When I opened my duffel back, almost everything was as I expected. There was a 0.000032176686316154822837899221145 probability that at least a few of the items in my scouter set would be missing.

I had hoped it was not my knife or lighter. When going through the gate, we were ready for almost anything - but every one of us dreaded coming through under equipped. It happened to Bilkes and Wietze. They opened their duffel bag on arrival, finding almost everything missing except for a broken brick which had shattered, leaving bits of red caked against the corners of the bag. Still, not as bad as being phased into a wall.

No wapol, no Train and no Cinder. Bilkes was pissed. The knife they later found but it was in the hands of the local police. They had spotted a child carrying what looked like a small radio -- the wapols. The knife, too dangerous for a child, was confiscated and later examined by the Italians. Bilkes argued he wanted it back but the police were curious about him almost instantly, despite his height and somewhat familial sounding accent. It was Wietze who had the bright idea: sneak into the station and retrieve the wapol and knife. And, to his credit, they found the station was unoccupied as the local gals had come by that day for the Igmana family, to pay homage for the family and distract the officers while the Igmana thugs pilfered the charity next door.

With that the two were able to locate a reasonable Destin by the highway where they jumped and got back to tell me the story.

I spat on the ground, holding back a curse. Travelling in time always brought unpleasantness with it, like a stale, aged odor in an icy fridge - because humans were encased in time, and we were not. They were sitting, like shaking dolls going through impulse - while we were not. I didn't hate my heritage, I'm a third human, but I hated the idea of traveling, the idea of enclosed motion. But our hunts were useful to the RELESEA, and the pay, well, the pay speaks for itself: I own about a quarter of New Founders as a result of travels like these. It's why I risk being wiped out.

It takes a certain tolerance for pain to dive and find yourself without a knife. I have to spend about three weeks getting to know everyone in the area, seeing who has gold and where I might go to get some. When I've found some, I manage some excuse to borrow a necklace or take a look at a ring and so forth. I transmute the tiny block afterwards when I'm alone and let the nanites do the rest. They finish in about 3 minutes with a new knife. I can then leave.

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But now, Ireland didn't seem the place to be knifeless. I had to find shelter and then get acquainted with the strange. My wapol said there were 302 inhabitants in the vicinity. There were some with significant wealth and there was lots of gold nearby. I would go to meet one of these fortunate people and look for a way in. You can't simply ask, "I'd like a small amount of the gold you have in your house which I've detected and I'm from several thousand years away, several light years away...." "Oh sure! Sure!'

Gold has an exclusionary tolerance of 2.48 to dives. We need it to plan larger incursions, say 1500 men, into a time drop.

Let's say a certain RELESEA argent wants to take prisoner several thousand people from an area of time that is very incident heavy. You move one iota of dust from the place, you do one dive and you annihilate the race. It's been done, still is done to day - but Gold has prevented many of these atrocities. Transmuted gold leaves a collvold measure in the mesa of time putrification. In time, even if a 1500 man incursion occurred, took prisoners, the whole place would look like a theme park to the time drop. Everyone would be oblivious, life would go on, we would be abominably rich. Hence, my occupation. I've seen it done with a large amount of gold transmuted, the chains on the process are so pure - it would be like living the reality for the first time. And best of all, everyone is oblivious. But the spoils are the proof.

When prisoners were taken last, I remember their huddled strange faces, looking at their captors in confusion. We were taller by about 3 feet, lean, icy blue eyes peering behind smooth black masks. Ninjas they must have thought. Demons. But underneath we carried the same pale skin and spoke the same tongues. We came from them.

Now we came for them. Typically they become servants to the argent and others are put to war in certain sectors for gold mining.

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