Our treaty might not technically be binding just yet, as the senate was yet to vote to ratify it, however, both the export licenses and my being free and clear to teleport into the country for non-nefarious reasons had wound up being given not as a part of the treaty, but as part of a direct executive order.

Which meant that the treaty was just that much more likely to go through, since the biggest sticking point had already been dealt with, and at this point, it was basically pure profit.

From that point onwards, it had been a relatively simple matter of teleporting into Dulles International Airport, which I’d visited as part of the grand “let’s shove Tristan onto a plane and fly him around so he can be a better taxi” tour that Fionn had sent me off on all those weeks ago.

Then, from the airport, I took the metro into the city itself, had a bunch of meetings, and bought all the blueprints we needed.

A ton of money, some lesser magical stuff from the treasure of the Niebelungs, and a [Binding Agreement] that their proprietary blueprints would not wind up in the hands of anyone other than Charlemagne made everything rather doable.

As for the Skill itself, Mia and I had had a lot of fun exploring its intricacies. It said “binding,” and the contracts and agreements made with it were that, but only to a degree. They weren’t truly absolute, sadly.

You’d know when you were about to break them, the other contract partner would know if you broke them or even got close, and you were prevented from directly breaking them, gross violations physically impossible, you just couldn’t move.

But the more indirect a sabotage was, the easier it was to do.

Something we hadn’t actually tried, for obvious reasons, but was likely to work was deliberately injuring oneself to be unable to complete a time-limited task. And it wasn’t like the Skill could interfere overly much there, since many, many, motions allowed one to injure oneself. There were limits to the Skill, after all.

It might have said it prevented going against the spirit of an agreement, as well as the letter, but that only functioned as advertised against truly egregious chicanery.

In other words, there’d been a lot of other stuff we’d been able to play around with.

Mia and I had simply made a bunch of deals to each make a sandwich for the other, then done our damndest to sabotage them.

Outright ruining them by putting laxatives in one, pouring gasoline over the whole affair or similar levels of ridiculous nonsense were simply not possible. Even picking up the offending ingredient wasn’t possible when we were in the kitchen, nor could we enter while carrying something like that.

Putting stuff on the sandwich we knew the other didn’t like, on the other hand, was possible, even when it was specified that it had to be a good sandwich. On the other hand, if it had to be a sandwich meant to be enjoyed by the other person, that wouldn’t fly.

Also, taking a spiteful bite out of a sandwich prior to handing it over was possible, just very much pushing some boundaries, and the Skill had let me know that. Imagine your very own Jimminy Cricket, if Jimminy Cricket were a horrifying combination of everything you’d ever found annoying about anyone else ever, and was harder to ignore than a horror movie scream queen.

On the other hand, cutting a sandwich in half and eating one of said halves was perfectly alright, even though it was taking away a much larger part than a simple bite would have.

Because, well, while no one wanted a sandwich someone else had already eaten from, everyone liked a good sandwich, right? Even if you only got half?

Retroactively, all that experimentation seemed to justify my choices on what to have fundamentally defined within the Skill itself. It said it enforced the “spirit” of the agreement, but that spirit needed to be shared understanding.

Which created a big problem. Because when one party was a sneaky fuck used to seeking loopholes and the other party was more than happy to settle things with a simple handshake deal, someone was going to get taken advantage of …

But with my selection of “Good Faith” as something that would automatically be equally understood by everyone involved in a deal, that covered most loopholes. Not all, but plenty.

And beyond that, there was one final trick I’d only now figured out. The “intangibles” I could choose instead of clarifying something were transferred by the Skill, directly and immediately, without requiring any input on anyone’s part.

Which meant I could add penalty clauses, something along the lines of “if the above stipulations are deliberately undermined and broken, x will be transferred to the injured party.” Right now, the worst I could do with that was rip out a magical potential that most people didn’t even have, but I could pick something nastier in five more Levels.

Another possible penalty clause I could add was something that would permanently put the “ultra annoying Jimminy Cricket” in someone’s head permanently, a soft urge to do something they wouldn’t want to do. Even if someone managed to outwit the contract, they’d earn themselves a lifetime of maddening reminders of what they’d done.

In time, I’d likely start brokering deals between and for other parties, after all, my current Class was literally for mediating, but right now, I still played ambassador.

And businessman, to a degree.

Anyway, right now, I was running around with a contract that had simple monetary consequences as the penalty clause, with [Legal Grounding] making it something to satisfy any lawyer who had to look it over.

That approach didn’t work all the time, in fact, only worked very occasionally, but between today and the previous two days that had seen me zap around Europe, we had everything we needed.

After that, well, my plan had been to take one of the few still-flying planes to head as far west as I could possibly go to unlock a new portal target, but the only available flight had been in the evening which left me with several hours to kill.

And while doing so should have been easy in Washington DC of all places, I’d failed to account for the monster attack.

Anything that could be considered a statue of effigy of sorts had been guaranteed to be animated by the third challenge, which meant that a city full of monuments was near guaranteed to become a city of the dead in short order

It hadn’t gone quite that badly, but things had still been pretty bad. The Lincoln statue from his memorial in particular had turned out to be a [Raid Boss], with predictable results.

The zoological building of the Smithsonian had likewise been utterly gutted, and so on.

You know what? I actually had an idea. One I probably should have had much earlier, but that shouldn’t matter too much right now.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I fished my phone out, dialed a number, paused to make sure I wasn’t calling at an overly ungodly hour, and then, finally, made the call.

“Jones?”

Oh, he sounded sleepy, very sleepy. Oh, I’d miscalculated that … by quite a lot.

“It’s Tristan Vogt,” I said. “I’m in Washington DC at the moment and realized that my reconstruction Skill could fix a lot of this. I was wondering if you could tell me who’s in charge of the cleanup effort and maybe speed things up as far as an introduction goes? I only have a few more hours here.”

I hoped that explaining the time crunch would make him forgive me for waking him. There was a soft sound from the other end of the line that might have either been a yawn or him covering the microphone as he muttered something uncomplimentary. But after that, he sighed and announced “I’ll make some calls.”

And while he did that, I slowly walked across the National Mall, starting from Congress and heading towards the collapsed building that used to house the Lincoln statue that was responsible for most of the damage.

Incidentally, there was nothing left of the United States Capitol but a pile of rubble. Someone had had the good sense to ensure there weren’t sessions, meetings, or any other kind of event that would have multiple members of the government in one spot, so the loss of life from that destruction had been minimal, but it was a bad sign. And probably what I’d be asked to fix first because right now, a mess of police tape and hazard signs was about as far as the reconstruction had gotten.

Heading down from the hill, I walked between the line of museums on either side of the broad grass strip, many of whom were a part of the Smithsonian, and likewise in various states of disrepair, fenced off by construction barriers, police tape both intact and not, and in some places, memorial shrines for those who had been out here on that day, and failed to return home.

The Washington Monument did still stand, entirely intact, a vast pillar of seemingly immovable stone reaching for the sky in defiance of the devastation that surrounded it.

In its day, it had been the tallest building in the world. Today, it was dwarfed by many, many others, yet it held onto another record, being the tallest structure held together by gravity alone, no mortar on concrete having been required to support it.

It had been an awe-inspiring creation in its day and remained as such, but today, it just made me sad. I wasn’t sure why, but something about it there, unblemished, surrounded by so much loss …

I could have stood there for a minute or an hour, I wasn’t entirely sure, but eventually, my phone did ring. And as expected, the first question was if I could fix an entire building as big as the “random example” of the Capitol.

So I spun on my heels and turned back the way I’d come.

***

It was only when I was finished walking up the hill and turned the corner to see an official-looking man waiting with several police officers that I realized I was still wearing my usual t-shirt and jeans, having switched to something more comfortable once the last meeting was done.

A quick cast of [Modern Makeover] gave me back my suit and tie, but this time, its use was noticed.

That line in the original Jurassic Park “it can’t see you if you don’t move” line might have been widely mocked, but its inverse of “it can definitely see you if you do move” applied to a whole host of species, humans included. Nothing was more attention-grabbing than movement, and having someone’s outfit completely change in your field of view was so eye-catching I might as well have triggered a road flare.

The clear use of magic also made the cops jump, which made me grimace. Why were they here, exactly?

“Ambassador Vogt?” the official-looking man asked. He was an elderly black man, though he still looked perfectly fine.

I nodded. “That’s me. Sorry about startling you, everyone.”

“No worries,” he chuckled softly, looking me up and down. “If I could put on a clean and pressed suit at the drop of a hat instead of having to spend the whole day having to avoid crinkling or spilling something on mi- …”

He paused, chuckled, and slowly shook his head.

“Anyway, my name is Winston Anderson, and I’m in charge of the reconstruction efforts. As you can see, they’re taking a while.”

I decided not to comment as I shook his hand. Instead, I asked him about the cops.

“All monsters in the area are supposed to be dead, but no one’s supposed to be out here without a police escort,” he told me.

Oh, that made sense. And would have been good to know this morning …

Then again, I assumed there were warnings somewhere, and I’d just missed them. So I just nodded and moved the conversation along.

“My Skill is called [Restoration of the Old], it can clean, fix, or restore what I use it on, it works better on stuff that’s old and/or important. I’ve also got references, if you’re interested. I used it after the first Nation Boss wrecked Paris and Brussels, to fix the worst of the damage, including putting the European Parliament back together. Anything that was up to code before it got torn down will be up to code after I fix it,” I explained.

“Oh, I was wondering how they managed to keep it intact,” Anderson responded.

I sighed. “No one knows it got trampled, do they?”

“I’m guessing a valorous defense was a better story.”

“Probably,” I admitted. Charlemagne had been the one to deal with the outside world at the time, I’d been on my “becoming a better taxi” tour.

“So, is there anything else you need to know or tell me, or do you just want to point me at something to fix?”

Anderson chuckled. “I think I’ve heard enough. It’s not like me interrogating you is going to make things any better. You’re the one who’ll be fixing stuff.”

And catching the blame if it all collapsed on someone’s head. At least so went the subtext I thought I heard.

I also realized that one of the men I’d assumed to be police officers was just wearing a similar outfit, not an actual uniform, and had brought out a camera on a tripod. Ah, I’d been wondering why this seemed to have been done in such an “off the books” kind of manner.

Anderson glanced at the camera, saw it was ready, and turned back to me.

“Um … so how does this work?”

“Wave of my hand,” I explained.

Anderson gestured at the ruins of the Capitol. “Can you fix that?”

I nodded. I was surprised I was allowed to do anything to it, but then again, it could hardly get any more broken than it already was. The Lincoln Raid Boss, whatever its name had wound up being, had torn straight through it and seen the whole thing collapse into what just as easily have been the aftermath of a tornado.

Briefly, I gave a glance to the camera, suddenly feeling the gravity of the situation slam into me. I’d raised the European Parliament, restored Notre Dame, and negotiated with Genghis Khan. Twice.

This shouldn’t be as big as it was. Yet, well, it was.

I swallowed, stared at the building, slowly raised my right hand, and snapped my fingers. I didn’t have to do that, but it was how I’d always triggered it.

The sound that rang out was crisp, loud, and seemed to echo off the rubble before me as it began to move, the larger chunks of the roof, that had collapsed down after the Raid Boss had torn through the foundation, floating skywards and forming the brilliant white dome that was recognized well beyond the borders of this nation, hovering there as the rest of the Capitol constructed itself beneath it.

For a long moment, I was mesmerized by the sight, and out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the others in a similar state … and that’s when a gunshot shocked me out of my trance. The first gunshot, that was, as an entire barrage followed.

I stared at the monster now marching towards us, a statue. Scuffed, cracks running across it, but nevertheless intact enough to still carry the spark of life, a Level 17 fodder enemy that was slowly coming apart under a hail of lead, even as it advanced slightly faster than walking pace.

Oh … shit. How long had it been under there?

I leaped into the air and waved my hand upwards, making sure I’d reached as far from the ground as possible.

Then, I summoned a portal while taking a couple of steps to the side.

The entrance sat flush to the floor, right under the monster’s foot.

And the exit portal? Well, the bottom edge was little over three meters above the floor.

Predictably, the statue pitched forward, vanished into the “ground” before reappearing overhead before smashing into the ground next to me.

That was one less portal I could use today, but I still had two left. One to reach whoever required transporting, a second to bring them to where they needed to be.

Sure, I could have opened the other end of the portal over the Atlantic, anywhere the plane that had taken me here the first time had been, but I figured there was a half-decent chance they’d want to be able to put that statue back onto the Capitol once they fixed it up.

“Well, I guess that’s one way to do that,” one of the police officers sniggered.

But I just stared at the rubble. I had done that. A cheap shot using a full quarter of my daily portals, against a foe not even half my level, but that had been a clean kill of a monster. Not a fight I’d barely survived, not one I had to be rescued after, not me dropping napalm onto a monster from behind the walls of the Untersberg.

I’d had a lot of time to think these past few weeks, and come up with plenty of tricks I could theoretically pull off, but theory wasn’t practice. Yet I had managed to translate my idea into reality and … and that’s when more gunshots started ringing out. There were more, weren’t there?