Limitless Path

"Perfect," Beth huffed, pushing the door open and hopping out of the truck. Jaq had parked with the passenger side facing the community center, and Beth found herself in front of a growing group of the neighborhood's 'adults.'

"The hell is this, soldier?" Zack immediately barked, staring at the truck with some mixture of annoyance, anger, and awe.

"It's a truck," Beth replied adroitly.

"Beth!" said her mother in a warning tone as she walked up to the group, not impressed with her daughter's flippancy.

"It's your sweet, sweet parts delivery," Beth said with a wave of her hand as she moved to the back of the hover truck. She didn't open the doors, but waited for Jaq to move around and indicate that he wanted the rearmost crate brought out. Beth opened the doors and hopped into the still hovering truck with ease, grabbing the desired crate and hopping out with it before carrying it over in front of the community center.

Jaq had stepped up and began discussion about the work that was required, and Beth set the crate down before moving back and leaning against the truck. Jaq seemed to have everything well in hand, and quickly had everyone organized as well as had the outline of the plan for where everything was going and how. Beth settled into her role as muscle, helping Jaq for the next four hours as he essentially rewired and replumbed the entire neighborhood. The kinds of things he could do between his high level, advanced technology, and Engineering that had to be at least Master rank if not Grandmaster, was frankly quite scary.

In half a day, Jaq had rerouted all the power in the neighborhood to be disconnected from the general grid, interconnected with redundant backups, and linked to a power generation system installed by the community center. At the same time, he did the same with the plumbing and sewage, hooking the old piping to a new system that generated water through a system of runes, and disposed of the waste through a combination of technology and magic. The waste didn't disappear, but it was turned into essentially fertilizer and clean water.

The neighborhood would, after a time, have to provide energy in some form to run the electrical grid. Whether that was through beast cores, arrays or artifacts that gathered and output mana, or mana stones, that would be something they would have to figure out as they got there. Jaq used a few mana stones in the initial install, enough for several months of power, and also left connections open to hook up other inputs such as solar panels or wind turbines.

Beth moved around gathering up the empty crates as Jaq was once again holding a discussion in front of the community center. She stacked them in the community center in a corner, the handful of remaining parts and pieces being owned by the neighborhood. Well, they were owned by Beth, but she had bought it all for the neighborhood, and it wasn't as if she had any use for fifteen pipe elbows.

She resumed her place leaning against the side of Jaq's truck as he was finishing his explanation to rest of the members of the neighborhood. She noticed Sabs standing with two people off to the side, not recognizing them at first, but getting the clue based on body language that the two were Sabs's parents. She remembered that Sabs had said her father had made it back from business travel a little while ago, thankfully not killed or stranded due to the changes.

As she was thinking about it, the three approached her as Jaq droned on. She kicked her right leg out, setting the flat of her heel against the side of the truck as they walked up to her. Sabs walked up to her and turned to face her parents while standing next to her.

"Beth, these are my parents," Sabs introduced a little hesitantly.

Before Beth could say anything, Sabs's mother stepped forward and hugged her, saying at the same time, "It's very good to finally meet you."

"Yeah, uh, same…" Beth replied a little lamely, returning the hug gently so as not to injure her girlfriend's mother.

"You're being awkward again," Sabs's father said, not unkindly, as he laid a hand on Sabs's mother's shoulder. He gently pulled her back from the hug before giving Beth a nod, saying, "Good to meet you."

"Yeah, same," Beth replied before picking Sabs up with one hand and setting her in front of Beth herself. "Protect me," she said to Sabs in a stage whisper, earning laughter from all three of the others.

"It's fine, Beth," Sabs said, patting Beth's hand on her shoulder. "They just wanted to officially meet you."

"Officially?" Beth asked, shifting side-to-side.

"Beth. Relax," Sabs said, firmly gripping both Beth's hands and squeezing.

"We were just interested in meeting our daughter's current love interest," Sabs's mother said quickly.

"And who she's been spending so much time with," her father continued on.

"Uh, yeah, that's me," Beth replied a little lamely, pointing at herself.

"Beth; you're a dork," Sabs sighed, her blush quite visible as her girlfriend fumbled to a truly ludicrous degree.

"I'm not a people person," Beth defended with a frown.

"It wasn't obvious," Sabs said with a roll of her eyes.

"It's OK to be nervous," Sabs's mother cut back in. "We just wanted to get to know you a little bit. Sabrina told us that you've been spending a lot of time fighting. Why not tell us a little about that?"

"Oh, well," Beth smiled a little, straightening up some as she answered. "I just got done with a few days in a location to the south of here, fighting kobolds. They're, like, these beasts that are humanoid but really furry, with big snouts and small eyes. They're, uh, hard to describe with words a little.

"Anyway, I was fighting them with my companion, Blood, for a few days. We entered a dungeon that's down there and didn't realize the only way out was to clear it, so we had to spend days fighting our way out. It ended with a huge fight against a giant, super strong kobold boss. Then there was the random guy that tried to kill me, but that wasn't part of the dungeon." Beth tapped her chin as her encounter with the lizardman came back to the forefront of her mind.

"Well, that's…uhm…certainly a lot," Sabs's mother answered a little obliquely. "What was that part about someone trying to kill you?"

"Yes, daughter of mine," a very angry Rachel interjected, "what was that part about someone trying to kill you?"

"Oh, yeah, hey, look at the time," Beth mimed looking at a watch she obviously wasn't wearing. "Can't believe we talked so long, but gotta run."

Beth then attempted to dis-entangle herself from Sabs, which proved rather unsuccessful, as the smaller girl resisted her efforts. She thought about picking her girlfriend up and just absconding with her, but decided that kidnapping her own girlfriend in front of said girlfriend's parents wasn't exactly a brilliant plan. She settled on the plan 'Use Girlfriend as a Shield Until There's an Opening,' executing said plan by peering over the top of Sabs's head and arguing back with her mother.

"Look, I got jumped by some asshole that was looking for trouble and I took care of it," Beth said with a slight frown.

"Somebody tried to kill you, Beth. This isn't something to take lightly," her mother frowned right back, hands on her hips.

"I didn't take it lightly, but the fact there's barely enough of him left to fill a plastic baggy helps a lot."

"What did you do to him, Beth?"

"I didn't do anything," Beth answered with a shake of her head. "OK, that's not true, I fucked him up pretty bad, but it was going south fast when Baelvyr and Jaq showed up. You remember Baelvyr, the nine feet tall guy wearing a planet's worth of armor?"

"Yes Beth, I remember your instructor in the fancy armor. It's a little hard to forget your first meeting with an ogre."

"Yeah, yeah, right. Anyway, he shoulder-checked the guy while running at, like, a hundred plus miles per hour. Baelvyr that is, the other guy was getting ready to attack me again. Well, he had been, but Jaq blew his arm off. Then Baelvyr hit him at what was probably only a jog but…well…have you ever seen that video of that baseball pitcher hitting a pigeon with a fastball? It was something like that, only a lot louder and a lot…messier…"

"Beth," said Sabs, squeezing her hands hard, "you're rambling. Slow down and take a breath."

"Right, a breath," Beth said, gripping Sabs's shoulders firmly while taking a deep breath.

"Is that why you were in such a state the day before yesterday?" Rachel continued, her frown only having grown deeper at her oldest's rambling explanation.

"Yeah, basically," Beth replied with a shrug. "Hazards of the job."

"Beth, what job?" her mother almost ranted, clearly highly exasperated.

"I mean, it's likely I'll be doing that kind of stuff as a job," Beth replied, lifting her left arm to start gesturing at her mother. At the same, likely subconsciously, she slid her right arm down around Sabs's midriff, pulling the older girl against her. "Jaq and Baelvyr are senior members of the CRA, which are usually referred to as Enforcers, and I plan on joining those ranks. It'll take a long time, but I'll be like them one day."

"Or you'll be dead in a ditch somewhere, Beth!" her mother scoffed back. "What would have happened if the others didn't show up to help? You could've died the other day and now you're just shrugging about it!"

"Could've died a lot more than just yesterday," Beth muttered a little too loudly, as everyone clearly heard it. Before Rachel's already burning fuse could reach the end, Sabs's mother stepped.

"Rachel, honey, why don't we discuss this for a minute with that nice young man that just helped the neighborhood," she said, stepping up to Rachel and taking her by the elbow.

"Don't try to distract me, Maria," Rachel snapped, but still let herself be pulled away by the much shorter and gentler woman, who took her over to where Jaq was chatting with some of the others. Beth did a double-take at that, eyes wide at the ornery shopkeeper actually socially interacting with others without chasing them away.

"I just hope that you're not dragging my daughter into quite so much danger?" Sabs's father asked with a raised eyebrow and a bit of a frown.

Before Beth could respond, Sabs answered her father, "She is not dragging me anywhere, dad! I am doing exactly what I want to do, exactly how I want to do it."

"Easy, babe," Beth murmured, leaning forward to nuzzle Sabs while looping her now free left arm around Sabs's midriff as well.

"I know, I know," Sabs's father replied to her outburst, holding his hands up in a calming gesture. "I just worry about your safety, as well as the fact that we both know you haven't always been the most…assertive person."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Sabs replied, a little softer but still with some heat in her voice.

"We just worry about you going along with others to fit in, honey," her mother, Maria, had returned after having successfully passed Rachel into the conversation with Jaq.

"We're not having this discussion again," Sabs replied, crossing her arms over her chest right above where Beth was holding her. "I'm an adult and have no problem making my own decisions."

"As long as you're sure, Sabrina," her father said softly, wrapping his arm around his wife.

"I'm fine, dad," Sabs answered calmly.

"Well, that wasn't awkward at all," Beth mumbled into the side of Sabs's neck.

"Not that you helped," Sabs muttered back, lightly elbowing Beth in the side.

"Sorry."

"It's fine, Beth."

"Then let's get going," Beth said, sending a thought to Blood before following through on her earlier thought and picking up Sabs outright. She carried the weakly protesting girl to the front of the truck just as Jaq finished with his conversation and turned to move to the truck as well. Beth hopped up into the passenger door and moved back onto the lefthand bench with Sabs now in her lap, the smaller girl wrapping her arms over Beth's and leaning back against the younger girl.

Blood hopped in and moved to the back, Jaq having to close the passenger door after getting in himself with a grumble. Beth could very, very faintly sense the truck starting to move, only her greatly increased stats and slightly better kinesthetic sense allowing her to detect anything at all.

The trip back to the CRA hall was even quicker, with Jaq now having a fully accurate idea of the layout and distances involved. He parked the truck and hopped out, followed by the three girls right on his heels. He gestured to the far corner of the garage area, where there was a metal door different than the one they had entered through earlier, saying, "Your emblems can get you in and out of that door. Use it to return to the underworks."

With that, he immediately headed through 'his' door, allowing it to slide shut as soon as he had passed the threshold. Beth and Sabs just looked at each other for a moment before Beth shrugged and led the way to the far door. Upon reaching it, she found a small plate in the wall similar to what many of the rooms, including the training rooms, had to allow various members access. She moved her right hand up to the plate while thinking about her emblem manifesting in it, hearing a click and seeing a small light flash white when her hand was close to the plate.

She returned the emblem to her stat screen as she pushed the door open, holding it open for Sabs and Blood to enter. She noticed a small emplacement on the ceiling, something she might normally not have taken notice of, but it was nice to know all the secondary entrances to the Hall had security measurements monitoring their usages. She was sure Jaq both had an access to the feed and kept it regularly monitored, meaning that nobody who wasn't a member was getting in, even if they tried tailgating an actual member.

The three made their way up to Beth's room first, where Sabs immediately started stripping out of her gear. Beth grabbed her forging hammer and gauntlets from the same corner that Sabs was using, the older grown frowning at the slightly disorganized state of Beth's loot pile. She started organizing it a little better while Beth moved to the door, pausing before exiting.