Why am I here, again?
“So Xard, seems like you and Drim are back on good terms again,” Kada mentioned to the boy sitting next to him.
“Yeah, I guess,” Xard replied somewhat sheepishly. “Though, I don’t know if things will ever quite go back to how they were before.”
“Well, you did almost try to kill him, so it’d be weirder if things stayed the same,” Kada said casually as if what she’d just said wasn’t staggering.
That’s Cosdamn news to me.
“Do we have to bring that up?” Xard groaned. “Emotions were high on all sides there. And even you admitted Drim’s line of thinking was a bit crazy, and he certainly didn’t explain it the best either.”
What the hell are they talking about? I thought they all loved him.
“Yeah…” Kada lamented. “It definitely put him in a new light, huh? Made my heart go all twisty in confusion.”
“Agreed,” Xard matched her sigh. “He’s not the person I thought he was. Or maybe I just warped my depiction of him in my head. I definitely don’t hold the same attraction to him that I did when we first met.”
“Yeah, I’d say it’s about the same for me,” Kada sounded more and more depressed. “Think I’ll be holding back a bit on any flirting and advances for now. It’s clear they weren’t getting through to him to begin with. Not saying he was a jerk and ignoring us, but I’ve finally accepted that’s not where his head is at.”
Well, I guess they did all love him at some point then in one way or another. None of my business.
“He’s still really hot, though,” Kada added.
“Never said he wasn’t,” Xard scoffed in agreement.
Cosmos, I don’t care. Move on with the conversation if you’ve actually moved on.
“I’d still accept immediately if he asked me out, too,” Kada couldn’t resist tacking on at the end.
“Oh, one-hundred percent. No question,” Xard didn’t hesitate either.
Shut uuuuuuuup, Jaid had been forced to listen to this stupid conversation against her will. She’d been hoping to at least get some good intel they’d let slip like she had with Drim and Ahvra a week ago. Rusa in the driver’s seat didn’t seem bothered by the conversation that the pair was having in the back, or she was just used to such drivel at this point.
Thankfully, Jaid got her wish and the conversation died there, so she went back to staring out the passenger window of The Tourist. They were flying straight south, just now passing over the southern mountain range of the cointent. It was a pretty magnificent view, she had to admit. When they flew over an odd crater filled with debris near the top of one of the mountains, Kada pointed out that it had been Ahvra’s former lab. Jaid wondered if that’s what they were here for, but they flew past it.
She still hadn’t been told what this mission was, but Xard had approached her that morning, requesting her assistance with a rank 10 mission. When she asked why he’d picked her specifically, he said they needed at least one more member to feel confident. Since she was the highest ranking member that was available, it made her the obvious choice.
“Phon’s off on her own mission, and Drim’s in Tooshifont,” Jaid had been told. “This whole Kaizu situation is turning into a real mess, but hopefully it’ll be done with this trip. Looks like Drim, or rather the Fiends For Hire as a whole, will be getting full custody of her. It’s just taking a lot of paperwork and a generous donation for them to help recover their military. With that, they’ll basically delete all records of her ever existing.”
Rusa had reached rank 10 herself, so Jaid being a 9 didn’t affect their mission parameters too much. She’d beaten Kada in a fight that Jaid had wished she could have seen. In the last week, Jaid had thought a lot about who she’d challenge if she aimed for rank 10.
Honestly, while Kada was probably the weakest in a fight, Jaid outright eliminated her as a contender. If Kada melted the arena, it’d be over. Jaid was a decent swimmer, but her fighting capability in water was practically nonexistent.
Xard was also near the bottom of her list, able to completely absorb any attack with her sword. She’d be forced to use her railgun, but wasn’t confident enough with it yet to stand a chance.
Rusa and Drim were at the top for ones she’d want to fight outside of the test. Apparently, Rusa’s Curse made her the best in the group at hand-to-hand combat in just a few months. Drim was an incredibly experienced fighter with undying resilience. Beating either of them would truly be something to be proud of, but again, she wasn’t confident without more research and practice.
Surprisingly, of the five of them she, felt she stood the best chance against Phon. It hadn’t been tested yet, but Jaid believed her own Curse would mess with Phon’s. The CP had well documented how a large crowd negatively impacted her Curse. If Jaid could make enough clones, maybe her aura would be too big for Phon to deal with.
Auras were still a very new science, one that many were reluctant to believe. It had been theorized some time ago, but had been proven through Phon. Even before the existence of Fiends had been revealed, there had been several documented reports of her mentioning them off-hand while she was out bounty hunting.
Now, those who were researching auras practically worshiped her as a deity or fountain of knowledge; the Aura Matriarch some in the scientific community called her. Jaid had gone down a rabbit hole about auras when investigating Phon. It was weird to see her name quoted in scientific journals, both as Phon Drazah and as The Vixen.
The science had been pretty interesting, from the bits that she could understand. It was like a unique genetic code, an invisible identifier that every living creature exuded. There was a lot of debate as to whether or not it was actually a person’s soul, since that had also been proven along with Fiends, but it was a heated topic she didn’t dig too far into.
What Jaid had been more interested in was the new technologies that were emerging as a result. She knew the CP had funded development of sensors and cameras that could identify someone just based on their aura. Apparently, that was still rather difficult and would take a while, but they’d had a breakthrough just before she left.
They could now tell if someone was a human, Lesser, or Fiend just from a scan. It probably wouldn’t be long before those were launched in CP member nations all around the world. Well, they didn’t have the production capability of Nathym and couldn’t control each country’s infrastructure, so it’d still probably be a few years.
Apparently, similarly invasive technology was part of what their current mission was about—from what small bits she’d been able to garner from their conversations. It had been a very last minute mission if they’d rushed to include her instead of just waiting for one of the other’s return. It gave her the sense that it was world-ending.
Must not be anything too serious, though, if they were still being so casual as to let Rusa drive for the first time. Not just drive, but fly too, without any experience operating machinery of any kind. She’d said she wanted to try it out, and that had somehow been convincing enough for them. Jaid had thought they were insane, but Rusa insisted she’d read the manual—as if that was somehow supposed to provide comfort.
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That said, Jaid had no complaints so far. It had been the smoothest ride yet and Rusa was even more precise at driving than Jaid herself. Kind of annoying, honestly. That faith went out the window after they’d finished passing over the mountain range when The Tourist took a nose-dive straight into the ocean.
Jaid had braced herself for impact, but nothing of note happened besides a loud splash. The next moment, her fear was entirely overtaken by awe as she stared around. It was breathtaking. This part of the ocean had been untouched by pollution, and Jaid could see the seafloor clearly. Dozens, no hundreds of fish swam around them. There was also a concerning amount of monsters, but she tried to not let it phase her.
Submarines had been used in the war, but most were decommissioned now. As an almost entirely landlocked continent, they had little use. Would she have been able to ever experience a view like this if she hadn’t been sent on the mission? It was a sight most could only dream of. Maybe this job really did have its perks. Maybe she could find purpose beyond her mission if this was where it led.
“Oh, right, Jaid, guess we should tell you about what’s going on,” Xard cut into her confusing bliss.
No Zjik!
“Uhh, yes that would be appreciated, thank you,” Jaid drowned her discontent with politeness.
“Hmm, where to begin. Probably should have thought this through first,” Xard pondered for a moment. “Arlight, I guess the first thing you should do is brace yourself, because what I’m going to tell you is stupid. It’s so stupid that you probably won’t be able to accept it at first. But this is reality; our insane reality we live in.”
Jaid’s mind went ablaze with ideas of what it could possibly be, but no amount of bracing could have prepared her for what it actually was. “It all has to do with cheese.”
“Cheese?” she questioned in disbelief.
“Yes, cheese.” He confirmed as Kada pulled out a bag of cheese snacks from below the seat.
♪From the cow it squeezes, the cheesiest of cheeses. Just pop it in and chew, we made this cheese for you.♪ Kada hummed a slogan before she shoved a whole handful into her mouth.
“Wait, I’ve heard that before.” A memory from deep in the recesses of Jaid’s mind struggled to breach to the surface. “What was the name…?”
“Bovination,” Xard answered for her. “They’re not the biggest out there, but they’re popular enough. While they have an entire line of dairy products, they’re most famous for their cheese, no contest.”
“Okay… you’re right. This does sound stupid already,” Jaid was trying to unravel how cheese could possibly relate to a rank 10 mission.
“It gets worse,” Xard insisted with a serious look in his eyes. “So, like I said, Bovination is successful, but they’re nowhere near the top. Rusa here did a lot of digging, and the amount of methods they’ve tried to become number one is ridiculous.”
“They’ve planted spies in enemy manufacturing plants to try to sabotage them, bribed government officials to sanction or shut down their competitors, and even tried to open a cheese-based theme park. They spent a ton of money buying the land and on design, but they never got the proper permits, so they were forced to halt progress the moment they tried to break ground.”
“It’s quite easy to say that the owner of Bovination is off the deep-end and would stop at nothing to become the best.”
“Their hands are covered in more zjik than their cows poop out,” Kada added her attempt at a humorous analogy.
“So now they’ve resorted to literal brainwashing… Yes, you didn’t mishear,” Xard reiterated when Jaid stared at him with a blank face. “Where we’re headed is a broadcasting station they built way out in the ocean. It hijacks television broadcasts to overlay their own subliminal messaging. Our guess is that their tech will be capable of taking over internet streams too.”
“Nobody better dare mess with my streams!” Rusa interjected with her first words in a while.
“Anyways, it took Rusa here a ton of broadcast viewing to be able to triangulate the range and source. Due to some bizarre news clippings over the past few months, we had a good starting point at least. They’ve only been testing their brainwashing in the southernmost countries. This allowed us to be able to backtrace where the source was coming from.”
“With the time frame and location, Rusa only had to watch a few thousand hours of content to be able to isolate their subliminal messaging. They were pretty smart about it, only targeting shows with not much viewership and at seemingly random times. Even with dedicated resources, I don’t think any government agency would have been able to catch them for quite some time.”
“So, their messages started out pretty simple. Basically, get people to buy more cheese. And wouldn’t you know it, their sales in those regions shot up like crazy. But it gets worse from there. The messaging turned very dark very quickly. Eventually, it tried to turn the viewers into literal terrorists. Nothing that would destabilize the economy or overthrow a government, but terrorism nonetheless.”
“They… uhh… Man it’s stupid. I don’t even really want to say it. Like, how would this ever work out in the end…? Anyways, they’re having the viewers raid farms of their competitors and kill all their cows. This would eventually make them the only line of dairy products able to sustain the market, and shoot them to the top by default. That’s it, that’s their master plan.”
“We even had to restrain Rusa here for about an hour until they were able to process through and decommission the brainwashing implanted in them.”
“Those damned evil cows still haunt my dreams…” she lamented.
“This is some real supervillain zjik, Jaid,” Kada was both dead-serious and visibly excited by the prospect.
“Yes,” Jaid agreed. “I have to admit this sounds like it’s right out of a low-budget spy thriller. Kind of surprised Chorus didn’t come along to film the whole thing. They’d probably want to turn this all into their own movie.”
“Well, they sort of did,” Xard corrected her. One of Chorus’ cameras took that moment to float up from the backseat and wink at Jaid with their lens. “Chorus is obviously very interested in this place since it aligns very closely with their own goals. Nathym is also very interested just because he wouldn’t have to build it all himself. That’s why our mission is to secure the facility and disable the broadcast. Otherwise, we’d probably just destroy it.”
Oh great, so handing this technology from one supervillain to another, Jaid mentally groaned, not that she could voice any opposition without suspicion. “How’d we even get wind of this to begin with? The inner turmoil of the cheese-market doesn’t sound like a burning passion for anyone we work with.” It was the one thing about this that didn’t add up, not that any of it made much sense to begin with.
“We were reached out to by one of their main competitors,” Xard explained. “Apparently, after enough attempts at sabotage, they hired a few private-investigators to dig up dirt of their own. This led to them discovering Bovination sending a lot of supplies out to sea, out to nowhere. The one investigator who was bold enough to sail out after the supply ships never returned.”
“That's when it was turned over to us. The company doesn’t know anything about the brainwashing or everything else we’ve discovered, and we still don’t know how much we’ll tell them. Probably leave that up for Drim to decide when this is all done. Using Rusa’s estimated triangulation, we were able to properly find the place with one of our private satellites.”
Jaid took a moment to mentally jot down that they owned private satellites so she could report on it later.
“From above, the place is cleverly disguised as just an oddly shaped oil rig. It wouldn’t raise any suspicions from someone glancing at the satellite pictures, but it certainly raises an eyebrow if you dig into it at all. The perimeter is littered with defense weaponry and turrets. It’s no wonder that investigator didn’t survive.”
“From our surveillance, we haven’t seen a single human there either—not dropping off cargo, not walking out on the deck—no signs of life at all. Our best guess is the place is almost entirely automated, and we suspect that the day to day operations may be run by robots.”
“Wait, like robots from sci-fi?” Jaid asked in disbelief. “I’ve seen a few prototypes of robot workers, but nothing that should be able to run a facility of this scale.”
“We do suspect they’re pretty rudimentary,” Xard added. “Each one is probably only able to carry out a few functions. But with how much money has been thrown at this place, I wouldn’t doubt that there are hundreds. And with how heavily defended the outside is, we can expect that a good portion of them are there for security.”
“Woo, fighting a robot army! I love this job!” Kada’s excitement was reaching unrestrained levels.
“Well, you won’t actually be fighting it if you remember the plan,” an annoyed Xard reminded her.
“Yes, yes, the plan,” Kada nodded along. “At least I can say I was part of it. Maybe save me a robot to break at least?”
“And what is the plan?” Jaid’s inner thought leaked out this time, unable to hold back her annoyance any longer from being kept in the dark. Thankfully, they at least explained it to her in detail after she asked.