No one knew how much money they were going to get, it might partly be the reason the crowd had shown so much support. If they had known the stakes were so high, the trip would've been far less relaxing and more competitive.
Even Maximus' group had no idea as they looked blankly at the cheques in their hands. Isabelle had driven them to compete as she kept harping about helping the poor, they harbored a little grudge but it was all washed away once they read the amount on the cheque. Sending guilty glances towards the giddy Isabelle, they each left the stage and began talking.
*****
Maximus laid on his bed, counting the wads of cash in his hand. After spending more than two weeks in this world, he had an idea of the value of the currency in his hand. And he had to admit, it felt pretty damn good. Even in his previous world he had never had possession of such a huge amount. A lot of it had gone in the equipment Seraphina provided, much better than his 'cheap' equipment according to her but a lot was still left.
Getting up from his bed, he went over to his pc and once began his search for articles and news related to supernatural beings. After getting back home from the trip, Seraphina had modified his pc so that no one would be able to track him. He previously didn't search anything which would arouse suspicion but now he could freely do it.
When she saw his vigilante equipment though, she was impressed with his thinking of what items were needed but annoyed at how dumb could he be for not checking it for trackers and such. Surprisingly though, there was no tracker in his equipment at all. Did that mean the organization and that store weren't in cahoots?
They proceeded to clean up the gangs for the following week, catching the attention of that organization again. Strangely though, their troops just sent a warning but stopped taking any action.
It prompted Seraphina to hack into several local networks to see if she could catch any traces of what's happening. She even tried hacking directly into the organization's network and only partially succeeded, managing to steal several files at the periphery of their importance scale but alas, nothing important was in those files. Even now, nothing important was up on the internet.
He got up and was about to leave when the knob of the main door to his apartment turned. Reflexively, he quickly initiated his ability and almost used it when he spotted an unfamiliar face. A sense of foreign familiarity washed over him as the person frowned and snapped,
"Done looking at? Is my body worth taking over?"
Maximus' breath halted while gazing at the women as he realized the origin of the foreign familiarity, it was nothing other than William's memories. This person was his sister. Their first time meating. Due to his paranoia of Seraphina's ability, he had been training in ways to not show any emotions and it worked. Making the face William used to, he said,
"What are you talking about?"
The woman simply ignored as she walked over to her bedroom and closed the door. Maximus narrowed his eyes as went into the kitchen and cooked his breakfast. After about a half an hour, he comfortably sat on the sofa and put the breakfast on the table ahead of him as he kept watching different news, not letting go of hopes to find more information.
"We have failed yet again to leave our planet earth… Cosmosx says they'll keep trying to enter space… They say that they are hopeful in the coming years, what do you think?"
As he was slurping on his noodles, a piece of information entered his ears as he jerked his head towards the television. A small explosion went off in his head as he seriously watched this current piece of news.
'What? Humans haven't explored space yet? No moon landing? What the fuck? How?'
He put down his bowl of noodles and quickly searched more about it online on his pc. After browsing for a while, he thought while furrowing his brows,
'Aircrafts crash into something after reaching a certain height. Any kind of aircraft, explosives or objects crash into something invisible and don't go up any further. What is this new thing now? Experiments say they can't see it nor can it be colored. So, it's just an invisible shield covering earth? There's no scientific explanation for it either. Damn, papers say it has existed as long as they could remember. Could supernatural abilities exist from that long ago?'
He returned on his sofa and continued eating breakfast while listening to news, eager to come across more such news.
Just then, the door to the bedroom opened as his sister emerged with wet hair cascading down her shoulders. She entered the kitchen to make breakfast and saw that a bowl of noodles were already there. She simply picked it up and sat on another sofa as she similarly looked at the news.
After a moment of silence, she taunted, "Why? Eager to learn more about our world? Figures, that idiot William never went out of his house much except for university, which was also a force of habit."
Maximus had anticipated this, he continued eating his noodles as he responded calmly, not taking eyes off the news,
"Again, what are you talking about?"
Evelyn cocked her head to the side and snapped, "You damn well know what I am talking about."
"I don't."
"What is up with your behavior these days then?"
"What's wrong with improving?"
"You? Improving? In a day? Don't make me laugh. Tell me, what do you want?"
Maximus made an annoyed face as he looked into her direction and replied, "Why can't I improve in a day? I got enlightened okay, enlightened." Saying so, he stood up to refill his bowl. When he came back, another barrage of questions hit his ears even before he sat down,
"Assuming your lies, what made you change? Why did you even feel the need to change in the first place? And where were you in the first place? I had some work for you and searched your usual clubs and grounds, you were nowhere to be found. What were you doing?"
Maximus finally couldn't hold it in any longer,
"Bitch, Fuck Off!"