Once again, Babs found herself out of her element. Sure, she was dressed in her finest suit and had retied her tie with tired fingers until she reached perfection, but the setting felt all wrong. She stood outside the Arcadian headquarters of Zhanghai Industrial Corporation in the western side of Narragansett, located along a ridge that gave its occupants a commanding view of the capital down below. The usual heat surge of late autumn gave the city a gentle warmth, yet the headquarters - which looked like a bunch of pagodas stacked atop one another until they reached the sky - felt like an imposing mass of steel, concrete, and hip-and-gable tiles. The Restorationist relationship with Zhanghai always felt a little odd to Babs, but those looking to increase their own power often made strange bedfellows.
After a deep breath, Babs felt confident enough to step inside. Both a massive chandelier and a prim doorman greeted her; he directed her to the clerk, who directed her to the elevator. Her eyes widened at the technological wonder, a marvel of the modern ages. Once she told the operator her destination, he punched in the floor number, and up they went. The wooden walls inside the machine were shiny enough for Babs to see her own excited expression. If it weren’t for her steel nerves, all the anxiety bubbling below the surface definitely would’ve shown.
The elevator moved past administrative floors, banking floors, accounting floors, industrial floors, import/export floors, until it finally arrived at executive suites. When Babs stepped off the elevator, potted plants and marble busts directed her down the hall. Before an unmarked office, a corporate samurai stood outside, two swords on his hip. When she approached, he nodded in recognition and allowed her inside.
Babs felt like she had been taken back in time. Marble columns - purely for decoration - dotted the suite, which was large enough to hold both a conference table and couch. Paintings that hung from the walls depicted pre-Unleashing heroes - a warlord, wielding the reins of a warhorse, pointing toward the other side of the mountain range where his enemies could be found; a king dressed in golden armor and purple cloak accepting the surrender of the queen and family of his opponent. There was a conspicuously empty spot along the wall; that’s where Caesar would add the painting of his own triumph once he achieved his victory.
And there he was.
Without warning, without any symbol, he was standing there, right in front of where his painting would one day hang. The shift of energy in the room felt immense, as if a calm sea had suddenly been transformed into a giant tsunami with no prior warning. Babs felt the surge of Rddhi emanating from him; Haneda told her what he looked like, but he truly did resemble a king. Everything about him looked like it had been smoothly molded by a skilled hand - his frame was not too large nor too skinny, his height was imposing enough without being a detriment, his eyes shone with intellect. He wore a black bomber jacket with a splash of red on the sides; a fur cloak ran across the back of his neck and upper back. His hair was such a light blonde that it appeared almost white.
Babs immediately saluted the pledge of allegiance across her heart. Caesar smiled and nodded for her to be at ease.
“Barbara Morang,” he said in a voice that sounded all-too-there yet at the same time, almost distant, almost soft, yet always firm. He was an enigma, and despite his claims to be just a man on a mission, there was something unnatural about him, not quite divine, but not quite human either. “I appreciate your efforts as deputy political commissar attached to the Red Dragon Triad. The people of the ghetto look up to Red Dragons and therefore us. And now, with Ling’s unfortunate passing, they will now see the fruits of a full relationship with the Restorationists.”
Ling died under Caesar’s orders. A more pliable lieutenant was now in charge, and Haneda said profits were now up sixteen percent with the influx of cultivator pills. Babs could still feel the cold steel of the pistol in her palm.
“You have done well,” Caesar complimented. “And Haneda has given you a glowing report. The time has come for you to leave the nest. As of today, I will be appointing you commissar for the Yellow Knife Triad in southwestern Narragansett. There has been a recent change in command there in a manner similar to Ling’s. Unfortunately, the former commissar skimmed the books. His crime and punishment is your opportunity.”
Caesar placed a fatherly hand on her shoulder. His palm radiated with power, yet also felt very cold. “Your twin goals are to bring our civilizing mission to the area under their control and maintain a healthy profit margin. They represent a healthy market for enlightenment and cultivator pills. Do your best. Strive for excellence. Arete.”
Arete - to stop at nothing to achieve what you’re capable of. It served as the guiding principle of the Restorationists - did Caesar, who grew up as little more than a boy in the slums with a grand dream, not serve as a perfect example of it?
Babs nodded and saluted once more. “For Kallipolis.”
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I’m proud of you.
The words echoed around Babs head as she sat in the conference room of the Yellow Knife Triad with its new oyabun leader and his lieutenants.
I’m proud of you.
I’m proud of you.
I’m proud of you.
That, and a firm handshake, had been Haneda’s parting farewell. She even detected a hint of a smile in his otherwise stoic face. Nothing else needed to be said between them. He had already taught her everything she needed to know - it would be up to her and her own willpower to truly understand and apply those lessons. But upon hearing words like that, Babs felt like she could do anything.
The oyabun felt differently. He was a younger man, just freshly promoted after betraying his boss, and idly smoked a cigarette as he leaned back in his seat, utterly relaxed. “Ah, but you need to understand, Babs. The situation’s a little different now. You’re new here, so it’s time for a new agreement, see? The cut the Restorationists receive…well, we ought to make that a bit more fair, no? Especially for an incompetent newcomer not familiar with the ways of the underworld like yourself.” He toyed with the rings on his hand. “Let’s just say, we give you your pay when we feel like it, yeah?” His lieutenants grinned as he spoke.
Babs tilted her head towards the ceiling and let a sigh escape her. She loosened her tie and slowly rose from the seat. The oyabun shared a grin with his comrades and went to meet her. The second he sent out that first punch, she was already dodging it, her palm on his temple, her thumb in his eye.
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As he crumpled and wailed on the floor, Babs eyed her bloody hand. The more she used violence, the easier it came to accept. She retched all night after killing Ling. She wouldn’t lose any sleep over this.
“The tax is now higher by 1%,” she told him. “Try to fuck with me again, and I raise it another percent and take your other eye with it.”
Either he would learn from his mistakes or he would die gaining vengeance. As a commissar, Babs already knew to keep her head on a swivel. She wiped her thumb on the wooden table and departed.
Things shipped up after that. Upon seeing how much money they raked in with the cultivator pills, the now eye-patched oyabun didn’t care so much about that tax anymore. Salvatore was his name, and with all that money flowing in, he had a lot less to worry about, and soon learned the wisdom of playing by Restorationist rules. Babs ensured no lieutenants would be gunning for his oyabun position, and when the simple needs are met, you can start focusing on the more complex ones. The ones that deal with the mind rather than the body. The district for the Yellow Triads included a patch of land owned by Zhanghai that hid a pre-Unleashing subway tunnel beneath it. One fine day in summer, Salvatore, Babs, and the corporate samurai assigned to guard it proudly welcomed in the first Yellow Triad agora class. Beggars, prostitutes, children, black marketeers, and factory workers all attended; all learned about the wisdom of Kallipolis.
Babs crossed her arms proudly and watched enlightenment happen in real time. The people learned to trust her; when a drunkard was beating his teenaged wife one too many times, they came to her for help. She found them in a dusty one-bedroom tenement home. Dressed in her finest suit - with the sleeves and ankles rolled up, of course - she stepped through their door while his fist was still raised. She caught it before he could lower it, and then broke it before he could harm again.
His wife had blonde hair and a pained smile. They shook hands and Babs made it clear to the husband that beating his wife would be like beating Babs herself. The wife bowed her head in gratitude as she left.
The cultivator pill money paid for the agora and the supply kept its users - including that husband - happy. From illegally-cultivated fields of flowers mutated by the Unleashing in the homeland, Zhanghai smuggled them into Arcadia, where non-cultivators could enjoy their intoxicating and psychedelic effects. Pill markets opened up right next to the agora under the watchful eye of the samurai; no Arcadian authority would ever step foot this deep in the ghetto.
“I thought commissars could become cultivators,” Salvatore said one day as they stood on the balcony of the Yellow Knife headquarters, watching the ghetto and growing civilization below them. “So why ain’t you?”
Babs just smiled as she thought of a stoic, fatherly face. “I don’t need it. Becoming one might get the military’s attention on me, and besides - we built all of this without cultivation, didn’t we?” She tapped her fingers happily along the railing and thought of the blonde wife. If left to her own devices, she would’ve remained a dishwasher until she reached an early, overworked grave. But now - she wrote beautiful calligraphy and wanted to be a doctor in the new Kallipolis. “Why do you ask?”
Salvatore shrugged. “The unexamined life is one not worth living, right?”
Babs laughed at the agora wisdom.
Anyways, a year later, the blonde wife was dead. Street urchins with sunken eyes, in agreement for pills, brought Babs to her corpse. THe young woman who wanted to be a doctor also possessed sunken eyes and piles of cultivator pills surrounded her body in the rotting apartment. Babs grimaced from the smell of decay.
“Where’s the husband?” she asked.
For more pills, the urchins brought her to an alleyway a block away. The husband, now sporting an unkempt beard, used a pile of leaves as a blanket as he coughed his lungs out. His sunken, glazed eyes simply answered all of Babs questions. She left him there - there wasn’t much she could do for the basically dead man anyway.
When did all this happen? While she had been counting her money and enjoying the view from the balcony, those attending the agora gradually grew withdrawn. The local potter’s field filled up from overdoses and those still alive resembled zombies and brainless golems. When returning back to the hideout, a fight broke out in the streets. When Babs intervened, the people didn’t even recognize her. All of them had black rings below their eyes.
“This isn’t good,” one of the lieutenants said at headquarters. “If people start dying, there goes our profits.”
Salvatore gripped him by the collars. “Is that all you think about it? Money? These people were on the path to enlightenment, that’s the issue here?”
“Cool it,” Babs ordered both of them. She sat at the head of the table, resting her head on her fist. “I’ll tell Caesar myself.”
“Don’t!” Salvatore exclaimed. “You’ll be putting your life at risk by talking about the conditions here!”
Babs gritted her teeth. “Caesar’s a good man. He’ll understand that the drugs got out of control and will know a solution. If it’s for the people, then I’m willing to put my life at risk for them.”
A few days later, Babs was back in the executive suite. Two years had gone by in the seeming blink of an eye since the last time she was here. When she gazed at her reflection in the windows, she found tired eyes, grown weary with knowledge and age and responsibility, looking back at her.
As did Caesar.
He appeared behind her, out of nowhere. He hadn’t aged a bit since the last time they met.
“Barbara, we meet again,” he said with a smile. “I understand you have some concern with the Yellow Knife territory?”
Babs knew she had no reason to be afraid - Caesar was the embodiment of justice and fairness, after all - but faced with his power, she could only gulp and explain the situation with a tense chord in her voice. Caesar’s face remained relaxed and even pleasant the whole time. When she concluded, Caesar simply tilted his head. “You have nothing to be afraid of. You’ve done a magnificent job. We’ve purchased multiple tankers with the money you’ve collected.”
“But people are dying,” she protested.
“As they were fated to,” he simply answered. When she took a step back, he strode over to the window, looking at the skyscrapers in the distant downtown. “Destiny is a fascinating thing. Many debate over free will and fate. Why can’t both be true? Greatness must be seized. No destiny about it. The weak - those are the one who suffer under fate. They lack the strength, the wisdom, and the power to choose their path. That’s why we must give them the best one possible.”
Babs swallowed. “I didn't realize there were long-term affects to cultivator pill usage by non-cultivators until it was too late. I just gave them a path to addiction and overdose.”
“We’re giving the people of Kallipolis the best path possible,” Caesar gently chided her. “The money made from the suffering of your people will be put toward building Kallipolis. That was indeed the best path possible for the people under Yellow Knife control.” He looked back out toward the window. “Liquidate the ghetto. Send the people into the station so they may be of service to us underground. Healthy migrants of rural stock will take their place. We’ll direct the drug trade toward another district. These migrants will be enlightened, not addicted.”
Babs took a deep breath. “You mean you planned for all this? Then why did you have me enlighten these people if you intended for them to be burnt-out junkies all along?”
“It’s good practice,” he merely answered. “Measure twice, cut once.”
The blonde wife once gave her a smile filled with the warmth of summer. Sure, without Babs, she might’ve been a dishwasher the rest of her life - but her life would’ve lasted decades longer.
This is wrong. I have to do something-
Caesar stood before her. “Continue the good work, Barbara. The foundation of Kallipolis will soon be at hand.”
Before she could protest, a spiral of spectral gas and dust appeared in front of Caesar, and then his astral projection flickered and disappeared without a trace.