-Xavier Becerra

"Ahh, good to be home," John said, smiling as he strode in the front door. His mother's vehicle was still missing, which surprised and worried him in equal measure, but he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was nice having Seras able to walk freely around the house and to not have to worry about being too loud and having his own mother wonder who he was talking to.

"I just wanted to say sorry again, um, Master."

"Stop apologizing… geez, it's not your fault there are assholes like that out there," John sighed as Seras voiced her regrets to him for what felt like the thirtieth time since they left the mall.

"I know, but… I'm the one who complained about clothes an' all that," Seras mumbled, idly toying with the handles of the bags John had handed off to her. Despite her apologies and insistences that she would not be so much trouble the next time, Seras seemed quite grateful for the clothes and very attached to them.

"For good reason. I don't think I'd be very happy wearing your clothes and underwear for most of a week," John jested, rolling his eyes. "Besides, I was gonna have to learn one way or the other. Moira promised that she'd have someone evaluating my abilities and that she was going to start teaching me more about the Abyss - you'll just have to stay a bit safer until we can figure out how to conceal your aura. Or whatever the hell they can read about you so easily."

"Well, at least I can walk about without lookin' 'omeless," Seras muttered, idly toying with John's sweater. "An' maybe I won't draw so much attention from the, uh, non-magical ones."

John had to agree with that sentiment. Even having seen them uncovered, the mixture of a too-loose midsection and a too-tight chest area made the long-sleeved shirt both unflattering and yet impossible to look away from. Seras had been too shy to show off the outfits she picked out for John's opinion, but he was confident she knew her own body well enough to pick out something that would look better on her. He was kind of curious what some of them were - she'd insisted on privacy at at least two separate stores, and those had been the ones she had spent the most at. They were ordinary clothing shops, and John wasn't worried about the money since he still had several thousand just from the few dungeons they had completed, yet he couldn't help but burn with a desire to know.

John fought a blush from his cheeks as best as he could as, not for the first time, he wondered if he could Craft Seras a copy of her original outfit… that would be something he'd love to see her in in person. Shaking his head to clear the image before Seras could notice anything, John turned toward the kitchen and started planning out the rest of their day.

"Anyway, go ahead and change. I'm gonna get something ready to eat, then I can feed you and we can figure out what to do with the rest of the weekend," John called, rifling through his refrigerator. "We still have the rest of today and tomorrow. Given what just happened I'd kind of like to get some kind of grinding done, so that way we can work on getting some better weapons."

"I might just go buy that rifle…" John thought to himself as he tried to find something in the pantry that might give him a better buff for his health and mana regen. He would've done so already if he wasn't eager to get away from the scene of their latest deathmatch, not to mention to get Seras out of the public eye.

Staring at a month-old package of meat that he was seriously questioning the ability of Gamer's Body to "resist", John had a sudden case of fridge logic.

"Moira practically kidnapped me from the school because she thought that I attacked her. And seeing the Order's sigil on that cloak made those guys panic, so clearly the Order is pretty well known for attacking evil people… or at least people they think are evil. They're nice enough to me, and it did seem like they had a grudge against those guys in particular, but Moira was pissed when she felt the magic around Seras."

John put the meat back but didn't close the door, his appetite suddenly taking a backseat to a logic train John was no longer the conductor of. Perhaps it was his Intelligence score catching up a bit to its former highs after his Reincarnation ability.

"So even if he hated my old cloak, why would Lord Brighton give me this one? It marks me as a member or at least a friend of the Order, he even told me it did. He said he was concerned about the enemies it would make me… but what about the enemies it would make him? By giving that to someone with new and unexplained abilities, he was risking a lot of the Order's reputation if I did anything stupid. He didn't know about Seras back then, but Moira said he did now, and even then he knew I'd already made something with some form of Necromancy. To even tolerate that, he must think it's worth it."

John's brow crinkled as he stepped back, eyes staring at something that wasn't really there. A question - one that he realized he needed to know the answer to - was repeating itself over and over in his mind.

"So why? What does he expect to gain from me?"

"Father," Moira called out as she stepped into her father's study, her eyebrows slanted with an unease that had plagued her since leaving the mall. The glamour of her Illusion magic had faded away and left her standing before her father in the full glory of her Warden plate armor, unstained and unsullied by the combat she had been too late to take any real part in.

"You have returned," Lord Brighton noted the obvious as he turned to face her. The light of the fading embers in his fireplace cast a soft glow across his features, accentuating the wrinkles and creases that were just starting to form on his face.

He held in his left hand a rag, damp with oil, and in his right he grasped the pommel of a blade almost half as long as he was tall. Its glimmering hilt was decorated with seven different gems. In order, a ruby, sapphire, and emerald covered one side of the guard, an opal, aquamarine, and citrine the other, and in the center a diamond nearly the size of a man's iris was embedded at the core, nestled just millimeters below the beginning of the blade. Lord Brighton held it with care as he shifted, the tip swinging within inches of the fireplace but very certain in its trajectory. Moira knew the weapon well - it was a tool she had seen her father use on only one occasion.

She had vowed to the Lady herself never to touch the blade again after that.

"I have. I would speak with you, Lord Brighton."

"Of what, my Warden? Did the rescue operation not go according to plan?" Lord Brighton's voice feigned indifference as he continued to clean his blade, hand never ceasing its gentle motion of caring for the artifact. For all his casualness, Moira knew her father well enough to see the interest and amusement in his eyes. He seemed quite happy to make Moira spell out her concerns.

"It was a recovery mission, not a rescue," Moira noted. Lord Brighton sighed and nodded but still did not look up at her.

"I was informed. I wish you would have at least confronted the young lad before you sent him off to the Confessors - it is hardly proper to not even give the man a chance to admit-"

"He will have his chance; the Confessors would not **** a man who willingly-"

"I did not raise you to be ignorant, nor foolish, girl."

There was a moment of silence as the two finished interrupting each other. It was an argument that had been had many times before, a play the two could perform on command. Their stage directions and lines were second nature, the critics bored of a theater that never expanded its repertoire, and when the curtain fell, the ending was always as dissatisfying for the players as the audience.

"My concern lies not with those that John Newman encountered but with John Newman himself. Or more accurately, your intentions for him. Father."

"Odd," Lord Brighton noted, quirking an eyebrow as he slowed his hand to work the oil around the tip and top edge of the blade. The cloth was covered in nicks and holes where his hands had not always been so steady around the lethal contours. "Isn't the father usually the one asking his daughter what her intentions are with the young man hanging around their house?"

Moira blushed, cursing her body's weakness as her father grinned in triumph.

"This is no time for jokes. John Newman has not even had a full day under our tutelage, and although he has a minimal knowledge of the Abyss, he has no firsthand experience with it or any common sense about his own powers! He walks freely with these… creations of his and exposes himself to the world because he knows not the dangers he faces now."

"Would you suggest we lock him in a tower? We've already reversed one gender role, haven't we? You'd make a fantastic knight, of course, but I'm not sure about young Newman in a dress."

"I care little enough about what he exposes himself to, but what of the Order?!" Moira raised her voice to a half-shout, her father's typical jokes and attempts at a leisurely attitude filling her with indignation. It was times like this she almost missed the Warden Lord, the man who her father had once been, all his righteous fury and severity. But even when he infuriated her, Moira could not wish away the father she loved so dearly. Moira took a breath to calm herself, and her father matched the gesture. He gently set the cloth aside where it would not drip or soak into the furniture or wooden floors and stain them, then with both hands carefully hefted the blade up and set it into the mantel display it had come from.

"Say what you mean to say, Moira."

"John Newman is dangerous. He's a risk, one the Order knows little about. We take in new mages on occasion, but we've never seen anything like this. Why associate him with us so early, when we still do not know his intentions and he may not even know them himself? His only motivations so far seem to be exploring the very boundaries of his abilities, a path that none of us know the end to. Yet you would have him flying the Order's colors."

"As I recall it was you who insisted he accompany you on your first foray into the Cabal's own backyard," Lord Brighton pointed out, raising a calloused finger. "Did you not tell me you wished to test his loyalty, to see how well he might serve the Order?"

"I did," Moira admitted, not backing down an inch from her father's accusing finger. "And now everyone in the Barrier we erected that day is either dead by our hand, dead by his, or locked in our very own dungeons. So what association has he with us that might leave this place? I took every precaution to make sure that if John Newman turns out to have done anything truly heinous we might be rid of him - one way or another - and have no backlash fall upon the Order.

"We have cloaks, armor, and even weapons that are enchanted and do not bear our sigil. You gave him a blade from that very selection. Yet you intentionally gave him a cloak - a cloak you knew well to reinforce some of the weaknesses I witnessed in our battle together, that he would be encouraged to use if anything dangerous happened - and ensured it was the most blatant announcement of his allegiance. Even the sword might have gone unnoticed in the heat of combat, but an embroidered cloak? Truly, Father?"

Lord Brighton said nothing as Moira paused for breath. She eyed his reaction and found nothing, only a stony acceptance of what she had said. Moira had struck truth, then, at least in some measure.

"I want to know your intentions. Why are you so eager to include this mage in our ranks, despite the risks he poses? You have no idea what impact his abilities or actions could have on our allies or enemies - what of the Moon Clan? What of the Gorbachevs? What if those fools in Collide come out of hiding and convince him to reveal even what little he knows, or what if the Cabal capture him while he is outside our compound and **** him for the same? What benefit do you want out of him, that you think it so worth such risks?"

"Everything I do, I do for the Order."

Lord Brighton did not deign to continue for a moment, and Moira merely stared at him. By the Order's own tenets, as Warden, she could simply command him to explain himself. But Moira had gone since the day she received the Blessing of the Rose without using it against her own blood and certainly would not break that streak for something like this. Still, she did not back down. Her gaze was heated, and she willed her father mentally to understand what kind of rift this could bring between them.

"Moira…"

Lord Brighton sighed and slowly marched to his desk, opening one of the many drawers and pulling free a vial. Therein lay the Undead Essence that they had confiscated from John Newman the first day he came to the Brighton estate, and Lord Brighton stared at it with a fascination that belied his distaste for the aura that it emanated.

"…I hold here a magic that, to our knowledge and your own experience, seems to have come from nowhere. No object existed in its place before it appeared, magical or otherwise. No spell was cast to enchant the creature it came from or the remains that it left, certainly nothing of this nature. Even a confused, disoriented, or nearly **** Warden or Warden Lord would sense magic this foul in such close proximity. Perhaps most concerning is that it came from an Abyssal creature conjured in an Illusion Barrier, which should have left nothing behind at all, much less an object that has existed outside of its original Barrier unaltered for nearly a full week now."

Moira remained silent, thrown off by the fact that her father was essentially reiterating her own concerns about John Newman's unknown factors as evidence of why he had trusted him to represent their Order.

"Though the man may or may not prove to hold our ideals and morality, and though he knows little of what he wants in this world, it should be clear to you what I want, Moira. I want what I have always wanted. The safety and preservation of the Order, of what it stands for, and of all the innocents - magic and otherwise - who depend on us for preservation from predatory guilds and organizations like the Cabal or those necromancers.

"But in my entire life, I have only made one decision that went against the Order. I cannot regret my choice, but I live with the consequences each day. Our newfound isolation has left us weak. I will do what I must to rebuild this place."

"You would criticize my methods - against known criminals and murderers - yet you would offer John Newman no opportunity to make an informed decision before announcing his alignment with our Order to the world? If that necromancer spreads his tale to one other person, the entire Abyss of Springfield will know by dawn." Moira shook her head in a mixture of shame and rage. "You intended this all along, all because you think that his abilities could grow our divided Order."

"That is precisely what I intended," Lord Brighton agreed, shaking his head as he turned away from Moira and back to his desk.

"And, Lady willing, one day he will forgive me for it."