The new aremely popur new member of the Asano family was looking rather shell-shocked. Jasoracted Nik from the clutches of Hana and Jace, taking him to a quiet er of the baly.

  “Well?”

  “It’s… I don’t know. It’s a lot.”

  “I know. You shouldn’t expect to just wander in and have some i e to everyone. Get to know them. Let them get to know you, ohey’re past the ess that makes everyone want to hug you and put you in a series of adorable es.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Dad…”

  “What?” Jason asked with unving innoce.

  “Have you e into possession of a series of y hats?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s about time I brought the team in to introduce them to everyohat should take the pressure off you a little.”

  “You may wish to hold off on that, Mr Asano,” Shade said from Jason’s shadow. “The Australians have finally noticed their missing officials.”

  ***

  “This is so good,” Josh mumbled around a spoonful of geto.

  He was standing outside the geto shop with Sue, Solomon and the cierge.

  “It is quite patable,” Solomon was forced to cede.

  “It just occurred to me,” Sue said, “that we didn’t tell anyone where we went. Asano just kind of swept in and it all got strange from there. You don’t think that’s going to cause any problems, do you?

  ***

  In the offices of the Department of Prime Minister & et was a feren. The three gover officials meant to be in that room were not, the open portal at one end of the room the obvious reason for their absence. If the trio had been having a more normal day, the kind that didn’t involve visiting an alien world in an alternate reality with a wizard, they might have dohings differently. Told someone where they were going, for example, or running for the hills. Some days, however, are just so out of the norm that you end up going with the flow, only to ter wonder what you were thinking.

  The security force currently crammed into the feren were already w what the trio had been thinking. A full squad of silver-rankers had been deployed, all equipped with magically enhaactical armour and firearms. They waited on a gold-rao portal in from the artefact city ahem through.

  What they found oher side was a warehouse-scale space, with floor, ceiling and three of the walls made of unadorned metal panels. The st wall was a single, humungous pane of gss, looking out onto a p.

  “Are we in orbit?” asked Gar, the squad’s silver-rank leader.

  “Not just orbit,” said Lu, a gold ranker liaising from the ese gover. “That ish.”

  Gar looked again and saw that Lu was right. The p did look like their big blue marble, but the tis were wrong.

  “Where the hell are we?” he asked. “Some kind of space station? A spaceship? We have gravity. Is it from rotation, magic or some kind of alien sce?”

  “Figuring that out is why we’re here,” Lu said. “Where we are, and what Asano did to our people.”

  He turned from the window to give the room a more thh examination. The panels making up the walls were rge, each several metres across. There were doors in each of the non-window walls, including ohat were warehouse-sized, rge enough to let massive freight pass through.

  “Some kind of warehouse?” he postuted. “A loading bay?”

  “Maybe a security room?” Gar suggested. “There could be recessed ons behind some of these panels.”

  “I was tempted,” Jason said, and the squad wheeled to level their guns at him. He was standing in the middle of the room, dressed like a tourist with his hands in his pockets. He looked at the guns with a sigh.

  “Really?” he asked. “Have you guys not seen a movie? When one guy is standing casually while a bunch of SWAT-looking guys point guns at him, those guns definitely aren’t going to work. Look, let’s just skip ahead. You blokes shoot me and we’ll see how it goes.”

  “Hold your fire,” Gar ordered his squad. He g Lu, the only one of them without tactical gear un. He was wearing pin bck fatigues that looked simple but had more powerful magic flowing through them thaactical gear.

  “Asano, where are we?” Gar asked.

  “On a space station in my personal universe.”

  “Your personal universe?”

  “Yeah. I don’t have time to go into the details, but it’s very small, by universe standards. Just the one sor system. That’s the mai out there, smack bang in the goldilocks zone. Some of the others are habitable, if a little more exotic. I had to do some odd things to make that work, depending on their distance from the sun.”

  “You say that we’re on a space station, in some private universe,” Gar said. “Even with magic, it seems a lot more likely that it’s all a ruse. The air and gravity feel like we’re in a room oh, not in orbit around it. For all I know, that window is just a high-definition s and that portal brought us to a warehouse in the middle of Geelong.”

  Jason blinked surprise, theed into ughter.

  “Oh, I totally wish I’d dohat, now. I like you, Mr Gar, so I’m not going to be to harsh on you and your ds.”

  “We’re well versed in your methodology, Mr Asano,” Lu said. “You like to use absurdity to fuse and distract. That will not work here.”

  The grin that crossed Jason’s face would have put the Chesire Cat to shame.

  “Funny you should say that. In your world, you’d probably be right. But this is my world, Mr Lu, and you have no cept of how absurd it get. Gentlemen, I told you to shoot me.”

  Every finger resting on a trigger squeezed, sending a single bullet shooting out of each gun. The bullets stopped in the air, then eae floated into front of the person that fired it, h in front of their head. The bullets grew cartoon faces and started yelling.

  “Were you even listening, idiot? Do you realise how expensive we are, and you’re just flinging us at some guy who turned us into cartoon characters! We’re going ba uns now, and nobody better fire any more of us until you’re back where you belong.”

  The bullets theuro the barrels, some of them growing arms to flip off their shooters on the way. For a long moment, everyone was frozen. Then one of the security persohrew their gun away as if it had tried to bite him. That triggered reas from the others, staring at their guns or likewise tossing them to the ground. Oually looked down the barrel of his loaded firearm, getting him yelled at by Gar. Only the unarmed Lu was unfling, his expression calm and his eyes locked on Jason.

  “Your universe,” Lu said.

  “Yep.”

  “You’re powerful, here. trolling our perception of reality.”

  “I could, yeah, but it’s easier to just ge reality. The only things not mio and in this pce are your souls. As for your bodies, I could turn them into pots of water and cook lobsters in you.”

  “You cim to be a god?”

  Jason’s chuckle sounded every bit like light-hearted amusement, yet every other person in the room felt a chill run down their spihe security team, still looking shell-shocked, sheir attention onto Jason.

  “I’m nothing so limited as a god, Mr Lu, but you sider me such, if it helps. I uand the challenge of ing to grips with power on a scale beyond anything you sidered possible. I once perceived the ey of the os. It was for an infinitesimally small time, beyond the ability to measure, yet even with the power I have in this pce, just the revetion of it almost destroyed me.”

  He smiled at Lu.

  “Even now, you doubt me,” Jason tinued. “Perhaps it’s all an illusion. Maybe we really are in a warehouse in Geelong. Mr Lu, in your world, I’m just a gold ranker, not unlike yourself. A powerful one, with powerful friends. But in this pce, everything ao me. Even physics.”

  “So you say.”

  “What do you want to see, Mr Lu? To feel? To be? What will it take to vince you? You wao turn off the sun? I’ll have to warn the people on the p, so they don’t start a religion or something, but I do that.”

  “Why do you even want to vince me? What do you get out of it? If you have this kind of power, what I possibly offer you?”

  “If I vince you, you’ll vi least some of the leaders of Earth. Some won’t listen, of course, but you’re a man of influence. Of power.”

  “That’s a ughable assertion in this pce.”

  “But you won’t be in this pce. Hopefully helping world leaders uand what I have here. Because, if they do, they’ll uand why I have no ambitions on dispg them.”

  He gestured at the window.

  “What would be the point of seeking power oh when I have this?”

  “To some people,” Lu said, “it doesn’t matter what they have, or how much of it. They always want the hing, If only because someone else has it already.”

  Jason sighed and nodded his aowledgement.

  “I ’t argue with that, Mr Lu.”

  Lu turo look at the phrough the window.

  “Is this where it leads?” he asked. “This path of magic? Is there no limit?”

  “I don’t know. The os is vast beyond what any mortal mind encapsute, believe me. Most immortal minds as well. I’m not sure if a true limit to someone’s potential exists, but we each have our own roadblocks. For you, the monster cores you used to get to gold rank make you uo go further. But nothing is impossible.”

  The stoic Lu’s shoulders slumped.

  “It’s easy to feel rge, when you have power,” he said. “The truth is, I’m so very small, aren’t I?”

  “We all are,” Jason said. “I have my own universe and I’ve sat ohrone of creatio I’m nothing but a speck. But that’s part of why it’s all so amazing. No matter how far you go, there’s always a new horizon. I don’t know if the people of Earth realise this, Mr Lu, but I’m immortal. Properly immortal. If you kill this gold-rank body, I’ll just make another, right here. I’m going to live forever, but I’ll never run out of hills to climb. Don’t think of yourself as small, Mr Lu. Think about the os as a pce of infiential.”

  “Perhaps for the younger geion. Those that did not use monster cores to raise themselves.”

  “That’s a tough one, I’ll grant you. But as I said, nothing is impossible. Right now, there’s a war going on iher world. It’s over a relic that I’m told , amongst many other things, purge the residual monster cores from people. Give them a fresh ce to advance. I’m not saying that you or I will ever get our hands on this relic, but my experience is that’s nothing is truly impossible. Just very, very infeasible.”

  Lu walked over to the giant window, past the security squad who were watg their discussion with uainty. The gold ranker looked out at the p below.

  “You’re not lying, are you?” he asked softly. “About this pce. The power you hold here.”

  Jason walked over to stand beside him.

  “No,” he said softly.

  “Even if the os is vast, we must seem so small to you.”

  “Every seed is small, Mr Lu. That doesn’t mean it ’t bee a mighty tree. I wasn’t going to talk about this yet, but one of my iions iurning to Earth is to help it oh forward. To prepare it for when other worlds e calling. I won’t lie, Mr Lu; the old guard, like you, have probably gone as far as you ever will. But some of those you will guide and teach will roam stars beyond stars. See wohat even I have yet to enter. You’re not the future, I’m sorry to say, but yoing to help build it.”

  Lu looked from the po Jason and back to the p.

  “ I go there? See it for myself?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Your people are getting some getht now, we should get in on that.”

  “Did you just say geto?”

  “Well, it’s not teically geto.”