Chapter 174 – Confrontational

“I don’t know what happened. We were with the group coming back from Stalvantol when those two broke off to talk to someone. I think it was their daughter? Anyway, they popped a privacy barrier and we couldn’t hear what they said but it looked like it got heated. Then I suddenly feel like my soul was being drowned in darkness and I thought I heard wolves…?” – Eyewitness reporting a disturbance to Order Security Forces.

“So, what is it you want to know from Kurt and his team?” Jay asked after the group had a sixty second staring contest with an angry FBI director.

Gretchen scowled. “You know exactly what I want to know.”

Jay nodded. “Let’s just say it for the record. Ask direct questions please.” He calmly stated.

Still angry looking, Gretchen pulled a note pad and a tape recorder from the admin pouch on her armor. “Tell me what happened here last night.”

“My agents were enjoying their personal time and were attacked. They defended themselves accordingly.” Jay answered for them, setting the tone once again that he was their legal representative.

“Care to give any details?” Gretchen fought to keep her voice level.

“Care to ask specific questions?” Jay retorted.

The agent blinked and her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. “My apologies. Where were you, Mister Rosk, during the time of the attack?”

“Go ahead but keep it brief.” Jay said mentally to the group. “Don’t answer anything unless asked directly if you can help it.”

Kurt nodded reflexively. “We were at Zach’s Games and Comics.”

“What were you doing there?” Gretchen asked, making a couple notes on her pad.

“We were there for our regularly scheduled D&D game.”

“Who else was present?”

Kurt hesitated until he got the go-ahead from Jay. Gretchen noticed the pause, but he answered before she could say anything. “Myself, Val, Kristi, Anna, Rindi, Steve, Adam, Mel and Frank.”

“And who exactly are these people in relation to you?”

Once again getting a mental nod from Jay, Kurt answered. He explained who everyone was and even gave names as best as he knew them. He noted that Gretchen didn’t take notes so much as she was crossing things off her list of pre-determined questions as he went on.

“Good. When did the attack occur?” She asked after he filled in the gaps.

“Umm. Between the hours of 8:06 and… wait, just this attack or both?” He paused mid-way, not sure what to include.

“Both?” Gretchen perked up while he heard a ‘hmph’ from Jay. Apparently, he said a little too much.

“Go ahead, you are into it now.” Jay told him.

“Uhh yeah. We were attacked here in town and at my home.” Kurt was back to playing things close to the vest after his slip up.

Narrowing her eyes, Gretchen pursed her lips. “Start with here in town.”

“Ah, 8:06 P.M. through 8:11 P.M.”

“You were attacked for five minutes? When did you start to defend yourself and when did the fighting stop?”

“It stopped at 8:11 and we started defending ourselves immediately after I got shot.” Kurt answered.

“You got shot?” Gretchen asked, looking him over once again.

Kurt shrugged. “I got better.” He loved using that line and abused it every chance he got.

“Mister Rosk, this is a serious investigation into what appears to be a case of domestic terrorism.” Gretchen began to admonish him until Jay once more spoke up.

“And international.” He cooly slid into the middle of her rant, making her stop and look at him.

“International?”

Jay nodded. “Yup. Also, one of the attackers is pretty easily linked to the CIA. There were three groups, the primary one was from all over the place but has the CIA link. The second group, who were also in town here, was from the French government and the one that attacked Kurt’s sovereign territory was from the UK government.”

The fey woman looked like she has taken a bite of lemon at that news. She blinked a few times and quickly regained her composure. “And you have… proof?”

“We captured many of them alive and have taken their statements. All of them were run through our facial recognition database.” Jay admitted aloud while talking to the others mentally. “I am trying to distract her from pressing the issues of us having a stand-up gunfight in the middle of the road so try to avoid implicating yourselves further. If you have to talk about it, you were defending yourself, not the aggressor.”

“Would you be willing to share this information with the team investigating the issue?” Gretchen asked immediately. She sounded hopeful, like that would help her case immensely.

“Not for free.” Jay admitted. “But I am sure I can send a bill for utilization of Order resources. Maybe even get them a discounted rate for being a ‘friendly’ nation.”

“How…” Gretchen trailed off like she wasn’t sure where she wanted to go with that sentence.

Jay took the chance to fill in the blank. “Generous? Magnanimous? Kind? Helpful?” He fired off several suggestions.

“I was going to say mercenary, but sure, let’s pick one of yours.” She did not look amused at his antics and tapped her note pad with her pen. “Back to the issue at hand. Mister Rosk, you said you were shot. How is it you seem completely unharmed?”

“As an employee of the Order Stabilitas, I have access to the finest medical personnel that can be found anywhere.” Kurt answered politely.

“Nicely done. That was a great deflection.” Jay commented mentally on how Kurt didn’t say he used the medical services, thus obscuring his secrets. He also wouldn’t put it past Gretchen having some way to discern truth from lie, given she was a fey.

Gretchen nodded. “Understandable. What happened next?”

Kurt then went a gave an abridged version of what happened. He left out many details about how they actually went about the counterattack and what tools or abilities they used. He wasn’t planning on giving her anything but the most general overview.

After Kurt recounted everything that happened, he waited for the next set of questions that she had. He was actually a little surprised she didn’t press for more and try to trip him up. It was more like she was taking a witness’ statement rather than attempting to interview or interrogate him.

“And what happened to the bodies?” Gretchen finally asked. “We have plenty of blood and lots of ballistics evidence but not much in the way of bodies.”

Jay leaned forward. “The Order took care of the clean up since we handled the attack. If you wanted the bodies or survivors, then you should have been here sooner or done something to prevent this. Frankly the only reason you have any evidence is because we wanted to bring a grievance to the countries and agencies involved.”

Gretchen closed her eyes and took a very, very long breath in through her nose before exhaling just as slowly. Then she did it again. “Would it be possible to have the dead and the survivors returned to us for crime labs and criminal prosecution?” she asked like someone at their wits end with a child playing 20 questions.

“No.” Jay said simply. When she just stared at him, he elaborated a little. “We, that is to say the Order, will be bringing that directly to those responsible. No need to waste valuable taxpayer dollars on this when we can handle it.”

“Very well.” Gretchen said through clenched teeth. “Can I assume that we will also not get any of the video evidence? None of the security cameras nor the footage from cell phones seems to be viable. All we have is from leading up to the first gunshots but nothing after the attack began.”

“Nice work, Val.” Kurt praised her over the implant. He felt her light up with pride over the necklace. He knew her spell to handle surveillance devices was potent but didn’t know it covered such a large area.

“That will also be a hard no.” Jay didn’t wait for her to ask for more information and provided it immediately. “We have a duty to protect our agents and, seeing as no innocent bystanders were harmed, there is no need to provide any evidence.”

“Speaking of harmed bystanders, I have a request from the interim Sheriff and the local mayor.” Gretchen began. “They would like to know how much your, umm, reclamation efforts are going to cost.” She waved her hand toward the Arizona team who were still sitting at a table nearby and eating lunch.

Jay smiled. “Nothing. But I will send them an invoice that shows they are ‘paid-in-full’ if that helps ease their concerns.”

“Really? You, a man who had lawyers fight us for every cent they could, aren’t going to charge for this service?” She seemed very skeptical about that.

“No charge. In fact, that is the entire purpose of their team.” Jay waived merrily to the Arizona team. “Their mission is to repair any possible damage that occurs from our missions or as a result of paranormal activities.”

“That is… generous. How can you possibly afford that?” She looked pleasantly surprised at the information.

Jay winked and pointed to the recorder still on the table. “Trade secret. If you want to know more, you will have to sign a contract ‘with me’.” The way he said ‘with me’ made a chill run up Kurt’s spine but he suppressed the urge to shudder.

Gretchen reached out to the recorder. “Interview concluded.” She said before tapping the button to stop recording. “In my honest opinion, outside my capacity as a representative of the FBI or an agent of the United States, good job on this one.” She said while looking at Jay then nodding to Kurt and the rest.

Kurt was suddenly very confused at the complete 180 that the woman’s tone had taken. He wanted to ask what it was about, but she turned to him then. “Mister Rosk, I hope that you and your, umm, team recover well in the coming days. You have done this world a great service from the sounds of it.”

He noted that, despite not being in the fey realm, she distinctly avoided any of the common language that could infer a debt between any party. The mention of ‘the world’ was ambiguous enough that he couldn’t exactly exploit that for anything. Judging from the snort of amusement that Jay made, he picked up on it too.

“We are not in the fey realm. There is no need for such careful wording.” Jay said in his usual drawl.

“Be that as it may, old habits die hard and I want nothing to do with…” she waived her hand around the gathered group. “…whatever this is. It is my sincere wish that you never have these sort of dealings with the government again, much less with me.”

Kurt took that opportunity to end the conversation. “In that case, if there is nothing else, we will be leaving to continue our recovery.”

Nodding once, Gretchen looked out to the masses of FBI and local police still in the area. “With the continued reclamation efforts, we should have this wrapped up by noon tomorrow, but the street will be reopened by this evening.”

She stood then and looked at Jay. “Good day, mister Theocrosis.” She extended her hand to him, though it shook slightly as she did.

“Debt fulfilled. May our paths never cross again.” The daemon replied and reached out to touch the back of her hand. There was a flash of light, and she visibly relaxed as the glowing, silver sigil on the back of her hand vanished.

The director didn’t stick around after that, showing herself out of the cordoned Order area at the maximum speed her dignity would allow. They watched her go for a moment before turning back to each other.

“I have no idea what to think about that.” Val admitted. “I still don’t like her, but maybe I just don’t like how she is going about her job?”

Kristi grunted. “I’ll still make it look like an accident if I get the chance.” When everyone turned to her she just stared back. “What? That’s better than what I wanted to do five minutes ago.”

“Recent personal growth aside.” Jay began. “You all need to head to the Order now. My boss, Casitor, wants a debrief about this debacle and is expecting you some time in the next hour or so. Penny can show you the way to his office.”

“That’s it?” Kurt asked. He didn’t think it would be this… quick.

“That is all that they are really allowed to do under the agreement that they signed.” Jay yawned. “Waaahhh. Listen, I’m flagging here so let’s go get a coffee and I can see you off to the Order with some last-minute advice.”

With that, they all stood and walked back to The Captain and from there, back to the Order pocket dimension.

*****

“That wasn’t so bad.” Kristi commented as they walked back from the Order’s senior executive wing after having an informal meeting with Jay’s boss. They were currently on their way back to their portal after a late lunch and had to cut through the area set aside for the permanent, interplanetary portals the Order had to other worlds and realms.

Kurt agreed. “Yup, it helps when they have our body camera footage. All they need after that is the mental bit of what we thought and when. This was actually faster than last time.”

“How did you manage that, Val?” Penny asked as they stepped around a crowd of people coming through the security checkpoint to the portal lobby. “I thought your spell would blank out everything.”

“Not sure.” Val admitted, pulling her tails closer in so they wouldn’t be touched or snagged by the passersby. She had been keeping her kitsune features out as of late. Given they were all in the official Order combat fatigues, nobody was inclined to cause issues. “It must be spell I was projecting excluded them based on my subconscious?”

They finished moving past the crowd that appeared to be mostly Order employees based on the badges hanging around their necks on lanyards. “Is that really a thing?” Kurt asked. He hadn’t heard about spells working like that but then again, his knowledge was pretty limited.

“A lot of what I do works on intent.” Val explained. “A lot of illusionists cast that way from my understanding. Even my shadow magic is sort o-“ Val stopped in her tracks with her ears perked up and her swaying tails went deathly still at the sound of a woman’s voice calling out.

“Thea?”

“Mom?” Val whispered, barely loud enough for the group to hear as she turned around.

Kurt and the rest turned to follow Val, as she spun around. He wasn’t sure what he expected but the very Japanese looking lady wearing a pants suit with a very fluffy, red fox tail and ears on wasn’t it. She looked almost but not quite exactly unlike Val.

Her facial features were a little more rounded than Val’s and she seemed to be a little more plump, but it was hard to tell given she was several inches shorter than her daughter. Her hair was also much more glossy, and held back in a low ponytail that stretched to her mid back.

Seeing a dark elf step up next to the kitsune Val cried out “Mom, Dad!” She began walking their way very quickly, crossing the small atrium in a matter of seconds.

Standing beside Val’s mother was a very typical dark elf man, also wearing a suit. Kurt had seen very few dark elves, them being less common in the States than in Europe. He knew they looked like regular elves with the exception of skin tone. While they varied as much as human, they all had an underlying grey tint to their skin. From there it was everything from a light grey to a dusky purple in tones.

This one’s skin tone was of the more grey-brown color, like someone had put a shadow in a tanning bed for way too long.  He was nearly the same height as Kurt but much thinner, being pure elf, it seemed. His hair was light blond and cut short in a more modern style. Other than that, he looked like a normal businessman returning from a long trip, complete with luggage.

The group followed after Val, with Kurt and Kristi leading the way as the others formed a second row. They were not far behind but gave the reuniting family some space as Val piled in for a warm hug from her mother and a decidedly polite one from her father. Regardless, her tails wagged back and forth in a blur as she leaned in.

After a moment, Val pulled back. “Mom, dad, I wanted to introduce you to Kurt and Kristi.” She pointed back to them. “Guys, this is my mom, Sayuri, and my dad, Thaskental.”

“Oh, nice to meet my daughter’s friends.” Sayuri nodded to them politely but very briefly before returning to Val. “You grew a second tail! And at such a young age, it’s truly a blessing from the goddess.”

“Oh, their act-“ Val began but was steamrolled by her mother’s talking.

“This is most excellent news. Now you can be done with that unsavory soldier role the Order has you in. We can find you a good match with a proper husband, even with your abnormality.” Sayuri’s eyes were positively glowing as she held Val by the arms. “Ken, do you think one of the clans would be interested or would an elven house be better? Perhaps we can arrange somet-“

“Mom!” Val interrupted, wriggling out of her mother’s hands to stand next to Kurt. “Kurt and Kristi are my mates. I don’t need an arranged marriage with anyone.”

“Little Thea.” Her father began in a surprisingly deep voice but with a tone like he was talking to a child. “I know you are still young and don’t understand the ways of the clan, but this is not something you can decide by yourself.” He looked to Sayuri who hesitated but eventually nodded in agreement.

“Perhaps I can find someone in a subordinate house. If she were to go to someone in the house proper it wouldn’t be as a first wife. Though a concub-“

“Dad!” Val blurted, her face turning red and her emotions shifting from happiness to hurt and betrayed. “I am not going to…”

Val’s mom cut her off again. “Thea, this is serious business.” She looked over to Kurt and Kristi with a critical eye. “And while I am sure your friends have been adequate companions, we need to consider how this will impact my clan and your father’s house.” She then went back to talking to her husband, completely ignoring them like children.

“Do you want me to…” Kurt began over the implant. He was unsure what the dynamic of this situation was and where his boundaries were, but this was beginning to upset him.

“I got this.” Val replied before stepping back up to her parents who had gone back to talking with each other about the political benefits of a ‘blessed daughter’. “Mother, Father, I would have your attention.” She said in a firm but clear voice. If Kurt couldn’t feel her nerves though the necklace, he would have assumed her to be perfectly calm.

When they both turned to look at her, Val continued. “I will present a few facts. You will listen. Ah-Ah! No!. Just listen.” She had to shush them as they raced to talk over her again.

“I will not be marrying anyone in the clans or in the houses because they are far below my station both economically, religiously and politically” She paused and Kurt felt a ripple of mana which Penny said was a privacy barrier she had deployed. “Thank you, Penny.” Val said before returning her full attention to her parents.

“Mother, I am not ‘blessed by the goddess’. I am actually her disciple, but I walk a different path, separate from other Kitsune due to my choices. I will not be returning to the fold and become a normal member of the temple. This is my religious reason.

“Father, in the time since I have joined with Kurt, we have out earned your entire house by over thirty percent of their annual income with significantly less expense. My assets, combined with my mates, are set to fully eclipse our house and the next five subordinate houses combined within three years. We are also landed and have a declaration of sovereignty from the nation we reside in. This is my economic reason.

“My political reason is because Kurt, my first mate and husband, is the de facto leader of all the lycans of the werewolf race. His political and religious power that stems from this eclipses both the house and the clan. And, with his personal power also comes great enemies which will endanger you by proximity.”

She looked at them both as their jaws tensed in unison. “Because of this, I am breaking official familial ties with both House Krakno and Clan Usungi. I will take my place as a member of Pack Rosk.” She finished with a formal bow. She looked calm but, over the necklace, Kurt could feel her sadness and turmoil that raged with her pride and hope.

When she finished, Val’s parents stared at her for several long seconds. “Y-you are… going to emancipate yourself from the house?” Her father asked, clearly stunned at the abrupt decision.

“Pack Rosk?” Her mother questioned then looked at Kurt, her expression filled with confusion and maybe some hope. It was hard to tell as he had never seen her before and wasn’t accustomed to her facial and body cues.

He wasn’t sure what he was expected to do here but he nodded. “The most senior member next to myself.”

Ken stepped toward him dramatically. “And who exactly are you to take what belongs to House Krakno?” He had a determined set to his jaw as he sneered at Kurt. “I have never heard of this house of Rosk, and I sincerely doubt Thea’s words about power.”

In the timeless expression of the straw that broke the camel’s back, these words would be that straw. Kurt was finally pushed past the breaking point of keeping his cool with the rather transactional parents of his mate. Feeling what they were doing to Val through the necklace was too much for him to bear and stay silent.

“I am Kurtis Thalican Rosk. Named by Odin as The Lupus Rex, The Scion of Lycaon, Walker of the Road, Twice-Cursed and Thrice-Blessed, Realm Walker and Half-Born.” With every name and title Kurt took a step forward, crowding over the man as he felt a strange presence in his mind that fed the words to him. He had the urge to push his aura out and tried to tie that into his body language and presence. “I am the Redeemer of the Cursed, The Master of the Hunt, The Apex Wolf.” Another step.

“I am the guardian of innocents.” Step.

“I am the bane of the Strand.” Step.

“I am the Wolf of Retribution,” Step.

“and I am on a path to seize my divinity even if I have to slaughter every single pantheon to do it.” Kurt had a manic growl under his voice as he loomed over the now terrified elf who had fallen to the floor and backed himself against the wall. “So, I ask, who are you, little elf?”

“…Kurt…” Val whispered. The barely uttered word grabbed his attention by force, and he realized what he was doing. Kurt’s aura had flared and let a bit of his divinity radiate out toward the elf, utterly crushing his own aura.

Taking a step back, Kurt turned his back on the man and looked to Val. She had a sad smile on her face as she watched him return to her. “Thank you.” She said and reached out to take his hand. He also noticed that a lot of Order personnel were watching them from what they wrongly assumed was a safe distance.

Val took one last look to her parents, one of whom was standing like nothing had happened while the other was a cowering mess on the floor. “Fairwell, mother and father. Perhaps we will meet again.” As a group they turned and continued their way through the Order.

The sound of rapidly pounding feet from behind made them turn to see Val’s mom rush toward her. Kurt braced for a fight but the older kitsune threw her arms around Val and choked out a few words through a voice thick with barely restrained sobs.

“I am so happy you are free.” She whispered in a voice so low Kurt would have missed it if not for still holding onto Val’s hand and being right next to her. “I will try to be in touch but if not, know I am proud of you and that you have my blessings and my love.”

With that, Sayuri ended the hug and returned to her previous position near her barely standing husband. They shared one last, brief look before turning and going their separate ways, for better or worse.

“Come on.” Val said, letting out a shaky breath. “I was expecting this to happen eventually, but not today. I think I need to clear my head and home sounds like the place to be right now.”