I can hear you... I can taste you...
- Location
- Here
The powerful man calling himself 'Mister Sinister' blinked at the unexpected movement. "Wait! [[STOP!]] How are you…"
"[[C̶̟͚̣̙ͅo͇̻̹͚̥͎ͅn̢̝̞̹͔̘s͏͍̬̮̟u̼̥̳ͅm͚̲͉̲e]]."
.
CRUNCH.
~~~Pocket System~~~
One moment, the remote connection between Nathaniel Essex and his clone was allowing him direct access to that old fool of a pawn, to seep into the unprotected minds of the impudent test subjects that would DARE to interrupt his ongoing experiments!
The next, and Mister Sinister felt so̮̺̲̯̲̭m̞̱̺e̥̹̰̜̖̦̞t͔̲͕̗̣hi̮n̤g f̮̘̤̱̩̹̤͓o̼̱̝͓̘̙̠̻c̬̻̰̪̯̠͇̞u͈͙̭̺̘̬͈͔̟̣͔͖͉s͔̼̞͔͇̬̜̠̭͇̦̳̤̰̱̯ͅ.̣̟͉̬̠̤̱̹ͅ
He was seen.
Then the connection had vanished entirely.
No… Not vanished. Not exactly…
Something had seen him here, in one of his lairs of safety, it had seen his connection, and it had decided to take a b̴̧̗͓̜̼͉ͅi҉̰͈̜͉̱̥̀t͔̱̘̘̼͓̮͚e͍̞̰̘̳̬̱̝.̧̰̹̣̥̦̰̙͜
This…
He'd have to move fast. Make plans. Activate contingencies.
At least after his body recovered enough from this blood loss to begin regenerating his internal organs. The fleshy mess from all the portions of his body exploding would have to be cleaned up at some later time, if possible.
For now, he had to R̻̗̠̭̫͟ͅÚ͏̛̩͕̺̲͕̻̬̻͕̞̠̳͍̞̻Ņ͙͇̦͚̥͍̳͓̱͇̫̫̟̩̠̱̠͍͎̀!
.
~~~Pocket System~~~
The remains of the man started to collapse to the ground spewing blood before it was Collected into his Pocket.
Shit. No, focus: Get everything handled, worry about eating most of a guy later.
Besides, John didn't have time for the stupid obscurity protocols now anyway. "I can't keep working with this old body. Girls? We need a prime Body Crafted and brought into this room, please."
Instantly he saw one of the prototype Bodies designed by his two girlfriends being called from his Pocket, and John shifted his focus…
And one became two.
Jeremiah Wickles looked at John Doe, and couldn't help but snort. "Cutting it a bit close there, ain't ya boy? That nutjob had our necks just then."
John grumbled at himself, the old bastard that he was. "You know we were cut off from everything until certain criteria were hit… But yeah, that was BULLSHIT! What kind of anti-detection security module allows the situation to run straight up towards DEATH just to keep the secret!? Fuck that! We need FAR more safety settings before trying this again."
Old man Wickles shifted in his chair, getting a better look at Charlotte… Who seemed to have passed out at some point. "Is she good now? Only reason I haven't disposed of that bastard's body yet in case we need his brain for something."
John sighed. "ALL mind manipulation effects were overwhelmed when we woke up… She's just out of it like everyone else because this whole mansion fell within our 'limited range' and we might have been JUST A TAD murdercidal with rageitude."
Shit! "Are they at risk!? Do they need medical attention!?" It was HIS job to die first, Charlotte!
The boy hummed. "Medically they are all perfectly fine, just recovering from being exposed to the unrestricted idea of us. I think we knocked out almost everyone who was exposed to our existence for a full few seconds until our tertiary defenses reeled all that back in… Damn it, something else to fix. They should all be fine though."
…Good.
She'd be fine. They'd all be fine.
His younger half started grumbling. "This whole security module testing scenario has been fubared from the very beginning… Not to mention how messed up it was that we couldn't defend ourselves until the last second! It's going to take FOREVER to just review all the shit we have to fix!"
Heh, sucks to be you. "Not MY problem, as far as I'm concerned. I'm retiring. All that mess with keeping those modules up to date and functioning as intended? Not my issue."
John blinked… And then realized. "Ah, we ran that sub portion of the Transfer module to separate us already. Do you still have access to the Pocket?"
Hum… "Not exactly? More like a spiritual tether to the Concept of John Doe or something. Also another tether to somewhere in the afterlife, because I think I have built up some retroactive Karma between my new existence and the old crazy version of 'Jeremiah Wickles'."
That caused the black and white haired young man to pause in examining the room. "Wait, is he going to want to come back for his old body or something? You're still using it!"
Meh, not an issue. "It's not like I MADE UP any of my inherited memories, this Body was ready to die years ago! This version of me is just too ornery to die like I logically should. Besides, I can feel that past Soul is getting close to entering some sort of reincarnation cycle anyway, so we won't be fighting over these old bones."
John seemed… Concerned. "Did we reincarnate as ourselves into that Body or did we somehow partially revive this guy? How much of your Brain is actually you and how much is actually related to his departed Soul?"
Jeremiah couldn't help but shrug. "Don't know, don't care, not my issue! You and sis and the girls get to have fun problem shooting and debugging that whole mess, drop a letter at some point telling me how it turns out."
The kid sputtered! "But THAT'S not fair!"
Life's not fair, brat! "I'm not connected to the System anymore, if you wanted me to give a shit you should have noticed that issue when reworking the deployment modules in the FIRST place."
That said… "Don't mind putting you guys up as some sort of extra security staff or something… Obviously I'd need to fill in Charlotte cause she wouldn't fall for any blarney you care to come up with, but it'd give you all time to start trouble shooting this whole mess while hopefully mitigating the consequences for having to 'break character' and all that."
John's eyes flickered a bit and… "If you or the others are trying to communicate with me using the com channels, it won't work with me disconnected from our Pocket, you know."
The kid winced. "...Ah, yeah. That makes sense. Well, the girls say they snuck in this new Body using the chaos of us breaking character as a distraction, but they can't actually Transfer into this world until we go to a new Realm entirely and shut down all the extra 'secrecy' defensive modules… They weren't designed to partially shut down since we didn't expect this to happen."
…So Jeremiah couldn't hug sis before she had to move on?
Unfortunate.
But by this age, he'd experienced grief more than a few times. He'd manage, especially with his little Charlotte being safe…
Speaking of which. "Is Temptation getting anything out of that 'Mister Sinister' dick waffle? His brains shouldn't have been damaged when we Consumed him."
They'd left his entire skull intact even!
Such restraint, very impressive.
John huffed. "That Body was basically just a relay clone, controlled at range through a powerful mental ability. No real brain meat to decode, no memories to work with. But we DID manage to have our sister's agents partially trace back the Soul connection, so they are working with Temptation to stalk this 'Mister Sinister' down and prevent this shit from happening again."
The kid raised one finger though, showing data. "Thankfully despite that setback, this isn't a total wash. The genetics encoded in this meat puppet has our girls VERY interested in upgrading some of our genetics using him as an example. At least for use when Transfering to a new Realm, in places where we can't use some of the more esoteric alien genetic information in Body creation."
Jeremiah hummed. "This guy was that enhanced? Something about him FELT powerful, at least."
John snorted! "Hell, a few tricks might even improve some of these options available in our Borg databases, which is DAMNED impressive! Grace is going to do a full suite of tests and find out what tricks we can use from this dude in future places next time we Transfer."
Humph. "Well just be sure to tag some of those improvements for MY people! I'll not have them put through something like this again in the future… Completely unacceptable."
John nodded. "If nothing else, we now have examples of locally enhanced human genetics for gaining superhuman muscles, bones, reflexes… Anything involving actual powers will need more testing of course, especially since that clone's brain was basically empty, but the biological stuff? That we can work with."
Good. "And the mind control issue?"
His younger half shrugged. "You already have the schematics for technological defenses to mental manipulation, there was a whole section about the stuff in the mess we got from Bolivar Trask! He didn't want any 'muties' to get into his own mind, after all."
Jeremiah stared at the brat blankly. "You are telling me that moron Trask managed to obscure or even fully block under researched methods of mind control using only basic scientific principles?"
John nodded. "Yep!"
His eye started twitching. "And he didn't even consider how much MONEY he could make selling such a thing to his partners at the very least?"
The boy nodded once more. "From the notes the girls read, he didn't care about anyone else but himself. Why BOTHER selling his co-conspirators brain protection?"
But… But! "Because THEY could expose HIS secrets! Setting aside the enormous potential for fortune he missed acting like that… Keeping THEM from having important information carved out of their sweet meats would be protecting HIS interests!"
For the love of GOD! "Self interest ALONE should have him at least…"
John shrugged. "Nope! He made some models for himself, made fake versions for the few people he 'trusted' that were secretly bombs to blow up their heads if they ever got compromised, and then stopped worrying about the invention and topic entirely."
He stared at nothing. "...To go build more murder robots?"
A nod. "To go build more murder robots."
For fucks sake. "Please thank Grace for any OTHER safety equipment she can dig out of those captured databases, and let me know how soon we can start protecting my people… And how much longer they will be unconscious."
John pulled up a medical screen. "It looks like 'Mister Sinister' got in using Trish Tilby's 'Followup interview request' as an excuse and took so long to get BACK in here to 'finish the job' because he had to go to our security control room to ensure the cameras were all set to loop."
Jeremiah narrowed his eyes… "He already knows the layout of the building. So either he compromised someone who knew the facilities layout, or this had been done before."
John nodded. "You are going to have to get your whole team examined using some of the scanning tools from racist robot man just to be sure nothing sneaky was left behind in your people."
God, what a mess… "I'll have Charlotte get this done, hopefully it will keep her from kicking herself about this whole situation."
The younger man sighed. "Assuming she or any of the others even remember today… He either compromised or re-compromised all security staff along the way there and back, but didn't have time or motivation to cause any other issues because we're pretty sure he was trying to be sneaky here. After all, the camera trick would be pointless if everyone could remember the TWO cameramen when all the recorded evidence now implies there was only ever one here in the building."
…Shit. "Pretty sure he was leaving the three of us for last because we were going to be 'rewritten'. Or at least Charlotte and I, he put Ms. Tilby asleep so maybe she'd just not notice anything odd happening here."
John blinked. "Which means that Charlotte will remember being hijacked and us going to sleep and… Me waking up and then? Oh dear."
Jeremiah on the other hand was carefully considering what he could recall. "Pretty sure you waking up knocked everyone out before we managed to eat the fucker."
John shuddered. "Please don't mention me doing that, I'm busy trying to repress that whole incident. Blegh, I can still taste the smugness even now, eww."
Heh, amateur. Old man Wickles was the KING of repression! "I've already mentally disassociated myself from YOUR actions, so as far as I am concerned, YOU ate the jerk and I was technically not in the area. Heh!"
The young man stared at Jeremiah's grinning satisfaction… And raised one finger. "Just for that, YOU get to explain to Charlotte what happened here without my help. Good luck with that."
Wait WHAT!? Hold up! "Now you just wait one damn…"
And the boy grinned! "Oh would you look at that, I'm suddenly SWAMPED with all sorts of module testing and readjustments due to not having enough help from cranky old variants of myself! Guess I'll just have to go get to work for the next two days or so… See you soon, gramps!"
FUCK YOU! "Don't you DARE even THINK about…"
And he was gone.
FUCK! "I'm telling sis about this! You hear me brat!?"
The reporter suddenly snorted in her sleep, reminding him that he now had a whole secured BASE filled with happily slumbering bodyguards, backup teams, staff, and so forth. "Shit."
And the only way to get this mess handled would be to wake up Charlotte, which would require him explaining this whole mess to a VERY smart woman who would be VERY skeptical… Not that he would bother to lie to her in the first place, but this was likely to be a very lengthy process as she'd inevitably get him to explain all sorts of stuff that he could suddenly recall…
Double Shit.
Fuck it, might as well get this crap show on the road. "Girls, I know you are probably still monitoring me… Could I at least have some tea and refreshments for this upcoming talk?"
The room shifted as new furniture came into reality and Charlotte shifted from sleeping against the wall to sleeping in the new plushy chair. The table had something hot steaming in the pot and small sandwiches… "Thank you, everyone. And someone smack my younger self, if you'd kindly."
Sigh… Better get this over with.
…Maybe it'd be best to pour the tea first? Or serve the snacks? Or delay longer?
Charlotte shifted in her chair. "...Sir?"
Damn it. "Hey girl. Feeling alright?"
The woman blinked at the high quality tea arrangement… And the sleeping reporter off to one side… The unconscious cameraman in the corner and the COMPLETE lack of security staff in the room. "...Feeling fairly confused, sir."
Hoo boy, how to start? "Well I can't promise to help anything make sense, but I can at least get you more confused trying to explain this mess."
She was already straightening her uniform. "I'll take what I can get, sir."
Sigh. "Probably best to start with how I both died and didn't when I was reborn and also left for the afterlife. God that was a confusing moment… Good drugs though, our doctors definitely use the best stuff."
Charlotte blinked. "Sir?"
Yep. This was probably going to take a while.
"[[C̶̟͚̣̙ͅo͇̻̹͚̥͎ͅn̢̝̞̹͔̘s͏͍̬̮̟u̼̥̳ͅm͚̲͉̲e]]."
.
CRUNCH.
~~~Pocket System~~~
One moment, the remote connection between Nathaniel Essex and his clone was allowing him direct access to that old fool of a pawn, to seep into the unprotected minds of the impudent test subjects that would DARE to interrupt his ongoing experiments!
The next, and Mister Sinister felt so̮̺̲̯̲̭m̞̱̺e̥̹̰̜̖̦̞t͔̲͕̗̣hi̮n̤g f̮̘̤̱̩̹̤͓o̼̱̝͓̘̙̠̻c̬̻̰̪̯̠͇̞u͈͙̭̺̘̬͈͔̟̣͔͖͉s͔̼̞͔͇̬̜̠̭͇̦̳̤̰̱̯ͅ.̣̟͉̬̠̤̱̹ͅ
He was seen.
Then the connection had vanished entirely.
No… Not vanished. Not exactly…
Something had seen him here, in one of his lairs of safety, it had seen his connection, and it had decided to take a b̴̧̗͓̜̼͉ͅi҉̰͈̜͉̱̥̀t͔̱̘̘̼͓̮͚e͍̞̰̘̳̬̱̝.̧̰̹̣̥̦̰̙͜
This…
He'd have to move fast. Make plans. Activate contingencies.
At least after his body recovered enough from this blood loss to begin regenerating his internal organs. The fleshy mess from all the portions of his body exploding would have to be cleaned up at some later time, if possible.
For now, he had to R̻̗̠̭̫͟ͅÚ͏̛̩͕̺̲͕̻̬̻͕̞̠̳͍̞̻Ņ͙͇̦͚̥͍̳͓̱͇̫̫̟̩̠̱̠͍͎̀!
.
~~~Pocket System~~~
The remains of the man started to collapse to the ground spewing blood before it was Collected into his Pocket.
Shit. No, focus: Get everything handled, worry about eating most of a guy later.
Besides, John didn't have time for the stupid obscurity protocols now anyway. "I can't keep working with this old body. Girls? We need a prime Body Crafted and brought into this room, please."
Instantly he saw one of the prototype Bodies designed by his two girlfriends being called from his Pocket, and John shifted his focus…
And one became two.
Jeremiah Wickles looked at John Doe, and couldn't help but snort. "Cutting it a bit close there, ain't ya boy? That nutjob had our necks just then."
John grumbled at himself, the old bastard that he was. "You know we were cut off from everything until certain criteria were hit… But yeah, that was BULLSHIT! What kind of anti-detection security module allows the situation to run straight up towards DEATH just to keep the secret!? Fuck that! We need FAR more safety settings before trying this again."
Old man Wickles shifted in his chair, getting a better look at Charlotte… Who seemed to have passed out at some point. "Is she good now? Only reason I haven't disposed of that bastard's body yet in case we need his brain for something."
John sighed. "ALL mind manipulation effects were overwhelmed when we woke up… She's just out of it like everyone else because this whole mansion fell within our 'limited range' and we might have been JUST A TAD murdercidal with rageitude."
Shit! "Are they at risk!? Do they need medical attention!?" It was HIS job to die first, Charlotte!
The boy hummed. "Medically they are all perfectly fine, just recovering from being exposed to the unrestricted idea of us. I think we knocked out almost everyone who was exposed to our existence for a full few seconds until our tertiary defenses reeled all that back in… Damn it, something else to fix. They should all be fine though."
…Good.
She'd be fine. They'd all be fine.
His younger half started grumbling. "This whole security module testing scenario has been fubared from the very beginning… Not to mention how messed up it was that we couldn't defend ourselves until the last second! It's going to take FOREVER to just review all the shit we have to fix!"
Heh, sucks to be you. "Not MY problem, as far as I'm concerned. I'm retiring. All that mess with keeping those modules up to date and functioning as intended? Not my issue."
John blinked… And then realized. "Ah, we ran that sub portion of the Transfer module to separate us already. Do you still have access to the Pocket?"
Hum… "Not exactly? More like a spiritual tether to the Concept of John Doe or something. Also another tether to somewhere in the afterlife, because I think I have built up some retroactive Karma between my new existence and the old crazy version of 'Jeremiah Wickles'."
That caused the black and white haired young man to pause in examining the room. "Wait, is he going to want to come back for his old body or something? You're still using it!"
Meh, not an issue. "It's not like I MADE UP any of my inherited memories, this Body was ready to die years ago! This version of me is just too ornery to die like I logically should. Besides, I can feel that past Soul is getting close to entering some sort of reincarnation cycle anyway, so we won't be fighting over these old bones."
John seemed… Concerned. "Did we reincarnate as ourselves into that Body or did we somehow partially revive this guy? How much of your Brain is actually you and how much is actually related to his departed Soul?"
Jeremiah couldn't help but shrug. "Don't know, don't care, not my issue! You and sis and the girls get to have fun problem shooting and debugging that whole mess, drop a letter at some point telling me how it turns out."
The kid sputtered! "But THAT'S not fair!"
Life's not fair, brat! "I'm not connected to the System anymore, if you wanted me to give a shit you should have noticed that issue when reworking the deployment modules in the FIRST place."
That said… "Don't mind putting you guys up as some sort of extra security staff or something… Obviously I'd need to fill in Charlotte cause she wouldn't fall for any blarney you care to come up with, but it'd give you all time to start trouble shooting this whole mess while hopefully mitigating the consequences for having to 'break character' and all that."
John's eyes flickered a bit and… "If you or the others are trying to communicate with me using the com channels, it won't work with me disconnected from our Pocket, you know."
The kid winced. "...Ah, yeah. That makes sense. Well, the girls say they snuck in this new Body using the chaos of us breaking character as a distraction, but they can't actually Transfer into this world until we go to a new Realm entirely and shut down all the extra 'secrecy' defensive modules… They weren't designed to partially shut down since we didn't expect this to happen."
…So Jeremiah couldn't hug sis before she had to move on?
Unfortunate.
But by this age, he'd experienced grief more than a few times. He'd manage, especially with his little Charlotte being safe…
Speaking of which. "Is Temptation getting anything out of that 'Mister Sinister' dick waffle? His brains shouldn't have been damaged when we Consumed him."
They'd left his entire skull intact even!
Such restraint, very impressive.
John huffed. "That Body was basically just a relay clone, controlled at range through a powerful mental ability. No real brain meat to decode, no memories to work with. But we DID manage to have our sister's agents partially trace back the Soul connection, so they are working with Temptation to stalk this 'Mister Sinister' down and prevent this shit from happening again."
The kid raised one finger though, showing data. "Thankfully despite that setback, this isn't a total wash. The genetics encoded in this meat puppet has our girls VERY interested in upgrading some of our genetics using him as an example. At least for use when Transfering to a new Realm, in places where we can't use some of the more esoteric alien genetic information in Body creation."
Jeremiah hummed. "This guy was that enhanced? Something about him FELT powerful, at least."
John snorted! "Hell, a few tricks might even improve some of these options available in our Borg databases, which is DAMNED impressive! Grace is going to do a full suite of tests and find out what tricks we can use from this dude in future places next time we Transfer."
Humph. "Well just be sure to tag some of those improvements for MY people! I'll not have them put through something like this again in the future… Completely unacceptable."
John nodded. "If nothing else, we now have examples of locally enhanced human genetics for gaining superhuman muscles, bones, reflexes… Anything involving actual powers will need more testing of course, especially since that clone's brain was basically empty, but the biological stuff? That we can work with."
Good. "And the mind control issue?"
His younger half shrugged. "You already have the schematics for technological defenses to mental manipulation, there was a whole section about the stuff in the mess we got from Bolivar Trask! He didn't want any 'muties' to get into his own mind, after all."
Jeremiah stared at the brat blankly. "You are telling me that moron Trask managed to obscure or even fully block under researched methods of mind control using only basic scientific principles?"
John nodded. "Yep!"
His eye started twitching. "And he didn't even consider how much MONEY he could make selling such a thing to his partners at the very least?"
The boy nodded once more. "From the notes the girls read, he didn't care about anyone else but himself. Why BOTHER selling his co-conspirators brain protection?"
But… But! "Because THEY could expose HIS secrets! Setting aside the enormous potential for fortune he missed acting like that… Keeping THEM from having important information carved out of their sweet meats would be protecting HIS interests!"
For the love of GOD! "Self interest ALONE should have him at least…"
John shrugged. "Nope! He made some models for himself, made fake versions for the few people he 'trusted' that were secretly bombs to blow up their heads if they ever got compromised, and then stopped worrying about the invention and topic entirely."
He stared at nothing. "...To go build more murder robots?"
A nod. "To go build more murder robots."
For fucks sake. "Please thank Grace for any OTHER safety equipment she can dig out of those captured databases, and let me know how soon we can start protecting my people… And how much longer they will be unconscious."
John pulled up a medical screen. "It looks like 'Mister Sinister' got in using Trish Tilby's 'Followup interview request' as an excuse and took so long to get BACK in here to 'finish the job' because he had to go to our security control room to ensure the cameras were all set to loop."
Jeremiah narrowed his eyes… "He already knows the layout of the building. So either he compromised someone who knew the facilities layout, or this had been done before."
John nodded. "You are going to have to get your whole team examined using some of the scanning tools from racist robot man just to be sure nothing sneaky was left behind in your people."
God, what a mess… "I'll have Charlotte get this done, hopefully it will keep her from kicking herself about this whole situation."
The younger man sighed. "Assuming she or any of the others even remember today… He either compromised or re-compromised all security staff along the way there and back, but didn't have time or motivation to cause any other issues because we're pretty sure he was trying to be sneaky here. After all, the camera trick would be pointless if everyone could remember the TWO cameramen when all the recorded evidence now implies there was only ever one here in the building."
…Shit. "Pretty sure he was leaving the three of us for last because we were going to be 'rewritten'. Or at least Charlotte and I, he put Ms. Tilby asleep so maybe she'd just not notice anything odd happening here."
John blinked. "Which means that Charlotte will remember being hijacked and us going to sleep and… Me waking up and then? Oh dear."
Jeremiah on the other hand was carefully considering what he could recall. "Pretty sure you waking up knocked everyone out before we managed to eat the fucker."
John shuddered. "Please don't mention me doing that, I'm busy trying to repress that whole incident. Blegh, I can still taste the smugness even now, eww."
Heh, amateur. Old man Wickles was the KING of repression! "I've already mentally disassociated myself from YOUR actions, so as far as I am concerned, YOU ate the jerk and I was technically not in the area. Heh!"
The young man stared at Jeremiah's grinning satisfaction… And raised one finger. "Just for that, YOU get to explain to Charlotte what happened here without my help. Good luck with that."
Wait WHAT!? Hold up! "Now you just wait one damn…"
And the boy grinned! "Oh would you look at that, I'm suddenly SWAMPED with all sorts of module testing and readjustments due to not having enough help from cranky old variants of myself! Guess I'll just have to go get to work for the next two days or so… See you soon, gramps!"
FUCK YOU! "Don't you DARE even THINK about…"
And he was gone.
FUCK! "I'm telling sis about this! You hear me brat!?"
The reporter suddenly snorted in her sleep, reminding him that he now had a whole secured BASE filled with happily slumbering bodyguards, backup teams, staff, and so forth. "Shit."
And the only way to get this mess handled would be to wake up Charlotte, which would require him explaining this whole mess to a VERY smart woman who would be VERY skeptical… Not that he would bother to lie to her in the first place, but this was likely to be a very lengthy process as she'd inevitably get him to explain all sorts of stuff that he could suddenly recall…
Double Shit.
Fuck it, might as well get this crap show on the road. "Girls, I know you are probably still monitoring me… Could I at least have some tea and refreshments for this upcoming talk?"
The room shifted as new furniture came into reality and Charlotte shifted from sleeping against the wall to sleeping in the new plushy chair. The table had something hot steaming in the pot and small sandwiches… "Thank you, everyone. And someone smack my younger self, if you'd kindly."
Sigh… Better get this over with.
…Maybe it'd be best to pour the tea first? Or serve the snacks? Or delay longer?
Charlotte shifted in her chair. "...Sir?"
Damn it. "Hey girl. Feeling alright?"
The woman blinked at the high quality tea arrangement… And the sleeping reporter off to one side… The unconscious cameraman in the corner and the COMPLETE lack of security staff in the room. "...Feeling fairly confused, sir."
Hoo boy, how to start? "Well I can't promise to help anything make sense, but I can at least get you more confused trying to explain this mess."
She was already straightening her uniform. "I'll take what I can get, sir."
Sigh. "Probably best to start with how I both died and didn't when I was reborn and also left for the afterlife. God that was a confusing moment… Good drugs though, our doctors definitely use the best stuff."
Charlotte blinked. "Sir?"
Yep. This was probably going to take a while.
