Everyone gathered at the restaurant, waiting to hear the results. Odds are they wouldn’t make such an event of it in the future, but since this was the first time, they decided to hold a nice little dinner to celebrate. A bit over a month had passed since Jaid had snuck into the Fiends For Hire, and they were now well into Nonovber.
This gathering was to announce the results of the first month's point totals for their crimes, good deeds, and job completion. They’d delayed the start of it a bit until everyone had passed their final membership test, so that everyone could start fresh with equal footing.
Sadly, not everyone was in attendance. Roque had been gone for about two weeks. Apparently, there were complications with all of his companies now being owned by a member of the Fiends For Hire, so he’d gone on a pilgrimage to smooth things over. Jaid guessed this meant that he was actually going on a bribery tour. He still submitted a few job completions every few days, so no one could complain. Two days ago, he’d submitted a whole swath from Zjiksa which Phon had been giggling about.
Gatrim was also missing, having left for another long-term job this morning. He had managed to work his way up to rank 7 in the past month but then got his ass handed to him by Nachi in the rank 8 test. Since then, he’d been working hard, taking on more and more difficult missions to prove himself.
Jaid had just returned from escorting him and Kaizu late last night for a sort-of-successful mission. It was a rank 9 to investigate claims of a noble who’d been kidnapping people. Gatrim was interested because it could lead to connections of what his family had been doing. It also immediately attracted Kaizu, since the chances of finding someone worthy for her to kill would be high.
While it never came to it, Jaid was still conflicted whether she would have let Kaizu kill someone or not, since it would have been her call to make. In fact, that entire mission had been a bust in a way. Turns out, the noble was actually being framed by the requesters since they stood a lot to gain if that noble was out of the picture. The mission still ended in a lot of arrests, but not the ones they’d been expecting.
Surprisingly, Kaizu was actually here tonight. A month ago, she would have refused a non-compulsory gathering such as this. Ever since the Tooshifont issues had been resolved, she’d been much more amenable towards working with others. Officially, Kaizu Izuzu no longer existed.
There was now only the woman known as The Stained Street Sweeper. Of course, no one in the organization would call her such a silly name, so Kaizu she remained. Her Criminal Score had also been reset with this, otherwise she would have been the clear winner with all the murders that the police had been piling onto her.
She’d also been someone Jaid hadn’t been expecting to get to know so well. They’d been on a good handful of missions together now with Jaid acting as her handler, though the chance to kill never came. In their time together, Jaid had to discover that outside of her serial-killer tendencies, Kaizu was honestly a very boring, very normal person.
Jaid and Tize had somewhat become the unofficial chaperones of the group, so she’d been forced to grow closer to them all than she ever expected. Tize had challenged Nachi every day until he beat her and joined Jaid as the only Rank 9s. Since they were the highest ranked besides the generals, they often found themselves at the behest of many wanting to aim for the top and take on missions outside of their rank.
It had basically been cemented as Jaid’s role in the organization, not that she minded it. Hell, she’d probably even admit to liking it if someone pressed her enough. It allowed her to build bonds without the awkwardness of trying to force friendships. She also found that this made her fellow members much more loose-lipped around her, sharing secrets without her having to pry. It all made her other job as a spy that much easier—far easier than she ever expected.
She’d found herself in a nice spot, and because of that, she hadn’t made any pushes to obtain rank 10. While it could open an entirely new world of intel for her, she still had plenty to find out at her level. There was no guarantee that she’d be swooped into the general’s inner circle when she achieved it, but there was also an implied level of trust that came with earning that rank.
For now, she was happy where she was, though she still got plenty of pressure from Nachi to stop slacking and attempt it—even issuing several challenges to fight again where Nachi threatened demotion if Jaid lost. She assumed Nachi was joking, but never took the bait just in case.
Tize also hadn’t attempted rank 10, but that had been another issue Jaid had been mulling over lately. ‘I want you to be the one I fight,’ he’d said to her shortly after beating Nachi. He never brought it up again after that, but now there was a weird expectation looming over her head. As long as she waited to increase her rank, Tize would stubbornly halt his progress as well.
Another part of her procrastination was the bond she’d seen among the core group of generals. The Bovination facility hadn’t been the end of her being dragged around for various adventures. In that time, she’d come to see how close they really were—their own family within this much larger organization. It was a giant wall she hadn’t prepared herself to try and climb.
To everyone’s surprise, the four main generals had rushed off to a mission that morning and weren’t in attendance, despite announcing that they would be just yesterday. There’d been quite the sense of urgency and no one else seemed privy to the details, not even Rusa who was now forced to host the event.
“Alright everyone, let’s get right to the announcements,” the older woman held a mic in her hand. She still looked tremendous for her age, and could even pass for young and spry despite being already past the halfway point of this incarnation's life cycle. It had been interesting watching her grow up. Jaid had known this incarnation for literally almost her entire life.
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Since she changed so much so quickly, it honestly made her one of the hardest to get close to. When she was young, she had been pretty self-absorbed and almost rude. Now, she’d taken much more of an interest in those around her and almost had a motherly air about her, but was more aloof and fun-loving than responsible.
“Let’s start off with some positivity!” To no one’s surprise, Rezin won the ‘Good Deed’ category by a landslide. The boy had been on the least missions since joining, but had fairly good reason. He’d also been challenging himself every day with the rank 5 combat trials. Rezin certainly wasn’t suited for them, yet he had still made his way up to the 20th level, only to lose to the Freer several times now.
When he wasn’t trying to beat that, he was training, but his training couldn’t compare to anyone else's. His Curse was so psychological, he couldn’t practice it without willing participants. That led to him regularly volunteering at an end-of-life facility. His training partners were those facing death's door, but they were oh so happy to help.
The service he provided them was unlike anything else, and made him the most loved employee of the facility even though he didn’t actually work there. Rezin would show the patients whatever they wanted: loved ones who’d passed or those who hadn’t come to visit for a while, places they’d always wanted to visit, or magical realms they’d only dreamed of. Since it was using the patient's own mind, it showed it to them exactly as they desired—even if their minds were failing, or even if they could no longer think of a clear picture.
While Rezin certainly benefited from it, this couldn’t be classified as anything else but a ‘good deed’, so everyone had found him well deserving. Not hesitating on asking for what he wanted as a reward, Rezin announced his intention to stack favors in order to make a video game of his own design. A pure want for a pure boy.
Somewhat surprisingly, Andi Jaimess from the science department had been in second place. Thinking back, Jaid wasn’t sure the two had exchanged anything more than common courtesies. But when she pried her mind for all the times she’d seen Andi around, it had always been helping one of the students with their studies.
She was officially employed as a teacher, but it seemed going above and beyond for her students was racking up the ‘good deed’ points. From what little prying Jaid had done on her, she’d always believed Andi hated teaching. Maybe having pupils who actually appreciated her made all the difference.
Jaid herself was roughly in the middle of the pack. This wasn’t something she’d strived for the top of, but it seemed her normal day-to-day life awarded her a decent amount of points. Though, she was slightly irritated that Tize was exactly one spot above her with just a handful more.
“Okay, it’s time to see who’s good at being bad! And we actually have a tie!” Somehow, somehow, both Itsy and Chorus had exactly achieved 3860 points during the allotted time. To make it even crazier, it had almost been a three-way tie with Roque having an increase of 3850.
This made Jaid wonder about the system. Were the points lower than they should be and only processed at certain rates? Every crime had to be manually processed after all—certainly not something they’d trust to an automated system since it could easily ruin lives. Maybe each person was only allotted a certain amount of processing time at once. It would definitely explain why the scores were so close.
Rusa read out some of the charges for each of them. Their scores were very unsurprising with context. Chorus had dozens of trespassing and breaking-and-entering charges. Apparently, they’d been just using random offices and estates to film establishing and background shots. Jaid had no idea what they’d be used for, since Chorus still had yet to actually release any of their projects.
Itsy’s charges were almost all destruction of property. To her credit, Itsy was very good at getting any job done that she was assigned quickly and efficiently. She just had no awareness or care for any collateral damage. The judicial system even had to invent a new crime just for her: Assault with a Vehicle. This was different from vehicular assault, since apparently picking up and hitting someone with a car couldn’t be classified the same way.
Roque was simply Roque—lots of white collar crime—par for the course.
“Okay, now for who contributed the most to the organization!” These results were read in ascending order. Third place was Tize to Jaid’s unsurprise. The man kept busy. She certainly couldn’t fault his work ethic.
Second place was Drim. Jaid was shocked initially that the generals even took part in this ranking, but it was only fair. Even if they ran the organization, they still contributed to its workflow. Having them at the top consistently could spur motivation in the lower ranks as well.
Damn, probably means I’m fourth behind Tize, Jaid assumed they had a comparable workload. She then wondered who was in first. Perhaps Phon since she’d been on several confidential missions as of late.
“And in first place is Jaid!” There was a round of applause, but Jaid was too stunned to react for a moment. Realizing she needed to do something, she forced a smile, but it was awkward since she was gritting her teeth. A weave of complex emotions crept up the back of her neck.
How had it come to this? She’d worked hard to try to raise her standing in the group, but as a result, she’d ended up doing the most. Now, she was the biggest contributor to a group that she was attempting to dismantle. Wasn’t that extremely conflicting and counter intuitive?
Yet at the same time, it felt good—great honestly—to know her efforts had been recognized, even if these hadn’t been the people she’d been trying to impress. She should be happy. She needed to be happy, or at least she needed to show it right now. Focusing on her own body, Jaid slowly forced herself to relax as her smile became more natural.
Eventually, attention on her dropped altogether when it became obvious she wasn’t going to say anything in response to her win or announce what she wanted as a reward. Things ended quickly from there and most members cleared out since the dinner rush was about to begin. Jaid’s woes only grew, though, as someone’s hand gently clasped onto her shoulder.
It was Tize. He didn’t take a seat next to her as she expected, but he did lean in close. “Congratulations, you’ve been working hard.” His voice then got a little quieter so no one else could overhear.
“Y’know, I’ve come to believe that it doesn’t matter that you’ve lied about your past. I was certainly skeptical when you said you had your reasons to hide things, but you’ve proven yourself. What matters is that you’re here now and giving it your best. Hopefully, we can put that awkwardness of the first night behind us moving forward. That’s all I wanted to say. Have a good night, Jaid.”