Chapter 192: 189 Gesellschaft? More Like Gesellschafted! Ha Ha!
Gesellschaft base, Germany, February 22nd, 19:44.
Rachel has always been adamant that Sting Theory doesn't do commissions. not unless it's to a Clown that she likes that is also still paying for it, because doing a commission is one thing, but spending her valuable time on someone else for free?
What kind of a joke would that be?
However, as she looks at the snow covered warehouses through her drone's camera, she can admit to herself that everybody really does have a price.
Seven hundred million just for the job, and another hundred if Lusia's 'asking nicely' works out like she thinks it will, and Rachel honestly finds it annoying how she doesn't really see Lusia failing.
That woman may be insane, but there is a method to her madness, even if it's hard to see sometimes... most of the time.
She trusts her to accomplish whatever goal she sets out to at the very least. Rachel's own freedom of the Birdcage is proof enough of that.
So that's eight hundred million, split nine ways and then rounded up leaves ninety mill for each group, Lusia taking eighty to 'keep the numbers looking fancy' and thanks to the fact that Rachel is the only one in her group, she doesn't even have to split it with anyone, leaving her with ninety mill of pure cold cash in profit.
And the amount of work that she has to put in for that profit is very little, making it almost seem like free money.
After all, she's getting all that money, and all she's being asked of in return is the simple push of a button.
Well, that's actually a misnomer now that she thinks about it. None of her inventions need her to push any buttons, they simply fulfil their purpose at the exact time that she created them to.
Speaking of, it seems the clock is about to tick over to forty-five.
With an impish grin on her face, Rachel watches as her screen goes white and crashes into static, the drone being destroyed by the blast, but she just switches over to another camera drone further away and watches in real time as her Driver goes off.
Unlike a typical bomb, such as a thermonuclear weapon, Rachel's Drivers don't produce the same kinds of mushroom clouds, because the effect is a lot more concentrated, and anything hit by the blast is simply destroyed completely until soon enough, her camera is looking at an empty crater in the middle of an otherwise snowy forest.
"Well that was easy," she says to herself, reclining back in her comfortable chair from all the way back in the States as she presses a few buttons on her console, "now lets see how the others are doing."
In only a moment, her monitor changes to show another aerial shot of another complex of buildings, though this time it seems less designed for storage, with big warehouses. Instead, it seems more like a military base, filled with barracks and shooting ranges, she even spies a group of men jogging around a field.
Luckily, she tuned in just in time to catch the start of the show, and she takes out her popcorn with a smile. She doesn't even really like popcorn that much. It's just funny to eat it while watching people she knows fight deadly battles.
Not that they're really in any real danger, all said.
===
Vendor is a businessman first and foremost, but that doesn't mean he isn't educated in other things, such as parahuman psychology.
He is, after all, a parahuman. It'd be foolish to not read up on what changes he might go through, and one repeatedly noted fact about parahumans is that they have increased aggressiveness, often seeking out conflict even when the person before would have preferred to avoid it.
And he notice the signs, budding restlessness, twitching fingers and the like. Sort of like an addict suffering withdrawals, except he was never introduced to the drug.
It was annoying at first, but he learnt to deal with it. He just had to take some of his creations out and stress test them himself. To pick a fight, basically, and the restlessness goes away for a while, letting him focus on his Tinkering until it returns.
So when Lusia said that she'd prefer for everyone to get involved, he didn't really mind. A fight of this scale should tide him over for a couple of months, letting him focus on some interesting projects he's been trying to figure out recently.
And he's not even in any danger, since he got paired with March, who also brought some of her own people, but they count as an extension of March, so he's not losing out on any money because of it.
And the reason he's happy to be paired with March becomes obvious the moment they begin their assault.
They start by simply walking through the doors, not for any tactical reason, jut because it's more fun, and we are Clowns.
The big, armed gate stops being an issue with a simple toss of one of his specialty grenades, this one is a favourite of his, as it functions by sending out an omnidirectional pulse that effectively turns all the nitrogen in the air into what is basically dynamite.
Which makes for quite the boom!
Almost immediately after the explosion goes off, an alarm follows it, all the while Vendor and March calmly stroll inside, followed by March's minions, Tori, Megan and Jace.
"Alrighty boys and girls!" March exclaims, raising her arms up to her sides as she spins around once, the smile behind her bunny mask clear to them all, "remember to do exactly as I say, and we win."
If anyone else were saying it, Vendor would call them cocky, not to say that she isn't cocky, but the difference is that they all know that she's right. He has no idea where Lusia is finding all these scary kids, but she sure is scary for her size.
They only make it a few steps into the base proper before the first squad shows up, only to be mowed down by Jace without a word, his telekinetic bullets made extra deadly by his other ability to boost the speed of small projectiles.
The next group to arrive falls just as easily. There were more of them, and they did manage to shoot at the Clowns first, but Tori could stop all the bullets and Jace could mow them down just as easily, their body armour being entirely ineffective.
Vendor can only idly congratulate the PRT on doing such a good job at keeping the layman ignorant of what parahumans are truly capable of, because the simple fact is that normals don't stand a chance, even with the more simple, weaker powers.
Parahumans are just on an entirely different level, but if people truly understood the difference then a race war would be the likely outcome, and it's clear from the current display who would win that.
Luckily for March's boredom, the next group to arrive are not just more normals, as they seem to have gotten the point that only capes can fight capes.
Two Clowns and their minions stare down seven soldiers. No words are spoken between them, none have to be, but before anyone moves, March calls out directions, speaking in a simple code to cut down on any delays.
"T twelve! J nine! V G four one!"
Without hesitating, Tori lets loose her telekinesis forward, just in time to stop a suddenly accelerating cape, while Jace points his fingers to his nine o'clock and lets loose a barrage of bullets that catch an unsuspecting cape as soon as he appears there, timed to perfection.
At the same time, Vendor takes out a grenade and throws it at his one o'clock, where it detonates into a sludge, blocking what looks like a giant arrow of fire with ease.
At the same time, March is not idle, rushing forward to meet with a pair of Brutes, dodging their attacks with such ease that it seems choreographed, but returning the favour with very real attacks, taking the first mans leg and piercing the second's heart in just as many seconds.
"M! Back three, about face, left two, attack eight! V! Back one, G two five! T three!"
Following her instructions, Vendor takes a single step back and watches as the tip of a sword passes right before his eyes, almost nicking the tip of his nose and making him go cross-eyed. Before the sudden attacker can push for anything else however, Tori blasts him away with her own power, and Vendor ignores his brush with death in favour of taking the named grenade and throwing it to his five.
He then watches in amazement as Megan takes three steps backwards, gaining just enough distance to avoid a spike of earth rising from the ground, and turns around right as a phantom of a man appears where he would have been right in front of her, only to fade away, seemingly missing an activation condition.
She then seems to phase to the side, moving two steps in half the time right as a thin white line, like a steel wire, that cuts into the ground where she was, and when she raises her arm, her power activates in time to pull on a cape that was growing in size, causing them to stumble down right on top of the grenade that Vendor just through, which turns his chest to dust the moment he impacts it.
It's as Vendor thought. Being paired up with March just means that you aren't in any danger.
===
Elsewhere, a less chaotic scene is taking place.
In the middle of a snowy mountain range, a curious image can be seen, of a matching pair of children, dressed up in monochrome doctor's coats and matching but opposite masks, Negante and Chibi watch a nearby Gesellschaft base from atop a nearby cliff, with Jack and Queen standing nearby, still dressed in their combat maid attire, as is required when the kids are playing Clown.
Bringing a pair of binoculars to his eyes, Negante looks back down at the base for a moment before putting them away and turning back to Chibi.
"Does your person... have hair?" He asks, causing Chibi to let out a sigh.
"No," is her demure answer, her pout clear through her tone as Negante flips down three of the remaining profiles on his board, smugly glancing at her own board which still has six profiles left standing.
Crossing her arms under her non-existent bust, Chibi decides to guess. "Is your person... Bambina?"
Negante's body freezes for a moment before he takes Chibi's place in being the one pouting. "...Yes."
"Really!?" Chibi exclaims, to which he tersely nods his head, "yaaay! I though I was gonna lose!"
He thought so too.
But it's just a game, and soon enough they are just chatting casually as they wait, not bothering with anymore games.
"Do you think any of us will ever get put on a game like this?" Chibi asks, innocently curious, and Negante thinks on it for a moment.
On one hand, if Lusia decides to make it happen then it will, but he feels the question is more on if it'll happen without her direct involvement.
It's not like it's uncommon for Villains to get promotional deals after all, like Bambina, who's a new Villain from Los Angeles. So long as you can score high on the rating sites then it's not too hard to be a 'celebrity cape'.
But like Hollywood, it's not known to be an enjoyable thing, constantly fighting for popularity so that you can keep getting promotional deals and such. Not a very fun life from what he's heard of it. The only part that interests him in the slightest is that a lot of ranking sites also serve as betting sites.
Things like if x got in a fight with y then who would win? You place a bet on it, and if they ever do fight then bets are paid out then. It's technically illegal, but far too prolific to be stopped.
Negante himself has put several bets on Tear winning against literally anyone he could think of at the time. He even put a small bet on her against Eidolon, because the odds are insane for literally anyone against 'The Strongest Hero'.
But back to the question at hand, he doesn't see any Clowns being so attention starved that they feel the need to fight for a high ranking, and without fighting for it, you just won't be ranked. Even the Triumvirate are rarely in the top fifty, because people are stupid and their memory is short.
"Nah, prolly not," he finally answers, having come to his conclusion, "why? D'you want to be on one of these games?"
She seems to ponder the question for a moment, holding a finger up to her chin. "No, not really. I think it would be cool to have out own faces in the game, but I don't think I'd want everyone else to have it too."
Nodding his head, Negante rolls up his sleeve and checks his watch, picking the binoculars up and giving the compound one last look. "The virus should be done by now, wanna go see if we can find anything interesting down their?"
"Sure!" Chibi exclaims as she jumps to her feet, not the slightest bit bothered by the lives her and Negante have taken. They are Nazis after all, killing them is no different from weeding your garden. At least, that's how her mommy explained it to her.
All it takes is a little airborne virus, specially made to be weak and ineffective, likely to die out in a couple of days and almost completely incapable of actually infecting anything, with a focus on slowing the heartbeat, but still too weak to have much of an effect.
Combine that with another airborne drug, one specifically designed to take away a human's ability to resist a very specific heart disease, and you have a combination that can take out a compound in a couple of hours completely silently, all without risking causing a plague.
=================
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Yeetus beetus, that's three groups of clowns down, only five more to go. And yeah, Riley + James is a combo that was unintentionally hella fuckign scary. Like, I never really properly thought about it till now, but they are legit such a good combo that anyone reading this without the A/Ns could legit end up thinking that I designed James' power for the sole purpose of synergising with Riley.
Like, she can make any kind of virus, but people could still makes counters, or just resist it with out antibodies, but then james can just add to her virus with some tinker bs that makes out antibodies useless and cures basically ineffective.
So yeah, scary little duo.
Also, fuck march, I hate march now. She's no longer anywhere near my favourite, she causes me so much anxiety. Legit tried to do an interlude for her but deleted it after a few hundred words, cuz I haven't read ward, so not only do I just not know her character as well as I do worm characters, but when writing her I have to do everything perfectly.
Do you know how annoying that is? March has to know how everything is going to pan out around her and exactly when it will happen. That's so fucking difficult to write when she's using it to communicate with a group.
If it's just March by herself then I love it, but the moment she's with anyone else I hate it. I also don't know jack shit about the people she surrounds herself with. Honestly at this point I'm hoping that she'll just die for the sake of my convenience.
But if y'all know anything about me, it's that I value being honest to my plot way more than my own convenience in writing, so don't think I'm just gonna kill her off.
(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!
pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)
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