"Ow! Why is everyone hitting me!"

"That was a tasteless joke."

Marcus rubs his side but doesn't retort.

"Anyway, you guys want to look at the powers?" To Viv: "The rest of the powers, in your case?"

"...to be honest I think you're a lot better than any of us at being a munchkin and stuff. When we play D&D it's not any of us who's, well, doing that thing you do."

...m...u...n...c...h...k...i...n...

"You do optimize a lot. Sometimes excessively."

He slumps forward to rest his forehead on his hands.

"What fresh hell have you constructed for yourself."

"I haven't. Munchkinned. At all. And I should."

"Wait, are you saying that the kinds of minmaxing you do for games might not be great choices for your actual real life?"

"...What are you proposing that you munchkin, I dislike that look."

"I... shouldn't isekai. I should, I, I should take powers that'll let me solve AI alignment and, and eradicate malaria and stuff."

"...isekai?"

"It's when a character dies and goes to another world."

"Just go to another world. And I'd go somewhere that allows transit back."

Vivian's jaw physically drops, and she puts it grimly back in place.

"Are you trying to tell me that somewhere with reliable dimensional transit can't eradicate the malarial mosquito? That you, personally going around gazing wistfully at brilliant scientists, is a better solution than having the entire multiverse on offer? That isekai is not basically synonymous with obscene superpowers?"

He opens his mouth.

Then he closes his mouth.

"Okay but I, I, if, I still would need to optimize for getting somewhere that could help with that, and it'd be unconscionable to leave here on the hopes that, that I'll find something, and actually it'd be a story I'd hate to be in if I left this world and when I came back it was made of grey goo wouldn't it."

"...uh, my bad, I didn't mean to trigger this."

"No I should actually think about what I, I mean if this is chapter one and I can choose my powers then that's a big deal and—"

Felicia covers his mouth with a hand. "Stop. Breathe."

Stops. Breathes.

Vivian looks somewhat like there should be physical steam coming out of her ears. She also takes the chance to breathe.

"Peter," she says after a few seconds and after the steam has mostly ceased. "You are aware that doomerism pisses me off. It pisses me off worse, apparently, when you use it as an excuse to self-harm about not fixing the world while fixing the world. I would like us to take another break, while you ask your magic notebook if she can put in a word with her boss to keep the world from ending while you isekai somewhere that can eradicate the malarial mosquito and solve AI alignment. Please."

He pulls Felicia's hand away from his face and says "Yeah okay."

"For someone so smart you can be really stupid sometimes, you know."