Chapter 978: Implications For Your Work

“Asano, the Network won’t just let you barge into their facilities and do as you please,” Geneva said.

“I hope you’re right,” Jason told her. “I intend to round up everyone who was a part of this and make sure they never do it again. The more of them that come to me, the more time I save.”

“Do you think that you can fight the whole world?”

“Yes. I’m hoping it won’t come to that, but we have contingencies if it does.”

“You have contingency plans that you think will let you defeat the whole world.”

“I don’t need a plan to conquer the world, Director Andros. The contingencies are to limit the damage when I do.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Then you should be very careful, Director, given that I’m also extremely powerful.”

“What are your intentions?”

“Step one, confirm that very naughty things are being done here. How is that door coming?”

He glanced over at Farrah, Belinda and Clive, working on the vault. The rest of Jason’s team was present, along with a few others.

“This vault is surprisingly well-designed,” Belinda said. “This door is essentially a giant magical battery. It uses the sheer quantity of mana its holding to render many standard intrusion techniques unusable.”

“How long to crack it?” Jason asked.

“Oh, we figured that out a while ago,” Belinda said. “We’re working on how to remove the door entirely without venting all that stored magic.”

“Why would you need to remove the door instead just opening it?” Jason asked.

“Well, we came all this way,” Belinda said. “It seems like a shame not to take a souvenir.”

“We’re not here to steal things, Lindy.”

“I thought you liked doing things for more than one reason.”

“Belinda,” Danielle said. “What we are doing here is a forceful intervention that is going to upset a lot of people. While not essential to our endeavour, things will go more smoothly if we can establish the moral high ground. Taking the opportunity for plunder while we are going about it will undercut those efforts.”

“Fine,” Belinda grumbled, like a child told they can’t have any sweets for dinner. She snapped her finger and the massive vault door cracked open, slowly swinging wide. Inside, the facility staff were all backed up in the rear, looking out with fearful expressions.

“Clive?” Jason asked.

Ignoring the people cowering at the back, Clive walked in, moved straight to one of the open container doors and looked inside. He pulled out a few devices to wave around, then nodded to himself.

“Yeah,” he called out. “They were definitely storing reality cores in here.”

Farrah walked over to Jason and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Maybe you leave the questioning to other people,” she suggested. “Anna will be good for this, and we’ve got all the people we need backing her up. It doesn’t need to be you, and maybe it shouldn’t be.”

“I’m fine, Farrah.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she said. “But can you honestly tell me that investigating reality core use on Earth won’t bring up old memories? And that those memories won’t affect your decision-making in ways that perhaps they shouldn’t?”

“No,” he admitted.

“This isn’t like last time. It isn’t just you, me and Dawn. There’s a lot of people looking to help you here, and not just our people. You talk about wanting the people of Earth to step up. Now that you’ve explained to them properly what’s going on, maybe give them a chance to do just that? The locals are going to do a better job of tracking down everyone involved than people from a different world. Use their expertise, with Anna as liaison and the rest of us as muscle. Isn’t that why you dedicated the time and effort to setting this up?”

“Yeah,” he said, although he sounded reluctant.

“Then isn’t it about time you gave it all a chance to work?”

He looked over at Geneva. She was still sitting on her stool, but with a pack of Jason’s gold-rank allies looming over her.

“I don’t like it when you make this much sense,” he grumbled to Farrah.

“I always make this much sense.”

“Shut up.”

She swatted him on the head.

“Get out of here.”

He created a portal arch. He felt some resistance against it opening, from the magical wards on the facility, but tapped into his astral gate to push through. He sensed Geneva’s surprise, but instead turned to Bussinger, standing off to the side of the room.

“You’re with me,” he told her, then stepped through the portal without waiting to see if she’d follow. She looked around hesitantly, then did so.

***

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Bussinger stepped out of the portal onto a wide street. Trees lined one side, in front of buildings that looked renaissance-era in design, but were clearly not. Their construction material was white and shed mist, almost like dry ice. She realised after a moment that the buildings were made of clouds, narrowing down the potential places she had found herself in.

She turned on the spot, looking around. One the other side of a street was a park. Many of the people she spotted were not human, and she was getting as many stares as she was giving out.

Someone started talking to her in a language she didn’t know and she realised she was still standing in the middle of the street.

“Entschuldigung,” she said, stepping onto the footpath. The man speaking to her had been a cyclist who had stopped to avoid running into her. It wasn’t a busy street, and most of the traffic was made up of bicycles and scooters. There was a delivery van that went past, and she saw tracks for a tramline.

“Excuse me,” a voice said in English. She turned to find a little girl looking at her, struggling to escape the grip her mother hand on her hand. She was not human, but looked like a fox person, with no fewer than three tails wagging excitedly behind her.

“Marija, don’t bother the nice lady.”

“But she looks so cool! And that was Jason Asano! I saw him come out of the magic door!”

“Pardon me,” Bussinger said. “Did you happen to see which way he went?”

The girl pointed at a nearby building, her eyes locked on Bussinger’s golden gauntlets.

“Did you get those metal gloves from a monster? They’re so awesome!”

“I did,” Bussinger said. “And thank you.”

She turned to the mother.

“If you don’t mind me asking, this is Asano Clan territory, right? Which one?”