Anna and Susan sat on a park bench. It was early evening, and parents from the surrounding houses were calling their kids in for dinner. A nearby piic table had a b draped over it, with a mix of meical and magical tools id out. A leonid was tinkering with what looked like a Rubik’s cube, but with runes instead of colours on the sides. Anna had seen enough Leonids to mark him as a teenager, but he had the fidence of a professional as he worked.

  A human woman walked over to stand by his table. She looked to be in her early twenties, but so did most of the popution. An astounding number of Asano members were essence users, suggesting a staggering access to resources. Anna took a sed look at the girl and her rank-polished features. It had been a lot of years, but she looked like—

  “Emi,” the leonid said as she approached. “I told you that you should have let me look at these long ago. Your problem isn’t the magic, it’s the meics. The transitions aren’t smooth enough, so when you switch figurations, it’s causing wear on the… are you even listening?”

  Emi had sensed Anna’s attention and turo look back at her observer. She narrowed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to recall an old memory. She o Anna, then turned back to the leonid.

  “Sary, you were saying the transitions are causing wear?”

  “Yeah. Who’s that?”

  Emi threw annna’s way.

  “Someone my uncle used to work with.”

  “I thought all the outsiders were stu the mushroom farm.”

  “Not all of them. Wait, mushroom farm? They’re in the visitor dorms Uncle Jason made. That’s practically a paot a farm.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still a pce to keep them in the dark ahem bullsh—”

  “Just pack up and we’ll go, Gary. Your mother told me t you home for dinner.”

  “Are you and Vi eating with us?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gary put his tools and b away in a rge backpad they wandered off.

  “Is that Jason’s niece?” Susan asked.

  “Yes,” Anna said as they watched the pair walk away. “If the Asano ’s isotion ends, there’s going to be a lot of attention on her.”

  “And what about you? If you decide to bee a part of all this, yoing to be the ’s diplomatic face to the world. Is that something you want?”

  Anna leaned wearily into Susan’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know where to even start sidering it. Three days we’ve been going through it all. Three days of every new cim being crazier tha. When you ask a guy if he thinks he’s a god, any answer but ‘no’ means he’s probably stockpiling ons and trying to vince people to be sister wives.”

  Susan ughed.

  “How are you not blown away by all this?” Anna asked her. “I’ve been living in a world of magic my whole life and I don’t know how to take it. I ’t imagine what it’s like for you.”

  “That’s the thing, love: this isn’t my first time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like you said, you grew up with this. Your family have beework insiders feions. When you told me that magic was real, I thought it was some kind of prank. Then I thought you were crazy. Then you showed it to me, and I thought the world was crazy. Now, you finally know how I felt back then.”

  “Okay, but the scale of it. How many times i three days did Asano say ‘I show you once I’m there in person?’ Assuming that he isn’t lying — which is quite the assumption, given his cims — then we’re talking about a scope that dwarfs us. What is a try when he has his own sor system? A p, when he’s rewriting the rules of the os? If he’s lying about it all, that’s trouble, but trouble I at least get my head around. If he’s telling the truth, then we’re nothing to him. He operates on a scale that makes everything we know a tiny speck of nothing.”

  Susaled her head onto Anna’s shoulder.

  “We’re not insignifit, love. Not you and me, and not the Earth. Not to him, or he wouldn’t have goo all the trouble ing you here.”

  “But doesn’t it make you feel small?”

  Susan sidered a moment before answering.

  “From how he expi,” she said, “all of these great magic bibbity bobs—”

  “Great astral beings.”

  “…are there to make the universe work. They’re the meisms by which everything works, right? Life, death, time, etc.”

  “That’s how he expi.”

  “Okay,” Susan said. “Remember that road trip we took on the Great O Road, right before we got married?”

  “Sure. That was a good trip.”

  “Remember the car? Your old MG?”

  “Of course. I loved that car.”

  “Yes, you did. Would you say that car was a signifit part of the trip?”

  “Absolutely. What does any of this have to do with Jason Asano fighting a magic bird that stops universes from breaking open?”

  “Stick with me, love. Do you think that the cept of internal bustion was signifit to our trip?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Exactly. Internal bustion is extremely important to a petrol car, and that’s what we were driving, but it didn’t matter to us. On a rger scale, it was signifit, but it didn’t matter to us at all. So, yes, if you’re looking at these great space jibber jobbers—”

  “Great astral beings.”

  “…then we are insignifit. But if you’re looking at us, they’re the insignifit ones. Just a thing that makes the car work.”

  Anna looked at her wife, then drew her in for a lingering kiss.

  “You are amazing, you know that?”

  “Yes, but you could stand to say it more often.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want it to go to your head.”

  Anna leaned ba the bench, feeling more rexed than she had in a week.

  “If Jason is really as powerful as he cims,” Susan said, “then he’s bending over backwards not to rub that power in everyone’s faces.”

  “He had Rufus Remore fly across the po hold a meeting where he expined how powerful Jason is.”

  “Did he? I wasn’t there for that. Did Rufus expihing we’ve heard over the st few days? Or is that something he’s only telling you?”

  Anna tapped her lips thoughtfully.

  “No,” she realised. “Rufus as much as said Jason was ing back with a squad of gold-rank powerhouses. He made a few implications — how could he not, with Jasoo the System — but nothing like what we’ve been hearing.”

  She sat up straight, frowning as she gamed out Jason’s agenda.

  “Jason is positioning himself as a power, but ohe existing powers here uand. e to grips with. Enough that he’s someohey have to deal with, rather than exploit. If they genuinely believed that he owerful as he cims, I have no idea what would happen. The whole p would go into crisis mode. Some very bad decisions would be made.”

  She leaned back again.

  “He doesn’t want to destroy the world just by arriving in it. That’s what he said. And if he’s that powerful, he probably would.”

  “The’s hope he is,” Susan said.

  “You don’t think it would be better if there wasn’t a demigod with a history of anger issues and recklessness desding upon the Earth?”

  “I think that bringing you here, telling you everything, shows us his iions, one way or another. If he’s being ho about possessing all that power, it shows us that he wants to use it responsibly. To seek out sound advice, act with care and avoid mistakes when he . But if he’s not as all-powerful as he cims, and this is all a ruse…”

  “Then he’s running a game, with me in the middle of it,” Anna finished.

  “Yes. But even if he’s lying, he’s still going to have a lot of power. This whole city is something he made and ge on a whim. If he es to earth with ill-i, he cause immeasurable damage.”

  “Which do you think it is? Hoy or lies?”

  “He’s a lot like you, you know?”

  “Like me?”

  “I remember back when you were running the work bran Sydney. Not ing home for days. Arriving furious when you did. Frustrated that the people who should have been shielding the world from magic were pying politics. Isn’t that what happeo him, the st time he was oh? Trying to do the right thing, only to be undermined by the ambitious?”

  “I suppose it was. This is you saying that you think he’s being straight with us?”

  “This is me saying that if he really is like you, things have a ce of turning out alright. And if he’s not, you o be here anyway, to ameliorate the damage of whatever he’s really up to. We both know that you won’t walk away and leave it to be someone else’s problem.”

  ***

  Anna and Susan found Jason i of the guest house they had been assigned. He was wearing an apron with pink flowers on it. As they ehe kit, his back was to them as he managed several pots oove.

  “e and check this sauce,” he said without turning around. “I ’t taste anything with this body, so I ’t mahe salt levels on my own.”

  Anna looked at him from under raised eyebrows, but Susan moved forward. She tasted the from the end of a wooden spoon.

  “Ooh, that’s nice. But yes, a little more salt.”

  “Were you listening to us talk?” Anna asked.

  “One of the most important things about power,” he said as he turned back to the stove, “is knowing when not to use it. If you have a hammer, it’s easy to look at every situation as a nail. But sometimes foro matter how precisely applied, will only make things worse.”

  “Yood at that,” Anna said.

  “Cooking?”

  “Implying you answered a question that you did, in faot.”

  Jason turned his head just long enough to fsh her an impish grin.

  “I think you and I could have fun together, Anna. I do hope you accept my job offer.”

  “I am leaning that way, but I want a better uanding of what I’m walking into.”

  “That’s fair,” Jason said. “And you will be forced to make certain cessions.”

  “Such as?”

  “No more supermarket bread. I know you and I have talked about this a long time ago, but a little bird told me that you did not heed my advice.”

  Anna turned a gre on Susan, who did a reasonable job of looking i.

  “We don’t have supermarkets here at all,” Jason tinued. “It’s more of a perma farmers’ market situation, plus bakers, cheesemongers and the like. It’s not as ve, I’ll grant you, but it helps foster a sense of unity. I leave ma of the y grandmother, for the most part, but this, I insisted on. The food is free, though. The staples, at least. Rufus has to import his jellybeans himself.”

  “I was more talking about some verification of the cims you’ve made about the power at your and. If what you’re saying is true, you must be a legendary figure iher world.”

  “Farrah has been throwing the word ‘mythic’ around. But Pallimustus doesn’t have the same media saturation and mass unicatioh does. The powerful people know who I am, but the popution at rge doesn’t. My team is a lot more famous thahere are a few pces they know my name, but I get away with using a fake ohere aren’t news reports and online videos to pster my face everywhere.”

  “Do they know, there? Just how vast the span of your power is? You cim that it extends beyond not just Earth or their p, but the entire universe. Every universe.”

  “It’s more of a potentially vast span, at least until my mortal prows. I have limited ability to manipute the System, although I do have some. Around my avatar and here in my domains. But I ’t just use it like it’s my personal toy. There are rules I o adhere to. I spent fifteen years fighting to see them enforced, after all. That includes on me.”

  “I know that I ’t test your immortality, or see this universe of yours.”

  “It’s quite small, as universes go.”

  “I would at least like to see one of the astral spaces, where your power is stroo get a taste of its full scope.”

  “That’s easy enough to mahere are portals in the admin tower.”

  “Even with all that, though, this os level power is hard to aowledge.”

  “Vast ic power is the term. I used to have it on a t-shirt, although I think Emi has it now.”

  “The assumption is that the System is ected to you, but it could just be some ic force that finally reached Earth. You could be leveraging your early access to it to make us think you are in trol of it.”

  A windoeared in front of her.

  [System Administrator] notification: I’m being as open as I , Anna.“Cute,” she said.

  He turned around from his cooking to look at her.

  “ I take it that you are at least provisionally accepting my offer?”

  She took a deep breath a out slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Step one, you eat. Step two, an astral space tour. Step three, we figure out what to do with the minders yht with you. They’ve beeing increasingly ky, despite their aodations being quite luxurious.”