hand and slid it across the table to Emma. "Today, we take back whatever is still considered normal in our lives. We get pastries. We walk somewhere that does not contain a boss phase. We buy clothes for the children. Then, because our standards are beyond repair, we go to the dungeon and pretend that counts as routine."
Joanne lifted her coffee. "A group date with a dungeon chaser. Romantic, tragic, likely to include tomatoes."
Dominic smiled gently. "I support this plan."
Rico climbed onto the table and raised one paw. "I demand bakery tribute."
Alex pointed at him. "You will behave."
Rico slowly lowered his paw. "I demand bakery tribute politely."
That was how Team Nemean ended up at the Vogel bakery just after the morning rush, moving through Queens with enough casual clothes, hidden security, and mana-suppression accessories to look almost like ordinary young adults if one ignored the fact that several people on the street recognized Alex before she reached the door. The bakery's sign still looked the same as Phong remembered, warm and homey, with the slightly faded charm of a place built by hands more interested in feeding people than branding itself for tourism. Inside, the smell of butter, sugar, coffee, yeast, and warm fruit wrapped around them with such immediate gentleness that Phong felt his shoulders lower before he told them to.
The Vogels still ran the bakery, although "ran" had become a more flexible word since Alex's rise in popularity. Divers had become the new celebrities of the age, and Alex's family bakery had turned into a destination for fans, curious tourists, local reporters pretending to buy bread while fishing for quotes, and young divers who wanted to say they had eaten a pastry made by the family of THE Us Mindblade before she was called anything so ridiculous.
To keep the place from drowning, Papa and Mama Vogel had hired several students from nearby universities, most of them part-time, cheerful, and visibly thrilled to be working somewhere that might place them within six foot of team Nemean. One young woman nearly dropped a tray of croissants when Alex walked in, then recovered her professionalism, although some might argue Mama Vogel's penance stare had some effect on that.
Mama Vogel came around the counter first and embraced Alex with flour on her sleeves. Papa Vogel followed with Phong's hand caught in both of his, his grip warm and firm, his eyes doing the parental scan that measured sleep, weight, stress, happiness, and whether the young man engaged to his daughter had eaten enough to survive the day. The answer, judged by Papa Vogel's immediate frown, was apparently inadequate. Within two minutes, Team Nemean had been moved to a corner table, the students had carried over baskets of pastries, and Rico had been given Bockwurst in exchange for being disciplined for one day.
The raccoon haggled the duration of his "no justice non-sense time" down to 2 hours, and happily deemed sausages were an acceptable bribe.
"You have more help now," Phong said, watching a university student ring up a customer wearing an Alex Vogel fan hoodie.
Mama Vogel laughed. "Our daughter became famous and made our little bakery into a pilgrimage site. We either hired help or turned into a tragic documentary about Kaiser Brötchen."
Papa Vogel set a cup in front of Phong with visible pride. "Try this."
Phong looked down. The coffee had a creamy foam cap dusted lightly with salt and cocoa, and the scent rising from it made him think immediately of Long, of Vietnamese coffee shops, of family kitchens, and of the strange comfort created when people from different parts of his life quietly taught one another how to care.
"Is this salt foam?" he asked.
Papa Vogel's chest expanded. "Long taught me."
Alex stared at her father. "You took coffee lessons from Long?"
"He is a serious young man with strong opinions. I respect that."
Phong took a sip and blinked. The foam was a little too thick, the salt a touch uneven near the edge, but the balance was there, creamy and sharp over the bitterness, and suddenly Phong wanted to laugh and cry for reasons too complicated for a bakery table. "It is good."
Papa Vogel beamed. "Decent?"
"Very decent."
"Ha," Papa Vogel said, turning toward the counter. "I told you. Vietnamese future son-in-law approval."
Mama Vogel waved him off while pretending not to smile.
For a little while, breakfast managed to be breakfast. Dominic split a berry pastry with Janet and got powdered sugar on his sleeve. Joanne ate in silence for once. Jack ate quietly but went back for a second savory roll. Séline and Camille came for their rematch against German bakery culture. Alex sat beside Phong with one hand under the table near his knee, and every time someone called her name or asked for a photograph, she handled it with grace that made Phong both proud and protective.
After breakfast, Phong took them to the mall.
This, according to Rico, was a tactical error because malls contained "too many children and not enough of them wearing a kamen rider driver." Phong ignored him and led the team through clothing stores with the grim determination of a man preparing a supply convoy. He did not buy anything for himself, despite Alex holding up three shirts and declaring that one day he would own something that did not look chosen for farming, fleeing, or forced on him by necessity and the Tannenbaum's network of influence.
The real purpose was the elf children. They were growing, rough on fabric, and constantly split between camps, forests, training grounds, and treant territory, which meant every shirt, jacket, sock, and pair of pants needed to survive climbing, mud, Timato escort, and whatever child logic considered "play."
Buying clothes for six elf children with Team Nemean turned into a production. Janet focused on comfort and made sure seams would not irritate them. Dominic gravitated toward warm layers. Joanne picked colors "because if the children are going to be tiny dungeon royalty, they should at least look photogenic while causing logistical panic." Emma said they should take the whole store. Alex selected a few simple outfits and one slightly nicer set for each child, saying they deserved clothes meant for something other than survival. Rico tried to sneak a tiny sun glasses and a tiny leather jacket into the cart for himself, got caught, and argued that he too was one of Phong's dependents, which resulted in Phong buying it because Alex laughed before he could build a proper defense.
By afternoon, carrying enough bags to outfit a small academy of forest gremlins, they returned to the dungeon, because by Team Nemean standards, living inside a monster-filled alternate ecosystem had somehow become part of normal life. Alex made the condition clear before they reached lake Baratok: Phong was still banned from reading reports unless an emergency occurred.
He tried to argue that many emergencies began as reports, but she kissed his cheek in front of everyone and told him that if Yuè collapsed because he spent one afternoon delivering children's clothes, then Yuè deserved a harsher organizational review. Emma, traitor that she was, supported the ban as "stress control and leadership delegation."
Rico announced that tyranny lost to bigger tyranny that wore perfume, then retreated behind Dominic when Alex looked at him.
The first thing Phong saw was the wall.
He stopped so abruptly that Rico bumped into the back of his head.
A wooden wall ran around the camp, the troll mountain, and part of the lake.
It was not a palisade in the ordinary sense. No one had cut logs, sharpened stakes, and driven them into the ground. The wall curved with living irregularity, roots dug deep, trunks joined side by side, bark fused into broad plates, and branches arched overhead in sections where walkways had already begun to form naturally. It looked ancient and newly grown at the same time, like a forest had decided to remember the concept of fortification. The line swept from the outer farms around Camp Stymphalian, climbed along the base of the troll mountain where terraced fields were being carved, and extended toward the lake in a protective crescent that left enough water access for canals and boats while controlling the approach.
Phong walked closer, awe turning slowly into analysis.
The old treants had joined themselves.
That realization struck him harder than the wall itself. The older treants from the nearby forest, the ones who usually moved with seasonal reluctance and spoke only when Black Ants came for blood, had rooted themselves into a defensive ring. Their bodies formed the wall. Their crowns interlocked. Their roots braided under the soil in a network dense enough that Moletatoes could coordinate through it like living trenches. Phong's defensive plants had grown across the bark in a symbiotic relationship that looked too natural to be random: Garlic Mines nestled near root hollows where the Moletato network could ensure allied safety, defensive chilies hung under branch eaves like red warning lamps, Enoki gun clusters sprouted from bark shelves facing outward, anti-air dill feathered the upper ridges, and Timatoes lounged in sunny gaps with tiger faces turned toward every path that might become trouble.
Dominic came to stand beside him. "That was not here before."
"No," Phong said, very quietly. "It was not."
A troll carrying a basket of soil waved from a newly formed walkway atop the wall. Several pixies flitted along the upper branches, clearly warned by nearby fire chickens to behave. Great Burrow mice had already found inspection holes. A group of lizardmen engineers stood near the lake edge, arguing happily with an Inkborn sage over whether the living wall's roots would complicate irrigation or improve it. Yuè had taken one afternoon without Phong and grown a defensive biome.
Alex watched his face. "Report ban still stands."
"This is not a report. This is a wall."
"It is a wall-shaped report."
Before Phong could answer, he heard giggling.
He followed the sound around a curve of joined treant bark and found the six elf children crouched near one of the older trunks, mouths full of bark fibers, cheeks smudged with sap, and expressions of absolute guilt. Lôi, eldest and therefore most aware of consequences, froze with a thin strip of bark between her teeth. Her younger siblings froze with her, which made the entire group look like a tiny herd of deer caught eating a temple.
Rico, perched on Phong's shoulder in his new tiny leather jacket, whispered, "Bark crimes."
Phong stared at them.
The children stared back.
Celine slowly tried to chew.
Phong pointed at him. "Stop."
He stopped.
Phong crouched in front of the nearest treant root and placed one hand on the bark. The old treant's awareness moved through the wall slowly, vast and patient, like a hill deciding whether to wake. The response came through leaves, roots, and a pressure behind Phong's eyes rather than words at first. Consent, protection, amusement, children, growth. Then, after another long pulse, a thought shaped itself more cohesively for human mind to process.
They bite. Old wood remembers younger spring now.
Phong closed his eyes for a moment.
The elf children had done this.
Born out of the biome atop Horns of the Earth's back, they must have carried some effect on plant-life species in the dungeon when they spent enough time near them. It was not control, at least not from what Phong felt through the treant. The old trees had not been forced into a wall. The children's presence had awakened something, encouraged something, perhaps reminded the treants of an older evolutionary path where forest, defense, and community were not separate concepts. The defensive plants had responded to the change, sinking into the bark as partners rather than tools, and the younger treants in the surrounding forest were already showing signs of evolution after exposure to the children's play.
Phong opened his eyes and looked at Lôi.
"Did you ask before chewing?"
Lôi swallowed carefully. "We were testing."
"That is not an answer."
"The old grandtrees said it tickled."
A slow creak moved through the wall above them, and several leaves rustled in what was unmistakably ancient laughter.
Phong pressed his fingers to his forehead.
Alex covered her mouth, which meant she was trying not to laugh.
Joanne failed entirely. "Your kids evolved the forest by teething on it."
"Thank you, a real time report on the drama of my life is precisely what I need right now," Phong said.
Emma, already taking notes despite Alex's report ban technically applying only to Phong, stepped closer with bright, dangerous interest. "This could be juicy to send to our Latina scientist."
Alex pointed at her. "Later."
Emma stopped writing with visible pain.
Phong spent the next several minutes confirming consent from three old treants, two younger treants, the nearby plant network, and a Timato that seemed to think the whole event was excellent because more wall meant more places to nap in ambush. The old treants had chosen to become the wall. Younger treants had begun evolving after spending time near the elf children, apparently with enthusiasm rather than distress. The defensive plants were feeding from the wall's excess mana and offering defense in return, a clean symbiosis rather than parasitism. Nothing in the network felt coerced, though Phong made a mental note to ask Selena whether children born from a world-beast biome chewing on ancient tree people counted as botany, parenting, or theology.
Finally, he stood.
The elf children straightened guiltily.
Phong looked at their sap-streaked faces, their bark-dusted sleeves, their bright eyes, and the living wall behind them that might save thousands of lives someday.
"I am not grounding you today," he said.
All six children lit up.
"Because," he continued, and their faces immediately became cautious, "the treants agreed, the wall is healthy, and nobody appears harmed. That does not mean you test your teeth on every ancient plant-life species you meet."
Rico raised a paw. "What about moderately ancient?"
"No."
"Recently ancient?"
"No."
"Bureaucratically ancient?"
Phong reached up and pushed Rico's face away again.
He pointed toward camp. "Go clean yourselves. All of you. Sap out of your hair, bark out of your teeth, hands washed, faces washed, and then you try on the clothes we brought."
The children gasped as if clothes were an unexpected boss reward.
Lôi looked toward the bags Dominic and Janet were carrying. "New clothes?"
"New clothes," Phong said. "Including shoes that are not half-mud and shirts without Timato bite marks."
Joachim whispered, "The Timato started it."
A nearby Timato growled in protest.
Phong decided, wisely, to litigate that later.
The six children ran toward camp in a burst of laughter, followed by three Timatoes, two Alerting Carrots inside their pockets, and Rico shouting after them that fashion required swagger. The living treant wall creaked softly overhead, defensive chilies swaying in the warm dungeon air, Enoki gun caps turning outward toward the wilds beyond the camp. Phong stood beneath the joined branches with Alex beside him, Team Nemean behind him, and Yuè growing around him in ways he had not planned but could still learn to guide.
Alex slipped her hand into his.
"Normal enough?" she asked.
Phong looked at the ancient treants forming a wall around his camp, his plant defenses growing symbiotically from their bark, his elf children running away to try on mall clothes after being caught chewing on sentient trees, and Rico in a tiny leather jacket yelling fashion advice at Timatoes.
He squeezed her hand.
"For us," he said, "surprisingly normal."