The first joint meeting between Belobog's surface command and the underground Wildfire organization took place in a maintenance tunnel that belonged to neither faction—neutral ground carved from necessity in the depths of the city's infrastructure. Alex watched the assembled representatives with growing concern as it became clear that seven centuries of divergent survival strategies had created communication gaps that ran deeper than simple political disagreement.
"The water rerouting project is feasible," Chief Engineer Serval was explaining to the mixed group, "but it would require diverting resources from surface defensive maintenance during a period of increased Fragmentum activity."
"Resources that the underground settlements have been requesting for basic life support upgrades," Seele countered. "We're talking about systems that affect the daily survival of three thousand people."
"And surface defenses affect the survival of thirty thousand people," Captain Gepard replied with the patient tone of someone who had been having variations of this argument for months. "Strategic priorities have to account for scale."
Alex could see the fundamental problem underlying the exchange. Both sides were correct within their own operational frameworks, but those frameworks had evolved in isolation to address different aspects of the same underlying crisis. The surface command thought in terms of military strategy and resource allocation across the entire population. The underground organization thought in terms of immediate human needs and community-level problem solving.
"What if we're approaching this backwards?" Alex said, interrupting what was beginning to sound like a familiar pattern of circular argument.
The room fell silent, and Alex suddenly found themselves the focus of attention from some of the most competent and experienced leaders on the planet. They took a deep breath and hoped their outsider perspective would prove more helpful than presumptuous.
"You're both trying to solve the same problem—how to keep people alive and safe in an environment that's actively hostile to human existence. But you're treating it like a resource allocation problem when it might actually be a coordination problem."
"Explain," Oleg said from the back of the group. The Wildfire leader had been listening to the discussion with the kind of focused attention that suggested he was looking for any angle that might break the persistent deadlock.
"The surface command has access to heavy engineering equipment and manufacturing capacity," Alex said, gesturing toward Gepard and Serval. "The underground organization has detailed knowledge of local conditions and direct community connections. Instead of competing for the same pool of resources, what if you combined your different capabilities?"
"Joint operations have been proposed before," Serval said diplomatically. "Coordination overhead tends to reduce overall efficiency."
"Because you're trying to coordinate from the top down," Alex replied. "What if you coordinated from the problem up instead?"
Alex moved to the maintenance tunnel's engineering display, pulling up a schematic of the water system breach that Seele had shown them earlier. "This specific issue requires both engineering expertise and local knowledge. Serval's team has the technical ability to design and implement infrastructure modifications. Seele's team knows exactly how the current system affects daily life in the affected areas."
"And?" Gepard asked.
"And instead of having surface command allocate resources to underground operations or vice versa, you create a joint working group with representatives from both sides who are empowered to make decisions about this specific problem." Alex highlighted sections of the schematic as they spoke. "Each group contributes their strengths without having to subordinate their operational priorities to the other group's framework."
Seele studied the display with the expression of someone working through practical implications. "Autonomous problem-solving units with mixed membership and shared authority."
"Exactly. You maintain your separate command structures for issues that fall clearly within your areas of expertise, but you create collaborative structures for problems that require both perspectives."
"It would require trust," Oleg observed.
"It would require competence," Gepard corrected. "Which both organizations have demonstrated repeatedly."
Alex watched as the group worked through the concept, noting how the discussion was shifting from defensive arguments about resource allocation to collaborative planning about implementation details. The fundamental insight wasn't particularly complex—specialization was more efficient than generalization when the specialists could work together—but sometimes obvious solutions were invisible to people who had been stuck in adversarial patterns for too long.
"We could start with the water system project," Serval said slowly. "Limited scope, clear objectives, measurable outcomes."
"And if it works, we expand the approach to other infrastructure challenges," Seele added. "Waste management, power distribution, communication networks."
"A pilot program," Himeko said approvingly from where she'd been observing the discussion. "Low risk, high potential impact."
The remainder of the meeting was devoted to practical planning—identifying personnel who could work effectively across factional lines, establishing communication protocols that would allow rapid information sharing, and defining decision-making authorities that would prevent bureaucratic bottlenecks from undermining time-sensitive operations.
Alex found themselves serving as an informal mediator as the two groups worked through implementation details, helping translate between different organizational vocabularies and pointing out areas where apparent disagreements were actually based on miscommunication rather than genuine conflict.
"You're good at this," March observed quietly as the meeting began to wind down.
"At what?"
"Seeing the shape of problems that other people are too close to recognize," March replied. "It's like photography, in a way—sometimes you need to step back and change your perspective to see what's actually there."
Alex thought about that as the various representatives began to disperse, already making plans to begin joint operations within the next few days. They'd helped facilitate a breakthrough in cooperation between two groups that desperately needed each other but had been prevented from working together by the accumulated weight of historical circumstances.
"Alex," Seele called as she prepared to return to the underground sectors. "Thanks for the outside perspective. Sometimes it takes someone who isn't invested in old arguments to see new solutions."
"Sometimes it takes people who care about the same things finding a way to work together," Alex replied.
As the Express crew made their way back to their temporary quarters, Alex reflected on the day's progress. They'd helped bridge a communication gap that had been hindering cooperative efforts for months, potentially opening the door to more effective responses to Jarilo-VI's crisis. It wasn't the kind of dramatic heroism that characterized video game narratives, but it was the kind of practical problem-solving that actually made a difference in people's daily lives.
"One step at a time," Dan Heng said, as if reading their thoughts.
"One step at a time," Alex agreed.
Behind them, in the depths of Belobog's infrastructure, engineers and community organizers were already beginning to work together on solutions that neither group could have implemented alone. It was a small victory in the face of a planetary crisis, but small victories accumulated into larger changes when they were built on solid foundations of cooperation and mutual respect.
Alex was beginning to understand that their role in this universe might not involve dramatic confrontations with cosmic forces. Instead, they might be here to help people find ways to work together more effectively—to serve as a bridge between different perspectives and priorities in service of shared goals that everyone cared about but no one could achieve alone.
It was a more modest form of heroism than they'd expected, but no less important for being human-scaled.