On the second day of the Washington trip, John walked around in the empty house conveniently across and then just a few houses over from his parents’ place. It was in a bad state, although only compared to the otherwise rich neighbourhood. In detail that meant some missing tiles on the roof, a bit of dirt on the outside walls, a wild lawn and a busted lock on the backdoor. There was nothing really wrong with it aside from the fact it was settling dust.

A sign on the outside told John who to call, but he wouldn’t make that call himself, so he simply wrote down the number as he looked around the place. It was empty down to the floorboards, so it made sense that the owner wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to repair the backdoor. There was nothing to steal and the dust on the ground indicated that it had been empty for a while. Some small footsteps let John know that some kids had been playing here at some point. Also, a cat or some other small mammal had been making periodic visits here. Lastly there were fresh imprints of heels.

John added the fresh imprints of his own shoes to the dust as he made his way towards the window. “The view from here is not as clear as I would have wanted,” he said, his voice reverberating in the air. One needed to stand at an awkward position, almost pressing their face against the glass, to see the house of family Newman. Not great for a place meant to house a spy.

“Second storey is a better place,” a voice behind him pointed out, following with the clacking of heels.

John looked over his shoulder to look at Hex. The hired bodyguard was a looker, for sure. With black hair that kept close to her head and then flowed down straight as an arrow, she had a naturally discipled look to her. Her black leather jacket and simple jeans worked nicely with that and the grey t-shirt she had on underneath showed only the slightest bit of cleavage.

Her hands were in her pockets, and when she gestured without pulling them out, she stretched the jacket and revealed the handle of a gun she carried in a holster hidden under her arm. An easy way to force Abyssals to reveal their supernatural abilities was to get them at gunpoint. Even if they didn’t suddenly start moving at immense speeds, one could just shoot them. A classical win-win situation for the bodyguard of a mundane person.

From her athletic body to her fair skin and no-shits-given expression, it was pretty easy to discern why this late twenty years old decided that getting involved with his father’s love life was the quickest way to stay around him. Her presence might have even been a pushing reason why John’s parents were swinging so enthusiastically. Then again, that was pure speculation; he didn’t even know which one of his parents had made the suggestion or when it had really started. He didn’t plan to ask either.

“Well, let’s see that then,” John gestured for her to take the lead. It was the first time he was meeting her, but the air was one strictly of business despite their casual behaviour. They had no feelings for each other, nor did they hit it off particularly well as she was one to keep her mouth shut most of the time. ‘She does have a nice butt,’ he freely thought to himself when she walked up the stairs in front of him. They were the only two people inside the house. “How come you are in this line of work?” he wanted to know, curiosity and impersonal silence bothering him. Just because he wasn’t looking to make friends with her didn’t mean he had to be cold throughout this meeting.

Hex was level 66. While that didn’t make her particularly impressive, she was still a cut above the average and could have found work and money elsewhere. “Safety,” was the simple answer. “Guarding a mundane is one of the safest jobs a fighter in the Abyss can get.”

That did make sense. Between trafficking substances, magical gang wars, farming naturally forming barriers or working as a mercenary in some war between larger powers, just sitting around a person that had a secondary, effectively almighty guardian was comparatively easy. Also: better paid, usually people were willing to pay for the safety of their loved ones more than for a replaceable soldier. The only reason why there were so few people in this line of work was that there was no real way to rise further and that the market was largely saturated with even the few in it.

“I see,” John took the last step of the staircase and followed Hex over to a small room. Once there, it became easily apparent why it was a better spying position. The house was one of the designs that decided to slice the corners on the second storey. A window, installed in the resulting diagonal, allowed easy viewing of the target in question. “Well, seems like you will be getting some help soon.”

“Good, I would have stopped working for you soon otherwise,” she stated straight-up. John turned away from the blinds that were covering the inside of the window and gave her a silent look. If she was this willing to stop working, how willing could she have really been to protect his parents? “I will keep my end of the bargain to my dying breath,” Hex continued, controlling her tone completely despite the much stronger Gamer’s presence. “No need to threaten me. I know what the end of cowardly guards is.” John nodded and lowered his levels of animosity by relaxing his body language. “I am just saying that I am not going to be suicidal enough to keep guard over them alone, given that you make more and more powerful enemies.”

“That is fair enough,” John admitted and turned back to look down the street. With his Agility perk, his zooming eyesight allowed him to look at his mother as if he was way closer. “I have been too lax with their security until now anyway.” Turning around, he gestured for Hex to follow him. He had made the decision to buy this house and place some sort of guardian inside by now and the hired guard had a list of potential other places to check out for suitability.

Hex was interested in the coming upgrades and additions, for obvious reasons, “Any details I should know about?”

“I will mostly pay for golems that can keep twenty-four-hour oversight over the house and install them on key locations, maybe have another one installed as a co-worker of my father. We’ll see what I can do without raising suspicion.” The problems with plans like that were that the more golems he placed, the higher the chances one of them was part of some accident that revealed their nature and administered part of the punishment to John. Gaia would then fix some memories, and all that would be left would be a Gamer whose difficulty level in reality had been raised to Very Hard.

‘Well, that comes out of nowhere,’ John thought and then accepted the quest. He already had a meeting that sent him running through the city later today, so he might as well inform himself whatever the biggest cathedral in the capital was and make his way there. Alternatively, one of the numerous dates he would have over the week was surely going to allow that little bit of side-tracking. Those rewards were strictly too juicy to pass up on. A Max Class Level AND sex with Gaia (at least that’s what he interpreted that second thing to be)? He would sign onto almost any quest for that.

A quick look at his hand indicated that Hex noticed the Gamer doing his thing, but she left it uncommented and instead continued on with the topic. “Anything else?”

“Still debating whether I want to hire more people. They are more flexible but can also decide to become a leak. Goes without saying that I want to avoid that,” John told her. “Still debating whether I want to create an Artificial Spirit to this end, but that’s a thing I have little influence over anyway.” He didn’t tell her exactly what the mechanical limitations there were, as she didn’t need to know the details of how that worked.

It wasn’t until John got the Sisterhood choice presented to him again that he could even consider creating a new Artificial Spirit for this express purpose. To get as much as a roll on that, he needed Artificial Spirit at 100 and it wasn’t even in the thirties right now. Didn’t help that it was levelling incredibly slow after the numerous resets it had already gone through.

Ignoring all that, he went on, “I will also install some measures I won’t tell you about. Just as an extra insurance.” He stopped for a second to respectfully lower his head, “No offence.”

“None taken,” Hex shrugged it off, and they continued their sightseeing. John wrote down yet another address and phone number. The next step in the process would be to give it to one of those security golem manufacturers who would begin the very costly process of creating a whole fake life for a person that didn’t exist and then have that person buy that house. Several millions would just disappear, but John could create money out of thin air, so that was completely fine with him. “I wouldn’t trust a single person with my family either.”

John didn’t ask questions about that. It was beyond obvious that Hex wasn’t her actual name (despite what she told his parents) and Observe had told him anything he needed to know anyway. They kept their chatter largely professional, only two or three easy jokes getting chuckles from the other.

The walks between each piece of real estate went through barriers. John didn’t want to run the risk of being seen by his parents and having to answer the questions what he was doing in the area when he said he would only visit in the evening. That would be pretty awkward.

In one of the last houses they went to visit, John posed the only personal question, “Do you feel anything for my parents?” It came in the wake of how close her relationship with them had been through the months she had worked as their secret guardian.

Hex hesitated, understandably. Whatever she said had ways to sound wrong to her employer and she didn’t know him well enough to guess what he wanted to hear. Which was perfect; John only wanted to hear the actual truth. “Yes, but I wouldn’t stay without the money,” she stated. “I might see them when I have an off day in the area, because they are good people and I don’t mind being around them, but I don’t love them and this is my job.”

“Alright,” John found nothing wrong with that. In her situation, he would probably try to act in a similar way. He would fail, because he got attached to other people that showed him kindness way too easily, but logically speaking that was the correct way to handle being in her line of work. “Expect a raise sometime soon,” he told her.

“You already overpay me quite immensely,” she let a slight smile on her face, relaxed that her employer didn’t seem displeased.

“Yes, but I am also filthy rich,” he magnanimously waved at an imaginary wallet. They finished their tour shortly thereafter and went their ways. One a bit richer, the other a bit more confident about his parent’s security. Although there was one thing he was unhappy about. “Why didn’t you notify me when Maximillian and my mother got together?”

“Why would I have?” Hex asked in return. “He wasn’t a security risk. Not only does he seem to be on friendly terms with you, he has a bad foot and his powers are impossible to use stealthily. Additionally, he had no idea she even was your mother until recently,” the bodyguard shrugged. “Not the first Abyssal she slept with where both parties didn’t know what they were touching.”

“Right…” John got that line of argumentation, but that still didn’t satisfy him. “For the future, please notify me about Abyssals that get close to her.”

“Sure, if you got the time to read all of that,” Hex answered readily, and from there they separated. The raven-haired girl returned to her duty while John had to go to a certain a house.