The team were waiting on the chairs outside the director’s office in the Greenstone adventure society. They had been waiting for a few hours, multiple other adventurers had come and sat next to them to them to supposedly wait for an audience with the director before being firmly told that the director was going to be busy for the rest of the day. The same secretary that pushed everyone else away told the Mitchells that it shouldn’t be much longer. She had said this five times so far. Everyone who had come in had looked at the team in curiosity, there were card games in this world but they had these cards custom made to play earth games. Currently playing a game of ‘chase the ace’ they each had a different type of quintessence in front of them they were using as counters. Lucy was winning having not lost any while James was on his one last shot of charity having lost all his.

[I swear she must be cheating, we’re never playing poker, you have too many advantages. You must be using your astral projection to look at my cards.]

[Oh cut your whining you big baby, it’s a card game, its luck based, thats why there’s all those sayings about ‘playing the hand you’re dealt’.]

She then placed her last card to show she had won that hand with a smug smile. James was grumpy as he lost and was now completely out the game. As Teddy shuffled the cards for the next hand without him James got up and paced.

[So I get why it might take a while but this is getting a little ridiculous. So we did a few things, completed a few contracts we didn’t know existed. They have to be careful about newly appointed adventurers wiping out entire villages but we brought back adventurer badges that they sent out there! What’s taking them so long?]

When they had returned to the city they had reported straight away to the adventure society campus. The usual drill for adventurers was to go to the jobs hall, select a contract, have it signed by the clerk as in progress, kill whatever monster or deal with whatever situation someone had taken a contract over, then return the contract to the clerk and get paid.

When the Mitchells got back to the city they went to the jobs hall and found all the contracts they had inadvertently completed along the way home, including what turned out to be a number of two star contracts and one three star contract. Even though the team got dispensation to carry out a two star contract from the society in Vitesse it was a one-off and they had been warned not to let it go to their heads. They had then found the clerk had a report from the ships captain and a report from Mr Roberts at the mirage stadium in Vitesse. There was also a hefty stack of village notice board contracts that the team had amassed on the road for over a week on their way back from the zombie village.

The paperwork almost stacking as high as the clerks head as he sat at his desk. The clerk’s eyes went wide when he saw they had brought back four adventurer badges and no bodies. As soon as the clerk saw all this paperwork and the complications it involved he had called a functionary to conduct a review.

Reviews were fairly commonplace, usually for contracts that turned out to be more than they appeared. It involved Teddy having to write a very comprehensive report which the functionary could hardly believe. It had started first thing in the morning, the functionary was done with them just before lunch and they had been waiting in the conference room they had been working in. After they had refreshed themselves from food in their inventories a magic society researcher had arrived to ask James about his vambrace having read the report already. An hour or so later the rest of the team were asked to also write reports. Starting to worry about all the attention now the team were getting antsy. It didn’t help when four functionaries arrived to comb over the reports with the adventurers. It was now nearly evening and the team had been moved to just outside the directors office and settled in for a long wait. They had been treated very politely and professionally, given refreshments and apologies for the wait.

Finally the doors opened and Vincent Trenslow was standing there as the deputy director to let them into the office. He had pushed both doors open then crossed his arms and looked at the team.

“Gods” He exclaimed, “Outworlders. Come on then, lets start.” He beckoned them in and Kyra put the cards into her inventory.

The team got up and filed into the office. It was very large as befitted the director. As they entered there was a sofa area on their left big enough for almost a dozen people, a long table on their right was for big meetings in privacy and at the far end in front of them they saw a large wooden desk with green stone embellishments with the director Genevieve Picot sat behind it signing bits of paperwork.

“Come in, come in. Let’s get started.” She rose from her desk walking around to meet them halfway, she was walking towards the long table before she changed her mind and made for the sofas. “It’s been a long day, lets sit in comfort, we’re going to be here a while.”

[‘lets start’?! ‘We’re going to be here a while’?! Does she not know we’ve been here all day?] Kyra complained on the interface.

[At least sofas mean we’re not in trouble I guess.] James said.

Out of all four on the team he was most impatient to be away. They all sat down on the sofas, the four Mitchells, the director and deputy director and three functionaries with stacks of paperwork, notebooks and clipboards.

“Lets start with the news that we are not going to punish you.”

“Punish us for what?!” James exclaimed.

The deputy director looked down her nose at his mild outburst.

“Mr Mitchell, this will go a lot easier if you talk less and listen more. We are not punishing you, for completing contracts above your rank. The dispensation from Vitesse absolves you for your ship-bourne contract, the two star and three star contracts you completed were done in ignorance of the fact they were contracts at all. It has been deemed that your performance over the last few weeks has been exemplary and the complication has been in how to reward you. The notice board contracts are easy enough and you will be compensated in the usual way along with the contracts you picked up from the jobs hall retrospectively. The difficulty is how to reward you for the return of the badges, your performance at the coastal village, the two star and three star contracts and the jungle village. The return of the badges required the clerks to confirm which contracts those adventurers had taken, the first had been the trigger for a series of the adventurers heading out to the jungle one after each other, culminating in the three star contract you inadvertently completed by recovering the badges and solving the mystery of why they had gone missing in the jungle. The original contract was for a two star adventurer due to its isolated nature, another two star contract was to establish contact with the villages beyond that point that no one had heard from in a long while, we now know that it was due to the infection why no one was getting through. You will be happy to know the magic society has deployed en-mass to the contaminated village to conduct a thorough examination and decontamination.”

Vincent took up the explanation while the director poured herself a drink, adding a small amount of liquor from a cabinet in the corner.

“We cannot be seen to reward adventurers for completing contracts above their rank, it is a matter of perspective, word will get around that you are a one star team and completed contracts and still got the rewards. It would invite others to try the same. The solution we have found is to coordinate with Vitesse adventure society in ‘making up’ your rank to what it needs to be.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The Mitchells all looked at each other in surprise, none of them had speculated this outcome.

[Does this mean what I think it does?] Teddy said on the group chat [Are we getting retrospectively promoted?]

“It is going to appear that you were all made two star adventurers in Vitesse, with the exception of you Theodore. Although you made it clear that none of you claim the team leader role as a quirk of your particular team dynamic this does not fit the general trend of team make-up and due to the reports that came back about the team you were labelled team leader, as such it is going to be made to look that you were two stars before you left for Vitesse, the paperwork has already been backdated to show this. As such you were promoted to three stars in Vitesse.”

The team were shocked. As brand new adventurers they were looking forward to getting promoted at some point but they had known they were going to have to work hard for it. Not only had their newest member barely an adventurer a month was now two stars already but Teddy was the highest star he could get for iron rank.

“This should solve the problem that we highlighted although it will bring attention to you as a team being promoted so quickly, my advice is that you keep your heads down and be humble about it.” Vincent motioned to the functionaries who handed them their badges, freshly minted with additional stars.

Genevieve put her cup down and pulled a sheet of numbers from a stack to look over.

“You will be handsomely paid for all of your contracts completed as usual, as we understand you all have all of your powers awakened and have no need for a reward in the form of stones. Instead we think we have a suitable reward for the admirable work you have done, a favour that is owed to the branch we have been holding onto, a reclusive inventor called the Craftsman owes us a specialist vehicle. We haven’t used him before and he is deep in the desert almost all the way to the next adventure society. Some of his inventions got… carried away and had to be put down before they caused too much damage. But we have been assured his work is mostly reliable.”

She handed the paper to Teddy to look over.

[Isn’t it a little bit rubbish? We did a lot of work, not trying to big it up but we saved half a dozen villages and cleared up a huge mess. I think we should get something a bit more.] James complained.

Teddy raised an eyebrow at James then handed him the paperwork, he looked it over, it was the list of the loot they were being rewarded with for all the regular contracts they had completed.

[I take it back. Wow.]

They hadn’t realised quite how much they were making from the amount of work they had done. There was a considerable amount of coins and quintessence on the paper, more than they’d all had before they went to Vitesse.

“You can collect your rewards tomorrow morning along with a letter to take to the craftsman. I’m sorry it took so long to sort out but you are now free to go home and relax.”

It had been a long day to finish on such a short meeting but the team recognised that there must have been a lot of work behind the scenes, they got the feeling that the director was glad to see the back of this.

“…thankyou director” Teddy said, standing with the team.

Everyone understood that there were consequences for what had happened today. The team needed to go away and talk about what had happened.

“The pay is very generous and we’re happy to have helped so much.” Kyra added, emphasising the fact that the team had done it out of the desire to do good work rather than for the pay.

They filed out the room headed out of the campus. On the way home they stopped in the Schooner for beers and decent food. They got a corner table that faced the entrance and the barman brought them two beers and the girls favourite cocktails without being asked, they made pleasantries but the bar was busy so they couldn’t catch up, it was nice to know they had been missed in their weeks away and they had the chef making them a round of the new club sandwiches.

[Anyone else confused why that got so complicated? I thought the job was to go out and do good then come back get paid?] James said after a swig.

[I think the society is playing a game on the line with the aristocracy again. They also have to save face with other branches. We’re not normal adventurers, not a normal team, not doing normal new adventurer/team things. The direct reflection on the academy is very good but for the society branch it looks a little like they’ve lost control.] Lucy answered. As usual, normally good at cutting to the heart of the problem with her clarity powers.

They chatted about it for a while but they all agreed they wouldn’t have done anything any different, the area had been so long without help due to the infestation that they had to help to the extent they did. They realised that for local adventurers the four badges they had picked up none of them had Remore ribbons. The food came and was delightful, the pub always had the best sandwiches and they all had another round of drinks. Some time later they felt two familiar auras approach and enter the bar. They had seen Rashid and Vincent together at the academy and knew they were friends but the purpose of their visit to the bar became apparent as they gazed around the room until they saw the team in the corner and made their way over.

“Hello you lot.” Vincent said. “Mind if we join you?”

He and Rashid grabbed chairs and sat with their backs to the rest of the room.

“We were hoping to find you at your villa for a private chat, we need to discuss a few things from today.” Rashid said.

Kyra look at the bar and made eye contact with the barman. She pointed at her ear and made a cutting motion with her hand in front of her neck. The barman nodded and gave a thumbs up. A mirror appeared in Kyra’s hand and a small button appeared on the middle of the table. She pressed it and a transparent shimmering bubble appeared around all the occupants of the table.

“Privacy bubble I picked up in Vitesse, apparently they’re popular in high society places.”

“Very fancy Mrs M, different kind of high society to Greenstone and it’ll work nicely. How’re you all feeling after that today?” Rashid said.

“Tired, confused, it’s a lot of thinking.” James said. Lucy have him an exasperated look. “And none of us are happy that Teddy is the ‘leader’”

“Me least of all! I don’t want responsibility for you lot!” Teddy said, Kyra gave him a pouty face and he rolled his eyes at her. “Well yes of course I’m responsible for you, I’m contractually obliged to be.” Rashid raised an eyebrow at him. “Well I married her. That’s kind of a contract.”

Vincent was holding his head in both hands.

“Damn outworlders. But be serious for a minute, we need to make sure you understand what is going on. That whole region has been a blind spot to the society.”

“We noticed.” Lucy interjected. Vincent scowled.

“We weren’t happy about it. The local politics have got much better to deal with but they’re still there. When the first adventurer went missing it was a member of the Whipparrel family that went to see what happened. Very influential amongst the families and a staunch opposer to the academy. They insisted that only a non-Remore adventurer go and recover the body. The new director isn’t in the habit of being told what to do by the families anymore but there’s a realistic amount we can get by without keeping everyone happy. The family appointed another family opposed to the annex to recover their son. Unofficially of course. That choice didn’t go well. Now the society office is bombarded with accusations that we set them up to fail. We pushed the contract to three stars and they snapped it up with their only three star scion and that’s four badges. We were in negotiations what to do about it and a meeting was set for tomorrow but obviously it’ll be a different kind of meeting now.”

“That’s partly why we’re here. We wanted to bring you up to speed but the academy annex recognises that you are stuck in the middle of something that is not your problem. I have a portal power and we would like to offer you the chance for a trip to the Craftsman.” Rashid said.

“A trip that would start immediately I guess if this meeting is tomorrow?” Teddy asked, obviously slightly annoyed.

Rashid and Vincent shuffled awkwardly and looked at each other.

“We could probably wait and go early tomorrow morning.” Rashid said.

The Mitchells all agreed on the interface it was for the best.

“All right, we’ll be your dirty shame and sneak out the window before we get caught.” Lucy said. The two men winced.

“We really wished we didn’t have to do this. You should be able to shout about what you’ve done! It was pure adventuring. No contracts, just getting out there and righting wrongs. Killing monsters. Exactly what we at the academy annex wanted to teach you to do.”

“I mean… the money is really nice though…” James said and Lucy punched him on the arm for being a jerk. “Speaking of, we made a tonne of money, let’s drink, you guys are staying and drinking. Rashid you can crash at the villa, when you’re sober enough to send us to the right place we’ll go.”