Chapter 133: Unpleasant Revalations

Chapter 133: Unpleasant Revalations

It was only after the confrontation that Isaac had realized he was still wearing his Halloween costume, but then again, the fact that he’d managed to intimidate a hardened spy in an outfit that ridiculous made a rather strong statement about his abilities.

By the time he’d reached the university, the costume was completely gone, though. It would have drawn an annoying amount of attention. Besides, he’d have drawn plenty of that anyway if he hadn’t been using [Sneak] to fade into the background.

... which was a hell of a lot less effective against people specifically looking for him and further lost in effectiveness against someone who actually knew him.

So when the shout of “Hey Isaac” reached his ears, there was only a very short list of suspects even before he recognized the voice.

“Hey Sam.” Isaac greeted him at a more reasonable level of volume “What’s up?”

“I missed you, man.” Sam exclaimed, affectionately slugging Isaac’s shoulder “You weren’t here when we threw the party to celebrate your victory in Korea, but I think we can arrange to have another one now that you’re here ...”

“I’ll have to take a raincheck, I’m afraid. I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. A lot.” Isaac bade off.

“I think you work a little too much. Come on, you can’t spare a couple of hours to have a little fun? Hell, you can sober up in a matter of seconds and be fine afterwards!” Sam suggested “Blow off a little steam, maybe even find a little company? You know the whole world saw you on TV as a hero, right?”

“I’m well aware.” Isaac said, barely able to suppress a sigh “But I’m way too busy, sorry, maybe later. I’m also already too late for my first day back, so ... anyway, it was good to see you, but I gotta go.”

And with that, he jetted off towards his faculty’s building.

As he ran, Isaac was cursing his past decisions, ever having gone to that damn frat party in the first place.

There was a reason he and Sam had lost touch in the first timeline. One of them was diligent at everything he did and enjoyed the occasional burst of hedonistic excess to blow off a little steam. The other spent most of his time arranging the parties that were filled with said excess, doing little but that.

Isaac had craved that feeling of freedom from burden of his responsibilities when he’d received that invitation and he’d had the time, so he’d grasped that responsibility with both hands. Hell, he’d even left his weapon behind, for crying out loud.

Later on, he’d gone to the frat for a second time, for yet another party, and then never returned.

That whole thing ... was not him anymore. He was a different person now, and quite frankly, far too old to be going to frat parties. As fun as that drunken chaos had been for him in his twenties, once he’d stopped seeing it as a way to reclaim the innocence of the past, it no longer held any appeal.

Besides, there were far more adult parties happening in other places, like the Dungeon Guild, Camelot, or the general slew of diplomatic meetings. These ‘parties’ ranged from the extremely formal to something akin to a modern re-interpretation of a medieval feast, but were generally more his speed. It had taken him a while to reach this point, but he could admit that.

... even if Sam and his fraternity probably thought he was ‘lame’ now.

Isaac reached his destination in a matter of seconds now that he was moving faster than walking speed, but then he froze. The whole place had changed. Massively.

First of all, the main building had finally been completed, reaching its full height of ninety meters, almost enough to qualify as a friggin skyscraper.

Four massive summoning rooms were still in the basement and hadn’t changed any since they’d been broken in during the first event, as well as the team’s offices.

The ground floor was mostly one massive entry hall/museum with a bunch of ‘trophies’ from their various efforts.

His first Zweihänder, broken when a ‘The Crusher’ had fallen top of it.

The Hydra-skin handbag they’d made for Bailey as a prank.

And several preserved plants from the various Hunting Grounds.

“Mostly, yeah. Things are looking up, but there are a bunch of things I need to talk with you guys about. Where’s Karl?”

“Blowing stuff up in the mad scientists’ lair. He’ll be here soon.” Amy said, and Patrick added “That’s what the building that houses the laboratories hazardous and explosive materials ended up being called.”

“To be fair, that’s exactly what it is.” Raul said “Stuff shouldn’t explode during the course of normal experimentation, even I know that.”

“Hey, we’re not that bad.” Karl called down from the top of the stairs, having just arrived “We haven’t damaged the lab even once since we got it.”

“And how often did Professor Jäger’s [Accident Simulation] trigger and show you just how destructive an experiment would have been if the cooldown [Skill] hadn’t stopped it?” Amy shot back, a statement that was met with silence.

Isaac knew [Skills] like that, one’s that could stop experiments or crafting processes as they started to go off the rails, then show the person conducting said thing just how badly things would have gone if it hadn’t been for the arcane intervention. A lifesaver for the enterprising [Engineer], and given that those people were playing around with some of the most energetic materials in the world, a truly mandatory [Skill] for everyone who could get it.

“Anyway, good to see you Isaac.” Karl greeted “Did you have at least a little fun? I mean, it was supposed to be a holiday, right?”

“I went mountain climbing, but I can tell you guys about that later. For now, I really need to talk to everyone.” Isaac gestured to the conference room “Shall we?”

A mere moment later, they were all siting around the table, with everyone else staring at him expectantly.

“The reason I was late today was because I discovered that my family was being watched by the German government.”

He took a brief pause to let them react, but they kept their cool, so he continued.

“I managed to get in contact with the boss of the agent in question and he reassured me that they’re just there for their ‘protection’ and I believe that is true to a certain degree, but there’s also a certain implied threat to the whole affair. Now, I don’t think it’s possible to watch someone’s family without telling them and not be at least a little creepy, but it’s still not a good sign that they didn’t tell us.

“As the guy I spoke to put it, I ‘make a good friend but would be a terrible enemy’ and I think that’s a good way to describe all of us. They know how bad going after our families or using them as collateral could go and how much our current level of cooperation benefits everyone, Germany included, but it shouldn’t hurt to remind them of that occasionally.”

“Sounds like you had it better than I did.” Bailey commented “I’ve been contacted by every agency with even the slightest amount of skin in the game about how I should ‘come home’ and ‘have some patriotic pride’, with some darkly ambiguous comments thrown in. I’ve lived in this country for twelve years, ever since I came here for my studies, so I moved my folks here and put a stop to all of that. If I catch any German spooks sniffing around them ... they can either become an official security detail or back off.”

Suddenly Amy began giggling, then tried and failed to stifle her mirth as the others turned to look at her.

“Ok, so my stepdad is a conspiracy nut, and now he’s got he [Class] to go along with it. He recently started claiming his [Skills] were telling him he was being watched, but it sounded like he was nuts as usual. And he’s cried wolf so often that no one listens to him anymore, the one time he’s actually right ...” she ended that explanation with another burst of giggling.

Yeah, Amy did not like her stepfather, that had become rather apparent even from the handful of times she’d mentioned him.

“I think my parents will be flattered when they figure it out.” Patrick added “Then again, they haven’t figured out I work for the finest research group in the country, so that might take a couple of decades.”

“That isn’t going to be a problem for my folks, they’ve got their own bodyguards.” Raul shrugged “They might not be intelligence agents, but they’ve been with the family for a while, they can handle things.”

Ok, that was ... interesting, and explained a lot, but wasn’t germane to the situation at hand, so Isaac filed it away for later.

“And what about you, Karl?” Isaac asked.

“What does it really change, in the end? I’m going to keep working as I always planned to, and if anyone tries anything, there’ll be hell to pay. Domestic intelligence agents, foreign intelligence agents, the Mob, doesn’t matter.” Karl said grimly.

Isaac grimaced as his friend echoed his thoughts. Nothing to do but hope nothing went wrong and take brutal revenge if it did.

“Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, I brought presents.” Isaac announced and began pulling stuff out of his spatial storage.