Marcus made his way through the Adventure Society campus after meeting with the carefully selected nobility. It was fun going full bombast and pushing around some aristocratic slackers, but it was also exhausting to ham it up like that. Fortunately, the opposite approach was the correct one for his next meeting. He had been warned, in no uncertain terms, to never get in an outrageousness contest with Jason Asano. And when Danielle Geller gave out political advice, you listened.

It would have been nice to have someone of her ability advising him on the rest of the Yaresh political scene. He’d been prepared well enough for the most part, but they’d been way off on Gormanston Bynes. He’d been warned that Bynes would be the one most likely to derail his appearance, but Marcus was almost certain the man had actually been helping him.

“Ladiv,” Marcus said to the celestine trailing behind him. “What did you make of Gormanston Bynes in that meeting?”

“He should have been fighting you,” Vidal said. “Undermining, pushing for concessions that would minimise the damage to his faction while he got a handle on the new political state of play. Instead, his resistance was token, and transparently so. I think he knew what was coming and instead of warning his people, is using it to burn off the useless underbrush. It felt like we did exactly what he wanted us to.”

“That was my feeling as well. Can I expect the same kind of surprise from Asano? You were assigned to him for a time, correct?”

“Firstly, always expect a surprise from Asano. On any given day. you might get a foolish buffoon, a hardened adventurer or an enigmatic figure dealing with cosmic forces. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll get an unstable head-case that can and will annihilate anyone or anything that wanders into view. Mostly he takes that out on Builder cultists or monsters, but there have been other incidents. I know of one where, at iron-rank, he killed multiple adventurers in a shopping arcade.”

“What did the Adventure Society do to him for that?”

“Promoted him to three stars.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It was an isolated branch, the usual corruption. The Continental Council over there ended up taking over the branch for several months to clean house.”

“He’s three stars again now, right?”

"There was considerable debate at the Rimaros branch as to what his rating should be set at. A three-star rating is for contracts that involve large political messes. The director decided that if he had the kings and multiple diamond-rankers making personal inquiries as to what his ranking would be, claiming Asano wasn't dealing with high-level politics already would make him look like a fool."

“They showed you his unredacted file, right? What is your take on Asano?”

“Alone, he’s more liability than asset. Emotionally unstable, unpredictable. Extremely erratic. Does not work well with others, outside of his own team. Unreliable by most metrics.”

“Most?”

“Jason Asano's saving graces are twofold. One is that if he decides that something is worth doing, he'll kill himself to get it done if that's what it takes. He's literally done that. The other is that when he sets out to do something, it gets done. It doesn’t seem to matter who or what gets in his way, or even if it’s possible in the first place.”

“Trouble, but worth putting up with?”

“A year ago, I would have said no. But just as the world started going mad, a madman from another world arrived and found himself at the centre of it all, over and over. He sacrificed himself to prevent the Builder invasion from starting early and miraculously returns just as it starts in earnest. I don't think that's a coincidence. The gods don't keep visiting him in public because they're bored. They're warning us that Asano has something to do here, and we'd best get out of his way and let him."

Marcus glanced at Ladiv as they continued navigating the halls of the Adventure Society’s massive admin complex.

“I was told by someone that knows Asano,” he said, “that he’s easy to deal with if you look at him with the right perspective.”

“That is information I could have used quite a while ago,” Ladiv said. “Please share.”

“I was told that if you think of Asano as a diamond-ranker, it all becomes easier.”

“A diamond-ranker.”

"Yes. This advice came from the mother of Asano's team leader who is a highly respected gold-ranker. She has known Asano since his first days on our world. She told me that Asano himself doesn't realise it, but his mentality is that of a diamond-ranker, and always has been. The indifference to authority, operating by his own rules and values, disregarding consequences. Involving himself in things that anyone with a functional mind would run screaming from. In a diamond-ranker, that’s what we expect to see, but Asano has been doing it from the beginning.”

Ladiv frowned, falling into silent thought as they continued through the halls.

“There are lots of people like that,” Ladiv said finally. “Arrogant. Foolish. The universe slaps them down for it. But Asano keeps getting back up, doesn’t he? Even when it kills him. I said that I didn’t think that Asano’s arrival was a coincidence, and now you say to look at him as a diamond-ranker. Suddenly, I start to see the pattern. The more time that passes, the more it becomes clear that the world around us is treating Asano like a diamond-ranker. He was iron-rank when he gained a personal grudge from the Builder. The way Soramir Rimaros treated him baffled everyone, but if he was looking at Asano as a peer then it all makes sense.”

“The agrees with you that Asano is not finding himself in the middle of events by coincidence. Do you think Asano has some kind of destiny, set in motion by forces beyond our reality?”

“Asano was plucked from another world. I don’t know if that’s because he was chosen or if he was chosen because of it, but it seems clear that he has something to do that very powerful entities want done. I even think he’s working on it right now. While I was travelling with his team, I heard the occasional offhand remark about some task he was putting off because of the monster surge. The implication was that it was an undertaking of some magnitude.”

“What manner of undertaking?”

“I’m not sure, but I believe it involves taking something from the messengers. It’s why we came to this city.”

“Taking something from the messengers,” Marcus repeated. “Something contained in a giant metal orb, perhaps?”

“I think that highly likely.”

“Have you shared all of this with anyone?”

“The director of the Adventure Society here in Yaresh. It’s all postulation and overheard asides, so I haven’t made any kind of formal report.”

“Do you think Asano knows more about the messengers than he’s telling us?”

“I absolutely think that.”

“Which makes me wonder why he doesn’t share that information.”

“That much is easy,” Vidal said. “Imagine if every time you brought forth major information you were disbelieved, distrusted and dismissed.”

“But surely that has changed now. Everyone is aware that Asano has access to sources of information the Adventure Society and Magic Society only dream of.”

“Yes. But if you go from being ignored to people trying to take what you have, take over what you’re doing or just take you out entirely, I can see why you might not be open to collaboration. And it’s not just Asano. You know what caused Clive Standish to fall out with the Magic Society.”

“I do.”

“I know that Asano has considered giving up his Adventure Society membership altogether. He threatened as much to Lady Allayeth when their relationship was still more conflicted.”

“It’s not now?”

“No. I think she figured out the same thing you were told and started treating him like a peer. Now people are concerned that they’re a little too close.”

“She convinced him not to leave?”

“I think his team are the reason he won’t. Not unless the society pushes them harder.”

“Hopefully, this meeting will turn that around,” Marcus said.

***

Marcus had been warned to anticipate the unexpected from Asano and his team, and that was what he got: a conference room in the heart of the Adventure Society being used for an outdoor barbecue luncheon, indoors. The conference table and formal chairs had been piled up on one side of the room where they were being casually snacked on by two giant tortoises, one of whom had a moustache.

A collection of lounge furniture had been put in the centre of the room, mostly conjured Marcus guessed, from the uniform green colouration and the faint tingle on his magic senses. That would be the work of Belinda Callahan, one of two former thieves on the team. The one piece of furniture that stood out was made of cloud-material shaped into what Marcus could only describe as a throne.

The man sitting in it was unquestionably Jason Asano. As promised, his aura was something to behold, and Marcus immediately saw what people had told him about it feeling akin to a messenger’s. There was more to it than that, though; marks from old battles, echoes of the divine and stranger things he couldn’t identify. Most of all, there was a depth to it, as if Asano contained some unfathomable void.

Asano and his team were spread out around the room. There was a leonid working the grill wearing an apron with ‘adventuring is more fun when you eat the bad guy’ emblazoned upon it.

“What is going on here?” Marcus asked.

“You’ve never heard of lunch?” the leonid asked.

"I don't buy it, bro," said a man so large he could have been a leonid shaved down as a disguise. "No way a bloke that huge doesn't know what lunch is."

“Hey, Vidal is here,” an elf said. “Standing next to this guy is practically an invisibility power.”

The elf had a large physique, which always stood out on their normally svelte species. He didn’t assertively project power the way Gormanston Bynes did, his looser outfit de-emphasising his physicality. It left him looking more stocky than muscular, even a little chunky. Marcus knew this to be the team’s healer who, alongside the team leader, was reportedly one of its more conventional members. He had clearly picked up Asano's casualness around high-rankers, however.

“Why don’t you blokes grab a plate and sit down,” Asano said. “Always nice to break bread while having a chat. Unless you think that what you’re here to tell us will spoil lunch.”

Marcus grinned. He’d been warned that Asano liked to provoke people in non-aggressive ways to feel them out, and that had certainly proven true. He glanced at Vidal.

“The food’s going to be good,” Vidal told him. “As for whether or not they’ll like what you have to say, that is for you to convince them.”

“We’ll eat,” Marcus decided and wandered in the direction of the buffet table. He took a plate and piled it high with grilled meat, barely making a dent in the small hillock steaming away on the table.

“Tyrannical pheasant?” he asked.

“The team came across a huge wave of lesser monsters,” the other leonid said from behind the grill. “We have a stockpile like you wouldn’t believe.”

Marcus looked over at him.

“You’re not a part of the team, correct? You’re Gareth Xandier.”

"I'm retired. I'm not above swinging my hammer at a monster from time to time, but I'm focusing on my craft now."

“Are you from the Xandier clan of the Redwild Mesa?”

“No, I’m from the Xandier family of some little town you’ve never heard of.”

“Oh, he’s heard of it,” Asano said, watching the exchange from his cloud throne. “He knows all there is to know about everyone in this room. He’s just pretending he doesn’t so he doesn’t seem too creepy about it. Isn’t that right, Mr Xenoria?”

“It seems you’ve done your research as well, Mr Asano,” Marcus said. “And you saw me coming.”

“I don’t have time for that kind of thing,” Asano said. “Humphrey’s mum told us about you. Did you think you could ask her about me without her letting us know someone’s looking? She’s loyal to the Adventure Society, but she’ll burn it to the ground if that’s what her son needs.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Marcus said.

He moved to sit opposite Asano, claiming a couch that fit him more like a chair. Asano looked at the pile of saucy meat on his plate and looked over to the buffet. Marcus sensed a subtle aura expression and a plate lifted off the table and portions of food started floating in the air to land on it. The plate then moved through the air to hover next to Marcus.”

“Protein is important, Mr Xenoria, but you really shouldn’t miss the full culinary experience.”

“He’s not wrong,” Vidal said from the buffet table where he was piling a plate high with side dishes.

“What is protein?” Marcus asked.

“Something in meat that’s important for normal-rankers,” Asano explained. “I won’t go into it further or Knowledge will get cranky at me again. My brother-in-law could explain it; he’s a doctor. That’s what we call expert healers where I’m from. I’d intended to bring him over with me, maybe advance healing on two worlds. Shame that didn’t work out.”

“Why didn’t it?”

“My family grew reticent after I started publicly executing people.”

“You’re a ruler on your world?”

“No, it was extrajudicial. The opportunity came up and I took it.”

“You don’t have any more time for the authorities on your world than mine, then.”

“I tried, Mr Xenoria, I genuinely did. I overlooked one betrayal after another, countless attempts to exploit me while I was trying to work with the people who should have been saving the world. But they were too invested in short-term power grabs to do their duty. In the end, I had to do it for them. Myself and a small team I put together. But the people who should have been working with me wanted what I had, and they came for us. My lover, my brother and my friend were killed. Most of the others I made go home to their families. After that, it was me, my friend Farrah and a silver-rank avatar of Dawn. I'm assuming you know of whom I speak."

"I do."

"The Adventure Society isn't as bad as the organisations in my world, I'll grant you. But there's no escaping politics and ambitions that blind people to the larger problems. Rimaros felt very familiar in that way. Wherever I go, people in authority can’t seem to stop causing me the same problems. Are you going to be my next problem, Mr Xenoria?”

Marcus burst out laughing.

“You do quiet menace very well, Mr Asano. But no, I don’t want to be your next problem. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“I imagine you have. The reason I am here is that the Adventure Society is undergoing a major shift in general policy. The sinecure memberships are being stripped out. Focus and resources are being redirected to the ongoing threats. Remnants of the Builder cult, leftover monsters from an unprecedented surge. Most of all, the messenger threat.”

“We don’t want any extra focus from the Adventure Society,” Jason told him.

“So we have surmised. We know that you have some task before you. We know that powers larger than this world are invested in its completion.”

“You want to know what I’m doing.”

"Yes, but I'm instructed that if you are unwilling to share that information I am to leave it at that."

Jason sighed.

“Meaning that you’ll be doing something behind my back to find out, inevitably causing us trouble at the worst possible moment.”

“You have a lot of trouble accepting good news, don’t you, Mr Asano?”

“I don’t know, Mr Xenoria. People like you never give me any.”

"Then let me be plain about our intentions. We're going to get out of your way. Clearly, you've been doing very fine without an Adventure Society hand on the yoke. You'll need to be part of a much larger group when you go underground, as there are gold-rank threats down there. I'm glad that you aren't so stubborn as to try and cut the Adventure Society out of that expedition, as you have leverage enough that you could. But in the rest of your activities, we shall leave you be unless you come to us."

“You needed a meeting to tell us you would be leaving us alone?”

“We want to be clear that what happened with attempting to seize those elementally infused messengers from you won’t happen again.”

“That would be a lot more convincing if the Magic Society hadn’t tried to grip my huge magic ball two days ago.”

“That was politics.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“I’ve just come from a meeting where I stripped a plethora of adventurers of their society membership as they used it for nothing but politics.”

“Not on my behalf, I hope.”

"No. The same is happening around the world. As I said, there has been a shift in general policy. We will also be reallocating resources. For example, Carlos Quilido has been conducting research using a combination of funding from the Church of the Healer and the Amouz family of Rimaros. We intend to inject significant additional funding into that research."

“You’ll have to take that up with Carlos,” Asano said.

“He is travelling in your convoy. And views you as a critical element in making that research viable, from what I understand.”

“Lindy?” Asano said, not removing his gaze from Marcus.

“What?” she mumbled from around a mouthful of food. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening. Something about being sad because everyone’s out to get you? We’ve heard it before, so I stopped paying attention pretty early.”

Asano chuckled, unoffended.

“Have Estella take a closer look into Carlos’ research assistants,” he told her. “Their lips may have come a little loose.”

She gave him a thumbs up as Marcus gave him a rueful smile.

“I’ve gone and annoyed you when that was the opposite of my intention,” he told Asano.

“Why would I trust this sudden change in attitude from the Adventure Society?” Asano asked him.

“You shouldn’t, I suppose. Trust is built over time, and we’ve not done a great job engendering it from you, have we?”

“It’s not like I don’t understand,” Asano said. “Why would you put stock in some erratic low-ranker who’s constantly getting into trouble and disrespecting everyone? I like the Adventure Society, Mr Xenoria, I really do. But I’ve been operating outside of the frameworks they understand for a long time, now.”

“You’re right. The purpose of the Adventure Society is to confront the unusual challenges that this world and its people face. But these last few years have seen those challenges become more unusual than ever. We’re a large organisation and our movements are commensurately ponderous. While we’ve been catching up, you've been facing challenges we didn't properly see or understand. You're not alone in this. All around the world, people like me are having conversations like this with people like you. People who saw all of this coming and acted on their own when we were too blind and too slow to respond.”

Marcus nodded at the lanky human eating a sandwich.

“People like Mr Standish, there.”

“Me?” Clive mumbled.

“Yes, Mr Standish. You. Mr Asano, while you were back on your home world, Mr Standish warned us. He uncovered a critical transport and communication network used by the loyalists of the disgraced Purity church. He led some of the people in this room on an investigation that revealed the messenger invasion. He had to fight for all of that through a less-than-enthusiastic response from us and a worse one from the Magic Society. I imagine he’s explained all of that.”

“Great,” Asano said. “All the people who did the hard work alone while your lot sat on their butts. Now that they’ve been proven right, suddenly you’re looking to swoop in and take over. Or maybe just take credit.”

Marcus let out a wince.

“Honestly? Yes, that’s pretty close to what we’re doing. Not taking over, though. Just participating. Supporting the people who jumped ahead, like you. You said that you were operating outside of our framework. You’re right, and you and your companions aren’t the only ones. The Adventure Society wants to expand our framework. To give you what you need, even when that is getting out of your way and letting you do what you do. I know I’m not going to convince you of anything today. All I'm asking is that you keep an open mind. Don't shut us out and we won’t try to box you in.”

“So, we’re back to you arranging this meeting — interrupting what we were busy doing — so you could not ask to do anything.”

"We can help you, if you need it. I know that tensions are strained with the Magic Society—"

“We can deal with the Magic Society,” Standish interrupted.

Asano got to his feet.

“We should get back to the cloud palace,” he said. “This is starting to feel just pointless enough that they may have been trying to lure us away from it.”

Marcus also stood.

“Mr Asano, Danielle Geller was right about most things when it came to you, but not everything. She thought you would invite me to call you Jason.”

“I haven’t seen Danielle in several years. Last time we met, I was nicer.”

Asano went off to vanish buffet dishes into his personal space. Belinda Callahan dismissed the conjured furniture and Asano floated the other furniture back into place, albeit with now with a few gnaw marks. The group vanished through a pair of portals, leaving Marcus and Vidal behind. Marcus stood, shoulders slumped, with a plate full of food in each hand. Vidal only had one, leaving a hand free to fork lunch into his mouth.

“That did not go as well as I had hoped,” Marcus said.

“At least they left us our meals,” Vidal said after swallowing. “He didn’t completely shut us out.”

“How so? I feel shut out.”

“He left us a pretext to talk with him again.”

“And what’s that?” Marcus asked.

“At some point, we have to return the plates.”