The coast was clear, Rowing was still sitting at the same table I had left her a little over an hour ago, and there wasn’t a returner anywhere nearby; it was finally time to complete the task I had come from America for in the first place.
Walking up and leaning against the wall, I quickly topped off my Particle Count by downing several potions and even a water bottle filled with particle water, bringing me back to peak form for what needed to be done.
As it had been a while since I attempted to coerce multiple people at a single time, I needed a second to focus my thoughts before walking into the cozy and quaint Café.
A small bell above the door signaled my entrance to the building, alerting the staff that another customer had arrived; upon noticing it was a child, they seemed to write me off, but in that split second that our eyes met, I began my ploy.
’Psy-kinesis, you will ignore my presence and that of the woman author in the back corner. No matter what is said or transpires, you will forget it happened and continue going about your chores.’
The 33-word command drained a minimal amount of PC from my tank, and since everyone present had low stats, the command took effect instantly, and the four staff members acted as if I didn’t exist.
Seeing this, I counted the number of people present, scattered around the small café, and went around the room, gaining the attention of the other customers, using my skill, and moving on.
In all, the process took me less than five minutes as there was only a handful of people present, four to be exact, apart from Rowing and the staff, so it didn’t take me much time before I had finished ensuring no one would be the wiser for what I was sure would be a difficult challenge.
As I’ve explained before, while my Coersion skill was relatively powerful, it had its drawbacks and weaknesses, primarily involving the Will of the target.
If I wanted to force Rowing into handing over her life work to me, I didn’t doubt I would be subjected to a certain level of backlash, but this was to be expected.
By this point, she had been working on the first book for years, and it was finally about to be published. After years of toiling to write a compelling story and then propositioning publishing companies in an attempt to sell the story to the world, it wasn’t a stretch to say that the Henry Potter books meant EVERYTHING to Jennifer Rowing.
Yet here I was, about to force her into giving me the rights to said series, something that went against every fiber of her being.
This fact alone should have been MORE than enough reason for me just to kill her and try to salvage the publishing situation myself. However, it was a messy job that would require WAY too much time and more effort on my end if I wanted to wrap things up neatly.
Not to mention the fact that more than a few Returners were vying to steal the very same thing I was attempting to regulate and control.
In fact, it was the presence of the returners that convinced me to take the route I had envisioned after finding out about the plot that the Overwatch Trio had come up with.
The problem itself stemmed from Rowing being known publically; even if I took her out of the equation, there was nothing stopping anyone from trying to publish the series themselves, which made me question the intelligence of the other returners because if I had been able to deal with the woman before she sent out her drafts, then I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with and could have gone the route of being the original creator of the franchise after killing Rowing off when she was still unknown and hadn’t signed any contracts.
Seeing as no one had tried that, and Rowing had moved so far along in the publishing process, part of me wanted to criticize the older returners, but at the end of the day, I was kind of the same. I don’t doubt that I could have found a way to get out to Scottland earlier if I really tried, but it was an issue I had thought quite deeply about.
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In the end, it made more sense to wait, and if something happened to the Author or her series, I would have cut my losses and moved on to my next scheme, one that I was still on track to execute in the early 2000s.
Setting aside the fact that no one had tried assassinating her successfully in the last couple of years, I thought ahead to my next actions while casually walking up and sitting down at the table Rowing was sitting at.
As I moved silently and didn’t draw much attention, the woman didn’t even notice me and continued to be fully immersed in her revisions of the first book.
It gave me a few seconds to contemplate the rest of my plan.
Unlike the others who wanted just to kill the woman off and steal the book, I knew it was going to be much harder than that to take over the franchise and make money, especially since the rights had already been sold off.
Thus, I needed to take a different course of action; the plan was simple: convince Rowing to go with me to the publishing company, reveal that I was the TRUE Author of the series, and admit that she had actually stolen the story from me, who had been coming to her as a tutor.
Using my father as a scapegoat and claiming that he was going to Sue Rowing, I could get the Publishing company to transfer everything involving the franchise to my Pen Name and even get the payments transferred to my bank account instead.