Distractions in Business
Kei got her ass kicked by Emily.
Kei could have tried, but Emily was a beast herself. She knows how Kei fights and her muscle-boosted limbs easily pinned Kei down and gave her the beating she somewhat deserved.
Kei told me it was just some mission. But she forgot to tell me she spent a lot of time here and met up with Emily every weekend. Emily made Kei look like she really was just after body and in a way, I think Boss just wanted to get laid. Miss Emily’s quite hurt by how she just got ghosted and Kei here had somewhat ‘evaded’ Emily for reasons even a beating Kei wouldn’t dare to tell. I got a feeling it’s a stupid reason.
When Emily knocked her lights out. She spat on the ground and saw me binning my latte. She sat on the sidewalk. Then look at Kei sprawled on the ground.
“What a fucking heartbreaker.”
“Is she?”
“You love her, huh.”
“What? I do. Got any problem with that?”
“Didn’t say anything. Always knew the Boss swings on both sides.”
She snorted and pulled her nose.
“Doesn’t even fight properly. What a bitch. What’s your opinion on her?”
“Better than the last bosses I worked under. She pays well. Not demanding and is usually a pleasant companion.”
“She made it. Bitch used to tell me about her dreams. Thought she’d let me accompany her into achieving this dream. I guessed wrong. She didn’t and left me on my own.”
She says this. But I think she still has the hots for Kei. The glance. The way she undresses Kei with her eyes and the subtle biting of her lower lip tells me she still wants her.
Women like Emily are the kind who wants to ride and die with their lovers. I don’t know when they met, but she sure hasn’t forgotten. And in this city it’s somewhat rare to find someone who can’t easily move on with so many happenings in just a single year.
She also feels like she’s a sucker for Kei. Which leads me to wonder if Kei still has feelings for her. It was a complicated situation and I feel like I wasn’t in the business of knowing.
“What do you think she’ll say if she wakes her ass up?”
“Dunno. She always moves forward. Never stopping. Even Eta’s death didn’t seem to stop her. I don’t know if it comes naturally for her, but she always was a girl with an iron heart. She’s amazing… and I sometimes hate her for being this way.”
“You want to get back together?”
She scrubs her shoes on the pavement. Her eyes move to the cafe and then back to Kei.
“I don’t know. It’s great seeing her though. Take care of her. I’m going to tell the owner.”
She squats down and pokes Kei on the cheek. She stood up and then went back in. I took another look at the shop and saw the electrical boxes outside of the shop. Some might not notice, but I can see the shop is more like a fixer’s area. An information stall where mercs would come to do things under the dark. It did look strange to me. This whole district focused on flesh mining and they have a café and so few restaurants.
I dragged Kei out of the pavement and then placed her against the wall. She groaned and opened her eyelashes where her eyes immediately went looking for Emily. Then her eyes went back to me.
“You are a lousy assistant.”
“And you quite suck at love, Boss.”
Kei snorts.
“Nothing wrong with wanting to get myself laid. I didn’t think she cared this much. Sure, I liked the sex and the company, but never really thought about it that way.”
“I suspected you and Eta were that way first, you know?”
She looked at me in disgust.
“Hell no. Keep that devil off my head. Not a good thing to joke about, Akun.”
“Sorry. Still, I think she still has the hots for you. You say sweet-talk her and she’d ride and die with you.”
“She would. Which bothers me. I ain’t that good to ride and die with. And I’m not exactly looking for anyone at the moment.”
I saw her eyes looking away. She’s lying to herself.
“You are lying to yourself.”
“Maybe. Fuck me, I’m miserable and lonely. Is that what you want to hear, my lousy Assistant?”
I squatted next to her and lit up the bowl of my pipe.
“Nothing wrong with wanting to get some comfort.”
“I don’t wanna do it. Call it a shitty excuse. But I left because I didn’t want to see her die in front of me. I can handle Eta dying. But if I see her get fucked up because of me. I’d be aching for years.”
“Not that bad actually. I understand what’s wrong. So, that’s it? You don’t want to?”
“No. I just want her out of my head. It’s been years and all I have for her is just leftovers.”
“Lying again.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. But we aren’t exactly in Alonzo for this.”
“You know more about this district than you actually let out for.”
“Sorry for lying I guess?”
I helped her up. She spat blood out on the floor and pushed on her back.
“I need to recover from the beating. She got some good augs on her.”
“Yeah. It was quite amazing.”
She turns to me.
“You record me getting beaten?”
“I have to do it, Ma’am. I couldn’t help but do it.”
She looks at me helplessly.
“I guess this is the only downside of success. Ah, it truly is suffering!”
She throws her arms up and then goes off on her own. Watching Kei going away like that, I looked at the woman crossing her arms on the side of the shop with quite an expression on her face.
“Sorry you have to hear that.”
“It’s fine. Was somewhat expecting that with a bitch like her. Got no qualms with her. It’s the least bullshit response I heard from living in this city.”
“You sound somewhat pleased.”
“There’s something beautiful about the way she does things. Still, it doesn't mean I have to praise her directly. Really, what a bitch.”
She was somewhat of a fun woman so I added her to my contact. I also sent her the footage I took from her beating the shit out of Kei.
[Have to ask this fr. But are you sure you’re on her side?]
The message she left made me laugh. I am on Kei’s side. She’s my boss, after all. But I don’t excuse what I think is no good.
***
I found Kei injecting herself with some auto-syringe. Now that she’s done with Emily for now. I think we can go back to business. Thankfully, we were somewhat efficient in what we wanted to do and got to work.
“Send you the footage.”
She looked up the footage and frowned.
“Wow, it feels strange seeing my ass getting kicked.”
“Should have fought back, Boss.”
She shrugged and asked for the footage we got from the brain of the cultist and the guy Agent Hayes told us about. The Mages, who were in-charge of the footage, were able to start work on the footage and did some basic annotation on the footage and subtitled it for us to understand.
The enemy was using a spell based on this unrecorded tome. The basis of the spell is familiar, but the somatic, verbal, and material composition to make the spell work is unknown.
We put in a translator to translate it, but even the Bot handling the translation couldn’t recognize the language. From the notes the Mages left behind, it’s probably a dead language and one that isn’t translated or revived either.
“Can’t be a dead language somehow.”
“Why?”
“We would at least know the name of it. I suspect that this isn’t a human kind of language.”
The languages of the otherside creatures differ. The way they approach language and communication is still confusing even in this era where we have supercomputers simply because of the lack of data we have on them. Capturing a demon is a monumental task and demons usually just do ‘kill’ themselves to return to their plane of existence. And not to mention dealing with devils is even more exhausting. Do you want to learn their language? You have to ask which one you want to learn specifically. The earth has 7,000 languages and hell has an unknown number. The articulate devils who are dealing with humanity have said there are ten thousand languages and that isn’t including the dead languages from fallen devils who are felled by their fellow devils are constantly scheming against them in this endless cycle. One might think hell is all fire and brimstone when there is together another world that seems too alien for humanity to understand.
We couldn’t understand the language so we had to do guesswork and find out the composition of it through observing the somatic and verbal gestures of the enemy. The analysts, who were from the TCU’s diabolist section, told us of his guesswork and collaborated in understanding what it was.
Two days of work were spent on trying to figure it out with Agent Hayes occasionally contacting us with brief summary reports of what they were finding on the flesh pit mines.
The problem with this kind of creature is it is able to artificially create its own flesh golem that can deter the Agents and the Clergy sent in the mines. It also doesn’t help that the Union occupying the mines are starting to get impatient by the progress and have made demands that they should be able continue their work. The Church basically pointed their guns at them after their statement, accusing them of being cultists for trying not to starve.
It would have been easy, but with the possible involvement of a contractor who might have helped the cultist in their ritual. The Church’s mind can’t be changed and Vicar Liebert doubled-down on securing the district, which has been a problem since import and export have been crippled with the Clergy and the Bureau Agents searching every container for any contaminated products.
The Cultists have been quiet. In the shadows and lurking quietly without making a fuss. We do get reports from other Agents about how there might be a scheme we’re blindly walking on without knowing. But that is not our job here. We can fight, but we aren’t called here to join them in the fight and Kei herself has made it clear what our role was here and made no compromises about changing this. Sure, we’ll defend ourselves, but our primary role in this was support and the investigation of the anomaly.
If it’s even an anomaly. Kei defines anomalies as something that deviates or not part of the Great Record made available at the Mayans Great Cycle in which the monsters started truly appearing openly without secrecy. That was thirty-eight years ago.
Kei suspects we aren’t dealing with an anomaly, but instead a demon or devil that has been mistaken as an anomaly. All signs point that’s the case, and if there’s something Kei and I learned from dealing with demons. They always have some trick. Finding the heart of this demon might not be the end of the problem. It could get worse. These kinds of demons sure enjoy creating and meddling with biomass of flesh. I wonder if this is the same as the Okinawan Devil’s fragment?
We were focusing on the way to strike the heart when we clearly had somewhat failed to realize that we were facing a demon and possibly… someone with enough wits to make a deal with a demon.
That’s what we were missing and somehow I wasn’t really that surprised when we realized we’ve been thoroughly distracted by an enemy who we haven’t even met.
Distractions in Business
Kei got her ass kicked by Emily.
Kei could have tried, but Emily was a beast herself. She knows how Kei fights and her muscle-boosted limbs easily pinned Kei down and gave her the beating she somewhat deserved.
Kei told me it was just some mission. But she forgot to tell me she spent a lot of time here and met up with Emily every weekend. Emily made Kei look like she really was just after body and in a way, I think Boss just wanted to get laid. Miss Emily’s quite hurt by how she just got ghosted and Kei here had somewhat ‘evaded’ Emily for reasons even a beating Kei wouldn’t dare to tell. I got a feeling it’s a stupid reason.
When Emily knocked her lights out. She spat on the ground and saw me binning my latte. She sat on the sidewalk. Then look at Kei sprawled on the ground.
“What a fucking heartbreaker.”
“Is she?”
“You love her, huh.”
“What? I do. Got any problem with that?”
“Didn’t say anything. Always knew the Boss swings on both sides.”
She snorted and pulled her nose.
“Doesn’t even fight properly. What a bitch. What’s your opinion on her?”
“Better than the last bosses I worked under. She pays well. Not demanding and is usually a pleasant companion.”
“She made it. Bitch used to tell me about her dreams. Thought she’d let me accompany her into achieving this dream. I guessed wrong. She didn’t and left me on my own.”
She says this. But I think she still has the hots for Kei. The glance. The way she undresses Kei with her eyes and the subtle biting of her lower lip tells me she still wants her.
Women like Emily are the kind who wants to ride and die with their lovers. I don’t know when they met, but she sure hasn’t forgotten. And in this city it’s somewhat rare to find someone who can’t easily move on with so many happenings in just a single year.
She also feels like she’s a sucker for Kei. Which leads me to wonder if Kei still has feelings for her. It was a complicated situation and I feel like I wasn’t in the business of knowing.
“What do you think she’ll say if she wakes her ass up?”
“Dunno. She always moves forward. Never stopping. Even Eta’s death didn’t seem to stop her. I don’t know if it comes naturally for her, but she always was a girl with an iron heart. She’s amazing… and I sometimes hate her for being this way.”
“You want to get back together?”
She scrubs her shoes on the pavement. Her eyes move to the cafe and then back to Kei.
“I don’t know. It’s great seeing her though. Take care of her. I’m going to tell the owner.”
She squats down and pokes Kei on the cheek. She stood up and then went back in. I took another look at the shop and saw the electrical boxes outside of the shop. Some might not notice, but I can see the shop is more like a fixer’s area. An information stall where mercs would come to do things under the dark. It did look strange to me. This whole district focused on flesh mining and they have a café and so few restaurants.
I dragged Kei out of the pavement and then placed her against the wall. She groaned and opened her eyelashes where her eyes immediately went looking for Emily. Then her eyes went back to me.
“You are a lousy assistant.”
“And you quite suck at love, Boss.”
Kei snorts.
“Nothing wrong with wanting to get myself laid. I didn’t think she cared this much. Sure, I liked the sex and the company, but never really thought about it that way.”
“I suspected you and Eta were that way first, you know?”
She looked at me in disgust.
“Hell no. Keep that devil off my head. Not a good thing to joke about, Akun.”
“Sorry. Still, I think she still has the hots for you. You say sweet-talk her and she’d ride and die with you.”
“She would. Which bothers me. I ain’t that good to ride and die with. And I’m not exactly looking for anyone at the moment.”
I saw her eyes looking away. She’s lying to herself.
“You are lying to yourself.”
“Maybe. Fuck me, I’m miserable and lonely. Is that what you want to hear, my lousy Assistant?”
I squatted next to her and lit up the bowl of my pipe.
“Nothing wrong with wanting to get some comfort.”
“I don’t wanna do it. Call it a shitty excuse. But I left because I didn’t want to see her die in front of me. I can handle Eta dying. But if I see her get fucked up because of me. I’d be aching for years.”
“Not that bad actually. I understand what’s wrong. So, that’s it? You don’t want to?”
“No. I just want her out of my head. It’s been years and all I have for her is just leftovers.”
“Lying again.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. But we aren’t exactly in Alonzo for this.”
“You know more about this district than you actually let out for.”
“Sorry for lying I guess?”
I helped her up. She spat blood out on the floor and pushed on her back.
“I need to recover from the beating. She got some good augs on her.”
“Yeah. It was quite amazing.”
She turns to me.
“You record me getting beaten?”
“I have to do it, Ma’am. I couldn’t help but do it.”
She looks at me helplessly.
“I guess this is the only downside of success. Ah, it truly is suffering!”
She throws her arms up and then goes off on her own. Watching Kei going away like that, I looked at the woman crossing her arms on the side of the shop with quite an expression on her face.
“Sorry you have to hear that.”
“It’s fine. Was somewhat expecting that with a bitch like her. Got no qualms with her. It’s the least bullshit response I heard from living in this city.”
“You sound somewhat pleased.”
“There’s something beautiful about the way she does things. Still, it doesn't mean I have to praise her directly. Really, what a bitch.”
She was somewhat of a fun woman so I added her to my contact. I also sent her the footage I took from her beating the shit out of Kei.
[Have to ask this fr. But are you sure you’re on her side?]
The message she left made me laugh. I am on Kei’s side. She’s my boss, after all. But I don’t excuse what I think is no good.
***
I found Kei injecting herself with some auto-syringe. Now that she’s done with Emily for now. I think we can go back to business. Thankfully, we were somewhat efficient in what we wanted to do and got to work.
“Send you the footage.”
She looked up the footage and frowned.
“Wow, it feels strange seeing my ass getting kicked.”
“Should have fought back, Boss.”
She shrugged and asked for the footage we got from the brain of the cultist and the guy Agent Hayes told us about. The Mages, who were in-charge of the footage, were able to start work on the footage and did some basic annotation on the footage and subtitled it for us to understand.
The enemy was using a spell based on this unrecorded tome. The basis of the spell is familiar, but the somatic, verbal, and material composition to make the spell work is unknown.
We put in a translator to translate it, but even the Bot handling the translation couldn’t recognize the language. From the notes the Mages left behind, it’s probably a dead language and one that isn’t translated or revived either.
“Can’t be a dead language somehow.”
“Why?”
“We would at least know the name of it. I suspect that this isn’t a human kind of language.”
The languages of the otherside creatures differ. The way they approach language and communication is still confusing even in this era where we have supercomputers simply because of the lack of data we have on them. Capturing a demon is a monumental task and demons usually just do ‘kill’ themselves to return to their plane of existence. And not to mention dealing with devils is even more exhausting. Do you want to learn their language? You have to ask which one you want to learn specifically. The earth has 7,000 languages and hell has an unknown number. The articulate devils who are dealing with humanity have said there are ten thousand languages and that isn’t including the dead languages from fallen devils who are felled by their fellow devils are constantly scheming against them in this endless cycle. One might think hell is all fire and brimstone when there is together another world that seems too alien for humanity to understand.
We couldn’t understand the language so we had to do guesswork and find out the composition of it through observing the somatic and verbal gestures of the enemy. The analysts, who were from the TCU’s diabolist section, told us of his guesswork and collaborated in understanding what it was.
Two days of work were spent on trying to figure it out with Agent Hayes occasionally contacting us with brief summary reports of what they were finding on the flesh pit mines.
The problem with this kind of creature is it is able to artificially create its own flesh golem that can deter the Agents and the Clergy sent in the mines. It also doesn’t help that the Union occupying the mines are starting to get impatient by the progress and have made demands that they should be able continue their work. The Church basically pointed their guns at them after their statement, accusing them of being cultists for trying not to starve.
It would have been easy, but with the possible involvement of a contractor who might have helped the cultist in their ritual. The Church’s mind can’t be changed and Vicar Liebert doubled-down on securing the district, which has been a problem since import and export have been crippled with the Clergy and the Bureau Agents searching every container for any contaminated products.
The Cultists have been quiet. In the shadows and lurking quietly without making a fuss. We do get reports from other Agents about how there might be a scheme we’re blindly walking on without knowing. But that is not our job here. We can fight, but we aren’t called here to join them in the fight and Kei herself has made it clear what our role was here and made no compromises about changing this. Sure, we’ll defend ourselves, but our primary role in this was support and the investigation of the anomaly.
If it’s even an anomaly. Kei defines anomalies as something that deviates or not part of the Great Record made available at the Mayans Great Cycle in which the monsters started truly appearing openly without secrecy. That was thirty-eight years ago.
Kei suspects we aren’t dealing with an anomaly, but instead a demon or devil that has been mistaken as an anomaly. All signs point that’s the case, and if there’s something Kei and I learned from dealing with demons. They always have some trick. Finding the heart of this demon might not be the end of the problem. It could get worse. These kinds of demons sure enjoy creating and meddling with biomass of flesh. I wonder if this is the same as the Okinawan Devil’s fragment?
We were focusing on the way to strike the heart when we clearly had somewhat failed to realize that we were facing a demon and possibly… someone with enough wits to make a deal with a demon.
That’s what we were missing and somehow I wasn’t really that surprised when we realized we’ve been thoroughly distracted by an enemy who we haven’t even met.
