“Why don’t you just join their organisation?” Farrah asked.
“The Network isn’t as open to independent action as the Adventure Society,” Jason said. “They tell you what to do, how to do it and expect you to obey.”
“Why would anyone agree to that?” Farrah asked.
“Because they control essence distribution,” Jason said.
“Ah.”
“This is why I’ve been negotiating an agreement more in line with Adventure Society standards.”
“I definitely want to be part of that, then, yes,” Farrah said.
She shared a smile with Jason as they sensed the elation in Asya’s aura. After all the trouble the Lyon branch went through to forcibly extract information from the two outworlders, she was going to close the deal on voluntary cooperation. If the Lyon branch hadn’t been so paranoid about their secret astral space, things might have gone very differently.
“I was thinking that we could take a trip to Sydney tomorrow,” Jason said. “Finalise the details, take a look at who you want us to train, and where. Erika, I’d appreciate you helping Farrah to get some clothes.”
“That works for me,” Asya said. “The International and Sydney Steering Committees have essentially agreed to the current draft of the agreement, and they empowered me to finalise the arrangements here unless you wanted to change things up. I daresay that the inclusion of Miss Hurin is large enough a revision to put it off, but I can’t imagine them being anything but happy.”
“They bloody well should be,” Jason said. “Farrah’s probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know about magic. So, we’ll meet you in Sydney tomorrow, Asya?”
“Actually, I’d like to travel with you, if I may. I’m staying with my parents for a little while in Castle Reach. The Network wants to maintain someone locally and I was the natural pick.”
“Do your parents know about magic?” Jason asked.
“No, but I’ll have a wing of the house to myself, so privacy won’t be an issue.”
“Oh, just a spare wing they happened to have hanging off the side of the house,” Jason said. “We should probably take a look at the details of the revised agreement.”
The current state of the agreement was dominated by loot distribution. Jason was allowed to keep any personally looted items and received merit points for anything looted by others using his ability. He could trade in loot for more merit points or his merit points for any materials the International Committee had access to.
“I like it,” Jason said. “This way, the Network gets the bulk of the items, which is what it needs, and I get a massive pool to select the items I need from. Who determines the merit value of goods?”
“We actually have a valuation system in place, for trading between branches,” Asya said. “America exports a lot of gun essences, for example, which is why we have so many amongst our members.”
“That seems fair,” Jason said.
Dinner was a large affair, with Erika’s family, Farrah, Jason and Asya. Hiro and Taika came back. They had been out scouting potential locations for his land investment. Hiro explained his plan of building an Asano family compound to the others over dinner.
“That’s a good idea,” Farrah said. “If you're not going to go for combat abilities, you should get Jason to give you an essence set suited for wide-area arrays.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Hiro said.
“It’s long term or permanent magical installations,” Farrah said. “That’s my magic specialty, so I can teach you all about them.”
“Essences are the magic cubes that give you powers, right?” Hiro said. “Are yours suited to that kind of magic?”
“No,” Farrah said. “I have volcano powers.”
“I was envious of her powers from the outset,” Jason said. “She is seriously terrifying. It’s awesome and I haven’t even seen her fight flat knacker yet.”
“We haven’t really seen you fight either,” Asya said to Jason. “All we have is the footage of you fighting the category three, and the magical recording of your fight with the hydra.”
“Hydra,” Emi said. “Like what Heracles fought?”
“Yep,” Jason said, waggling his eyebrows at her. “It was a river hydra, with poison breath and regenerating heads.”
“Did you cut the heads off and burn the stumps?” Emi asked. “You know that Iolaus was the one who did that, right? He was Heracles’s nephew.”
“You can be my assistant, Emi,” Jason said.
“I bet I’m way better than stupid Iolaus,” she sulked.
“What’s a category three?” Farrah asked.
“A silver-ranker,” Jason said. “He got the jump on me, but he wanted me alive and was Greenstone tier.”
“You beat a silver-ranker solo?”
“It was more of a no-score draw,” Jason said. “He knocked me out and left me with his lackeys while he went off to get healing.”
“What kind of idiot tries to take an affliction specialist alive?” Farrah asked. “You got kidnapped? Didn’t they collar you?”
Jason’s eyes moved in Asya’s direction.
“I’ll give you the details later,” he told Farrah.
“You live a crazy life, Jason,” Ian said. “Planes exploding, kidnapping, rolling gunfights with bikies. I don’t want my daughter put in that kind of danger.”
“I’m afraid the world will be facing that kind of danger, sooner or later,” Asya said. “My organisation is doing their best to hold back the tide, but magic is rising in our world. It's reaching the point where we predict that containing all the monsters will become impossible sometime in the next decade. The truth is, we don't contain most of them now.”
“You don’t?” Jason asked.
“The grid only extends over the landmasses,” Asya explained, “and the surface of the Earth is seventy percent water. Sea monsters are real and we’ve been covering them up for centuries. Also, every year, we’re covering up more and more sightings of monsters that have spawned on the moon. The people who think the moon landing was faked aren’t even close to the real conspiracy.”
“Moon monsters?” Jason said. “That’s awesome. Is there a secret Network base on the dark side of the moon?”
“No,” Asya said. “Not that they’ve told me anyway.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“And now we’re having a serious conversation about moon monsters,” Erika said. “Jason, you were always a source of weirdness, but this is getting out of hand.”
“Can I be your assistant when I get magic powers?” Emi asked.
“How old are you?” Farrah asked her.
“I’m twelve.”
“You still have a few years until you’ll get essences. Have you started her training yet, Jason?”
Emi’s eyes went wide as saucers as her head swivelled to look at Jason.
“Absolutely not,” Erika said.
“It wouldn’t be anything strenuous,” Jason said. “A little martial arts and some free running. Really, it would just be some good exercise.”
“Farrah,” Erika said, “didn’t you say that your training involved torture resistance?”
“We wouldn’t do that,” Farrah said. “We didn’t do it for Jason. We could tell that he was soft.”