Mandat de l'impératrice des Cieux - Imperial Princess Troubleshooter Space Opera Quest

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Bumping this to remind everyone - Voting will remain open for another 24 hours.

Voting closes at 0300 GMT 12 JUL 19.
Adhoc vote count started by Whiskey Golf on Jul 11, 2019 at 6:14 AM, finished with 25 posts and 18 votes.
  • [x] Plan Seagram
    -[x] Measured. She's made some improvements, but she still has a long way to go.
    -[X] Involved. You'll effectively be Ahri's surrogate parent, directly overseeing her education and life. You're giving up a good amount of independence, anchoring yourself to nurture Ahri.
    [X] Plan Reliable Big Sister
    -[X] Encouraging. She's making good progress, keep at it!
    -[X] Involved. You'll effectively be Ahri's surrogate parent, directly overseeing her education and life. You're giving up a good amount of independence, anchoring yourself to nurture Ahri.
    [X] Plan Compliment Sandwiches
    -[X] Measured
    -[X] Present
    [X] Plan Ahri's Breakfast
    -[X] Eggs
    -[X] Sausages
    -[X] Bacon
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Your self-promotion on Discord has had dividends, Whiskey. Interesting quest.

[X] Plan Reliable Big Sister

Give the Empress emotional stability (because, haha, wow, that was kind of difficult to read), then throw her into the crucible.
 
Thanks to everyone who's voted. We're now in the final stretch.

Voting will,close in four hours, at 0300 GMT or 11.00pm EST.
Adhoc vote count started by Whiskey Golf on Jul 11, 2019 at 6:56 PM, finished with 30 posts and 22 votes.
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[x] Plan Seagram

I feel like it's a bit over-generous given how incapable Ahri is, but then again given how mentally fragile she comes off she might very well break if we try too hard, so best we moderate our approach.
 
If Ahri needs support you could vote for Reliable Big Sister. Where Yui decides the Empress needs family more than an advisor or tutor. (we can find other tutors)
 
Special DLC announcement release!

If we can get to 69 votes,we unlock the Season Pass that will give you early access to additional premium side content, at an earlier date before other readers! Vote now to unlock the Season Pass! and get exclusive premium special content, now!

*is beaten up*

Whaddya mean EA's business practices are unethical? they're the biggest publisher in the world! T_T

*is beaten up some more*
 
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ay ya Whiskey, your stuck-in-traffic iPad typing is not an example to be emulated.

Whiskey Golf said:
La is the same class of word thimajiggy as "lah" and "bah". You tack it on at the end of the sentence la. What does it mean? Dunno lah. You just say it bah. "La/lah" you'll find more in West Malaysia/Singapore; "bah" you'll find in Sabah, where I grew up. I'm a Sabahan bah, that's why I say bah.
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@Axslashel the words whiskey is looking for is "sentence final particles."
[X] Plan Reliable Big Sister
-[X] Encouraging. She's making good progress, keep at it!
-[X] Involved. You'll effectively be Ahri's surrogate parent, directly overseeing her education and life. You're giving up a good amount of independence, anchoring yourself to nurture Ahri.
 
Finally got around to reading this quest. I know I said I would since it started, but better late than never right?

Anyway, it's damn good. Feels like there's a ton of content crammed into each post, but the pace is great and things keep moving along. You've also always struck me as a knowledgeable guy with your various commentaries here and there, and it's cool to see some of that knowledge getting shown here. I always love an educational story.

So yeah, keep up the good work, and don't worry, I'm sure you can beat Avalanche's writing pace at a canter.

[X] Plan Reliable Big Sister
-[X] Encouraging. She's making good progress, keep at it!
-[X] Involved. You'll effectively be Ahri's surrogate parent, directly overseeing her education and life. You're giving up a good amount of independence, anchoring yourself to nurture Ahri.

I mean, with a title like that, I just have to vote for it.
 
Whiskey Golf said:
Special DLC announcement release!

If we can get to 69 votes,we unlock the Season Pass that will give you early access to additional premium side content, at an earlier date before other readers! Vote now to unlock the Season Pass! and get exclusive premium special content, now!

*is beaten up*

Whaddya mean EA's business practices are unethical? they're the biggest publisher in the world! T_T

*is beaten up some more*
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How hot is the content?:ogles:
 
Salbazier said:
How hot is the content?:ogles:
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The Season Pass content is quite hot yes. Unlocking the Season Pass also allows you to gecha for special SSR DLCs! We go from Ice Cold to Blazing Hot in a Beach Vacation in DLC 1 and enjoy a classic oyakodon dish in DLC 2, but you'll need to put in the time and effort to gacha-

Wait.

Whaddya mean governments are calling this gambling and wanting to make this illegal?! :o It's Surprise Mechanics TM! :oops:

(I might have been listening to Laymen Gaming on the drive to work this morning, without my daily dose of soda and caffeine to keep my brain centered. My brain might be a bit less centered than usual.)
Adhoc vote count started by Whiskey Golf on Jul 11, 2019 at 9:12 PM, finished with 39 posts and 27 votes.
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Right, so it's 11am, let's tally up the votes and see what we got.

Alright, it was a fairly close vote, but we have a winner: [X] Plan Reliable Big Sister
Adhoc vote count started by Whiskey Golf on Jul 11, 2019 at 11:02 PM, finished with 43 posts and 27 votes.
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Not The Day You Expected
  • Sidestory
    • Your name is Ayako Tomioka, and you are still trying to unfuck your bad day.

    About eight hours later, despite the fire lit underneath the entire depot, the staff have yet to find a copy of the permits. Neither has the team sent to search for Lee gotten in contact with the depot command center with any significant news. Jane assures you that they will be fine.

    So here you are, along with Xian and Jane, searching Lee's personal office. You would have tasked some other random staff in the admin department to do it, but Jane and Xian insisted that Lee would be less upset if his command staff turned over his office as opposed to having less trusted personnel go through his things.

    Not to mention that Xian would have an easier time spotting and disarming the traps that Lee is rumored to have rigged his office with and that having lesser people moving around Lee's office means lesser people to set off the traps.

    Silently, you thank the Empress that Lee wasn't insane or paranoid enough to set up lethal defensive measures. A loud bang echoes through the corridor as a bright flash and the intruder alarms ring out. Jane curses and radios the command center to cancel the alarm. This was the third trap that he has triggered so far. On the other hand, you are very optimistic that Lee has probably ran out of places to rig traps in, given the giant pile of flash bangs and tear gas grenades piled up in the middle of the room.

    While Xian is still working on making sure that the office isn't going to be a deathtrap, Jane and yourself have been a bit busy, eating a leisurely working lunch which Xian has been complaining about while he has been working on the office. It's not all fun and games though, You've been watching the security cam footage for the archive room, in an effort to track down the physical copies of the permits. Once again, you thank the Empress that the Comberth staff responsible for issuing the permits were so anally paranoid and had tamper proof verification seals tagged on to them, at the very least it made the papers visually distinct on the camera footage.

    You take a glance at Jane, who so far has been a bit of a bother with her tablet, playing some weird mobile game whilst eating lunch. Supposedly, she was in contact with the ground team, monitoring their current status. You don't see the point of such an action, given that a full section of powered armored marines would have the situation under control. At the very least, when it comes to combat operations, you are pretty satisfied that the staff are rather competent and are rather cautious about things. Curiously over the course of two hours, apparently she had been giving them what appeared to be etiquette lessons and what appeared to be instructions on what to buy as a gift when visiting a person's house.

    You wish that the company had the budget to install a surveillance and tracking AI for the monitoring systems so that you didn't have to suffer such tedium. Or at the very least, for Jane to provide you with another pair of eyes. Sighing at that thought, you take off your glasses and rub your eyes.

    She glances at you and tilts her head to the side. As if reading your mind, she replies to your rather non-verbal wish for assistance. "What? I need to keep watch over those knuckleheads, else that purple haired bitch tries to kill them again over some weird offense. And I would rather not explain to the boss why we had to man handle his wife in front of their daughter." She pauses dramatically. "Again." She scarfs down another rice ball as she continues to tap on her tablet and make flashy lights go off on the screen. "Even though she totally deserved it."

    You pause the video footage and stare at Jane. That was something new. "I wasn't aware that Lee was married with children."

    Jane looks at you and taps on her chin, trying to remember something. "Oh yea, you joined us a year ago, a few months after they decided to live on the planet." Jane grimaces. "You should be thankful you didn't have to deal with Mrs. Lee. On the other hand, You missed out on seeing his daughter. Cute girl, very sweet."

    "Well, what are their names?"

    Jane shrugs. "They never really gave us their names. Lee just shrugs and says it's up to them to tell us. The bitch just straight up told us that she doesn't have to give their names to their lessers."

    Wow, how rude. It's probably safe to assume that Mrs. Lee is probably some kind of noble. Though you wonder how did the boss attract and hold the affections of what appears to be a really spoiled noble lady. After all, you can probably assume that he's a commoner, given how his speech and mannerisms are rather plebeian, more so with how the man is usually extremely vulgar and uncaring about his appearance. This is before considering how much of a penny pincher he is, often being very anal about spending money even on essential items like life support. Really, the completely opposite of a stereotypical noble. The kind of person that someone like the current Mrs. Lee would think of as beneath her.

    You try to press Jane on what details she can actually provide on your boss. After several minutes of shrugging and I don't knows from Jane, you both realise that none of you actually knows anything about the person who has theoretical control over your lives and wallets. You start to feel more doubts about this naval arms inspection, given the fact that despite being in the middle of some backwater system in the middle of nowhere, the company you worked warranted the response of a battle group, as opposed to the usual cruiser patrol for an investigation.

    Looking at the apprehensive look on her face, you realise that Jane has the same doubts as well. Just then, Xian walks out of the Lee's private office, cursing up a storm. He looks at Jane's tablet and the empty plate of rice balls and rolls his eyes. "The office is clear enough for you to do actual work. I'm going to go get some food and rest. Have fun." Your assistant walks out grumbling about worthless fox girls that do no work and eat all the food. Jane pretends to not hear your assistant's grumbling and puts down the tablet. "Well, the permits aren't going to find themselves. Let's get this over and done with."

    As much as a slob Lee is usually, his belongings in the drawer of his desk are rather neatly arranged. You noticed that the guns, ammo and the explosives were some of the most accessible items in his office. Curiously, the only drawer in his desk that wasn't trapped, whose handle was rather worn, contained a sheathed dagger and a photo frame.

    The dagger has a very worn handle, with the grooves of the handle faintly stained brown closer to the blade, while the sheath itself was extremely ornate and bright yellow, featuring engravings of foxes and orchids surrounding the crest of the Imperial Royal Guards. Looking at it, it's pretty obvious that the dagger is some kind of ceremonial weapon. A quick glance to the weapons rack in his office reveals a curved longsword on display, the scabbard being matte black and vastly bigger than what a sword of that size would require.

    You pick up the photo and examine it. Sure enough, it's a picture of Lee and his wife. Judging from the elaborate outfits they're wearing, it seems to be their wedding photo. Curiously enough, the woman is holding a rather swollen belly.

    You hear a click behind you and a quick flicker of a lighter igniting, followed by a big exhale; you turn around just in time to have a thick cloud of smoke hit you in the face.


    "You know, you shitheads should have realised that I wouldn't keep the permits that we need to show at a moment's notice inside drawers that have flash bangs and tear gas grenades taped to them," a very nasally congested voice says, punctuating his statement with a pointed sniff. Lee Bashkan sits on his chair leaning forward, a cigarette between his lips, looking at both you and Jane. "I'm not feeling so good right now, so give me a sitrep and do it properly, before you give me more excuses to make you scrub down every single fucking surface of this asteroid with your personal toothbrushes."

    This wasn't the first time you've had to explain yourself to command, and you weren't the slightest bit intimidated by his demeanor, not helped by the fact that the boss looked like he should probably be resting in the sick bay.

    You keep the report short and curt, bringing him up to speed on the details. The battle group parked outside of the depot. The seemingly hostile rear admiral leading the task force spearheading this naval arms inspection. The Imperial Royal Guards being part of the inspection team.

    The missing permits and the ultimatum. How you had no authorisation to give them what they wanted.

    He squints at you and Jane, examining your faces in seemingly great detail, before he raises an eyebrow. A sneeze interrupts his reply; he wipes his nose, looks you in the eye, and drawls, "You know, as much as we have a client confidentiality policy, I don't think obstructing the people with battleships parked outside is a good idea.

    "On one hand I applaud your loyalty, but I would rather you not be responsible for losing our licence to operate, yes?"


    He looks pointedly at Jane, "or you know. Dying in a blaze of glory for no reason, yes?"

    Jane wilts from the sheer vitriol directed at her from your boss' levelled gaze. She shakes her head a bit to build back some of her confidence and fights back.

    "That's not important. Is there any reason why the Imperial Royal Guards need a battleship task force for a mere arms inspection?"

    Just for a second, you see the boss clench his teeth tight. Seeing his apprehension at such a question, you support Jane. "Is there something we need to be aware of where we are getting our weapons and what are we using them for?"

    Lee rolls his eyes. "If you are implying that I am under investigation for arming or planning some kind of insurrection against the throne, I am not. Because if Guard Command thought that some random upstart mercenaries decided they wanted to play empress maker? It's not going to be an arms inspection. It's going to be an accidental munitions cook off with no survivors."

    He waves his arms around. "As far as I know, quite a lot of our current stock comes from Comberth Harbor stockpile clearance. They are throwing out soon to expired stock and outdated equipment to make space for new munitions and new equipment." He pauses to cough, a very wet hacking sound rather than the usual dry cough. "One of the reasons why they are so anal about the paperwork. Given the fact that it's their arses on the line if we start off loading all of this bang bang to the black market or if we go pirate."

    Jane's tail starts to swish around in that obviously agitated fox girl way. "This still doesn't explain how you obtained all of those permits and why the navy even sent such a big task force in the first place."

    Sensing trouble, you keep your mouth shut and let Jane draw the heat from the boss. The fact that he has literally inhaled an entire cigarette in the span of a second is a ill omen, the fag turning into white ash almost instantly with a sudden flash of fire. Surprisingly, Lee does not explode like you expect him to. Instead he calmly scoots over using the wheels on his chair to his desk and snubs the cigarette butt onto an ashtray. He glances at you and waves you away from the table.

    Placing his elbows on the desk once you vacate the desk, he clasps his hands close to his face. "What," he pronounces each word slowly, "are you trying to imply?"

    "You are obviously hiding something that is going to get us all killed," Jane replies, leaning forward as if about to pounce, flight or fight reflex in effect.

    Lee rolls his eyes and sighs. "Look, all of us have our own secrets. But I can assure you that I am not wanted for whatever the hell you can think of right now by the Golden Orchid Empire, nor am I marked for death by Guard Command. I am asking you to trust me and not to randomly pry into my past because we had some random fox bitch come flying in spreading her tails in some kind of show of dominance."

    He bares his teeth. "Unless, of course, you would like me to inform your mother of your current whereabouts, Miss Tsai?"

    With the mention of her mother, Jane promptly ceases any display of hostility.

    "Look. We can clear this up in a few hours and we can laugh about it, okay? The very worst that can happen is that we have to explain to Xavier about why we need another extra allotment of equipment from HQ. "

    That would have been somewhat reassuring were it not for the fact that Lee looks to be on the verge of fainting. Regardless, he still manages to keep that businesslike air around as he gives his instructions.

    "Ayako, go grab Xian and get him to task a powered armor platoon to search for the permits. The verification tags should be giving off a faint electromagnetic signature, so suit's sensors should be able to pick them up. After that, get all the bloody documentation that you think that navy dickbag wants and then just give it to him. Arrange a meeting with him in… say 12 hours?"

    You nod.

    "Jane. Grab the CIC team and run through all the intel and that model of that pirate base we found. Recall the Baronche, Carrion Feeder, Deathstrike and the Lacerator. Get them rearmed as soon as possible and have them briefed on that operation we planned."

    "You mean the one I said was suicide because they had cruiser grade guns guarding the place?"

    "Well yes. Now that the navy is here, I want to ask if they are willing to conduct joint operations."

    Jane grins sadistically at that thought. She leaves the room before Lee can say anything else.

    You look back at the boss. "I'm going to the sick bay, get something for this flu. I'll get someone to muster the marines before I take a nap."


    He walks out of the room, before anything else could be said. Still you have to wonder what kind of knowledge would one have in order to shrug off a battleship task force investigating them as not an issue.

    There's also the fact that he refers to the Imperial Royal Guards as Guard Command, as opposed to the more commonly used IRG. You brace yourself to deal with another round of Xian's complaining as you make your way to the mess hall.

    -=-

    In the time it takes to make arrangements for the audit to continue, the Imperial task force in system goes down in size by a single capital ship and several escorts. It seems that the commander of the task force has left the system for some other reason, given that it was the biggest warship of the five battlewagons in system.

    Oddly though, the person in charge is still Rear Admiral Constance Vickers. When you bring it up to Lee, he shrugs and says, "It's not any of our business and four battlecruisers would still kill us all dead anyway." He speculates that Vickers might not have been the person in charge until that ship left, though for what reason he does not know.

    At the very least, this time you had the paperwork prepared and the authorisation to give them whatever else they asked for. The best part of all was that you had Lee to do all the talking for you. So all you needed to do was to just sit down and take notes.

    Sure enough, the door opens and in steps Captain O'Farrell. Behind him, flanked by a pair of heavily armed Guardsmen in power armor, is a fox of average height. Unlike everyone else in the room, who's wearing some form of vacuum-sealed skinsuit, she's wearing the black on blue dress uniform of a Major in the Imperial Royal Guards, a curved longsword secured to the white belt at her waist. You feel a momentary flash of jealousy as you take in the façade she presents - the expertly tailored uniform that flatters her curves, the red noble stripe on her pencil skirt, her long silky black hair, her soft, well-groomed tails – she's everything you're not, the sort of girl destined for greater things, who never had to struggle the way you did to climb the ladder.

    Lee stands up and motions for the rest of the party to sit down.

    Just for a moment, as soon as Captain O'Farrell moved out of the way, the Guardswoman's amber eyes narrow as she locks eyes with your boss. In response, Lee merely tilts his head to the side slightly, a wide grin growing across his face. You catch a slight twitch on the lips of the Guardswoman as she makes her way to the side of the table, taking her seat opposite you, between Lee and Captain O'Farrell. She takes up a tablet and nonchalantly starts to read from it.

    The two armored behemoths, however, stand right behind the Captain. Silent and unmoving, as they were the previous day.

    As the chairman of the meeting, and the host, Lee begins. "Good day to you all. I have to apologise for not being available the previous time you were here. So let's just all get down to business, so I think you can all probably enjoy a side of shore leave instead of being stuck with us, yes?"

    He pointed to the pile of papers, the electronic tags making them even more obvious. "The permits all signed and tagged by Fleet Activities Comberth." Both of the investigators take the papers and begin to scan through them. The Guardswoman reaches into one of her pockets to pull out a seal reader and plugs it into one of the tags. The paper flashes and glows slightly as the papers display another layer of information. She nods to the Captain on the other end of the table.

    O'Farrell then clears his throat. "So summarize it for me. Why would you need military ordnance against a bunch of yokels with ramshackle civilian ships?"

    Lee looks at you, then looks at the Guardswoman. You shrug your shoulders, while the Guardswoman just blinks. You can swear that was a pattern to how she blinked. Lee just sighs and replies, "Well, unless you want to accuse me of forging sensor data next. The last year's worth of readouts show that we have been dealing with at least four destroyer sized vessels. At the very least, they have military grade radars and countermeasures, not to mention that the drive outputs are putting out vastly more energy than anything we can see from crash converted civilian freighters."

    He pulls out a specific file. "This is after they tried to orbitally bombard Egon with a heavy cruiser. Which we drove off using civilian grade weaponry." He throws it at the Captain and the report lands with a thud right in front of him. Both men lock eyes and stare at each other, wordlessly trying to kill each other using their eyes, it seems.

    "Let us assume that you can tell the difference between a cruiser and a big freighter and that the cruiser actually existed. You want us to believe that you somehow managed to drive away a naval heavy cruiser, using low yield explosives, steel core rods and low yield energy weapons?"

    Lee rolls his eyes. "If you actually read the report. The Earl feigned surrender and we made a Eisenwald schnitzel delivery. The IED went off inside the cruiser. We took advantage of the confusion that caused and used a pair of pre-prepared freighters to ram the cruiser. While they managed to jump out, they will never be able to fix it without a proper shipyard. The last we know, they stripped it of anything useful and used the weapons to up gun their hideout."

    "Why aren't the pirates dead, given your expenditure of munitions?"

    "They are pirates, they don't stand and fight. The moment I jump in a destroyer and have them fire off everything, they jump out almost immediately."

    "Why didn't you pursue the pirates?"

    Lee scoffs at the question. "Do you enjoy sticking your dick into random holes in the middle of nowhere? Because the first time we tried, we jumped into a pre-prepared mine field."

    Lee and O'Farrell spend the next two hours gunning for each other verbally while reviewing your data. Thankfully, it hasn't gotten to the point whereby either side was going to literally gun for each other. The captain excuses himself and leaves the room to confer with his superior, one of the troopers following him.

    A few minutes later, he comes back in and sits down. "We can conclude the audit here, there's nothing else we need to check or ask."

    Lee claps his hands together, the sound drawing the attention of the entire room; one of the troopers raises his weapon slightly, before lowering it. "So with that out of the way. Why not we discuss business?" He activates the projectors to display a space station. "We know where these pirates are and for a negotiable fee and a bit of gunnery practice on your end, we can seize the station for you, intact."

    The captain raises his eyebrows. "What do you mean, gunnery practice?"

    Lee points out several structures on the station. "Anyway, like I was saying before, they had a hideout that they bolted a bunch of cruiser guns to and we know exactly where it is. It's just that none of our ships can handle that kind of firepower."

    He gestures wildly with both hands. "But given that you brought several battlecruisers here, I'm thinking that you can shoot out their guns, then I can have a troopship deliver a company of my guys to seize the station."

    "And how do we know that this station belongs to these…." Captain O'Farrel takes a slow pause here. "Pirates?"

    "The Egon PDF managed to milk the prisoners we brought back. Combined with a bit of analysis work based off their raid targets and sightings. On a hunch we sent in a few sensor drones and captured a glimpse of the station. So over a period of a few months or so we jumped in a few times to get a better picture of the thing, coupled with the fact that we have caught several known pirate vessels docked in that station a few times."

    "How can I trust that this isn't some kind of plot for you to knock off some person or another for your gain?"

    Lee rolls his eyes. If it was possible, they would have rolled a full 360 degrees. "Look, at the end of the day, I sort of would rather not have to deal with pirates armed with military grade anything. And I'll bet neither does the Imperial Navy want to let a bunch of pirates do anything but choke to death. So I'll be willing to just sell you all the information I have on hand, including the coordinates for that base. I say sell and not give because it wasn't free to obtain in the first place and I'm trying to run a business here. On the condition that you take my words seriously and actually treat this pirate problem as an actual problem. And if you still want our help in boarding the station, because the 13th Fleet's marines don't exactly look like they are particularly blooded, you can come back and we can discuss further business."

    The captain cooly fires back. "Like I said: how can I trust that your information is worth the money you are asking for?"

    You see the boss bite his lips. "For someone talking a lot about trust. I don't see why I should trust you to do anything right. Clearly the Imperial Royal Guards have so little trust in whoever the fuck is in charge of you. Given that Foxhound has decided to stick their noses into whatever mess this is."

    A soft cough interrupts whatever else Lee has to say. Captain O'Farrell, Lee and yourself glance over at the Guardswomen, sipping daintily at the bottle of tea placed in front of her. She looks up and meets all of your gazes in turn. "We would be derelict in our duties to the Empire if we were not ever vigilant, watching everyone and everything. None are above suspicion." Soft spoken as it was, you could tell there was weight behind those words. "Such as how certain words, interpreted in certain ways, can be deemed as betrayal." She shoots a look at Lee and you see that he's pale as a sheet, his confidence shaken. "Of which you should know the price." She smiles toothily, her fangs visible against her lips. "Of course, I am only joking, much as our mercenary commander is."

    Lee just laughs nervously. "Yes, I was only joking."

    The Guardswoman turns towards the Captain. "Captain, I believe that you should bring Mr. Bashkan's proposal back to the Rear Admiral. As much as he is a commoner mercenary, I think that given how his company has been nothing but accommodating to us, we should extend VSS some trust in these matters. Though, if you still have concerns, I am willing to personally verify Mr. Bashkan's information, while you discuss matters with Rear Admiral Vickers."

    Captain O'Farrell nods and stands up. "I'll leave that to you then, Major." He walks out, escorted by one of the troopers.

    Lee turns to you. "Ayako, I need you to check up on Jane. Could you go to CIC and see how she's doing?"

    You feel that something is not right with this situation, but seeing as Lee was the one waving you out, you comply and leave the room room, leaving Lee with the Guardswoman and her remaining trooper.

    -=-

    Eventually, the meeting concludes with a deal in the company's favor. While you can tell that Lee is extremely unhappy about only getting enough money to cover the estimated costs for this operation, he isn't entirely upset given that the company gets full salvage rights for whatever hardware you manage to take, so as long as the imperial investigation team gets to examine it to their heart's content.

    About an hour later, Lee calls you to his office. As you open the door, you are greeted by a huge cloud of thick smoke, the ventilation systems failing to keep up with Lee's substance abuse. You gag at the smell of whatever it is that your boss smokes. The pile of less lethal ordnance still in the middle of the room. And the previously empty ashtray on his desk is filled with cigarette butts.

    You resist the urge to put your helmet on; politeness dictates that you talk to him face to face. "Boss, you called for me?"

    Lee stubs another cigarette into the already filled tray and sighs. "Yea. I did. Remember how that you are second in charge? In the next six months or so, you will be learning to do what I'm doing, just in case, you know, if I get promoted to customer or something."

    That's rather strange coming from Lee, since he owns part of the company anyway. From what you can tell he has never been dissatisfied with the job, not to mention that he gets along with the staff most of the time. Given how he has literally been smoking away the past hour, this has to be something relatively recent.

    "Might I ask why, sir?"

    He sighs. "Well, as I said previously in the last performance review, you might not be as experienced as the rest of the command staff, but at the very least you seem to be less overtly aggressive. This is in fact a very good thing given how the rest of them are bloodthirsty and trigger happy."

    You shake your head. "No not that, I would like to know the reason why you think you would be leaving the company soon. Given that you plan on giving me more responsibility and work, it would be nice to know why."

    He sighs. "Yea, I suppose that's only fair, no? So first of all, some disclaimers. I can only tell you vague things. Most of it will be true. But do not try and dig into things, lest you draw the wrong kind of attention. Swear this to me."

    You nod and reply to him. "I swear to you that what you say will stay in this room."

    Lee takes off his gloves and places them on the table.

    He pulls the dagger out of his drawer and draws it from the sheath and slits his right palm with but a touch of the blade. Flipping the dagger, he catches it by the blade and holds the handle out to you. Wait. Is he expecting you to swear a blood oath? This was the kind of thing you'd expect from some corny vid series about the nobility. You decide to humor him at least.

    You mimic his actions and shake his bloodied hand with yours. As soon as the handshake is complete, he sprays down both your hands with disinfectant and puts his gloves back on.

    "Yea, I know what you are thinking. Weird right? But this was how it was for me back in the Guards. Quite a lot of ritual and tradition in the way we do things."

    "So if you probably haven't figured things out by now, I used to be a Guardsman. Our friend the pretty Guardswoman basically passed me a message from my mom. With the current situation as it is, she would be more comfortable if she had people she could trust on hand."

    You tilt your head to the side in confusion. "What does your mother have anything to do with the current situation?"

    "Eh, I come from a Guards family. My ancestors have been in what is now known as the Imperial Royal Guard since before there was an empire. Empress Hagoromo's retainers basically. So, mom is somewhere up there in hierarchy, I never really asked, but odds are she's above Kazusa, the one that I was talking to."

    Your jaw drops in disbelief. You think he is lying, though given the past day or so, you are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. More so since he somehow managed to obtain all those permits without much obstruction. "Why would you be out here running a mercenary outfit if you really are some important noble officer?"

    He snorts. "Office politics."

    You echo his words in disbelief. "Office Politics?"

    He takes it as a sign to continue. "Yea, Office politics. Look as much as the Guards like to portray themselves as selfless Guardians of the Throne, at the end of the day, they are only people. I can seriously say as a whole, they are fanatical. When you mix fanaticism and politicking, you get assassination and ritual suicide."

    You try to speak but he interrupts. "The Guards as a whole agree that we exist to protect the legacy of Empress Hagoromo. But we sort of disagree what that legacy is."

    "That doesn't really answer my question."

    He pulls out his wedding photo. "Yea let me finish. You can obviously figure out that yes, I shotgunned my wife. But can you guess her family affiliation?"

    "She's a noblewoman?"

    He smiles sadly. "If only. If she was just some random noblewoman, none of this would have happened. She's the heiress of a Sumeragi cadet branch. Now you probably want to know who is involved but for the safety of my family, there will be no names mentioned. Hell, if you want to sell me out, please do so to House Sumeragi. At the very least, they have no plans to kill me."

    He laughs. "Because, I quote my wife, 'the wolves of Hagoromo make great pets when properly house broken, my family is not one to squander such a precious gift.' She means I'd make a very good trophy husband."

    He grimaces. "On the other hand, parts of the Guard would just kill us all. My wife for being related to a Sumeragi, my daughter for the same and myself for bedding the enemy." He pauses. "Though at this point those same parts of the Guard are probably more unhappy over the fact that I killed five of them as my resignation."

    Did he just casually admit to murdering five officers of the IRG? "Wait, wouldn't they have hunted you down for doing such a thing?"

    He shrugs. "Office politics. Like I said, leadership disagrees on how best should we protect the legacy of the empress. Sometimes part of the Guard thinks that other parts of the Guard needs to cut themselves shaving. Fatally. It just so happened that someone way higher up on the food chain decided that those five needed to go, that I was in the perfect position to do something about it and they had the ability to make a better offer than what I was going to get in that room."

    He takes out a fag and put its between his lips. "As for why I could trust those other people. Let's just say that they had the Mandate of Heaven on their side. Basically, they had a list of targets for me to dispose of. They slipped me a pistol and some other stuff. Told me where the targets were and how security was compromised in certain very specific ways, so I can get to them."

    At this point, you just had more questions than answers every time Lee makes a statement. "So what happened that required the assassination of five members of the Imperial Royal Guards?"

    He snorts. "Basically, my team fucked up an ops really bad, got killed and then to top it off, it just so happened that only myself and said Sumeragi were the only survivors, yes? Kind of suspicious, don't you think? Especially since you know." He makes a hole with his fingers on one hand and inserts and pulls out a finger on the other hand through the hole. "And yes, they caught me in the act, so there was literally no way I can deny that I wasn't having sex with her."

    You can't believe what you're hearing.

    "So, as much as there was an investigation clearing us both of any wrongdoing. A bunch of the more senior officers were either convinced that the Sumeragi that I was fucking planned everything or saw an opportunity to advance their standing by shaming my family, so to speak. So one of them decided to drag me into an office, blah blah blah. Make me a pariah. Crap assignments in eisenwald for any other members of my family still in the service."

    He fingers the dagger. "She gave an ultimatum. Two ways I can avoid such a terrible mess, she said. Gut myself like a fish or finger my then uhh…. baby mother as the person responsible for everything that went wrong, they disappear her and everything is hush hush."

    He mimes having a pistol on a free hand. "I drew the pistol that I was given and shot that bitch. I then proceeded to fulfill my part of the deal."

    "Well. As much as my patron had the reach to cover up quite a fair bit of things. I still killed five noble officers. So I was given instructions to disappear." He scoffs. "My patron was very surprised that I actually manage to survive and contact her." He shrugs. "At that point, I was thinking she would have asked me to space myself or something. She anticipated that and told me that she would have disappointed her prime ancestor if she asked me to kill myself after all that I've done, given how her prime ancestor help forged the empire out of love. So she said I was free to go."

    You shake your head at how unbelievable all of this. Taking your actions as disbelief, Lee continues, "Fucking unbelievable, isn't it? You can choose what to believe. Just don't dig deeper."

    "This doesn't explain why you are out here, working for a mercenary company." You would one would expect that such an action would be rewarded handsomely.

    He scratches his head, a uncharacteristically sheepish look on his face. "We are kinda bad with money. Lost quite a lot of it on stocks. So both of us have to find work. She works at home as some kind of freelance consultant slash designer for some engineering firm. And well, I do mercenary work, mostly because there isn't really much else I'm good for."

    You still had one question on your mind. "And the permits and weapons? How did you obtain them so fast."

    He shrugs. "No idea. I applied for the permits through the proper channels, they got approved a week later, then somebody called me and asked if I was looking for legally obtained cheap military hardware. I figured that this was too good to be true, did my own checks, had Rafiz check her side for me as a favor and turns out, yes. This is totally legal. Just extremely skeevy in the… insider trading sort of way."

    "So when will you be leaving?"

    "When you can kill me in honourable one on one combat with swords," Lee says, with a serious look on his face. You know that he's probably joking but at this point you don't really want to know any more. Seeing the sour look on your face, he laughs.

    "Well to be more serious, I don't know myself. The message passed onto me was worded as a favor that I can refuse. But it's kind of bad to refuse a favor to your own mother, yes?" You nod to agree. "But I have my family to think of and I need to consult my wife as tradition dictates." He sighs. "But I'm also kind of worried about why my mom wants a wet works guy on hand, especially since the ascension of the previous empress."

    You tilt your head. Seeing your confusion, Lee sighs and explains further. "Nobody expected someone as powerful and well liked as the previous empress to choke on her food and die. Add on the fact that the consort was a fucking coward and took the easy way out, means there's some wet behind the ears princess sitting on the orchid throne with no one to teach her the ways and means without ulterior motives."

    He once against fingers the dagger he has on the table. "So besides the rest of the empire wanting a piece of the pie. The Guards will probably start killing one another over who they think should be the empress… Again. Oh and I suppose, a few of them will take the opportunity to fuck up Sumeragi space, I guess?"

    He puts the dagger back into the drawer. "Anyway. That's not really any of your problem is it? We've got to show up that anal little fuck in the navy in a few days time. So if you don't have any more questions, let's get back to work." He taps his desk. "Oh and do me a favor, if you see Jane, tell her that if she's done with operations preparation, that I'll be waiting for her in my office for her. I am honestly sick and tired of the bitch war that she has with my wife. And would like to ask her what the fuck."

    Once again, you look at the picture. It is no question that Lee's wife is extremely pretty, in possession of soft features and well groomed fur and hair, but then you look at Lee's face and back to the picture. While he has seemed to have put on a bit of weight, he wasn't exactly a looker back then either. He basically looked like one of those stereotypical gang enforcers in a cheap gangster flick. Now he looks like a fat stereotypical enforcer. "Forgive me for satisfying my curiosity, but the two of you don't really seem to have much in common, what drew the both of you together?"

    He laughs at the question. "What you meant to say is, that I look like shit and that she's too good for me,yes?"


    You nod at his statement, unsure of how to reply to his statement. He smiles. "Yea, I get that a lot. Most people are kind of surprised that I'm married to her. The less I say about the in-laws' opinions of me, the better. If you want to know how I managed to get my foot in the door so to speak, the details are classified, but rescuing someone from terrorists and the like is a really good suit remover."

    He shrugs. "We got stuck in one of those life pods for a few days, so there wasn't really much to do but talk if we wanted to entertain ourselves. So we did and turned out we had a lot in common. But mostly neither of us really liked being nobles."

    You wait for him to elaborate. "I didn't like Guard politics and she didn't like having to put up airs and having to watch everything she said and did as part of her extended family. We decided that we didn't want any of that for our daughter, so we decided to just find somewhere else to live, rather than deal with our families."

    He shrugs. "Though odds are, with how things are, we probably might have to move back in with either of our families for protection, but that's something for her to decide." He takes out his tablet. "If there's nothing else, I have my own things to prepare for the upcoming raid. Once again, you are not to speak to anyone else about anything I told you here. Dismissed." He waves you off and you take it as your cue to leave.

    You've got a lot to do, and even more to think about.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • So to summarize, we now know we need to acquire us some Varangians. Great. Glad to see imperial politics are the same no matter where the fuck you go.
     
    I wish going to say 'oh hey more than 25 votes, so how about that lemon, whiskey? :V' and then we got this. Not the quite the fruit I was told in the scuttlebutt, but i guess its juicy enough in its own way :lol
     
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