"He could stop gravity?" her father asked incredulously.

"He had total control. Even with everything I've seen over the last handful of years, it was really crazy. He could just turn gravity off, if he wanted to. Turn it off, just like that," Beth said, snapping her fingers.

"Fighting him was certainly an interesting experience," Sera said. "We did quite a bit of training with him over the course of a few weeks, and we never even touched him. Didn't even get close, and he wasn't lording it over us or anything. He's just that good; he doesn't even think about it and he's better than almost anybody I've ever heard mentioned."

"He was annoying," Blood added with grunt.

"Is there anything you guys need?" Beth asked her family then.

"Well, we're alright," Thomas said.

"We need consumables," Zack cut in.

"What does that mean?" Beth asked.

"Healing potions, mana potions, elixirs…everything," Zack said. "We don't have nearly enough, and we have to spend a lot of our money on other things, or we did. We're short critical supplies that we need to keep the guards, and the town, safe."

"Does the CRA have enough supply?" Beth asked idly, leaning back in her chair.

"We can't buy everything they have, if that's what you're asking," Zack said with a puzzled expression. "We don't have enough to cover our needs, but it's not like we've bought out the whole supply. We just don't have the funds."

"That's an easy problem to solve," Beth said, leaning forward again and idly fingering her necklace, mentally sorting through it. "Here, take all this. I don't need it; it's all a lot worse than what I'm usually using."

Beth dumped a dozen or more containers on the table with potions, pill, elixirs, and other random consumables in. She didn't dump out any food, as they had said they were more than sufficient in terms of food, so she just gave them all the extras she had of low-tier consumables. Despite selling off the excess constantly, she still did accumulate a lot of cheap stuff, or cheap to her, that she didn't view as worth trying to pawn off. It was maybe five platinum coins worth of stuff in total, which would have generated very little profit, as she would have had to sell it in bulk and at a discount. Giving it to the neighborhood was honestly a better choice, at the end of the day, than anything else she would have done with it.

"Oh, and take this," She said, tossing Zack a diamond coin. "That should keep you guys for a while."

"Good God, girl," Zack exclaimed, stat-enhanced senses allowing him to track and catch the coin easily, but he almost fell out of his chair when he realized what denomination it was. "We can't take that."

"I've got plenty of money and extra items," Beth replied with a shrug. "That much is nothing."

"Beth…are you sure?" her mother, surprisingly enough, asked.

"It's fine. My wealth is currently measured in orichalcum, so a diamond coin isn't that much. And the consumables are all old stuff that wouldn't have an effect on us, so might as well let you guys have them," she explained with another shrug.

"It's still…a lot," her mother said, looking through all the boxes.

"Don't worry about it," Beth said with a shrug before slapping her hands on her knees, preparatory to rising. "It's about time we head out."

"So soon?" asked Rachel.

"We're not going off-world, just back to the CRA Hall. We'll stop by again in a few days," Beth said, standing and getting ready to leave. Sera said goodbyes while Blood, on the other hand, was already sauntering out the door as soon as she realized they were heading out.

"You can stop by whenever, girls. Remember that," Thomas said before they headed out the gate and across the cul-de-sac.

"Your family's way more relaxed," Sera commented, stretching as they walked to the front of the neighborhood.

"Yours isn't so chill?" Beth asked, waving at one of the neighbors as they walked up to the front gate.

"Nah, they're all inflated egos and lots of pomp and ceremony. They talk about respect and tradition all the time," Sera said, waving a hand in front of her face as if to dismiss a bad smell. "It gets super annoying. I always welcome a chance to get away from them for a few years. Except for great uncle Rodrick. He's cool."

"There's a story there," Beth said as they left through the gates, loping down what was left of the highway after Blood. The neighborhood had maintained a section of it, converting the road for a mile in either direction into a stone-paved highway that was perfectly level and smooth, even better than what was there before. After that, however, they said it wasn't their responsibility anymore and just let it go.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Not any one thing, really," Sera replied. "Great Uncle is just, ah, different. He's kinda my role model, in a way."

"Now I've got to meet him," Beth interrupted.

"Sure, I'm sure you will when we visit. He's kinda a rebel without a cause type, I guess. He just does what he wants, when he wants, and doesn't let anybody boss him around. He's really strong, too, like one of the strongest in the clan. In fact, I know he's at least an Ascended, and a late-rebirth one, but he might even have made Exalted. I'm not really sure; he's somebody that often hides his power, so you really can't trust what an Identify-type skill tells you about him," Sera explained.

"Yeah, I can totally see how that would have inspired you," Beth said as they returned to the Hall.

"We should rest for now and find somebody in the morning," Sera said, leading the way to their suite.

The night passed uneventfully, and they had a massive breakfast the next morning before looking for anybody in charge. It took a while to find anybody, and Beth eventually just messaged Baelvyr and asked him where the hell he was. At which point he came down and met them in a training room, grumbling about getting pulled away from other work.

"What is it now?" he asked them, making a large seat creak ominously as he sat in it.

"Ref duty," Beth replied succinctly.

"Whaddya want?" he asked.

"I wasn't aware we would get a choice," said Sera.

"Well, ya gotta do it, so no choice there," he said. "I meant, ya wanna serve it here or somewhere else?"

"Well, staying on Earth would be nice. I don't know about this exact Hall, but I wouldn't complain," Beth answered for them.

"I can do this Hall," Baelvyr said. "Ain't a problem to have ya here. Only problem is if ya try to play favorites. If ya do that, and somebody reports it, then yer in big fuckin' trouble. As long as ya keep it clean, don't matter where ya are. Would be a little different if yer home was some mega metropolis and ya were some crazy hotshots with top-tier connections. Sorry to say, but since yer from this little backwater, it don't really matter. People won't care about it, as long as ya don't ever actually play favorites."

"Well, then, if we can referee here for a year, we'll do that," Beth said. "We need to work on our professions, anyway, and that'll give a bunch of time to craft."

"Ain't no hurry for nothin'," Baelvyr said. "Ya got plenty of time to do all that crap."

"Well, we have a token to use," Beth said, showing him the token that Mortaine had given to them. Beth was also pretty sure he gave them the token as an investment in them, since there was no reason for him to go that far in compensating them for the reliquary.

"Ah, if that person's strong enough to be sellin' tokens, they ain't gonna croak tomorrow," Baelvyr said, waving a hand dismissively. "Just focus on what ya gotta do right now. Worry about that other stuff some other time."

"Well, I'd rather make sure we can use it, and sooner rather than later," Beth replied, storing it back in her necklace.

"Well, suit yerself," he grumbled. "Come on, then. Gotta sign ya in."

"Sign us in?" Blood asked, the first she had contributed to the conversation.

"Yeah, yer ears still work. Come on," he said, leading them out of the training room.

He took them over to the arena and to a counter that was very similar to the one Beth had become familiar with on Luttraine. He popped the door open and gestured the three of them behind the counter before joining them, there being just enough room with his massive bulk back there. He started tapping away at an interface at the counter, pulling up several screens and entering a bunch of data before clearing everything away.

"Okay, follow me now," he said, bringing up a screen. "Ya can bring this up on yer communicator, but most people wait until they're at the counter. This is the log of who's workin' the arena for the day; ya can see both counter workers and referees here. Sometimes they might ask ya to work the counter, but yer supposed to be refereeing, so don't slack off. After ya sign in with this screen, ya put yerself in the referee pool with this second screen. If there aren't enough refs for the floor, ya'll be assigned immediately to a slot. If there's enough refs, it'll put ya in a rotation for time in the ref box. Any questions?"

"No, that's simple enough," said Sera.

"Good. Now, here's the second part. I don't expect ya to memorize every single detail, but this is the third screen ya need to know," he said, closing the first two screens. "This screen shows the queues; who's fightin', who's comin' up, and so on. It's also the same screen ya use to register somebody for an upcoming fight. There're some other screens for tournaments, two other screens, but I doubt ya'll need to see them for a while. They're here and here, but they work on the same principle as this screen. Ya learn how this screen works, ya can work the other screens. Ya can keep this one, which gives an overview of what's registered to the floor, up on yer communicator. The other two screens have more specifics, but ya can just watch this one even with tournaments and special events. Only need the other two if yer hostin' or have to make changes, but ya won't be doin' any of that for a while."

"Seems simple enough," Beth said, watching him go through the screens.

"Now, this Hall's got three counters, and one of the other ones is in use. Ya can see changes are poppin' up on the screens. First, log yerselves in, then we'll go over and see who's at the counter," he told them.

Beth, Blood, and Sera all logged in with the first screen he showed them, all three pulling the second up on their communicators to monitor. They followed Baelvyr around the outer ring of the first floor of the arena until they got to a second counter. John was there, along with another new face, yet another person wearing the CRA fatigues with the three stripes on them. Beth got a sense that these other newbies were pretty fresh, even perhaps compared to them, but they were all Gold Emblems, so they couldn't have been that new.

"These three are on ref duty for the next year, John," Baelvyr informed him. "They're signed on right now. Make sure they don't spend too long behind the counter, either."

"Well, well, well. If it isn't our two wayward prodigies. Oh, and the tall one's with you, heh heh," John chuckled. "Good to see somebody stepping up to do some actual work, eh?"

"Good to see you, too, John," Beth replied, rolling her eyes at the laconic man. "There fights goin' on right now?"

"Yepper," he said lazily. "We got enough people to use one whole counter. Isn't that just crazy?"

As they were talking, two people walked up to register, the unfamiliar woman behind the counter taking care of them. They two people were registered and then both called immediately, and two other people appeared after just a handful of seconds, so it looked like they weren't fighting each other. Before Beth could ask any more, John spoke up.

"Go in there and relieve Elana, Navere, and Thom. They need a spell, and ya can start right away. Just one-v-ones right now. Ya got any questions before I throw ya in there?" he said.

"I think we're pretty clear," Beth replied with a shrug.

The three of them then did exactly that, entering the arena floor proper, Beth noting Baelvyr had disappeared at some point, and replacing the three that John had mentioned. Beth didn't know who Thom was, but she was taking over Navere's field, so she just had to replace him. He didn't leave right away, however, and stuck around to watch the matches, though Beth knew he was watching her to make sure she was doing it right.

The fights weren't anything to write home about, and Beth was able to very easily follow what was happening. Truth be told, she didn't really need to do that much, as the arena systems were perfectly capable of determining win or loss based on several preset conditions. She was really there as a backup to the system to make sure there was still an intelligent decision maker with eyes on every match. What that amounted to in reality, however, was giving the opening spiel, counting the contestants in, dropping her hand to signal the start, watching a somewhat boring match, and then calling the winner, usually just confirming the automated systems got the right pick. Considering a lot of matches were ended by a deathblow and the arena separating the two contestants, that made her job rather easy. There were a few times where it wasn't entirely clear or where she had to step in to stop the contestants from having a go at each other after the match was halted, but that happened rarely. Especially since she didn't have to be nice about stopping people engaged in an unsanctioned fight, and the arena wasn't great about fully healing somebody the ref had decided to rough up.

It was enough that it kept her focused and busy, but like she had thought from the outset, most of the fights weren't that great. Since they had elected to stay on Earth, both for access to her family and friends as well as the chance to keep exploring the planet, they were watching people with zero, one, or maybe two rebirths at most fight. Very, very few people had managed to get to three rebirths, if any at all, and many of the people hadn't done more than a Perfect Rebirth, not managing to complete the quest at max level, if they even got to that. It made the fights somewhat plain, but that also meant she was more than enough to handle all the duties of a ref, including watching the fight as well as dealing with uppity contenders.

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