How did he even got here without me noticing it??
Before I didn't notice it, but this guy presence was weak… to the point that if you are not paying attention to him, you would forget that he was here. It's because of this that I took me all this time to notice that he didn't have an aura like everyone else. At least there wasn't anything that I could see.
"…Stan, why are you following us?"
"I thought we were going to have lunch…"
… did I tell him to come with us? I tried to remember our talk from before, but I didn't find any moment that could make him misunderstand me.
"Me, Hayley, her father, and the rest of my friends are going to have lunch…"
"Ough… so I'm not invited?" He gave me a nervous smile.
"Sorry Stan, we are still setting up here, and it would be rude for Isabella if we come with more people… maybe next time?" Why I'm trying to explain things to him???
"Sure, it was just that I'm low on points lately, so I thought… Hey!! Free food!"
I don't know why I felt guilty for it, he invited himself, but for some reason, I felt like the bad guy right now.
"You should try to work a little more maybe you can get more points that way."
"I used to do that, but right now I can't take more jobs… is a kind of punishment…"
I got a bad feeling about it…
"What did you do?"
"You know, how every man's dream power is to be invisible?"
"It's not, but go on…" I could feel where this was going.
"Well, I can't become invisible, but my ability is my lack of presence…"
Well, that explained why he got behind me without me noticing it.
"Ok… and what did you do."
"I tried to use my power in the noblest way… I tried to sneak into the public showers…"
"But since you are not invisible they catch you trying to sneak in?"
"No… they catch me after I got inside…"
I wasn't sure what kind of response should I give him, there is no way I will let this guy go near any of the girls.
"Well, that's what you get for using your power like that…"
"It was a noble purpose!!"
"Peeking at girls is not a noble purpose."
"You are starting to sound like them…"
Seriously, what is wrong with this guy?
"Well Stan, I have to go. See you around."
"Okay, Spence. You owe me a lunch."
He went back to where we came from… wait, isn't this guy suppose to be guarding that garage?
…
Since I have no idea how to deal with Stan, I decided to ignore everything related to him for now.
I went back to the apartment, this time I looked around constantly to be sure that he wasn't following me. Since I stopped to talk with Stan, Hayley and her father were already at the apartment when I arrived.
"Hey, what took you so long?" Hayley saw me arrive. After being reunited with her father, they were in the living room together, and she was smiling again in high spirits.
"I noticed that Stan was coming with us and stopped to talk with him for a while."
Mr. Ryan looked at me.
"He wanted to eat here?"
"Yes, luckily he started to talk, so I noticed him."
"Yeah I remember the second day he was working with us at work I made a comment about eating meat that day, the next thing I knew is that he was sitting on my table, I didn't know what to do so I ended feeding him…"
"Who are you talking about?" At that moment Hope joined the conversation.
"The guard of the garage…" I gave her the short version of what happened and the thing he told.
"… and he got punished, because of that."
"Have someone checked that guy's head?"
"There is nothing wrong with his head… he went through some tests when he got punished, and everything came back fine, he is weird but once you get used to him… he's still weird."
We laughed at Mr. Ryan comment. Afterward, Isabella called us to eat, we introduced Mr. Ryan to Isabella and Dana.
We ate all together, he told us about what he has been doing, and we did the same… he knew about what happened with the alligator and asked us about it. We also told him the story of how Isabella and Dana joined our group. And he was surprised by everything that happened since he left us in my old home.
When we finished eating, some of us had a cup of coffee.
"Spencer do you guys already have assigned jobs?"
"Not yet, I have to talk with Dr. Harting, but I have to see what he has to offer."
"Usually you would be assigned somewhere according to your abilities, it's surprising that he hasn't assigned anything to you yet."
"That's because he can't do that… it was part of the deal."
"What do you mean?"
"We are in an alliance, so he can't give orders to anyone here, of course, we will work hard, but if I feel that something is too dangerous or we don't want to do a certain task we can reject it…"
I explained the conditions under which I accepted to come here to Mr. Ryan.
"Nice deal you got there is a lot of the normal people that before had some academic degree and now is useless and ended doing shitty jobs, and on the contrary, there are some people, who never really work before with good abilities that have to work a lot because there are not enough people in their areas."
"What kind of jobs are there?"
"Well you already know about, the hunting groups, besides this, there is a need for teachers, doctors, and law enforcers. Right now the investigation area is in need of experts to recover the technology as fast as possible. People good with numbers for the warehouse to keep up with the points. Messengers are also needed to move the information around, and of course, manual labor to clean the collapsed buildings and build the greenhouses is a priority right now."
I nodded to all he explained while thinking what places were right for each of us. Even if I want them to learn to fight against beasts in the case of an emergency, I feel like it would be good for all to have a regular job and the hunting being a part-time thing. I plan to be an almost full-time hunter because of the system points I can get from it, but it wasn't necessary for the others to take the same risk.
"I have to go back to work." Mr. Ryan stood up ready to leave, he probably already stayed more than he was supposed to so he has to go back to the workshop. Hayley accompanied him to the first floor. Afterward, I had a short talk about the job options with everyone.
"You guy go relax today, I'll go to see Dr. Harting and talk to him about what we will be doing."
Dante got up and followed me. Dana was tired, so she fell asleep.
I went to the school, it brought back a lot of memories since this was my high school, so I was familiar with it.
There was a lot of people moving around but no one stopped me, and I arrived right away to the headmaster office. And knocked the door.
"Come in!"
I opened the door. And found Dr. Harting with a significant amount of book and paper around him.
"Give me a minute…"
It surprised me that the office had a lot of books around, I was tempted to absorb them, but it would be weird if I start to touch books and they became dust the second later.
"Sorry for the wait, I suppose you are here to discuss your jobs, I suppose you already discussed it with your group and have some ideas?"
"A couple, but I wanted to talk before that. I would like for them to have the option to not work if they come with me to hunt."
"No problem, the hunting group is the one that lacks people the most and not many want to do that job. So there is no problem to do that."
"About the jobs, I would like for G to either work with Hayley's father or building stuff, I don't know what you have like that."
"Aaron is currently working on something too complex he has the project to reestablish communications, so I don't think how good it would be for Gerhard, but in the armory, there is a group that is working in making weapons out of beasts parts. They also have other side projects, but they are focusing on that right now if not, there are also building groups working on the greenhouse."
"I think he will prefer the armory, but I have to confirm it with him."
"Of course. Someone else?"
"Isabella will work just during the time that Dana is in classes, she used to be a nurse."
"Good since there is a group in the clinic most of the people with medical knowledge is there, and we lack people here."
We continued talking about the jobs. I already talked about this with everyone, so it's not like I'm forcing jobs into them.
Hayley will help in the warehouse with the food that could spoil, that way she has a place to use her power freely, and Rose will be in the hunting groups with me and also will help from time to time with the accounting in the warehouse, she will go around a couple of days to learn first.
Hope will be working at the library in the afternoon, I want her to read everything that could eventually be useful, in the morning she will have ability and shooting practice.
Dr. Harting wrote a bunch of letters for us to present in the respective places tomorrow.