“Shhh! Quiet!” Josephine Wong waved her hand to shut the agent up.

Shortly after the entire building was flattened, broken pieces of bricks, drywalls and wood pillars that were blown far away started moving back to the place where the building once was. The burnt hole on the ground somehow started “growing” back to what it was, but the material that filled the hole looked like some kind of black and dark green goo. The pieces of brick, wood pillars were also put back in their original places, and for those that were too severely damaged, they were replaced by the goo that changed into their shapes.

“Hmm, I thought I missed something. Oh well.” Jianmen shook his head and turned to Josephine: “I think I know how to deal with the issue now - I need to prepare a bit. The kneecap you mentioned and described in the job description, the landing site is still sealed off right?”

“Yes. It’s completely sealed off, not only did we block off the three block radius, we also sealed the sewers underground, to prevent the dark energy from seeping into the ground and polluting the water system.” the agent answered.

“Okay. Nice. But I am not fully prepared today, in order to correctly handle the situation as gracefully as possible - I will need to do some preparation - from enchanted artifacts, to material for certain circles and arrays, and some gems and herbs, if that’s possible.”

“Whatever you need, just talk to agent Hall here.” Josephine Wong nodded: “He would assist you in this case. And if you have any informational requests and questions, you know how to find me.”

“No problem. Thanks. ” Jianmen walked out from the building, and with a clap of his hands the half destroyed building crumbled onto the ground then imploded, leaving nothing but a burnt hole on the ground and ashes spread all over the place.

“Agent Hall, it’ll be your duty to assist Mr. Yu on all matters, be it material requirements, requests for access and other privileges or anything having to do with processes and procedures. That’s an order, am I clear?” Josephine Wong said to the agent.

“Yes, Ma’am.” the agent nodded.

“Okay, Jianmen, I’ll leave you to it. I know I can count on you.” Josephine Wong gently patted on Jianmen’s arm: “Now, before I’m off to my things, can I have a word?”

“Sure.”

Josephine Wong pulled Jianmen to the side and cast a spell around them to prevent anyone from overhearing their conversation.

“How long is it gonna take?” Josephine Wong asked: “You know, with safety concerns addressed and complete resolution of the issues we have here.”

“I’d say five days to a week.” Jianmen answered: “And that’s considering the requirement that we need to keep the additional collateral damage to a minimum.”

“What about three days?” Josephine Wong asked.

“Three days - how do you feel about me leveling a few more buildings like that?” Jianmen pointed at the burnt hole behind him: “From what I can tell, there’s quite a lot of historic buildings in the area - ”

“Don’t worry about those - this entire area’s gonna get completely rebuilt anyways. And no one’s gonna live even close to here in a few decades.” Josephine Wong sighed and said: “And there’s also another thing I think you should know, it’s kinda serious.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“The federal government has something that could repair the results and aftermath of severe catastrophic events and disasters. They’d been saving it for quite a while for special circumstances, and what happened in San Francisco sort of cut it as one of these circumstances.” Josephine Wong slightly tilted her head: “Sound familiar?”

“Stone of Negation, they have the Stone of Negation.” Jianmen scoffed, rubbed his temples and looked up: “Of course.”

“I know, I was shocked too.” Josephine Wong sighed: “And they’ve been debating whether they wanted to use it for this. From what you told me about it, they will need to have someone who knows what they’re doing in order to use it.”

“Okay, but if they were planning to use Stones of Negation to fix this mess, why are you coming to me?”

“Because I am pretty sure the people they were about to commission, don’t know what they will be doing.” Josephine Wong shook her head: “But their backers, who have a lot of influence over how this decision will be made, had been pushing really hard. Now, I don’t want them to create another disaster just to fix one disaster - so I would need some proof that we are able to handle this situation and resolve them, without employing some kind of galactic scale eraser and commission it to a group of shaky hands.”

“Understood. Consider it done in three days.” Jianmen nodded: “And uh, can you ask them when they’ve got the chance: what’s the price of a piece of Stone of Negation?”

“I’ll be sure to ask them for you.”

Just when Josephine Wong retracted the spell, Jianmen’s phone started ringing, it was Caroline.