Introductions and Paperwork

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The car ride felt almost like an eternity to John, who preoccupied himself with inspecting the internal mechanisms of the car he was riding in using Machine Mind in intervals. The majority of which was, quite plainly, completely outside of his grasp.

After about twenty minutes had passed, Faith spoke up, “What’re you doing over there?” gesturing at John and his apparent intermittent intense staring at the glovebox in front of him.

John disabled Machine Mind and glanced over at Faith, replying with, “Oh, uh.... I have this ability that I got yesterday to inspect and interact with technology remotely, even through solid materials, apparently.”

Faith made a quizzical face at John “I… see, and you aren’t messing with the car, are you?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I doubt I even could if I even wanted to; this is way more complex than anything I’ve seen so far and utterly beyond my abilities at the moment.”

Faith smirked a bit, “Yeah, I can’t make heads or tails of it when I look at the stuff inside of this either. Dad had this packed full of every safety feature he could when I announced that I would be attending school at Ashcroft.”

“Huh, ok. Where exactly are we headed to? According to the map, we aren’t heading to the towers or anything”

“Like I said, we’re going to my house; it’s on the outskirts of town if you need to know.”

And with that, the conversation ended just as abruptly as it had started.

John and Faith both fell into silence one more, with both of them mostly just looking at their phones as the car drove itself closer to their destination.

About ten minutes passed by before John checked her relationship score, finding it at a 10, a slight increase from what it had been earlier. Oh, I should probably check exactly why my relationship score with her increased with an Observe.

With that thought, John waited until he thought he could cast Observe on Faith, which he soon found as she stretched her arms, closing her eyes.

Interesting… I guess I know she isn’t harboring any malicious intent towards me, but let's see how this goes.

John resumed his browsing of Reddit… and proceeded to wait for this car ride to come to an end.

The next thing John knew, the car was pulling into a driveway of an unfamiliar house. Looking up from his phone, John was surprised at what he saw.

John didn’t know what he had expected from Faith’s house, but the fairly cozy one story house that was in front of him was certainly not it.

The house was surrounded by a white picket fence that bordered the property and by the orderly bushes that lined the outside perimeter of the fence. The house itself was slightly obscured by the fences that lined the building, but John could get a fairly good look at what he was

As the car ground to a halt inside the house’s garage that opened to greet it, John took the time to note that the interior was mostly barren, aside from the rail mounted charger that hung from the ceiling, that he presumed was for the car, and the typical white door that led to the rest of the house.

Faith exited the car, and a moment later John did the same. Faith walked up to the door before unlocking it and entering the main part of the house. With a moment of hesitation, John followed Faith into a surprisingly ordinary house, once more betraying John’s expectations.

At first glance, John noticed nothing wrong with the interior, it seemed perfect… almost too perfect. John attempted to take a second to look around where he was standing but was interrupted by Faith snapping her fingers at him and telling him to keep following.

John was led into a study of some kind where an intricately crafted desk stood. Interestingly enough, the study lacked windows or any other opening aside from the door. It was sparsely decorated, with a single, slightly wilted potted plant shoved into the corner, as if it was an afterthought. The room was lit by a pair of light fixtures recessed into the wall, casting ominous shadows on the majority of the items within.

Faith told him to wait for a moment before she sat in the chair and laid her hand on a seemingly random section of the tabletop. There was a slight beeping sound in response, and the door behind John receded into the wall, leaving only a barely distinguishable flaw in the form of a slight fissure in the otherwise now completely smooth wall. Faith then instructed John to stand slightly off to the side of her desk, which he immediately obliged.

Faith began tapping the tabletop in front of her, which lit up with a display that listed numerous contacts. After scrolling down the list for a moment, Faith selected “Morgan Elemine” and tapped the Call button.

As soon as the call was initiated, the lights dimmed, and a hologram of a similar desk was slowly constructed in the center of the room. However, the key difference was the suited man that sat in the chair that accompanied it.

He was wearing an intricate grey suit made out of some kind of clearly incredibly rare material that seemed to cost more than John’s entire existence. His bearded face was still relatively handsome, despite the obvious wear that came only with experience; this was further emphasized by the glasses that framed and highlighted his features. While he obviously showed signs of his age, such as his greying hair, his bright piercing eyes showed no signs of weariness.

His eyes flickered over to John for a moment before returning to Faith. “I assume this isn’t a call to just catch up with your dad, now is it?”

Faith simply smiled, “No, it is not. The reason for the lack of planning beforehand is because of him,” gesturing at John, who was sheepishly continuing to stand next to her desk. “He appears to be a Late Bloomer of sorts. According to him, he woke up with the powers less than two days ago, and I extended an offer to become an associate of the company to him, as I felt it would be best to not let this opportunity go to waste.”

With a nod, Morgan replied and turned towards John, “I see. What is your name, and would you please demonstrate or explain some of your abilities?”

“My name is John Newman, and my abilities seem to be focused around being a video game character, complete with an inventory,” he said, willing his phone to be in his hand from his inventory, where it suddenly appeared for a moment before he put it back, “a health bar that heals me using an internal buffer of ‘health points’ shortly after I take physical damage, and the ability to increase my power, or ‘level up’, using experience I get by defeating enemies, and although I have not exactly tested this yet, the power to help improve the abilities of others as well. Pausing for a moment, John added, “I believe I specialize in crafting and manipulating technology, magical or otherwise.”

Morgan furrowed his brow and looked at Faith, “Do you believe this man’s… John’s claims?”

Faith pursed her lips for a moment, as if she was in thought, before saying, “I believe I do. I’ve seen some of this in action, and I seek to validate what I have not seen myself.”

“Alright, I’ll trust you on this one, I have complete Faith in you,” Morgan said with a grin to Faith’s obvious discomfort, before continuing. “As for granting association status to John here, he’ll have to sign some documents that I really encourage him to read in their entirety so he understands what he’s agreeing to before he officially does so.” And with that, Morgan pressed a button on his desk before taking a box out of one of the many desk drawers and pushing it into the surface of the desk, which it sank into to appear on the desk Faith was sitting at after a brief delay.

Faith opened the box and set them on a section of the desk closest to John. There was a stack of very legal looking documents in a small font, a pen, presumably to sign various points on the papers, and a small tablet, of which John only took the tablet before looking up at Morgan, who added with a smile, “I included an electronic version if you’re more comfortable with that than the stack of papers.”

John nodded before turning the tablet on and activating Machine Mind with the intent of speeding things along a bit.

However, there’s only so much you can do to speed something like that along.

While it did take only about a minute for John to know the entire document, consuming most of his mana while Machine Mind was active, processing and thinking about it was an entirely other matter, taking up about fifty minutes by itself.

When all of that was said and done, Faith was on her phone once more, and Morgan was staring at the far wall past her, clearly in deep thought.

“So,” John began to speak, having finally looked over the mass of legal documents, startling both Faith and Morgan, who looked at him. “To sum it all up, this says that you have the right to call upon me when either I or my powerset is needed for something that I will be compensated for with money or otherwise. I am able to refuse this offer if I specifically am not needed, but I will be required to compensate for the cost of hiring someone else and any damages caused. In exchange, I will be provided the protection I desire under you which may include housing if needed and certain services depending on how useful I make myself.”

Morgan nodded after listening, “I would say that more or less sums it up, give or take a few non-important details. However, I think a more important question is: after reviewing the details of this contract, are you willing to sign up?”