The picnic at the Island’s park district had plenty of people. Danielle Geller was at a picnic table, which she was sharing with Thalia Mercer, Rufus and Vincent. Jory was sitting at another table with Clive and the brother-sister pair of Rick and Phoebe Geller. Gary was sitting in a folding chair with a sandwich the length of Jason’s arm.

“You know you could cut that into smaller pieces, right?” Farrah asked him.

“Then it wouldn’t be an enormous sandwich,” Gary said. “It would just be a bunch of sandwiches.”

Cassandra was sitting next to Jason on a blanket. Humphrey and Gabrielle had their own blanket, like Jason and Cassandra, but Humphrey kept shooting nervous glances at his mother watching over them.

“It feels like it’s been all work and no play lately,” Jason said. “Sand pirates, underground lairs, sand pirates again.”

“There’s been a little play,” Cassandra said, lips curving in a tantalising arc.

“You are a beacon of luminous delight in a dark sea of obligation,” he said and gave her a gentle kiss.

“See?” Gabrielle said. “It isn’t that hard.”

Humphrey looked nervously at his mother again.

“Uh…”

Rufus stood up from his position at the picnic table, raising up a glass.

“Here’s to our iron-rankers and their first bronze-rank monster,” he said. “Not to mention two racial power evolutions.”

As the others raised their glasses, Jason smiled, Humphrey looked embarrassed and Clive looked surprised to be involved at all.

“Jason,” Rufus said. “You’ve come a long way from the confused, half-naked man we met in a basement in a cannibal’s cage.”

“You say that like we weren’t in cages too,” Gary interjected.

“Thank you, Gary,” Rufus said, then turned back to Jason. “Even then, you were something special. Something strange, certainly, but also special. Some of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your actions that day. Now, look at you. Taking down bronze-rank monsters; terrorising Danielle’s poor trainees. We’re all adventurers here and, I think, rather good ones. You may have come to us from very far away, but you belong here, just as much as any of us.”

Jason rubbed a hand over his mouth, misty-eyed. He got to his feet, glass in hand and looked over the assemblage of friends.

“Thank you, Rufus,” he said. “Thank you all. I’m a stranger in a strange land, and I know I can be… difficult, even at the best of times. You’ve all helped me, guided me, taught me, challenged me. Put up with me, more often than not.”

“No kidding,” Farrah called out.