Chapter 324: I Came Back to Show You Wonders (1/2)

Shade informed the family members who were variously preparing dinner, looking after infants or watching recordings that Jason was about to emerge and they should gather in the bar lounge. As such, they were waiting for him when he stepped out, Farrah right behind him.

“Firstly, my previous statement about asking questions before watching all the recordings stands. Second, this is Farrah. You should all recognise her by now. Let me be plain in stating that she is family. Anyone who has a problem with that can get off my boat. Third, I need most of you to sod off, so you’re getting off the boat anyway. I have important stuff to do and can’t be dealing with you every bloody hour of every bloody day.”

Most of the occupants were herded off the boat by Shade, although Jason made sure to give his dad a hug first. Erika and her family were currently living onboard, so they stayed, along with Asya. Once peace descended on the houseboat, Jason, Asya, Farrah and Erika moved to the kitchen where Jason started assisting Erika's dinner preparations. Brother and sister side by side behind the counter, finding an old, easy familiarity.

“So,” Jason said to Asya. “Did Erika shake the story of my France trip out of you?”

“I didn’t do any shaking,” Erika said, only for Jason to give her a sideways look.

“There may have been some mild jostling,” she confessed. “What she told me was insane, though. Aeroplane bombs, kidnapping, secret societies. Did you really kill that many people?”

“Yeah,” Jason said grimly.

Erika nudged him with her arm.

“Are you okay, little brother?”

“I’m heading in that direction,” he said, with a glance at Farrah.

“And you were kidnapped?” Erika asked Farrah.

“Yes,” Farrah said. “Lucky for me, they didn’t have any of the magical torture techniques from our world. An essence user can withstand mundane techniques well enough if you’ve been trained to. Especially if they’re trying to break you down mentally instead of physically.”

“You never trained me like that,” Jason said.

“You wanted us to torture you?” Farrah asked.

“No, now that you say,” Jason said. “How did they catch you in the first place? You should have been able to take those guys apart.”

“When I woke up,” Farrah said, “my brain was telling me it had only been moments but my soul had a longer story to tell. That was disorienting, to say the least, and I wasn't thinking clearly. Plus, I was in a newly-formed body and I wasn't human anymore, so it all felt very strange. My old racial gifts were gone and I felt all these blessings ready to evolve my new outworlder ones. In the state I was in, I made what turned out to be a very bad choice.”

“You accepted them all at once,” Jason surmised.

“Exactly,” Farrah said. “I wasn't exactly in a sound state in the first place and six gift evolutions at the same time were too much and I passed out. “When I woke up I was collared and in a box.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Asya said. “They were rogue elements of my organisation.”

“That’s okay,” Farrah said, to Jason’s surprise. “I’ve seen churches and Adventure Society branches go rotten from the inside. So has Jason, for that matter. The mission doesn’t stop being worth doing just because some of the people doing it go astray.”

“I appreciate that,” Asya said. “The Adventure Society are the people responsible for fighting monsters in your world?”

“That’s right. I’d appreciate learning some more about how you do things here.”

Asya explained the nature of the Network, with Jason occasionally contributing to help translate concepts for Asya or Farrah to understand better.

“Asya is here to nail down an agreement for working with them, so I can get to the monster hunting,” Jason said. “I also agreed to teach some of their people the things that you, Gary and Rufus taught me. I’m assuming you’ll want in as well.”

“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,” Jason said.

“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 Heads. 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, having 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’ 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.