Chapter 2: Chapter 2 – Contract
"You are funny. Mr. Freeman," the woman said with a friendly smile, no hint of laughter on her face.
"Isn't that a normal question?" Kyle asked as he looked around.
The other four were really just standing there, doing nothing.
One of them was keeping his boot on Kyle's throat, but there was no weight behind it anymore.
Two others were watching while the man with the shirt was readying himself to deliver another kick to Kyle's torso.
Kyle awkwardly scooted out from beneath the boot as he kept looking around in confusion.
"The payment and duties of this job are not related to money," the woman spoke calmly, with a perfect voice.
This pulled Kyle out of his confusion, and he looked at the woman with raised brows.
"How is a job not related to money?" he asked. "I ain't living to work. I work to live."
"Have you not noticed that you are in an unusual situation right now, Mr. Freeman?" she spoke calmly. "Is money the only thing on your mind, even in a situation like this?"
"Of course!" Kyle answered immediately. "My entire life revolves around money!"
"If you accept the job, it won't anymore," the lady said.
"Ah, so the payment is good?" Kyle asked.
The lady didn't lose her composure.
Instead, she slowly snapped her fingers.
And the four other people in the room vanished.
"This is a free service," the lady said. "The people burdening you are no more."
Kyle blinked a couple of times in confusion.
"Eh, what?" he asked.
"They are gone," she said.
"In what way?"
"They are gone. They don't exist anymore," she explained.
Kyle had some difficulties wrapping his mind around that sentence.
Gone?
As in, dead?
But how?
Why?
'Am I dreaming?' Kyle thought.
"Are you questioning reality right now, Mr. Freeman?" the lady asked.
Kyle looked with surprise at the lady. "Was it that obvious?"
"It's a common reaction," she explained. "No, this is not a dream. If it were a dream, you could do things that you wouldn't usually be able to do. Why don't you try it?"
Kyle blinked a couple of times.
What did he really want to do right now?
He really wanted to punch that guy again, but he was gone.
So, instead, he wanted the guy to appear so that he could punch him again.
Sadly, nothing happened.
Kyle and the lady remained silent for a while.
Slowly, Kyle realized that he wasn't in a dream.
There was no chaos, and he could think with clarity.
"Okay, what's going on?" he asked.
"I am offering you a job," the lady repeated.
"Why? What qualifications do I have that you are coming into my apartment to ask me personally?" Kyle asked.
"A fitting heart," she answered.
"Ehm," Kyle slowly uttered. "That seems a bit strange. I mean, I'm not kicking any puppies, but I'm also not the most law-abiding citizen."
"I didn't say you had a good heart, Mr. Freeman," the lady answered. "I said you have a fitting one."
"Fitting to or for what?" Kyle asked.
"Fitting for the job," the lady answered.
"Are you doing this on purpose?" Kyle asked again. "You keep talking about the job without explaining anything. I need a little more information here, Magic Lady."
"Are you interested?" she asked.
Kyle almost wanted to groan in exasperation.
Why was talking to this woman so difficult?!
This was high school all over again!
"Sure, give me the details," Kyle said as he sat down on his bed, which lost all of its elasticity and felt like a brick.
"Ah," Kyle said before the lady could answer as he looked at his bed. "So, you froze time, not just people. Cool."
The lady just looked at Kyle with professional friendliness. "You seem to be taking the situation quite well."
Kyle just shrugged. "I have no more fucks to give. Too much shit happened today. I just want to go to bed and forget everything that happened, but I can't do that right now. So, yeah, shoot! Give me your alien, interdimensional, whatever bullshit."
Yet, a moment later, Kyle felt regret for his words and sighed. "Sorry, for that. It's not your fault. I shouldn't have been so rude. It's just... you know..."
The lady's demeanor hadn't changed in the slightest. "You should listen to your heart more, Mr. Freeman. Mind and soul are a team, not enemies."
"You seem to know a lot about me, Mrs. Magic," Kyle answered.
"I have to," she answered. "It is my job to find fitting employees."
"Ah, you're a recruiter," Kyle said.
"You could call me a recruiter," she answered.
"Am I allowed to know the name of the client?" he asked.
"I must apologize, but I can't share that detail with you at the moment," she answered.
'Can't even tell me who she's working for,' Kyle thought. 'Mysterious.'
The next moment, a sheet of paper appeared in the woman's hands, and it floated over to Kyle.
Kyle just grabbed it out of the air, not caring about any of the supernatural bullshit that was happening right now.
He was just done.
Sure enough, it was an employment contract.
Yet, as Kyle read through it, he blinked several times in confusion.
"Enforcer Trainee," Kyle read. "That's the job title?"
The lady just nodded.
After reading through the contract, Kyle just held it to his side as he looked at the lady with a skeptical expression.
"Alright, to summarize," he said before coughing for dramatic effect. "I am supposed to enter different worlds that have magic and stuff, become some kind of Overseer, and then do whatever your client tells me to do. Is that correct?"
"That is correct," the lady answered.
"Shit, this sounds like one of these isekai animes that all the weebs watch nowadays," Kyle commented.
"Fiction involving world travel has been introduced to make the concept easier to digest when we scout people," the lady said.
"Mhm," Kyle answered. "You also made the Matrix?"
"We did," the lady answered.
Kyle just nodded a couple of times as if he had just heard something mundane about the weather.
"Okay," he added. "You can freeze time, right? That probably means you can do much more stuff, and the fact that you constantly say 'we' means there are more like you, right?"
The lady nodded.
"Why not ask them to become Overseer?" Kyle asked. "One of you guys could accomplish whatever I could do a million times faster. You could probably deal with hundreds of worlds or whatever within the time we have been talking."
"It's not that easy, Mr. Freeman," the lady answered. "There are certain complications that make it impossible."
"Okay," Kyle said, ending the topic. "What do you get out of this?"
"What do you mean?" the lady asked.
"What does your client get out of this?" Kyle repeated. "I've worked with tons of shady companies, and I know for a fact that a company will never give things out for free. There is always a return. If you are willing to get me out of this oppressive life and give me a brand new one with tons of things that all the weebs would jizz over, there must be something you want from me."
"Is your organization a non-profit?" Kyle asked.
The lady's smile changed ever so slightly.
Kyle wasn't sure, but he thought she looked a bit helpless.
"No," she answered.
"Alright," Kyle answered. "So, you believe there is something that I, some nobody from a non-magical world, can bring to you, people from a super magical world or whatever. It most definitely isn't my power or magic or whatever. It's also not my education since I only finished high school. You can get millions and billions of those."
"Tell me, what's the other side of the coin? I want to know what I am signing. This entire magic bullshit might turn into some eternal hell of mining for some kind of magic ore for thousands of years. That would be worse than my current life," Kyle said.
The lady waited a bit to answer. This was the first time she hesitated.
"If you manage to become an Overseer, we want you to act according to what we want. You can view it as you becoming a politician and us lobbying," she explained.
Kyle furrowed his brows.
What the lady said made sense, but his business instincts were telling him that it wasn't that simple.
"In the position of Overseer, would I have power over something you can't do?" Kyle asked.
The lady's smile turned a bit more strained.
"Not exactly," she answered.
"Then, what's stopping you from doing it?" Kyle asked. "The way you phrase it makes it sound like you could do these things with much less investment and more efficiency. What does your client have to gain out of scouting me?"
"Can they tell that I'm sure to become an Overseer? Can they see into the future and want to invest in me before I become powerful?"
The lady's smile became less pronounced.
"No," she answered, with a less friendly voice.
"Then, what the fuck?" Kyle asked. "Why are you not telling me? I feel like signing this will doom me to an eternity of something I will regret forever!"
"Do you want the job or not?" the lady asked flatly, her smile gone.
Kyle just looked at her with squinted eyes.
Well, he really wanted to, but this thing literally sounded too good to be true.
Something had to be wrong here.
Then, Kyle looked back at the contract.
"Is it possible to amend the contract?" Kyle asked.
The lady's smile returned. "Yes, if the contract is not to your liking, we can change it."
Kyle nodded.
Then, he turned the contract around and pointed at one clause.
"The Enforcer Trainee takes all actions committed as an order by the client onto their own conscience. The client assures that it will not make any illegal requests."
When the lady saw the clause Kyle highlighted, her smile became strained again. "I must apologize, but that clause can't be changed."
Kyle squinted his eyes at her some more.
"So, this is what it's all about," Kyle said.
The lady didn't answer.
"You want me to do legal but shady shit. If the magical space police are on your ass, I'm the guy taking the fall," Kyle added.
The lady still didn't answer.
"Why didn't you say so?" Kyle asked with a relieved voice, falling back on his bed. "I thought I would enter some kind of eternal hell. If it's just some shady shit I have to do, it's fine. Hell, I've been laundering money from stolen credit cards for over a year now, and I've been scamming the state out of taxes for years."
"Fine, I'll accept the job. Might as well become your thug."
The lady's smile returned.
"Please, sign here," she said, pointing at the bottom.