Country of Champions 32

"I don't get it. Rio's gone? Where did he go to?" Gan said.

Orison shook his head and led the scout away from the others. "His older brother came to fetch him. That guy and Mr Rothschild, another person you don't know, call on supernatural forces we don't want to tangle with. No one's going to remember that Rio was here.

"The reason why you can is because of your field that acts as a cushion against any particular reality's special laws or unnatural manipulations of greater reality laws. I can because I'm second-hand connected to him as well as my memories of him existing outside the bounds of this one reality. Don't bring him up in front of the others anymore. It would be kind of like the audio version of what the impossible geometry thing does to your mind through visuals."

The young mage thought to himself, "Should have kept your relationship with Daphne pure, little man. At least I won't waste resources I can't afford and avoid stress I can live without trying to find out what happened to you. It's funny how I kind of accidentally laid out what would happen if you pursued 'fun' over education and training but you got busted by your big brother instead of Avalon when your temporary lapse of good judgment almost turned into a permanent issue."

Suddenly sparks of intuition started firing off like fireworks letting him know things had changed in big ways. Esme no longer had his over robe. There were no messages from Trisha or Daphne in his touchscreen aside from a thank you from both of them for discovering her 'redacted' issue.

It took a little time to figure out other changes but from Garret's perspective, they had still met at the water park but it was because of standard tickets that had filtered out to him through Turner. That was just the tip of the iceberg for the teen. A lot of other details had changed in weird ways.

Orison was the guardian for both Garret and Babs. The girl had been living with them for almost the same amount of time. According to the merit expenditure timeline on his touchscreen, he had redeemed Janet from Irregulars intake the same day that she had been entered. She had stayed at Maria's for the two days prior to the party.

The strangest change had to be with Adena. The young mage was mentally kissing Aurora's feet because the woman hadn't been affected and was overturning a molestation charge that Adena's father was leveling at a non-existent Gravat. That would have hurt Janet's personal affairs tremendously as Adena's 'son' was the eldest. As it was, the young lady in question had Gravat's memories but had grossly misinterpreted the party event as she had no personal context of Orison.

Her and her Father believed that they had been there for entirely different social reasons related to Esme and Mr Lacquer. That father and daughter duo had filtered in through Trisha accepting an invite from Garret. Trisha wanted to thank Orison in person for his accidental saving grace and Esme asked to come for the same reason.

It was a cascade of strange that happened because a single thread of a person's around a month of interaction with a world had been erased. It made him wonder how much of his misfortune in the other timeline could be linked to Rio's disappearance. The young mage had no idea and was even more confused by the fact that the only physical change to the world was the return of his over robe.

Pulling the over robe out, a letter fell to the floor once it was unfolded. " Dear, Godfather... I hope you don't mind me calling you that since Dad's been having me call you that since I can remember. I won't bore you with a whole bunch of details about family issues and life because we likely won't meet again. I only want you to know that Rio may not be our family by blood but we do care very much about him.

"Since this is my second time picking him up and I don't want to make it a third, I've taken some time to make sure his disappearance and the disappearance of your angel friends won't cause backlash. When readjusting Esme's impression of events, I took the liberty of picking up the item that Rio recognized as yours. She was doing some fairly stimulating things with it. I'd suggest that you don't lend it to her again because the material it's made of, calls to her. Reference possible selkie or celestial maiden (ref Tennin: celestial maiden's raiment)?

"Thank you for all that you've done for my family. Were it not meant for you, I would have offered to bring you with us. Be well and safe travels."

The young mage thought with a relieved look, "I'm glad you didn't offer. I would have fought for my life not to go. Whatever blasted splay of greater reality accepts the traveling of a fledgling old one and their chosen mortal kin would not have a very fun path to walk, I think."

Garret and Babs approached him and the young girl took lead. "Mom says she's settled in and wanted me to ask if she could have me come stay with her there. Reading between the lines, I don't think she believes me being in a house full of male teenagers and men is a good place for me to be. It's bull but the last thing I want is for mom to throw another temper tantrum hysterical fit over something dumb."

He asked if she wanted to go and she thought it was for the best, 'to keep Janet in line'.

She added, "You'll be doing that trial by fire thing anyway. Staying at Maria's is fun but I'm kind of curious about the new house anyway. Did you know it's paid up for twenty years and has free water park access!? That's crazy!"

Garret laughed and said, "The truth is revealed!"

Babs shot him an annoyed look before motioning for Orison to bend down some and whispered, "I'll pretend to be sad if you and brother disappear one day but if you come back without him, I'm going to be sad for real unless you tell me a good story."

Not wasting time with dramatics and knowing how things would be, she told Orison to get the custody thing 'over with' and went to pack her things.

Garret was barely close enough to hear bits and quickly said in his defense, "I didn't tell her anything. She's just really good at figuring things out. She once told me that if she hadn't been green flagged for Core Administration Accelerator, she would have moved to Grandpa Booger's last year. Not even her teachers knew until months later."

Still trying to piece together the whole manufactured play that his 'godson' had constructed, he just went with the flow and hoped for the best. There wasn't anything the young mage could do about it until all the dust settled anyway for fear of making something worse. To distract himself and keep out of the girl's and her two brother's way while she got ready for transport to take her to her new place, Orison finished details with Roy.

"Sorry for running off but I thought I had a lead on something that I'll have to wing a different way. I've created a team fund and handed you a list of the equipment we'll most likely need. Does anything look like it's missing?" Orison asked.

Roy looked over the prep list and said, "A way to carry all of this. You have a week out from base and the supplies to match but there's no way we can divide this up for easy travel. Our combustion engines don't work there. So, maybe a magic wagon or a floating disk rental?"

Orison shook his head. "I'll give you the answer to that problem on Monday's team briefing. If you're not on the Barren's morning hours yet, use the weekend to get on them as best you can. No one needs to stagger camp watch this trip."

Wide eyed, Roy said, "No offense, but that's cracked. Are you planning on bringing a portable, air-tight bunker!?"

The young mage just smiled.

After a brief visit, Roy left, having quite a few things to do that evening and through Friday. The next three days would be fairly busy for the young mage as well. On Friday morning, Orison signed Garret out of school for a small fine and paid another for the Summit instructor that they had been assigned to come out to their place and run him and his team through fighting what threats they may encounter in Plague Barrens.

Pointing out far too many deficiencies in Garret and Gurrut's abilities to handle those threats, the young mage shelled out 20k to the instructor to take the brothers, Gan and Stag on a team virtual training exercise over the weekend. When Sergeant Stand wanted to know why the leader wasn't 'leading by example', Orison took the the man down to his lab and showed him the pile of projects he was trying to complete by Monday and the Summit trainer laid off. He also left their house 80K poorer on top of refunding his fee.

When Garret asked what was up with the creepy grin on Sergeant Stand's face, Orison replied, "He's thinking about how his wife won't ever be able to catch him with his special smokes, vapes or edibles anymore among other such mischief. I'm thinking about how he won't be so damn irritable all the time and paid me to make that happen... Don't worry. Come Monday, everybody on the team will have something to smile about."

In the silence and stillness Saturday morning, after his team went for training, the young mage got busy in earnest on his projects. The laser focus he relied on seemed to be on the fritz, however. Stray thoughts would puncture his concentration with bitterness over the Adena situation or irrational agitation over having Trisha and Esme basically unknowingly dumped him.

A part of him was almost happy about not having the complication to deal with but another part was disappointed. He knew where it came from. He might not want to play the part of some unrealistic, love sick cartoon prince but he didn't want to turn into a parody of Venito either.

Then there was Gan. His best friend didn't feel like much of a friend at all in the past few days but more of a stranger walking eggshells around him and occasionally showing off. There wasn't much to do about it but let time help them find some new equilibrium.

The weird vibe in the house was affecting the others too. The subconscious attention seeking on Gan's part was tickling Stag's instincts, making him a little on edge. Not because he wanted in on it but because another male in his territory was strutting around in a way Stag's inner buck was having a hard time ignoring.

Thankfully, Garret seemed oblivious and such low level friction didn't even register on Gurrut's radar as worth noticing. Unfortunately, he did overhear the tail end of a conversation between the two over what they'd do to an imaginary twin sister of Orison. It hadn't been nice. And with them egging each other to more absurd boasts, it breached the borders of inhumane and felony worthy.

He responded by having them spar each other and putting the loser in charge of cleaning the bathroom until they left. It hadn't been the best planned out idea. Garret was stronger and faster but Gurrut was far more aggressive and seasoned. Before it reached levels that his healing magic and a night's rest couldn't take care of, Orison stepped in and praised them both, agreeing to take care of the bathroom with a use of Presto every evening. He did make them sincerely apologize to his imaginary twin, feeling like a tool, before he'd heal them up.

Gurrut was Orc enough that such a happy event wasn't enough to satisfy the fire in his gut. So, Orison joyfully beat the stuffing out of him. While pretending it had been a complete blow out victory in his favor, he suppressed the hobbling and wheezing until he got to his alchemy lab, healing the fractured rib and torn ligaments in his knee.

Yet another stray thought that was bouncing around in his head over the weekend of craft work was just how little better he was to his youngest team members in pure physical combat. Once Gurrut had a little more time to adjust to his new limits and Garret had a little more real-world combat experience under his belt, the young mage wouldn't be able to put them down without magical trickery.

"What am I getting bent out of shape about? It's like I'm trying to compare the weakest third of my total ability to the greatest two-thirds of theirs and sad it measures a little short. That's insane ego," Orison thought.

By the middle of Sunday, he had bullied his way through all of the main items and only secondary ones were left. Deciding to take a mental rest before hitting the last stretch, he stripped and took a dip in the lake. The trance state he had slipped into was broken by a sudden sound of limbs cutting through water.

"Is this what you get up to while the rest of your team is slogging away in VR training?" Trisha said as she swam up to where he'd floated with a heel resting on a buoy line.

Noticing her bold choice to match his nonexistent attire, he smiled and said, "My brain was overheated. Now something in the lower engine room is threatening to overheat. To what do I owe the pleasure of this surprise?"

Pulling the strawberry blond hair out of her face, she said, "I hope you won't... think badly of me but I've had a rough day and I thought maybe..."

Seeing the somewhat embarrassed smile on her face waver and turn watery, he knew the thing he should have done was swim back to shore and let her talk it out but he was tired of 'doing what was right'. He wanted to be dumb and give her what she thought she wanted, what he suddenly wanted, instead of what he thought she needed. So, he did.

It took nearly five hours to go from lake to bedroom with stopovers on the dock and in the kitchen. What started out as nearly violent mutual passion, slowly down shifted on her side while he set pace until she was finally barely holding on for dear life. Eventually, she couldn't hold on anymore and passed out, bringing their exchange to an abrupt end. Orison panicked a little but she was alright, merely overwhelmed.

He barely managed to clean up and remove the evidence of his happy afternoon of mostly responsible entertainment before his team came in, worn out and ready for relaxation. Despite his best efforts, Stag took notice of subtle lingering traces and it remained that way until after dinner when Trisha finally woke up and attempted to sneak out, getting caught by Gurrut. Busted but with no one heckling her, she took Orison up on the offer of dinner and then another offer of conversation over some iced tea on the back porch.

It seemed that the Third Triumvir had temporarily demoted Mr Lacquer. To shore up possible losses, both resource wise and political, Esme had made overtures to a son of the Wingright family. Trisha wasn't ready to fold in and call it quits but she was hurt for getting the silent treatment nearly a week only to find out about the news with everyone else. In the cooling afterglow, she had begun regretting her impulsiveness, just like Orison pretty much knew she would.

He made it simple for her. "I knew what this was and what it wasn't. Hate me if it makes it easier for you. Fix things with Esme if you can. If I'm around and you want to... talk, my doors are open."

She gave him a teary hug and said, "Your the only man who took care of me after... you know. That was really sweet. I'm really not that girl who... I'm not."

Orison returned the hug and whispered soothingly in her ear, "I know. I'm happy you trusted me, entrusted yourself to me. I won't betray that even if you never want to see me again."

She kissed him one last time and ran off to meet her transportation in route, unable to bear his 'kindness and understanding' any longer.

Stag walked up to him with a wicked edge to his mildly amused smile. "If you were actually a nice guy, you would have done something she could hate you for. Now the poor girl can only hate herself."

The young mage said, "Well, I'm not nice and I'm tired of being tied to the whipping post to give others relief, emotional or otherwise."

"Oh, I'm sure the necklace in her pocket will really show her who she was messing with," Stag said with a mischievous chuckle.

With a little redness spreading around his ears, Orison pretended he didn't hear as he walked into the house. Inside, Gan was sitting glumly on the living room couch, staring at his feet while Garret was all but glaring at the young mage. Gurrut sighed and stared at his brother dully.

He walked over to Gan and pointed at the ruby ring. "Let me tell you a secret. Do you see that, on the edge of the main stone?"

Right about the time that the scout had the ring turned to him just shy of eye level, Orison punched the palm of his hand. Smashing against the Northlander's mouth, the edge of the ring managed to cut his lip enough to get a small bit of watery blood on the main gem. Right as Gan was ready to rev up to p*ssed, he felt a connection snap into place with the magic source inside.

"It needs a little blood to bond to its wearer. Apparently, you needed a little pain to remember what it stands for," the young mage said as he walked over to Garret.