Chương 23: Chapter 21 - The hottest couple of the month

I got back into the bunk at ten past four. V's message hit the spot. Yeah, I could be clandestine. I just never bothered, because running in face-first came natural to me. And it wasn't like I couldn't have done that with the smugglers. I could had chosen violence, instead of tracking their depot, I could had gone interrogating people around the bars. It would had worked too. The alarm gave me three hours before it decided that was plenty. Before I even got out for a breakfast, my phone buzzed.

I expected Ophelia but noticed Kallisto on the screen. Interesting. And it was a call on top of that. I stepped into the corridor and answered.

"What's up?"

"Explain this." She turned the camera on and glared into it. She moved it to show me a magazine. White text on black pages, under the masthead of Sorcerers Monthly, which was apparently the secret societies' magazine, and which I had somehow never heard of until now. She had it already flipped to a page, which she raised to a camera, and pointed at a picture. A really nice picture of Ophelia and me from the event shone there, one of the ones taken by Lillith.

The title under the picture read The Hottest Couple of the Month, and underneath it, the tagline read'The hottest cougar in our jungle has sunk her claws into a fresh prey.'

"It's over a thousand words long article," she added. That made me blush a little.

"Yeah, so? You told me to bring someone else."

"The side bitch isn't an issue. She's appropriately hot to accompany you in public. The problem is that there haven't been any articles about me. They have articles about completely average mages. And articles about projects that are nothing next to my powerplant."

"Well, it's not like you've shown yourself in public. Hard to catch you for a picture when you are constantly underground. Did you even go outside in the past month?" She frowned, turning off the camera sharing.

"And I have the whole place warded off against divination magic. Point taken. Are there any upcoming major events?" Oh, no, I was not telling her about the Vatican event.

"Not that I know of."

"All right. Take care." She hung up. With a smirk, I pocketed my phone. This could turn into a disaster, but I was going to worry about that later. I put the phone in my pocket and went to breakfast. The squad was all already there. And Luca had the magazine. Of course he did. Apparently, the mage magazine massively increased production and marketing with the secret societies not being secret anymore, so even non-mages could buy them though.

Manuel got hold of it before I made it to the table and read the opening line out loud in the voice of a man narrating a nature documentary.

"The hottest cougar in our jungle… is there something you want to tell us about your girlfriend?" Everyone looked at me now. They even prepared a tray for me in the center of the group, at the perfect spot to interrogate me. They put three apples on it, so two people contributed theirs to bait me better. As if I would pass on extra apples. I sat straight down.

"Our relationship wasn't public."

"Oh, really?" Manuel flipped the page, pointing at the article.

"After over thirty years of not being seen in public in a man's company, Ophelia has finally caught her new victim." He looked up with a smirk.

"How did that happen?" Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. I dug into the breakfast.

"I know her sister. She hooked us up."

"No way." Manuel dropped the magazine.

"That did not happen." Everyone else glared at me, even Francesca, who was wearing a faint smirk.

"By her sister, you mean Cassandra?" I wasn't lying all that much. I met Ophelia through Cassandra. Though, to be fair, she probably disapproved of our relationship with unmatched intensity.

"Yes."

"Wait," Torres said.

"This sounds like some mage thing the rest of us don't know about." Half the table turned to look at Francesca. She blushed, looking aside.

"There's a lot of it." I let her simmer for a few seconds.

"Vampires exist. A few of them are called high vampires. They are very well known, and Ophelia is one of them." An awkward second of silence passed.

"I've got like three thousand questions," Nadia said.

"I love vampires." I managed to finish breakfast in the meantime. Kara took the magazine.

"Anyway, we need to practice." Thanks, I whispered in my mind. We got out of the mess hall, and the others went to put on the Crusader armors. Francesca waited next to me. She said nothing, which was a lot worse than if she said literally anything. We went on to practice. Liam decided that trying to fit me into a standard formation would be pointless. So, he came up with new formations, all accounting for me rushing forward like an idiot to fight on my own. Well, fair enough, that was a realistic expectation.

Thus, all our formations split into three roles, me going on ahead, two teams of three shooters, and Francesca roaming through the rear and the flanks. With Kara and Torres, Liam figured the correct shooting angles, depending on how far from them I was. They also adjusted positioning, so that Francesca had a good pathing around and through them. We carried with this through the rest of the day, and the next one too. And it went kind of well.

I didn't have to do much since I mostly stood around and they tried to figure out how to not shoot me while having good angles. The base also had a practice course made out of one of the not used anymore buildings. That allowed us to train clearing indoor areas. That made for another good practice, especially with our numbers. Eight people were a lot in a hallway. But we could do that I led the way, one team of three followed me while Francesca had the rear, with the other team of three shooters covering her.

The squads of three settled into the ones we used in the first deployment. Torres, Manuel, and Nadia in one team, and Liam, Luca, and Kara in the other. Performance-wise, they matched, as the better three and the worse three. We discussed whether it wouldn't be better to mix people up based on skill, but ultimately decided against it. The Crusader armor adaptability affected speed. For someone disproportionately faster than others to work together limited them.

Plus, with Liam pulling ahead of the others, his two team-members were likely to end up alone at some point. Kara pulled me aside during a break in the drills. Everyone else was resting, even Francesca, so we could talk privately.

"Hey," she opened with, voice slightly unsure. I smiled.

"What's up?"

"You know Hellgear, right?" She motioned at her boots. Heavy, steel boots made in the typical Kallisto style.

"Yeah."

"The website says everything's sold out, and from what I've heard in the fan communities, nobody has received an order in weeks." Because Kallisto was busy drafting the geothermal powerplant, and then building it. Since she no longer had any immediate use for money, she didn't need to craft and sell gear. Not a story I could tell Kara, though.

"I've heard about that."

"Right, so, I know it's a long shot, but, wouldn't you be able to like call someone and get my order processed?" She smiled a bit.

"I took a big loan to order the breastplate. I knew it would take long, but seeing no one getting anything, it's getting to me." Well, that was going to be awkward.

"I'm not sure I can help with that much."

"Anything would help. You seem to be extremely well-connected, so maybe you could call someone?" Well, I could. It just wasn't likely to lead anywhere.

"I can't promise any results. But I can make a couple of calls. Why Hellgear, anyway?" Her face brightened up. First time I had seen that on her, actually.

"Well, we're fighting monsters of another world. Demons are of another world, and everyone's saying Hellgear is made by a demon." I knew that feeling. My glaive came from a similar idea, after all.

"That's mostly accurate," I said. We didn't need to get into the whole discussion of Kallisto being a fallen angel that was something like a goddess of demons. Well, some demons, most of which she created herself.

"And the gear is pretty good."

"It's insane. These boots never scratch, never heat up, never get water or cold through, never dent. I've got no idea what alloy they're made of, but it's amazing. I spent most of my savings on them, and they're the best thing I've ever bought." She posed a bit with a boot raised, tapping on it.

"One kaiju tried to bite into it and broke its teeth." Liam called us over to another drill. We went through that one too. Later that day, I texted Kallisto:'You should have an order for a cuirass from Kara Yang. I'd appreciate if that could be processed and delivered. Send it to KSF, they should forward it. Thanks in advance.' She didn't reply. That meant nothing, since ignoring me and getting straight to work would both look exactly the same from here. The next day, we trained in the morning, and mostly rested.

I spent that time texting Ophelia, because apparently, she was ready to text at any hour, in the middle of the day or not. Alarms blared through the base in the late afternoon. Deployment time.