Spence looked toward the crowd observing the man who had spoken.

“And who might you be?” He asked with warmth.

“The names Jasper sir,” Jasper responded with respectfulness. His voice, strong-willed but a little skittish. He had outbidded Harper for the information, a move that was incredibly smart and lucky but still a dangerous gamble. Revealing himself to big influence individuals while also potentially angering them. Jasper also was announcing he had money.

Fifty pure black crystals was a lot of money enough to get a lot of people's attention, and Jasper did have that kind of money he worked under Aton and admittedly got favored quite a bit so he had enough to pay for fifty but that would clean out a lot of his savings of money. Still with the weirdness going on with one of the few people he thought he could trust, Aton he would be willing to spend as much as needed to get an informational ally with Spence to figure out what the heck was going on.

“Why offer so much? Your acting like this is a bidding war, what makes you think you both cannot get the information.” He asked him.

“Sorry for the confusion Mr. Spence, you could give information to multiple people but I am raising the starting price to be in that group, sir. To 50 pure black crystals and if they don’t offer at least that much don’t take it 'cause it's worth at least that much.” Jasper told him his idea accommodated Spence’s personality pretty well, but he still made one mistake.

“Well I like your proposal Mr. Jasper but your idea is too good to ignore. I am sorry, but I am afraid I will start a bid to set my price, whoever wins has to pay immediately, and the price will still hover for whoever wants to buy the information for the rest of the foreseeable future.” Spence announced to the crowd still around him, and even loud enough for people outside of the crowd to hear drawing in a multitude of people back, Kell started to come back, the Law faction made their way over, multiple lower ranked squads, along with other big names made their way over to Spence, his Restoration faction, and the original crowd around him. A bidding war was about to start to get Spence's information.

Harper made her way over to Jasper, Joshens and the mercenaries got prepared for battle but considering she decided to come alone maybe she didn’t wish for conflict.

“Hey, you said you were Jasper right? Well, that was a bold move, you got guts kid. But now you're in a tough spot, your one of Aton’t subordinates right, considering his pay you should be well off but your still just an underling your funds won’t be able to compare to the big groups like me, but winning the bid at such a high price now for me would be seen publicly as a huge loss, so how about I sponsor you getting you the victory and we share the information?” Harper asked, the proposal hard to ignore for Jasper, she gauged him accurately he had more than he offered but not much more he wasn’t confident in his victory at all and he did really desire to win, it would not only give him information on Aton but provide him with all the details Aton has been leaving out.

“Fine I will accept your offer, but I will bid until I win, I hope your purse can handle that otherwise, we don’t have a deal.” He said maintaining confidence while still being a bit shaken up with everything.

“Well don’t go to infinity but as long as it's reasonable then I can accept that. Say nothing over 250 okay?” She responded.

“That's fine, it’s a deal then,” Jasper said as Spence started the bidding.

“Fifty-five.” From Kell. “Sixty.” From a Lawman, and the price continued to rise from sixty to seventy to eighty, to eighty-five. Until it finally started to slow down at ninety. And Jasper began the real war.

“One hundred,” Jasper announced. Many in the crowd looked at him, one-hundred pure black crystals was an enormous amount of money, that amount alone would put someone in the upper class of society. The deal Jasper made became a double-edged sword, while it allowed for Jasper to spend much more money than he had the capability of it would make everyone think he had an enormous amount of money unproportional to his status or power which could cause problems. Not to mention once he said that number, he had locked himself in, that was more money than he had if he wins and Harper backs out he will make a powerful enemy and without Aton there it would most likely spell his end. He probably would’ve rejected her offer if he didn’t hear so many good things about her. From what he had heard from Aton and the rest of the squad Harper was a very kind-hearted person and wouldn’t lie. Still gambling his life on secondhand compliments still made him shiver a bit in fear for his life.

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“One-hundred and five, and anyone outbidding that would be insulting me!” Kell yelled, which might have shut down a couple of bidders, but most with this amount of money didn’t fear Kell.

“One hundred and ten,” said another. Then one hundred and twenty, thirty, forty. The bid stopped, a Law-man had taken the lead and it looked like everyone else priced out.

Until, “One-hundred and fifty.” Jasper spoke, another step up from the previous bid, again everyone looked at him. Jasper couldn’t help but start to get weak, Harper gave him a pretty big budget. Was she lying after all? He would bet a number of the people here had more money than Harper so her willingness to spend so much started to scare him, it appeared as if he had already won at a mere one hundred and fifty and she capped him at one hundred above that why would she want to win so badly? Especially considering how he could also backstab her in the end it didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t bid any higher, in fact, he started to hope someone would outbid him, and then he heard the sweet sound of another voice. They must be going to outbid him! But Jasper had been wrong. Spence opened his mouth.

“One-hundred and fifty going, once.” He yelled out, it took a second for Jasper to process it. He might have messed up badly. “One-hundred fifty going twice,” Spence yelled out once more, Jasper getting even more nervous nobody was going to outbid him. Until another voice raised up at the last second.

“That's an absurd amount of money I am out.” A man announced for reasons of validation interrupting Spence for a moment.

“Then nobody else… sold to Jasper for one-hundred and fifty pure black standardized crystals! An enormous amount of money according to the crowd!” Spence announced Jaspers in the end victory, but Jasper still looked like he had lost, with a pale nervous face. He walked up to Harper composing himself, he needed to at least act strong. Joshenes followed him.

“I tried to stop you but you didn’t even react to my presence. It's like you were in a strange trance. Well, I am sure it will be fine, Harper wouldn’t back out of a deal! Don’t worry about it, pal!” Joshens tried to calm him down with those words seeing his demeanor, and it did help he now had a calm demeanor, though he had calmed himself down some to.

“...So I won with one hundred and fifty,” Jasper said somewhat awkwardly, but with calmness maintaining his composure. She looked at him.

“Well, we did make a deal. But to be honest I didn’t expect you to actually believe me. I very easily could’ve betrayed you and just let you die but I like you so I will keep my word. Well at least mostly you should have at least 50 yourselves so I will give you 100. I know I lied a bit but I think you need to learn a lesson in trust.” Harper handed him over a large pouch of money, with exactly one-hundred pure black crystals. She did want to teach him a lesson but also didn’t want to count out fifty crystals as she only had bags of one-hundreds in pure black crystals. Jasper took the bad without complaint for now.

Jasper rotated around and swam towards Spence; he didn't want to carry this much money for any amount of time, Joshens and the mercenaries followed him. He also had to make this quick otherwise he didn’t know if he could keep up his calm demeanor, still the risky part had ended he had gotten most of the money from Harper and would be able to pay off his bid. Spence looked amused and happy, Jasper understood why, he would be ecstatic too if he got 150 pure black crystals for merely his knowledge.

“Hello Jasper, I take it, you have my money?” Spence asked with a dark shadow looming over his face.

“Of course, why wouldn’t I?” Jasper asked nervously, “Here” he handed over the two bags of money. “This should be everything.” He told him, but Spence had already passed the bags to a subordinate who put them into a subspace to keep them safe. Spence put up his hand to signal Jasper to stop any further talking.

“Yes it’s exactly the right amount, great, a partnership has been formed,” he brought his hands together in celebration, “now unfortunately time is running a bit short and I do want to get to my other customers so I will answer any one question of yours for now, and we can exchange more information later.” The offer Spence put forward upset Jasper a little as prime opportunities to get to talk to Spence would be rare, maybe even never again. Aton went and two of the biggest groups were completely gone. But he didn’t have the influence to refuse.

“Fine,” Jasper said and began to think of the best question to ask, he wanted to ask the question that would give him the absolute best results. But also what if Spence did not know the answer to his question would he be out of luck or would Spence give him another chance? He looked up to see Spence getting impatient he would have to ask soon or else he might lose the chance to ask anything at all. After only a few more seconds of thinking, he finally asked…