Jerry had led everyone a different way to the same warehouse, he had parked the carriage at the nearby stable, Jerry was intending to switch out the horses, as they would still be the stable's property, eventually he would have to inform them he was leaving. They would have to purchase their own eventually, he said. It was much closer than where they had originally entered the town.
So the six of them, Jerry, Susan, the baby Robby, Layla, Sara and Kurt went into the waiting room and were led to a bigger room for the meeting, Carl wasn't there, and was running late. Layla had been particularly pleased with the large conference room.
After a short wait a finely dressed man, with gold chains, and rings entered the room. He was very outwardly displaying his wealth. He looked around and made eye contact with Robby, "Is that — who I think it is?"
Susan smiled back, "Yes this is our son, Robby wanna say hi Robby," gently making the baby his hand, "this is uncle Carl."
"Damn right Uncle Carl," Carl moved to get a better closer look at the baby, "ohh he has Jerry's eyes, too bad so I guess he isn't very lucky in the looks department, sorry guys."
"What is that supposed to mean, you wish you had my rugged good looks," said Jerry. "I don't got be all flashy like you. And I'm not going to fall for it, my wife's eyes are the most beautiful in the world." Susan seemed to enjoy that.
"Your rugged bald looks," said Carl. Sara, Kurt and Layla attempted to back laugh at that and failed, if they had been drinking anything it would have been spit out.
"Do you wanna hold him?" said Sara, trying to diffuse the two.
"Yes!" After taking the baby for a while playing a few rounds of 'goo goo ga ga', Carl gave him back to Susan, "okay, but I know you all didn't come down here to introduce me to your boy, why am I getting this seemingly pleasant surprise?"
"It is to introduce you to my friends, well, technically employers here. This is Kurt, Sara, and Layla. I believe you will be interested in what they have to say."
"Interesting," said Carl, giving the three a up and down, "what could these young people possibly have that would interest someone like me?"
Kurt brought out a bag and placed down a very large manna stone, ten pounds of each adamantium ore, mythril ore, and oracalcum ore. These metals were known to be materials only on the other side of the gate. Carefully displaying all of them in front of Carl. Carl's eyes started to light up a little, but he kept a straight face.
"Hmm, well that is interesting," Carl picked up the mana stone. "Wow that is a big one isn't it." Bringing the stone close to one of his eyes."So, I seem to be remembering this report or what you could call a warning, from the clan about some smuggling of their adamantinum, this wouldn't happen to be that would it?" said Carl
"I can assure you that this was not, as was never clan property," said Kurt.
"That's an interesting choice of words. If it's not from one of the clans, you would have to have at least access to their gate, that's the smuggling part kid."
"This didn't come from the clan, but before we get more into details about that, let's for sake of argument say we can prove to you today without a shadow of doubt this did not come from the clan, nor through their gate," said Layla.
"Hmm, well, if hypothetically you could prove that, I think I would be very interested, there is more right?"
"Much more," said Kurt.
"If all of that is true why do you need me?" said Carl.
"We don't have the resources to make proper distribution, you have a network already, we were led to believe moving products like this was much of your business, we would be just another seller, one that would like a bit of discretion from you," said Sara.
"So are you saying your problem isn't getting the material, it's that you have too much?" said Carl, "And couldn't possibly sell it all by yourselves."
"Yes."
"Well, that would be possible, I would be interested in buying much of this, I will have to take some."
"Pay for some.," said Kurt.
"Okay, I'll buy these samples and have my people make sure they are what they appear to be, we can do business, these are in high demand."
"So."
"So we still have the problem of you convincing me that the clan won't come here and cause problems that make it not worth it, I'm not going to be caught stealing from them."
"Is this room here going to be used for anything later?" said Layla.
"No. Why?"
"Well if you give me a bit I can show exactly where it's coming from, " Layla hovered from her seat towards the wall. Was she really just going to make the gate right here in front of him, we could have withheld that part.
"Wait, what? How did you do? Are you one of those?" said Carl.
Kurt had managed to calm Carl down telling him to be patient, he'll see. And after a few moments of Layla's strange movements of making a gate appear, it finally opened and became visible.
Carl was a little memorized about what happened, he apparently had never been to the other side of a gate, he didn't deal directly with the clan city-states, so he had never bothered to make a pilgrimage.
"If you would, you will see that there is no clan here," said Layla with a leading hand through the gate for Carl.
Carl walked through the gate in a bit of amazement, he straight face was in a bit of some shock. It's not everyday you see something like this.