We were all in a fantastic mood when we arrived at the information building. Like the testing hall this particular building was tough to spot unless you knew where it was. I still had no clue how they achieved that, but I imagined it had something to do with the stealth Skill. It was interesting to consider how it was done at least. Like maybe they built it using Perception oriented materials and while resonating the Skill. Would that make it a building with a Skill? Or maybe you needed an Architecture Skill to do things like that so they had used both Skills in its construction.

Whatever the case, once we were aware of it we could see it just fine, and we made our way in through the doors, which while similar to the white ones from the testing hall in design were pitch black. That was pretty much the only similarity, because once we made it into the building it became clear that the inside was far from the lobby like appearance of our previous destination.

The inside of the info hall was the polar opposite of the other Perception faculty building, with hard wood floors as opposed to carpet, and wall to wall boards covered with tacked up pieces of paper. Much like the mission system back home, it seemed like people here favored written postings as a method to avoid leaving any traces. The whole place was filled with people, though most of them were covered in cloaks or hoods, even on top of existing costumes, and more than half wore odd temporary masks that all looked the same. Anonymity seemed to be the order of the day for some of these people.

Callie gave a low whistle as we stepped inside. "Wow. This place is...interesting. My Perception is just high enough level to even notice some of these people. A couple of them seem to be a perpetual state of stealth, and I'm betting there's a few even I can't see." She turned to Celine. "Is there some kind of sorting system for who can take what jobs? I imagine you can't just accept any assignment." Which made sense, with the kind of people that were obviously here, there was no way they were taking the same kind of jobs as we were. Their stats would put them on a whole different level.

Celine smiled. "Well spotted. Yes, there are small colored dots on each mission if you look. The color corresponds to the range of your abilities in the test. The ones over here." She pointed to a series of nearby missions. "Are blank missions. Ones that anyone can take. They correspond to white on the mission boards. The missions need to pay more the further up the spectrum you go. Obviously people use points to pay for them, much like the crafting hall missions. All of my postings have been blank missions."

I blinked. "Well, that's...convenient? Or not? I honestly don't know. Do all of us have to reach the required standard to take it as a team? Because if so we're stuck at blank missions, but if not we can take orange missions because of Nightstrike." I wasn't sure if I had a preference there honestly. We might not really be ready for any higher level missions, though I assumed the higher pay would be useful.

As expected though, it wasn't an issue. Celine nodded. "Teams are only allowed to take missions based on the placement of their lowest scoring member, so yes, we can only do blank missions. Still, that shouldn't be too big an issue. There are bound to be multiple levels of mission for recon, and since a decent chunk of this new force will be lower G and even H rankers there should be at least one mission for investigating those elements of the organization." Which was a decent point, Mr. Jack-tastic might have reached E rank, but the Jerks as a whole were still mainly the same gang.

Granted, having an E rank boss was bound to effect their ability to grow, we'd seen that from the Flame Riot Militia. The boss being one of the elites of the planet definitely had a qualitative effect on the member's reputation, but it was hardly going to take effect so quickly. We were dealing with a gang from a lower tier city, and even those lunatics would have to hold back somewhat while they built up their rep, though I wasn't sure how capable of that they really were.

Callie headed over to the nearest board, having scanned the other notices to double check from a distance and closed in on one that would be useful. She strolled up and snagged one of the notices, reading over it and rolling her eyes before passing it to me. I scanned the posting, and had to groan at the contents. "How? How did they manage to find a situation like this so quickly after getting here? It's been like a few days or something right? I figured they would be taking things slow."

My girlfriend snickered. "Like they even know how." She held up the page to the others. "From what this says an unknown group with a characteristic colored mohawk has apparently laid siege to an area in the south of the WCP's G district. The territory of..." She checked the page again. "Cicero Castleton's Captivating Circus Cavalcade? Oh I can already tell I'm not going to enjoy dealing with these people. Anyway, someone is offering a hundred points per person to look into it and find out what's going on."

That was odd. "I know it was pretty big, but I feel like I would have noticed a circus in G district when we were last down there. We were all over that place, where exactly is this...cavalcade?" I hadn't seen anything that looked like a circus when we were combing the streets, and that felt like something that I'd have noticed. I was honestly kind of curious what an Ascendant circus would even look like. It sounded like it would be kind of crazy, exactly the kind of place the Jerks would feel at home.

Callie just shrugged. "I doubt we covered more than half of that place honestly, not that it was easy to tell. But we avoided the major population areas. The marks were all in out of the way spots where no one spent time by necessity. It'll be interesting to see some of the more lively parts of the WCP. My major issue with this is that it's posted here at all. Isn't the WCP supposed to be a completely separate force? Why do people at the Academy even care what's going on down in the WCP?"

This one Celine did know the answer to. "The Wish Curse Palace is an important part of Rajak. It's heavily involved in local politics and the distribution of local forces and resources. The information hall isn't just built around information from the Academy, it covers the whole city, and the WCP is a necessary part of that networking. I won't say all or even most of the jobs here are based down there, it isn't that big of a space compared to the whole city, but there are certainly a decent chunk of missions aimed at that area."

It also made sense that they would go straight down there when arriving. The WCP was a neutral area, even if only nominally. They would have a much lower chance of running into political complications moving around down there. I was curious if the Jerks even had enough G rankers to operate in G district though. They only had a few that I remembered. Then again who knew what "laying siege" actually meant in relation to them. I turned to Callie. "You're the one with the most experience with their G rankers, can we handle them?"

She snorted. "Easily. But only if they actually fight us. This is recon, not an elimination mission. Plus if they're running up against a noted G rank force they have to have gotten some upgrades. The only way I can imagine that happening in any reasonable time frame would be if they did some recruiting. With Mr. Jack-tastic at E rank it should be simple enough to find people who would be interested. Even if they would have to make allowances for...stylistic differences."

That was the nicest way of saying they needed to find crazy people that I could imagine, but I somehow doubted in a city this size it would be too hard to find people willing to act like idiots for a chance to get more powerful. The Jerks were...colorful, but they drew attention, which was its own kind of draw. With their boss at E rank there were bound to be people who would see working with them as an opportunity, even if they had to dress like a dumbass and act ridiculous.

Once we decided to take it we headed to the desk tucked into the back corner, where we informed the person working behind the counter (whoever they might have been, since they were in a thick hooded cloak and I literally couldn't penetrate the darkness with my eyes) that we wanted to take the mission. Since it was a blank mission we didn't need to present any proof of capability or anything, though Celine mentioned we would if we'd tried to take something higher rank, and then we headed back to the dorm.

We'd left the wolves back at the rooms, since they drew a lot of attention when they were around. Since Jessie was technically a tamer we could bring them around with us, but since we'd been indoors and in a more sedate area like the information hall we had decided to leave them at the dorm. Celine and the others had splurged on some treats and didn't mind sharing them so they mostly just chewed on some dried meat and waited for us, but they were still really excited to see us when we got back to the dorms.

Once we arrived Callie sat everyone down. "Alright, I figure we can drop in tomorrow to take a look at this circus. This particular mission will probably take a while, but we shouldn't go in costume. G district isn't exclusively costumed individuals, and circus is the kind of place where civilians would blend in. Since we don't want to draw attention and Jerks will DEFINITELY recognize me in costume it makes more sense to try to blend in. We can even bring Cark with us, since he knows the area pretty well from his time down there looking for Cass."

We could even bring the wolves with. No one in Velan would associate them with us, and we hadn't had them long enough to be known for them here yet. Plus they would be good protection when we didn't have our gear on, though since it was a recent addition I could at least carry my cane with me. We went over the details for a bit before deciding to head home. If we were going down to the WCP tomorrow we needed to be well rested. Plus we needed to ask Cark if he felt like coming along.

Benny stayed behind again, and Jessie drove, so Callie and I spent some time together talking in the back of the car as we drove back. We decided since we were going as civilians it would be a good time for us to have that date we'd been planning. Benny would probably be fine to head off with Celine, and Jessie volunteered (she was eavesdropping) to take Cark out to look around while Martin and Sarah did their own thing. With a firm plan in mind we sat back and enjoyed the ride, petting the wolves as we headed home. It was going to be a big day tomorrow.