Chương 609: Limitless Path Chapter Six Hundred Twenty-Eight

The second Ascended was talking with Beth's attacker, whose name she still didn't even know, while the Ascended was observing everything with his arms crossed from a distance. The attacker and the other Ascended came to some kind of understanding after a moment and started over to Beth, who hadn't released her Presence and still had flames of her Ideal flickering around her body.

When they closed in, the third Ascended also moved over, though he didn't say anything and just let the conversation develop with the four of them to start.

"So, Young Lady, what is this about you attacking-" the second Ascended started before Beth cut in.

"Bullshit. Don't let him blow smoke up your ass. I was at his company offices, having a very polite conversation with a senior manager, when he interrupted and decided silencing me would be a better way of doing business. I was perfectly happy to resolve this peacefully before he started throwing punches," Beth spat, waving a still burning arm at the Ascended from Prime Explorers Inc.

"You would deny you struck me first," he demanded, all three other Ascended sighing. Apparently, this dickbag was known for blowing hot air, and it looked like the others weren't exactly sympathetic to his attitude.

"Of course," Beth snorted.

"You flared your Presence first, even if just by a fraction of a second, and then you launched yourself at me before I performed any aggressive or hostile actions."

"Flaring your Presence and Ideal is hardly non-hostile," the man harrumphed.

"Look in a mirror, asshole," Beth retorted.

"You flared first and I matched you. I seem to recall it was you who threw yourself across Manager Kim's office in an attack before I interrupted you with a foot to the chest."

"You were clearly behaving in a hostile manner within our building," the man tried to divert.

"Oh, you want to see behaving hostile, huh?" Beth asked, flaring her Ideal to an extent that the space around the five of them started to burn and crack.

"Enough! Both of you," the third Ascended said, flaring his own power and showing that he was quite far through Ascended.

"I expect you to settle this like adults, not children."

"Tell that to this asswipe," Beth retorted, not backing down in the least.

"I was perfectly happy resolving official CRA business with just negotiation before lord chucklefuck over here took a potshot at me. If he, or you, think I won't finish what he started, he can keep running his mouth and find out."

"You'd fight all of us," the man asked, Beth noticing the CRA World Coordinator now starting to sweat at the situation she found herself jammed in the middle of.

"You're damn right I would," Beth replied with a snort, flaring her power even further, making all but the high-rebirth Ascended have to back up a bit.

"The best the four of you combined could do is lock me down and drive me off, and even then you're fighting uphill. And, again, I won't even fight all four of you, given that I was on CRA business and Senior Enforcer Adech would be very hard-pressed to interfere in business for the Association. As for the the three of you, well…"

Beth made a show of looking all three of the other Ascended up and down with a dismissive look on her face, which didn't go over well with the man from the company but the other two just brushed off. The company man looked ready to restart the fight right then, but he was stopped by the second Ascended, the one who had talked to him initially, who was either his superior at the company or someone that commanded his respect, considering he was easily able to quash the man's ire.

The third Ascended just looked at Beth with a slight frown and a slight scrunch of his eyebrows, clearly trying to figure out what she got her confidence from, but that shouldn't be that hard to understand. She didn't really have a hope of beating him, even if the other two didn't help, but she also wasn't afraid of him or that he would be able to kill her.

The equation would balance even further if she called her team over; while nobody else on the team could take any of the three one-on-one without some support, Beth was pretty sure either Bjorn or Sera could pin down the company man without much issue. Her team could, at the least, hold off two of the three, and that wold leave Beth with the thirty-nine rebirth Ascended, which is who the last man was.

"Can I see your mission deployment," Arianna asked with a sigh. Beth flicked her over the documents while keeping her eye on the other three.

"You're here with a team?"

"My team is still on Argand, mopping up the rebel elements that were funded by that dickbag's company," she said.

"Can we please tone down the insults a bit," said the second man.

"I would if I knew who any of you were," Beth retorted.

"At least Arianna had the common courtesy to introduce herself. Zappy boy over here didn't even give his name before he started trying to throw punches."

"Mark. Really?" said the second Ascended that had calmed the company man, looking at said company man.

"I may have made a slight error in judgment," Mark replied, causing the other three to all shake their heads.

"A slight error, he says," the third and strongest Ascended muttered.

"I am Kal Tzerath, planetary governor and second order peacekeeper for the White Dove Republic." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"And I am Thomas Marlin, Chief of Security for this system and third order peacekeeper for the White Dove Republic," the other man said. Beth looked between the two of them and then looked at the man she had been fighting, who just sneered at her and didn't say anything.

"Hey, so, how is this moron in charge of anything?"

"Excuse me?" Mark said angrily.

"You're not excused," Beth snapped back.

"His…ego may get out of hand sometimes, but he generally means well," Thomas said, glaring at Mark to keep him from speaking.

"He's in the position he's in because he's strong and his company needs people with power to protect their assets. Conflict management and resolution are not exactly his strong suit."

"Isn't that…" Beth started and then sighed.

"Look, never mind; I'm here on CRA business, as I keep saying, and as Arianna can now verify. I don't mind settling this in a more forceful way, but I'm happy to talk about the problem and work out a solution. Either way, the rebellion over on Argand is being…handled, and now all we need to do is make sure it won't happen again. Well, that and hold the people responsible who started the whole mess. It won't be cheap, I'll say that now."

"You've now transitioned to making strong-arm demands?" Mark asked, looking like he was ready to restart the fight at any moment.

"Mark!" barked Thomas, causing the man to deflate.

"I'm sure we can all work out something equitable. We wouldn't want a fight between Ascended to keep going anywhere close to a population center."

"I'm happy to take the fight into space or the mountains, if he's so eager," Beth replied, cracking her knuckles as she glared at Mark.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Kal cut in.

"The issue with Ascended fighting is that the fights are rarely quick. Even if you removed yourselves to a more remote location, it would take a lot of time for a winner to be decided. Time in which the two of you would be laying waste to everything around you, which is something I would much rather avoid in this settled system, even if you went into space.

The reason most Ascended keep their battles to undeveloped worlds is exactly this, and I don't want the two of you flying off to some unexplored world and stirring up some other hornet's nest by glassing half the place."

"Yeah, yeah," Beth said, releasing her Ideal, which was really just for show. She kept her Presence active until Mark, begrudgingly, deactivated his first, the cloak fading away as he returned to a more normal mien.

"Let's go down to the CRA Hall," Arianna said.

"I've reviewed the documents and this is a properly sanctioned mission from Arbitus Prime itself. You're not going to be wiggling out of this one without any skin left behind this time, Mark."

"Fine," Mark said with a dramatic sigh, Beth and the others not amused at his showboating.

"Let's talk." The five made their way down to the CRA Hall, the others keeping Beth and Mark separated with at least their bodies, if not other skills also deployed to make sure a surprise attack wasn't going to do anything. Beth was rather amused to see the strange looks on people's faces as they flew back into the city, shaking her head at the looks of wonder and awe that the five of them inspired. It was a combination of three things, she knew, with the fight earlier having been seen by many.

Then, there was the fact that anybody who could fly was either a powerful Enlightened or an Ascended, other than sapient beasts in their beastly forms, which was a big indicator of the power of the five of them. Finally, there was also the fact that she was sure some of the citizens they were passing recognized one, two, or all three of the people in the center, likely understanding just who they were looking at.

The group landed outside the CRA Hall and walked in, following Arianna up to her office, where Beth was still amused to see them keep her and Mark separated as they got ready to discuss things. Apparently, there were clauses for negotiating such things and Arianna was perfectly capable of acting as a mediator, though Beth herself did the actual negotiations. Kal and Thomas stayed for the entire thing, likely to make sure that tempers didn't flare too far.

They clearly had a somewhat calming effect on Mark, though it might just be an instilled fear of the two of them; Beth didn't sense that either of them were truly exceptional, from what she could tell, but Mark was certainly a cut below even average. He likely very well understood that if he acted up during the negotiation process, he was against four people who were all some degree stronger than him, with Kal likely being able to kick his ass six ways from Sunday without even trying all that hard.

"Who's your backer?" Mark asked at one point.

"My backer? What backer?" Beth asked, curious what exactly he was angling for. There were plenty of names she could say, but she wanted to know what he exactly wanted to know and why he wanted to know it.

"Come on, somebody like you doesn't appear from nowhere. That, along with your attitude and accomplishments, leads to the conclusion you're supported by someone. Prime Explorers Inc. isn't going to take this affront lying down, and we'll look into who's behind you anyway," he said.

"You might as well tell me what's going on here and we can clear some of the air."

"Investigate all you want," Beth said, shrugging casually as she sat back in her chair.

"Should I explain I was trained by an Exalted? Should I tell you I work closely with another Exalted that is well known and respected? Should I tell you my wife and I have a third Exalted as an occasional paramour and lover? What is it, exactly, that you would like to know?" She had great amusement watching as each of her statements, posed as a questions but really meant to drive the point home, hit Mark like a hammer blow.

Almost as amusing was the kind of stir it caused amongst the other three, though it didn't hit them quite as hard. She didn't want to hide behind any of the powerful figures she was connected with, but she didn't feel like this was doing that. Mark was clearly petty on a personal level, as well as a professional level; the negotiations had made that patently clear.

He was going to try to fuck with her, her team, or her associates in some way, so she'd rather start to nip that in the bud right now than wait before it became an… incident. She could just imagine what would happen if he stuck his nose into whatever business Baelvyr, Jaq, Tazeen, and the rest were about right now, with the giants and the disappearance of the titans and all that.

"Who…who was your instructor?" asked Arianna. Clearly the woman had some understanding of what was happening and likely knew all the Exalted that worked for the CRA or were close with the Association.

"Does the Champion Sobriquet 'Adamantine Colossus' ring any bells for you?" Beth asked with a sly smile, seeing Arianna's eyes widen. Funnily enough, both Kal and Thomas also reacted, though more subtly, while the reference seemed to fly right by Mark's head. It was pretty clear the man had to look up who they were talking about.

"You're a student of Baelvyr Kron?" asked Arianna with some level of eagerness in her voice.

"He was my mentor for, oh, two years or so when I first started my journey on the Path," Beth answered with a casual shrug.

"He taught me a lot of what I know; well, him and his team, including Tazeen and Jaq. They helped me learn a lot about the do's and don't's of fighting, of the CRA, and more. I guess you can say I was his student, though he might say something like I was frustrating project of his or something."

"That sounds like him," Arianna said with a smile.

"I got to meet him a couple times over the last couple decades and, uh, tactful he is not, if you don't mind my saying."

"I mean, he's an Exalted, and a highly combat-focused one," Beth said, watching Mark out of the corner of her eye as the realization started to dawn on him.

"I would say he's pretty blunt, but he's earned that privilege."

"If you were talking about Baelvyr for your mentor, then who…" Arianna said, clearly wanting to ask but wrestling with her own politeness over the topic.

"I often do work for the Lord of Traversal, as he's called, but I just call him Mortaine. The lover bit is someone who hasn't officially told anyone she's now an Exalted, though that probably doesn't narrow it down too much, but I don't want to breach her or her wife's confidence. They're valuable friends and lovers and I will just say there's even odds that you don't know who they are."

"I…I see," Arianna said, sitting forward and touching Beth's hand.

"My contact information. If you need something else after these negotiations, don't hesitate to ask." It was some blatant ass-kissing, but Beth didn't really mind it. Arianna was a Diamond Emblem, which meant she was a powerful Ascended with a ton of experience and an insane amount of connections and relationships inside and outside the CRA. Leveraging someone like that's network wasn't an issue for Beth, and it was basically one of the ways she had gotten so far so fast.

The woman likely also had a huge amount of knowledge covering all kinds of subjects, something Beth wouldn't hesitate to tap into whenever she needed or wanted.