Invitation

"I can't invite you in my home", Irio said

Greem frowned: "Listen, Irio. I have done nothing against you, and if we do not work together, we will not be able to complete the assignment in a week's worth of time"

Irio titled his head: "Oh? This is a misunderstanding. I don't look down on you. To be honest, I even feel a bit of admiration towards you. We both took the swordsmanship course, and I have seen how fast you improved in the swordsmanship class this morning compared to last month. It is not something that is possible without pouring enormous amount of effort"

"If it is not because of my origins, why would you not invite me to your home?", Greem complained, "You know that my family cannot afford a netrunner device capable of running the academy's softwares, much less affording three of them for you and isabella"

Irio sighed: "I know, I know. However, my father has forbidden me from inviting friends at home. If he knew the reality at school and the fact that I have no friends, he would surely have chosen another form of punishment...Anyway, my situation cannot be found out by him, so I am afraid we will have to go to Isabella's. Her father is pretty famous too, so his house is bound to be more luxurious than mine anyway"

Greem nodded. If it was at Isabella's, then it would surely be a better outcome than going to his home.

After calling Isabella, the woman answered. None of the scorn she previously harboured him could be seen in her voice: "Yes? Greem? Why would you call me?"

Greem answered: "We have been put together in a project assignment from Professor Xanar's class. We have to modelize cybernetic equipment to fit one of our fighting style. Could we come at your house with Irio to work?"

Isabella's voice was a bit shaken: "You? And Irio? You are my teammates? Why would Sarah not invite me in her group?"

Greem did not hide the truth: "Sarah Gringer? She joined Jack and Theo's party. Although they were three, they most likely wanted to avoid one of us joining her by force so they validated their team members in the software already..."

Isabella kept silent, before saying: "My father will not accept a lower district youth like you...It would go against his political agenda"

Greem cursed inwardly. He had forgotten about Isabella's father. The man was an extremist that treated the lower district inhabitants as vermin. One of the reason he risked his daughter's life with unreliable mercs like him was because he did not want the media to discover that his daughter had come to the lower district on her own free will to purchase drugs after all. The man was a psycho.

"Irio cannot invite us either for personal reasons", Greem thought with annoyance, "I guess you have to come to my house then..."

Isabella answered back: "I was not ill...I just had a rough night. Send me your house's locations and we will study in your house"

Greem nodded: "Is five alright with you? I will need to find some old netrunner computers from Doc..."

"Yes"

Irio also nodded: "I have sent you a couple of NTCs...I know you must not be able to afford the equipment otherwise. Do you know where to find hardware?"

[You have received 450 NTCs]

Greem smiled. Free money was welcome.

"Yes, don't worry about that"

Irio was a bit surprised. It was pretty hard to come accross proper netrunner gear. After all, netrunners were very discreet and only communicated through specific channels. For someone like Greem to get rank 1 netrunner computers meant that he had quite a lot of connections.