“So do you think I should take the job?” said Margot. Looking up at me, as I continued to lap the blood that dripped from the nap of her neck, burning with energy, like crimson star fire.

“Well, I think it’s an opportunity...and maybe just maybe... you’ll enjoy it. Plus, I think it’s probably right up your alley. Considering it sits right in the cross-section of your most favorite interests,” I said.

“Mhm...That is true I suppose. How many jobs out there are liable to involve this kind of mixture of game design, complex magical forms, and data collection...It’s almost like the job was made for me. Er...This...this wasn’t like...actually made for me, was it? This isn’t like that one time where you almost ate the world and had a replacement running its place is it?” said Margot. Looking towards me with concern.

I chuckled and kissed her brow.

“No, hon. First off, I thought we both agreed never to talk about that again...Second, I’m afraid I’ll never be quite so big that I can directly manipulate or alter the flow of the greater cosmos, and that’s what it’d take to make the people behind this move if they didn’t want to. I might be a big deal on the scale of individual universes but as far as the cosmos is concerned, I'm still a small fish swimming in a massive sea.”

“Oh...That’s good, I guess.”

Three days ago, the US government paid us a visit. It was bound to happen eventually, at this point we were level two hundred ninety-nine just a mission short of three hundred. With our combined powers doing jobs for the players league was pretty much just exercise we got paid for.

We’d even gotten into the habit of taking exotic jobs because it gave us an excuse to travel abroad and see new places. The point being that we were hella strong and had more or less outgrown being players for a while now.

Thus I wasn’t too alarmed, annoyed, or surprised when the government finally caught on to us. If a government was even semi-decent, they’d definitely have someone, be it mortal intelligence experts, or their immortal patrons, who could point out eyesores like ourselves because at that point we weren’t even bothering to hide how strong we were.

In any case, the government showed up at our door one day. Two men in black, wearing black shades. Well trained, B-rank individuals that had run a career track that had taken them from the military, to the FBI, to their current employers…

They muscled their way into our apartment building, showed up at our door all official-like. The guy in the lead almost started things off on the wrong foot,

“Ma’am, are you Margot Wallace?” said the G-man.

“Y-, Yes,” said Margot.

“Well then, I’m sorry but we’ll need to take you for custody. As a rank-S mage contracted with a Rank-unknown eldritch entity, you are an undocumented presence here in the United States. As such you are in violation of sections ten, thirty-nine, forty-three, and sixty-nine of the federal criminal code. While you are not under arrest we’re going to need you to come with us for questioning.”

To which Margot responded by saying, “Uhhhhh…,” Blinking at the man rapidly and growing visibly pale.

I leaned against a wall, arms crossed, a pleasant smile on my face, as I nodded along with the man’s words. Then once he was done speaking I sighed.

“Cool...I’mma close the door now, and you are going to try that again. This time I expect you to act like somebody went down to the corner store and bought you lads bloody a clue. Savvy? Cool, ” I said. Rolling my eyes at the man’s bulldog approach.

I closed the door, counted to ten and then opened the door again, and then in a much more cordial tone, the two federal agents explained who they were, who they worked for, and the job opportunity that they’d been intending to offer Margot and me.

If my treatment of the two federal agents seemed a bit cocksure and reckless, I assure you it wasn’t.

The man in black’s tone was just a standard negotiating tactic nations used when they're up against creatures like us. After all, a nation that couldn’t be at least a little bit haughty when facing dragons and strange beasts, wasn’t worthy of calling itself a nation...Especially in this day and age.

The agents and the government behind them had likely hoped, and honestly had correctly guessed, that Margot would be both awed and little intimidated into falling into their pace. If that had happened the ‘interrogation’ and the negotiations that followed would have been much more favorable for them.

Eventually, Margot would have started pushing back as she understood how vary wary the state was of getting on the bad side of a creature like her. But it would have taken some time and they would have been able to get an upper-hand in the meantime.

I know this because it had happened to me a couple of times when I was just getting started. My much younger self was the type to easily get awed by a crest, or a badge. Then my slightly-older, amnesiac-self, had to relearn everything my younger-self had learned because that’s what happens when your memory gets erased.

Now after multiple tedious, painful, life lessons, I knew better. Mortal laws were for mortals. Us immortal monsters generally only played along to the extent that it was convenient to do so.

According to a certain point of view, large organizations were just as alive as you and me. This was true for companies of a certain size and nature, and it was definitely true for a nation. All true nations were living, breathing, thinking animals, brought to life by their constituents and leaders.

It wouldn’t be at all incorrect to say that a nation’s were just as eldritch and monstrous as the rest of the undyings I palled around with. They were amorphous, multi-headed, multi-bodied, ever hungering, often aggressive, often amoral entities that operated on sometimes reasonable, sometimes alien, logic.

I guarantee you that there’s no successful nation on earth, or any world, whose actions when described in the abstract, without context, don’t sound like the actions of some capricious and tyrannical spirit, fae, or god.

A normal person could only negotiate with such an entity if the nation allowed it. Otherwise, they’d be squashed or ignored like the insects they were. Nations declared themselves for the people, by the people, because otherwise, people would realize just how scary it was to live in a world ruled by giants.

That wasn’t the case for beings like Margot and I. We were beings with power on par with a nation. Even better, Margot could display a strength on par with an entire galaxy.

I wasn’t just talking about our potential for violence. I was talking in terms of power ‘overall’. We might not have had much in terms of influence or wealth, but that was because up until recently we’d still been playing low-key.

I had a transcendental fleet of intergalactic super-machines at my beck and call, and that was before I’d used some of the leftover hyperdimensional energy to upgrade and expand my dark-eye network and FC-fleet. And thanks to certain activities I was involved in as a side-hustle, I basically had my hands in a major slice of a number of industries both domestic and abroad.

S-rank doesn’t just stand for super, or supreme. In the case of the more powerful amongst the rank holders, it stood for Sovereign.

Many nations were known to grant individuals at the peak of the ranking system a form of personal-sovereignty where the laws were relaxed for them in exchange for them not becoming a future calamity for the state and maybe lending a hand on occasion.

I’d stopped hiding what Margot and I were capable of a couple of years ago. We’d reached a point where we were so powerful where it would have been more harmful than helpful to try and hide what we could do.

Margot and I had reached a scale of being where simply by existing we caused ripples in the world’s destiny. That kind of thing was nearly impossible to hide and there were countless beings who likely knew that we existed even if they didn’t know exactly who we were yet. We had to show a little of our strength or there’d be misunderstandings about why we were putting so much effort into staying below the radar.

As such, any government that was paying attention absolutely knew we weren’t something that could just be pushed around with the weight of the state.

This world of ours was a jungle and it was the true beasts among us who knew the rules best. A monster that can flip a nation on its head will still be no match for monsters that can trample entire planets.

Thus the need for diplomacy and political theatre.

There was a reason the Agents they’d sent to our door had only been B-Rankers. There was no need to send in heavy hitters when you already knew that fighting was as far from your best interests as humanly possible.

After the failed attempt at being hard-nosed, the government agents made their case again. This time their spiel was given much more politely. They had brochures and everything, they’d even brought hats and fridge magnets. A day later, Margot and I went down to their offices and they gave us a tour of the facility we’d talked about a day before. Then we got a job offer.

They wanted us to work for the North American Branch of the UN Department of Paranormal Authority and Administration. It wasn’t a half-bad offer, even if the agency had the Cat-Sith Corporations fingerprints all over them.

*************************************************************************************************************

Moving the clock forward to the present, that meeting with the government agents had been a few days ago. Now we were trying to decide if we’d take them up on their offer. Margot looked up at me, still biting her bottom lip.

“Is...Is it wrong that I kind of want to take the job? It seems like it’ll be interesting at the very least,” said Margot.

“Not at all...Like I’ve always said...You do you, and I’ll follow your lead as always, love,” I said.

“Cool...I guess...I guess I’ll call-up Agent Bones and let him know the good news.”

And just like that, Margot and I became humble officers of the United States Government. Abandoning the player’s league because we’d more or less outgrown it.