The week seemed to crawl by, and Beth mentioned that to Sera on Friday, after they were done with their ref duties. "I can't believe how slow that went. I feel like I know what most people with a nine-to-five go through now. It sucks."

"Hmm, I can't say I really know the feeling, at least not before this," Sera replied. "I haven't ever had any kind of normal schedule."

"Not even at the Rose?" Beth asked with a smirk.

"Especially not at the Rose," Sera returned with a big grin.

They didn't bother staying that night in their suite, as they didn't have anything they had to do at the Hall the next day, instead heading out and flying to the area where they were scanning. They spent that weekend scanning, and returned for the next week of refereeing, which was just a standard week. The third weekend of scanning had them reach only about halfway through the scans by the end of it, showing just how much ground they had to cover, as well as how time consuming such activities could be. There were ways to do it better, but most of those involved having either a much more advanced ship, which meant way more money, or having somebody way stronger do the scans. An Exalted, one specialized in recon and analysis, could do the scans in a day or less, especially if they had a profession that could provide a lot of aid to such efforts, something like Enchanting, for example.

The girls didn't have dozens of adamantine coins to buy a new ship, however, nor were they at the level of an Exalted that could complete the scans in a couple hours. Besides, if they were at that level, they would be doing like other Exalted did and exploring the Eternal Depths, or spending time researching in the City of Mended Dreams, or some other activity that powerful Ascended and Exalted spent time on. Also, an Exalted could basically do whatever they wanted no matter their organizational responsibilities. Who was going to tell them no?

Another couple weeks passed as they refereed and scanned, the three spending their free time in the evenings going over information they would need for their Gold Emblem exams. They also spent a little bit of time visiting Beth's family, though she found them a bit oppressive these days. Despite having gone through a lot over quite a few years, counting all the subjective time she had experienced, Beth still felt both some wanderlust and some desire to not be under her parents' thumb. It was nice they were still around and doing well, but visiting them a half-dozen times in a couple weeks was starting to remind her why she didn't mind being off-world for years at a time.

It wasn't quite two months later that the scans were complete, Beth ready to move on and do something else, even if that was scouting some of the places they had scanned. It turned out that she might as well be a prophet, as Tazeen assigned them another long-term mission to investigate some of the scan results. Beth was a bit suspicious that Tazeen was making the stuff up on the spot just to keep them occupied, but then again, somebody had to come up with the missions that the CRA assigned members.

That did lead to an interesting question, as who did really come up with those missions? Surely somebody at the level of a Gold Emblem wasn't putting together Gold-level missions, which meant that it would need a Platinum or Diamond Emblem to set them up. She had read a lot in her materials about missions, but it was a lot about how the missions were structured, how many people could accept or receive credit for one, how timeframes worked, how rewards worked, penalties for failure or partial completion. It was a lot of the minutia, but it she hadn't come across anything that really gave insight into how and why missions were made.

Now, she knew that some missions were requests, either from individuals, organizations, or governments. People would come to the CRA for help, a Senior Enforcer would review the request and turn it into a missions brief, and then either someone would grab the mission or a Senior would assign it directly. But there were missions that the CRA made where no request had come in, and Beth was sure that the latest mission was a part of that group. The scanning might have been requested by people outside the CRA curious and worried about what was happening on the continent, but Beth had some doubt that external agencies had also requested specific scouting missions based on the survey results before the survey was even complete. There were a couple people she could ask about her thoughts, but she figured she might as well just go to the source with her queries.

"Tazeen," Beth greeted, finding him at the front desk. It was something she was used to, but it was something he had been doing far less of lately, so much so that it looked like it surprised many of the newer members to see him there.

"Miss Beth," he responded calmly with a nod. "What do you need?"

"I had a couple questions about missions," she began.

"Is this related to the mission you were just assigned?" he asked with a very slightly arched brow.

"Yes and no," Beth answered, wiggling a hand side-to-side in front of herself. "I had a question about how missions are created."

"Many are from commissions," Tazeen interjected equitably.

"I understand about the commissions," Beth said. "But there are also missions that are created by the CRA itself. I figured I could get the best explanation by just asking somebody that knows about it."

"I understand," Tazeen said. "You are wondering how and why missions that lack a commissioner are created."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Exactly," Beth said, snapping her fingers.

"It is rather simple, overall," Tazeen explained. "We analyze the situation on a planet constantly. You will have access to those reports starting at Gold rank. From that rank on, you can create missions of up to a level below you to take care of certain tasks. Missions we create ourselves are typically broken down into two broad categories; firstly are those missions that are fulfilling a need of the CRA or the local Hall, such as replenishing supplies or asset retrieval, those kinds of things; secondly are those missions that involve tackling a problem before we are even asked to handle it, such as the mission you are on now. Preemptive measures are common for Gold-level missions."

"How would you even know where to start when making up the mission?" Beth asked with a frown.

"There's a rubric," Tazeen replied with a slight shrug.

"Oh. Well, that makes it simpler," Beth said with a small, slightly sheepish smile.

"Indeed. Is there anything else?" he said.

"Any other kinds of missions?" Beth asked.

"Yes, but rarely," he answered immediately. "Not all the business we handle is a mission. Arbitrating a dispute or getting involved in a matter of local law or policing is something that we have to do as part of our responsibilities. As such, there are a lot of tasks that you will wind up doing, especially as you climb higher in the Association, that isn't a mission. Depending on what you are doing, how you are doing it, and a number of other factors, you will still be compensated for the work, but it will not be a mission. The most common general mission type, outside of what I previously explained, would be bounty missions. We are not, as a rule, bounty hunters, but if someone infringes on the rules that we are duty and honor bound to enforce, we will sometimes go after them."

"Like that, uh, guy that attacked me real early on?" Beth asked.

"That guy?" Tazeen asked, eyebrow arching farther. "Ah, I see. Jaq and Baelvyr took care of that. Hmm, yes, he was wanted by several organizations, including the CRA, though his known crimes weren't quite as bad as his suspected crimes. Considering he did attempt to murder you and your companion in cold blood, we could reasonably assume that many of the things he was merely suspected of were true."

"How'd he even get here, anyway? Considering how well you guys monitor the teleportation formations," Beth asked.

"Ours are not the only teleportation networks," Tazeen said. "Besides that, there are teleportation arrays that can be used to fling oneself to a specific coordinate. Many criminal elements use these arrays to travel places they shouldn't be to do things they don't want us, or others, to know about."

"That sounds dangerous," Beth said.

"Extremely," Tazeen replied. "Such arrays are consumables that are highly risky to use. The chance that they fling you off course to some destination in the middle of nowhere, or the middle of a sun, is second only to the chance that they explode upon activation. Those blasts can be quite spectacular. And deadly."

"Crazy. And what was his plan for getting away?" Beth asked.

"Criminals are not often known for their overwhelming brilliance," Tazeen said, a faint note of sarcasm tinting his voice. "I suspect that he had a very simple storage power, considering Baelvyr did not find any kind of spatial items on what little was left of his body. I suspect he had an item or an array block on him that would let him teleport away from the planet to a specific destination, likely a lawless world where he could offload everything he took from here."

"It wouldn't be legal, what he was doing?" Beth asked, frowning a little.

"Well," Tazeen hesitated slightly. "It's not exactly a cut-and-dry case. He was clearly infringing upon a newly integrated world, which the CRA affords certain special protections. On the other hand, the rule of finders keepers, as many would say, plays a large part across the universe. I don't know that he would have gotten more than a slap on the wrist if we had caught him taking treasures and opportunities, if even that. Of course, that would be disregarding the fact that he was a wanted criminal, and that on top of his unprovoked and lethal attack upon you and your companion."

"Interesting," Beth said. "Anyway, good to know you guys had his number once I called it in, but back to the mission stuff. Can you send my group and me a copy of that rubric and the directions? I'd like us to look over it before getting to Gold."

"Proactive," Tazeen commented, sending her a message as soon as she was done asking. "I will warn you, different Hall Masters will have different guidelines on what constitutes enough to make a mission. There's also a question of who does the work and how, and I'm talking about creating the mission and filing the reports, not doing the mission itself. As you may know, everyone that was at this Hall after the initiation happened on Earth is well familiar with each other and understand each other's workflows and predilections. Other Hall Masters are not as lax or as freeform in the same manner that Baelvyr will run a Hall he is nominally in charge of. It is also not usual for anywhere but extremely large Halls to have so many high-ranking members; we had four, which is three more than most places would have, even in large cities."

"Right, also good info," Beth said with a nod. "I'll review this stuff and keep what you said in mind."

"Let me know if you require anything else," Tazeen said, dismissing her with a short, sharp nod.

Beth returned to the suite and explained to Blood and Sera why they had gotten a message from the stoic elf, the three choosing to page through the files together, at least briefly. It was a lot of predefined terms and rules for when to make a mission, how to make it, how to rank it, how to write the mission brief, how to take a report, how to file reports, how to close it out, and more besides. It was a lot of dense, conditional terms and explanations that had Blood bored right away, though she at least skimmed it before going back to doing…Blood things. Sera and Beth read through it more thoroughly, though Beth did need a couple cups of hunting spice with redgold salt liberally sprinkled in to get through the documents.

After reviewing that information, it was time for them to go over the data from the scans and the mission Tazeen had assigned them, deciding where to go first. There were more than two dozen sites that they had to scout; it wasn't that they had to clear those sites, but there were reports that they had to do on each site. If they wanted to explore further or do more, they could, as there was nothing stopping them from going further, but they didn't have to do a deep exploration of those sites. Given that, they poured over the sites to figure out where they were going to go first as well as try to figure out a rough order, which was a little difficult based on just the scans. They eventually settled on an order that would have them going roughly south to north, so they would be starting with a site by the Gulf of Mexico, and then they would swing by New Orleans, which had a Hall, but much outside the very center of the city was in an unknown state.

The first site they were exploring was scanned as a dungeon, though they would have to confirm it themselves. That was all they had to do, technically, getting eyes on the dungeon and taking an external scan of it, but they were going to run it, barring it was way above their current power level. If they had to do some leveling to get the whole thing kicked off, they could spend the weekends and the evenings in Beth's gate leveling. They knew that the sites would be powerful, would be high level, would be challenging, considering that the mana density was so high and so few people had been exploring or fighting through the area. The first thing they needed to do was take a look, however, and see exactly what they were up against.

Now that they had the details and knew what they were about, they flew out that Friday afternoon, though Tazeen had told them they would be working through the next weekend, so they would have to figure out a bunch of stuff this weekend. It would be good to know for sure that they needed to do a lot of leveling, though Beth was hoping they wouldn't need to do any rebirths for a while. They could push into the two hundreds pretty easily just fighting in her gate overnight and on the weekends for a couple weeks. If they were finding a ton of sites that were level four hundred or something, that was going to mean some scouting and they would be done for now, which would be disappointing, to say the least.

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