"So, how'd that first day go?" John ask the three of them once they were off-duty. The rotations were such that they had to work about ten hours a day, and do that between five and six days a week, so they would be on the floor quite a bit for the next year.

"It was…boring," Beth said with a sigh as they were logging out.

"Welcome to refereeing," John said, rolling his eyes. "By the time you get to doing it, you're strong enough that nothing below high-level Empowered or Enlightened fighting is interesting. And you decided to ref here; nobody on this world is going to really impress you, I'd bet."

"Thanks for putting such a positive spin on it, John," Sera said, giving him a faux smile. "Glad we've got you here."

"Hey, that's my job," he replied seriously. "Keep the kids in line."

"You keep on it, old man," Beth said, seeing him visibly wince and frown at being called old.

Before he could reply, Sera said, "Good work today, everyone. When are we back tomorrow?"

"Show up by nine, local time. Earlier is preferable," John said tartly, sighing as he watched them walk away.

"So, what's our plan now?" Sera asked as they returned to the suite.

"I figure it should go like this," Beth answered, sitting on the couch after they were in and the door was closed. "We should ref and study for the next week or two. We should also put a lot of time into our professions; we can use the gate to cheat how much time we have for stuff."

"What do you want to study?" asked Sera.

"We should make sure we know what we need for the Gold tests, for one," Beth replied. "We should also keep studying runes, and do any studying we think necessary as we're working on our professions."

"Sounds like a lot," Blood grunted.

"You can do as much or as little as you like, as long as you're taking care of your ref duties," Beth said. "We should just try to make good use of our time, is all I'm saying."

"I'm sure it won't be a problem," Sera said calmly, laying a hand on Beth's and gently caressing it. "We should just take a bit more time tonight to rest. We should review what we did today and think about what our plans are and then relax."

"I'm not really that tired, really, just bored," Beth said. "Those fights were not…great."

"They're still low-level," Sera said with a laugh.

"Even for low-level, they're kinda, well, I shouldn't talk too much shit. I was terrible when I started out, too. Then again, that was when I was level one, like, level one level one. I haven't been that bad since then, and these guys are level one-fifty or rebirth one and level one hundred," Beth replied. "I'm not trying to insult them, or whatever, but I don't know how some of them are still at the point that they can barely swing their weapons at their level."

"Well, not everybody has the luck you have," Sera replied. "You did get awfully lucky early on and get a lot of good finds. Not that you didn't have to work for them, but people have to live a little leaner. And they don't always get the training of an Exalted just for free."

"Eh, they could've got off their asses and found the CRA Hall early like I did. Not everything that happened early on to me was from pure dumb luck," Beth said with a shrug.

"I'm not arguing with you, just pointing out a couple things," Sera said, patting Beth gently and getting a snort out of the shorter girl.

"I know, I'm just saying, it's not a thousand percent luck that got me here. Some people get a little too caught up in just trying to get a better sword or something and don't train or fight enough," Beth said. "Eh, I guess I can't be too hard on them right now, but they're just kinda bad. I was hoping, after a few years had passed, people would be a little better than just barely being able to swing their sword without cutting their own foot off."

"I think we should just be focusing on doing the job as best we possibly can and just keep the opinions of the fighters to ourselves," Sera said.

"Well, if they overhear me talking shit, maybe they'll challenge me," Beth said with a wicked grin. "That would be something entertaining, at least."

"I don't think we should be challenging the people we're refereeing to duels," Sera admonished gently.

"But it wouldn't be me challenging them," Beth replied with a broad grin.

"Sometimes, you're impossible," Sera said with a laugh.

"Let's just focus on the refereeing," Beth said, chuckling. "How was it for you two?"

"Largely the same," said Blood. "Boring."

"We only did basic one-versus-ones today, so there really wasn't anything crazy," Sera said. "If we have to oversee twos or something more complex, that will be interesting."

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"I don't know who'd even be doing stuff like that at this Hall," Beth said.

"We should still keep it in mind," Sera said.

The rest of the night passed by quickly and they were down at the counter early the next morning, just wanting to get the day started as early as possible. Beth wasn't somebody that liked to sit around and wait if she had something to do in two hours or ninety minutes; she wanted to get going and get it done. They signed in without any assistance and each of the three of them took a dueling field on the arena field, though Beth was replacing another ref. The arena was open twenty-four/seven, and they had refs overseeing the fields overnight, though they didn't need as many refs then. While there were some night owls that fought into the wee hours of the morning, humans being largely diurnal led to them needing far less coverage during the hours most were asleep. That changed on worlds with high rebirth people, as even many Empowered needed somewhat less sleep, and Enlightened or Ascended needed only a few hours here and there.

That wasn't the case for them, and the Hall saw the most activity during the daylight hours, particularly in the afternoon. The Hall was the busiest from about one in the afternoon until about five, at which point many people left to get food and have drinks and didn't return for the evening. Beth spent the whole day watching over matches, settling into a rather boring routine, though it was interesting to see just where the average on Earth was at. Well, it might not be the average, as people who had CRA memberships and who used the dueling fields weren't just the regular, everyday person. Still, they did give her a pretty good idea of what a decent subsection of the population had as their average skill base, and as she had told the others, she was distinctly unimpressed.

That opinion didn't change over the next several days as they ref'd for eight to ten hours a day, as the people she watched fight were mainly at the low to middle section of Journeyman with their weaponskills, if she was any judge. Many of them also seemed to be in Silver with their skills, with very few skill activations that looked to her highly enhanced eyes as if they were at the Gold level. She was using the time she was watching fights to train a little herself; not that she wasn't paying attention, but that she was monitoring how much mana people were using and trying to monitor the space around them. She was trying to hone and refine her sense of space, as the problem with her skill was that it was harder to detect anything other than space. She was making progress in viewing everything around her with the skill and seeing how the space was affected by people using skills and the arrays causing changes in the ambient mana.

The week ended and they had two days off from ref duty, days which Beth had intended to use exclusively for profession training, but Sera had mentioned they should investigate if there were any Gold missions available on Earth right now. If they could use their free time to hammer out a couple more of those missions, they would be set up for a much faster time to test into Gold. Not that there was a real massive rush to get to Gold, but it would be better to have that authority, especially with what Sera had pointed out just a few days ago. Beth agreed with the concept and decided to track down somebody who could give them the missions or point them to where there were missions. That person turned out to be Tazeen, as Baelvyr and Jaq weren't currently free, considering Jaq was managing the shop and Baelvyr was doing, well, Baelvyr things.

"Tazeen," Beth greeted him after tracking him down.

"Beth," he replied stoically. "Good to see you back. You and your companions have grown."

"Still not anywhere close to you," Beth said with a grin.

"Quite," he said calmly.

"You have any free Gold missions floating around we could get in on?" Beth asked.

"Hmm, we have a few," he said. "We must keep in mind, however, that you are doing your ref duties. Even if you have two days off, you cannot take anything particularly difficult or complex; you cannot miss too many days of refereeing without being penalized."

"That sounds ominous," Beth said. "What's the penalty?"

"More time refereeing for first time offenses," he said. "If the offenses are repeated, or egregious, or both, then your right to referee and work might be revoked for some length of time determinant on the administrator's whim."

"Okay, so, more ref time if we mess up. Good to know; don't want that," Beth said, getting a very small eyebrow quirk from Tazeen at that.

"Yes, I understand how…boring most find the work," he said. "As to your Gold mission, let me sort through what is available for a moment. I'll see if I can find you something quick, or something able to be done in parts."

"Thanks, Tazeen," Beth said, waiting just a few moments for him to review the missions. There clearly weren't very many and he was familiar with them, judging by how he had the details for her right away.

"There is one mission that your group could do," he said. "You will each get a Gold credit for it. There is also the option of doing it over a greater length of time, so you could do it in what free time you have over the next few weeks without running into problems."

"Alright, let me hear it," Beth said.

"You are familiar with this continent's geography?" Tazeen asked, though mostly rhetorically.

Still, Beth nodded and said, "Yes, of course."

"There is an area of the center of this continent, the center of what used to be the United States and the country called Canada," he said, eyeing her to see if she followed. At another nod from her, he continued, "The central area of those former countries, made up of mainly rolling plains and forests, has some of the highest mana density currently on the surface of the Earth. There is only one area that is any denser, in a country called 'India' far to the east of here."

"Really? India's got the most mana density?" Beth asked with a raised brow.

"According to current readings, yes," he replied calmly.

"And what's the job?" Beth asked.

"Contact with all cities and settlements in the central plains has been lost, and nobody has heard from them for six months. This is excepting the city known as Chicago, as contact with them has remained relatively constant," he explained. "What we need you to do is to scout, but not on foot. This mission requires that somebody with an airship or starship do long, slow passes of the area with their scanners set to a very fine resolution. We need a set of very precise and detailed scans of the terrain, beasts, mana densities, dungeon incursions, unique artifacts, settlements, and more. The mission brief contains all the details."

"I see. I assume that you mention it needs to be done from a ship for a reason?" Beth asked.

"Yes," he replied. "The area is far too dangerous for anyone below Enlightened to even think about going into. I would recommend that no one below Ascended venture inside, particularly the area along the length of the river known as the Mississippi. That river valley, and the terrain for several dozens of miles around it, is extremely inimical. I would caution you to be very careful even flying high overhead, and to read the briefing thoroughly. This mission, even though it is a very basic reconnaissance excursion, is still rather dangerous, mainly from the fact we don't have any good idea what is going on in the area at the present time. We don't really have any backup to spare right now, either, so if you get into a bad situation, it will take help quite some time to arrive. Don't be sloppy."

"This kinda sounds like a big pain in the ass," Beth muttered, reviewing the data he had sent on the mission.

"Big enough of a pain to get every participating member on the mission a completion of a Gold-level mission, yes," he replied.

"What's our timeframe?" Beth asked.

"You'll take the mission?" he asked in response.

"Yes, we'll do it, much as I hate this kind of thing," Beth said with a small sigh and a shrug.

"Two months," he answered succinctly. "If you are having any kind of trouble with the mission, please report it immediately. Just because we are stretched a bit thin on this planet currently doesn't mean that we can't spare anybody to assist at all. It will be much easier to free someone if we have some advanced warning that an issue is, or will be, cropping up."

"Roger that," Beth said, finishing her initial review of the brief. "We'll get started on this right away."

Her first task was rounding up the rest of her crew, as it were, and filling them in on what she had signed them up for. Sera had quite a few questions, while Blood's only question was if she was actually allowed to fly in local airspace. That question was pivotal, as they were supposed to do the mission from the air, and if Blood couldn't fly, they couldn't get it done. That necessitated an immediate request to Tazeen, who approved it despite Blood still being in her training. He just requested that if anyone took issue with them using Blood as a pilot while on Earth, they direct their queries to him.

With that sorted, and Sera's few questions ironed out, they just had to get started. Beth had them move into the middle of nowhere before deploying the airship, as she didn't really want anybody pestering any of them about the ship. Blood was in the pilot's chair almost before the thing finished unfolding, and Sera and Beth followed along more slowly. Even with the speed the airship could make, it would still be nearly an hour until they got to where they were supposed to be surveying, time which Beth and Sera used for some studying. They were mainly reviewing the latest maps and analysis from the area, though all of those were quite outdated at this point. The area could be changing by the week, and the latest data they had was from nearly a year ago, and even that wasn't much.

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