After a mass sobering, the orientation finally began upon Jaid’s return. Everyone was in attendance initially, since there were a few ground rules that had to be set that applied to all those living on the compound, regardless of their affiliation.
“Before we get started, there is one thing we need to make clear,” Phon Drazah announced to everyone in the room. “Apparently, it’s widely believed that I’m in charge of the Fiends For Hire. I’ll denounce that rumor right now. This entire organization was Drim’s idea. I just helped him along the way.”
“He is your landlord and employer if you’re a member. He has the final say on everything that happens here. I just usually happen to be the public voice, since I have a natural gift when it comes to speaking a lot. So, for once, I won’t be the one addressing you all tonight.” Phon gestured for Drim to take it away.
Drim began his first greetings while Jaid made sure her phone was still recording. Thankfully, she had managed to catch that declaration. A slim few speculated he was actually the mastermind behind everything. Given his timid nature in public, though, most wouldn’t believe without direct proof like this. Even Jaid hadn’t been fully convinced, but after meeting him in person, it was obvious.
The expected behavior of the residents was pretty standard, and Jaid felt a little sad it had to be stated. There were only a few major rules: no destruction of property, get along with your neighbors, and most importantly: no mistreatment, aggravations, or disrespect towards the citizens of Bisomote. Drim really stressed that last part, and made it clear that any violations could be grounds for immediate dismissal and eviction.
In order to help facilitate and encourage residents adapting and living a fruitful life, they would have monthly meetings to evaluate where they were at. If they’d have yet to find a job, their efforts to find one would be looked at. If they were a student and their grades were slacking, a reevaluation of their studies and possibly tutoring would be offered. These meetings weren’t indefinite, only until it was certain each resident was on the right path.
With the basic living situation out of the way, the residents were asked to leave for the remainder of the night. It was just the members left now, and it felt strangely more intimidating. All that were left were Jaid’s enemies—if not now, then in the future. More than likely, she may come to face off against them down the road. She needed to study them well.
“I’m sure many of you have a good idea of the work we do around here,” Drim was finally getting to the business side of things. “It should be no surprise since we’ve been well documented on the news at this point, but they don’t know everything. The goal of our organization is first and foremost to help others. Regardless of everything else, if you’re doing work for us, that is your prime directive.”
“The second objective is to gain notoriety. Phon and I have our own personal reasons for doing so that we won’t bore you with, but it’s certainly a small factor of why we started this company. You could say that with our names, we have all the notoriety in the world, but we want to change that perspective; to let them know that Drazah and Fiends are something they don’t need to inherently fear. The idea alone of Fiends is terrifying to many. I’m sure a good few of you know that well, but it doesn’t always have to be that way if we can help it.”
“Now, for work assignments. We cover just about any area you can think of. So whatever you’re into, there will be something for you. Let me make it clear now. You will never be forced to participate in a job you don’t want to. You may be asked, or even heavily encouraged, but if you ever feel like you’re not making your own choice, please come to us.”
“All of our jobs are posted in the app you have on your new phones. The assignments you can take will be based on your rank. Our trainer, Nachi, will go into more detail on this tomorrow. You all should have received an announcement for it, but you’re to meet outside the gym tomorrow at [350] for rank evaluations. I’ve been asked to mention that you should bring your weapons, but don’t bring your combat gear or anything you don’t want ruined.”
“When you’re on a job, the first order is the protection of yourself and those around you. Even if the mission fails, safety will always be the number one priority. As for how to complete the jobs, obviously, you should try to accommodate any requests the client may have. Otherwise, do it however it suits you; be loud or be stealthy, cause mayhem or broker peace. As long as it gets done without harming others or damaging their livelihood, we’re not very picky.”
“For how you’ll be evaluated…” Drim gestured towards a wall and three panels slid away. There were now three different scoreboards with everyone’s names. Two of them only had 0s next to each name, but the last had numbers in the thousands. It was obviously Criminal Scores.
Jaid grimaced at her own score of 2,240. In actuality, she didn’t have a single point, but the Central Peace had assigned a believable one to her fake identity. The highest on the list were obviously the veteran Fiends For Hire members. Phon Drazah was at the top with 12,120, and Drim Drazah was trailing behind at 10,085. Jaid assumed more charges were put on Phon since she was previously believed to be in charge, but guessed Drim would shoot past soon once the truth was out.
Xard had jumped up above Drim to 11,951. Jaid guessed it was due to his recent slew of vigilantism. Police certainly didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing, and were most likely applying the charges themselves. Kada, who has previously been far ahead, was now the lowest at 9,990. One of the newcomers, Chorus, actually beat her with a somehow even higher score of 10,000. It was wild that such a public figure could remain at large with a score that high, but the world wasn’t a fair place.
Ahvra, who previously had a clean slate, now had a score of 8,585. Jaid had looked into hers before coming here since the jump was odd, but it made sense when she looked into the charges. Her past of unlawful imprisonment and human experimentation had caught up to her. Nathym was the lowest of the Fiends with 1,530. Besides being a member, he had a few violations of patent law and illegal purchases of banned materials.
Mallea’s score jumped up to 4,000 after she harmed several CP agents when they infiltrated the compound a few months ago. Even Jaid wasn’t convinced it was a fair score, since it could easily be classified as self-defense. As the agents told it, however, her acts went beyond cruel and unusual, and they petitioned to have them classified as war crimes.
Nachi had a score of 3310. This one made Jaid sad since she knew Nachi was ex-CP. Jaid had joined right after Nachi’s departure and had heard many tales of the incredible Nach. It sucked that she never got to work with such a person, and only connected the dots when looking at the dossiers that they were one in the same.
The other new staff all had the generic score of 1,000 for being a member. Of the new members, only a few had scores such as Itsy and Niloy. Somehow Roque didn’t have one despite clearly being involved in some shady zjik. Jaid was annoyed that Tize didn’t have one either, so she couldn’t secretly flaunt her superiority. Most of the rest didn’t have anything.
Thankfully, the CP had taken her advice to not apply the generic 1,000 to the new members just yet. If the score was applied so quickly, it’d make it oddly suspicious that information was being leaked. They could claim that a score was given to anyone who hadn’t left after the interviews since it was evident this was all being monitored, but the CP should have no details on who was a member or resident and who was just staying temporarily.
“As you can see, your Criminal Scores are listed on the board to the right,” Drim stated the obvious. “In an ideal world, nothing we do would be considered illegal. We just want to make Rathe a better place, not improve our own standing through criminal acts. Many failed the interview process due to that warped perspective of what our group does.”
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“Unfortunately, humanity has its own set of rules that Fiends don’t sit in comfortably. So, there are crimes we’re fine with you performing, as long as the negative repercussions don’t harm innocent civilians. For example, feel free to rob from the rich and oppressive, but don’t skip the bill at a bakery where people need that money to live. Beat up miscreants who are harming others, but don’t permanently injure those who are just doing their jobs to stop us.”
“As for killing—I really hate killing—ironic, I know. But, I also understand its necessity in certain situations. There are even times I accept that it’s better to take someone’s life with our own hands than possibly let them escape the fallible justice system. We will not punish you for killing in those situations, but if there is another solution, we’d prefer you find it.”
“The only crime we will never hear an excuse for is sexual assault. If we catch even the slightest wind of it, you’ll be out on your ass or worse. Which does lead us into punishments. Everything will be handled on a case-by-case basis, and we’d like to handle everything internally if possible. No need to get into all the details now, but I’ll just warn you that we do have our own cells, and you can ask Kaizu about her situation for someone we can’t trust.”
“That all of course only applies to crimes. Punishments for doing poorly at your job will be far less severe—stuff like suspensions, demotions, or maybe supervised missions for a while. Hopefully, our interview process has weeded out the need for either of these kinds of penalties, but it’s best to make it clear.”
“As for why we’re condoning any crimes, it goes back to the notoriety I mentioned earlier. Bad deeds get a lot more attention than good these days, sadly. I’m sure Chorus here could lecture us all on why it’s more engaging, but the reasons don’t really matter. So as it stands, feel free to raise your score as high as you like. I doubt being a bigger payday for a bounty hunter would really put more heat on you than you get by just being a member here.”
“We’re not only supporting the bad, though, and we view the good as just as important. Well, more important for me, but I don’t speak for everyone. That’s what the left board is for. If you perform a good deed—helping someone change a flat tire, saving a drowning animal from a river, donating money to those in need; anything that goes above and beyond your job—you’ll earn points on this board. You don’t need to tell us when you do something, we’ll know. Don’t ask how we’ll know, we’ll just know.”
This was somewhat alarming to Jaid, possibly more alarming to the others or it may have gone over some of their heads. It meant that the members were being tracked somehow. Drim had just admitted as much. Most likely through their phones, but even they could only send so much data. The other members would probably accept that as the answer, but it didn’t sit right with Jaid. Her gut told her there was something more. Oh well, she had to ignore it for now and keep focus, but it would gnaw at her later.
“Now the center board is your job performance. It should be pretty self explanatory. Do more jobs, get more points. You’ll get 1 point per level of mission difficulty. If it’s a rank 5 mission, you’ll get 5 points. Obviously, that means completing harder missions gets you more, but lower leveled missions should be easier to complete. So regardless of your rank, it should be roughly a fair competition for everyone as long as you work hard.”
“Each of these boards is based on growth, and your growth will reset each month. So even though some of us have much higher Criminal Scores than others, we’re all starting off with a clean slate. Your records for good deeds and job performance will carry over, just for posterity and gloating I guess.”
“There are of course incentives for reaching the top spots. The top earner on each board every month will receive a prize of some sort. We’re still working out the details on what it is exactly: something like more pay, time off, maybe have Mallea make you a special pillow or something.” Jaid couldn’t help but notice that almost all older members of the group were enthused at that reward, so it had to be something special.
“Personally, I’m for listening to requests, and possibly building favor over time for bigger rewards. For example, if Kada were to be the top earner for several months, maybe I’d see about getting her land rights for the water park she wants to build.”
“You would!?” Kada couldn’t help but interject and inquire.
“Sure,” Drim brushed it off, but Kada was now glaring every other member down, possibly trying to intimidate them and keep them from winning. “If you have any of your own ideas of what would be good rewards, do let us know. We’ll make sure it’s something worthwhile. If you don’t have a goal, that just leads to stagnation and repetition. So, I hope you all find motivation or something to look forward to.”
“We should also talk about your salaries. As further motivation to increase your rank, a higher rank will mean a higher salary. That said, even rank 1 will pay more than just about every other job out there. You’ll also be able to keep whatever payment the client offers on top of it, or donate it to the group if it isn’t something you want.”
“Our clients are allowed to set whatever they think is fair for payment, but it’s more of a ‘pay what you can’ system. Money’s not really an issue for us, so we could offer our services entirely for free. That system is just in place to try to keep people from abusing our kindness. While we won’t chastise you for doing work for free or outside of our system, it’s much better for our organization if you get them to use it.”
“We pay salary on top of their reward in hopes of encouraging you to help those who really need it instead of whoever pays the most, but you’re allowed to pick whatever clients you like. With that in mind, if we find you slacking on doing jobs or contributing in some way, your salary can certainly be subjected to a temporary decrease until your performance is back to acceptable levels.”
“That was a mouthful of corporate speak I hope to never repeat.”
“For other benefits… I hope you have all found your accommodations satisfactory. We left them fairly standard on purpose, but you’re allowed to renovate or change whatever you want. If there is anything else you need, don’t hesitate to ask. Itsy, since yours is a special case, we’ll be demolishing the two rooms next to Crucion on the third floor and making it into a double apartment for you. We should have it ready in a few days.”
“For health coverage. Well, Fiends don’t really get sick, and Lessers have increased immunity, so we don’t expect it to be an issue often. We don’t currently have a doctor on staff but are always open to hiring one if the right candidate comes our way. Ahvra can’t cure illnesses, but can undo any serious injuries you may sustain. This is only if you still have all the components. So, if your arm gets chopped off, make sure you save it. She can fix but not regrow. Please keep that in mind.”
“Food, as you’ve seen here tonight, it’s pretty damned good, and will always be free of charge for members at the restaurant. Feel free to make any requests for anything you want them to make. Vank and Hazzle can make it and are happy to do so. That said, please do try out the local cuisine from time to time and support any businesses in Bisomote you can. They’re letting us operate here without putting up a fuss anymore, so we’d like to pay them back for the opportunity.”
“Supplies you’ll need for your job. Nathym can get you any weapons or gear and we also keep most standard items in stock. If you’re out on a job and need something, it will be on you to obtain it. The hope is that we pay you enough that we don’t need to bother with reimbursement. But if there is something overly expensive or hard to get, we’ll buy it ourselves and get it to you as fast as possible.”
“Transportation. We have plenty of vehicles ready to go for everyone to use. We won’t allow them to be used without proper licensing and training, though, especially our more advanced vehicles. I believe Itsy will be taking over most of that, so you can see her about borrowing or maybe even owning a vehicle up to her discretion, or you can visit Nathym if she’s unavailable.”
“I’m probably forgetting some things, but I’m getting pretty tired. That was a hell of a party, and I still haven’t fully recovered from yesterday. I’m guessing many of you are feeling it too, and you all have a big day tomorrow. So, if I think of anything else, we’ll send an announcement or schedule a meeting for a later time.”
“I should say, meetings like this won’t occur very often and certainly won’t be routine. With how our organization works, people will be coming and going on wildly different schedules, so this may be one of the few opportunities where everyone is here. Even those of us in the highest positions probably won’t be around here too often. We’re not just going to sit on our asses and have you do all the work.”
“We are planning to have most of us here during your training period and will be overseeing a few of your first missions. Though after that, it won’t be unusual for either us or you to be away from the compound for extended periods of time. Regardless, someone will always be around to help. And if you find yourself out there and in need of help, know you’re never alone. We’ll always come running whenever you need.”
“That’s all I have for today. Feel free to stick around and chat or eat some more food, but I highly encourage trying to get some sleep. Nachi won’t hear any excuses tomorrow. I can guarantee that. And now, officially, we welcome you all to the Fiends For Hire.”