Kada groaned after checking the time. It was another day where she’d slept much later than she should have, but her motivation to get up and do anything productive was severely lacking. She was actually going to take a proper day off after all, or at least that was the hope.
When she’d first joined the Fiends For Hire, she was pretty much the only one in the group who ever actually relaxed, or at least that’s how it felt. But ever since becoming a mogul in the resort industry, some zjik was always thrown her way—usually boring meetings or something that had been escalated for her to deal with for reasons she couldn’t understand.
Even with all the delegation she’d done to shirk as much responsibility as possible, issues would always find their way to her one way or another. But today, she had made sure there were no meetings of any kind, and she had resolved herself to ignore every email, even those that seemed urgent.
The woman was feeling so lazy, in fact, that she didn’t even roll out of bed. Instead, she melted right through it. Then she used her Curse to melt the floor slightly, and had it push her all the way over to her hot tub. But before the woman took a soak, she melted out of the pair of Pox onesie pajamas that she’d actually bothered to wear for the night. Her resort was planning to start selling them, along with a few other Fiends For Hire themed nightwear, so she was testing them out. It totally wasn’t because she’d just wanted some for herself.
After a few minutes of boiling away her sorrows and grogginess, she decided to check her phone, using the same lazy melting strategies to bring it to her hand. When she turned on the screen, she entirely ignored the usual bloat of notifications displayed, and picked her personal profile.
There was a second profile dedicated entirely to Ledmer and her resort. All emails and messages pertaining to it went there instead of mixing it with the rest of her life and interests—something crucial to maintain balance and protect any semblance of the lazy slob that she was at heart.
The woman started by checking her messages, mostly pictures from Niloy. Kada was courteous enough to send an appropriate reaction to each one. There were also a few messages from Mazie asking about the resort. Apparently the girl had a summer homework assignment to write about an adult they’d admired. So naturally Kada’s very being had nearly melted when she found out that the girl had picked her.
There was also a scathing message from Nachi asking why her workout results had been slacking that Kada immediately deleted. And surprisingly, there was nothing from her parents. Both of them had been messaging her quite a lot more recently. At first, it was weird, but lately, well, it was nice.
Yet there had been radio silence for the past few days. Hopefully everything was alright. Maybe she’d call them later, or maybe she wouldn’t. Since she was still supposed to be in the ‘annoyed at them for all their past transgressions’ phase—something she’d been failing at maintaining lately.
She let it slip from her mind and opened her personal emails. There wasn’t much of interest besides some news channel wanting her to come on a daytime talk show. She wondered why it wasn’t sent to her other profile but then realized that they actually wanted to talk to her about being a strong and thriving female Fiend rather than her business ventures, so she earmarked it for later.
There was also a message from Chorus containing a rough cut of their upcoming Lokka the Brave Quokka: Confession Day Special. While it was certainly something the woman definitely wanted to watch, it required a more functioning brain to be able to give proper feedback. Maybe she’d watch it while eating breakfast, or lunch, or whatever the meal would be considered at this point.
It didn’t take much longer to go through her email since she didn’t have a bunch of spam to sift through thanks to their proprietary client. So when she was done, Kada shifted over to the Fiends For Hire member app. While any job she took there could certainly be considered working on her day off, it was often where the most fun experiences could be found.
She actually hadn’t taken many normal missions at all lately. Any working time spent away from the resort was usually dedicated to her overarching assignment of exploring ancient ruins. That had been fairly exciting at first, with each new ruin feeling like a brand new adventure. But the more she explored them, the more samey they started to feel.
There were only so many times she could stare at an ancient mural, or architecture, or what she suspected were toilets of the past before the charm started to wane. It didn’t help that she wasn’t really finding anything important. There were plenty of little artifacts that she’d recovered, but none of it historically significant as far as she could tell. Anything that looked interesting she brought back to Ipucco to see if he was interested. And if he didn’t want it, then it was donated to museums.
That was unless Rishaki caught wind of a recent expedition. The woman had a nose for treasure like a raving Buzzhound. But Kada usually ditched the goods off at the school as soon as she returned to the compound, before The Peddler could corner her and make her an offer that she couldn't refuse. While Kada liked nice things in exchange for what she considered junk, there was a moral aspect that just made her feel icky with every artifact sold.
The most thrilling find in recent memory was some sort of ancient library or archive, and The Mermaid had gifted all the texts to Drim, knowing he’d be intrigued and grateful. Which of course, he certainly was. The issue, however, was that he could read none of it, just like the papers Kada had found with Chiulu sometime before. And while they didn’t seem to be the same language of what she remembered, they were close enough to at least be scribble cousins in her mind.
Apparently it had all since been given to Asset, who could somehow read the mysterious and ancient writings. So they’d been tasked by Drim to translate and transcribe them in their free time. Drim had also presented the idea to them of writing down the rules of the languages they knew to make a translator. But the weird being seemed unamused about their heritage being stolen by modern day technology.
Besides those recent discoveries, it had just been piles of empty chambers. The ruins often led to nothing—either solid walls or giant chasms. On more than one occasion, she’d found two different ruins that were eerily similar, and where they oddly cut off, it felt like that’s where the two ruins should join together. She’d gone so far as to return to the original ruin and compare the spots and marks, confirming her theory. It was like they’d been split apart and shuffled around the world.
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But none of it brought her any closer to finding their mystery woman. If she hadn’t already intruded in their heads—twice—Kada would just think someone had lost their minds to even believe she existed. It was weird to think how some divine being with the ability to grant insane and whimsical powers could exist without any sort of trace. Maybe she wasn’t even on the planet at all. Perhaps there’d be a second expedition to space soon to try and find her.
That idea got The Mermaid thinking about the true cause of her current vexations in life. She was just bored. The other generals were killing kings, scheming to take over the world, going to space. While the latter had ended horribly, even knowing what had happened, Kada still would have gone, because it was an impossible opportunity.
It wasn’t that she felt unfulfilled in her life. If she’d never joined the Fiends For Hire, she’d probably still be a lifeguard somewhere, or maybe a swimming coach, living a perfectly ordinary mundane life. While that was all she could have asked for growing up, now that she’d had a taste for the unpredictable, she was always looking for more of it, to live a life like no other.
Hell, she was also the only one of the four who didn’t have to endure their prison sentences. While she would have absolutely hated it, and was grateful she didn’t have to live through that misery, her wandering and eccentric imagination couldn’t help but fantasize and romanticize the experience.
She really shouldn’t be complaining—currently living a fantastical double life of adventurer and owner of a super successful business. But she just wanted something new and exciting to shake things up. Because even the best things in life grew stale after experiencing them endlessly
So on the member app, she scrolled through the odd jobs that had yet to be claimed to see if any of them caught her attention, mostly scanning for something she had never done. There were a few monster hunting requests for monster’s she’d never seen, which could always be exciting, but she wasn’t really feeling it.
Kaizu was also recruiting a group to lure a serial killer that was targeting young men who coincidentally and eerily matched Gatrim’s physical description. The recruitment parameters only specifically mentioned that Gatrim himself was barred from participating, but anyone else was welcome to join. It seemed she was playing the part of the ultra overprotective girlfriend.
That could certainly be interesting to see, but there were already takers. Jaid, or more likely a clone, had signed up to participate, along with Rezin as well. And that would certainly be enough. The two women would most likely use themselves as bait and have Rezin disguise them with his Curse.
It’d be something along the lines of making them look like ‘someone you’d want to kill if you were a serial killer’ or another similar concept. Rezin’s Curse was very flexible, and it was often hard to remember just how specific it could be with the hallucinations, but they’d figure it out.
If Kada were to join, she’d just be more bait, and honestly three of a serial killer’s target in the same area would probably spook them. Chorus would almost certainly record the whole thing too, so she could just watch the whole thing later, either as edited content or just the raw footage.
So with nothing else of interest in the main queue of jobs, Kada switched over to her personal selection. Deborah had hand-picked two jobs for her to look at, as the woman did with any member when she believed they’d be the best person for the job or if it’d fit their particular interests.
The first, though, made The Mermaid a little unsure why she’d been sent it. Actually, it made perfect sense logistically, but it certainly wasn’t the fun and excitement she was presently looking for. The job was to assist a recycling plant. They’d taken on more refuse than they could ever recycle and were running out of places to store it.
So they wanted it gone by any means necessary—buried somewhere, shot into space, they didn’t care how, just gone. And Kada would certainly be the best person to make that happen, except for maybe Roque and Rishaki, but she highly doubted that they’d ever dirty their hands with such things. Really, she was the only viable choice to take care of it efficiently. But it still sounded like boring busy work.
She’d most likely still accept it someday, but put it off for as long as possible. Maybe she’d ask Deborah to just outright reject further jobs from corporations who had dug themselves into holes. They often paid well, but were rarely fun or fulfilling, at least not for her.
But it made so much more sense why the secretary had both accepted the job and passed it along to The Melting Mermaid when Kada’s eyes finally glanced over the second one. It was a commission for someone in the Fiends For Hire to make a piece of artwork for a city plaza. Apparently they hadn’t asked for anyone in particular and just wanted something Fiend-made.
There were no real specifics on what the artwork should be, so Kada would essentially have free reign to make whatever she wanted. However, there was one request that the materials be eco-friendly if possible, so that the mayor could tout it as part of their planet-saving agenda, and show off that they were doing the bare minimum.
Another look back at the recycling request and she realized that it was shockingly close to the city in question, even in the same country. Kada could easily transport it in a few hours and then spend the rest of the day letting her imagination play. It was just the kind of thing she was looking for, and the new frontrunner of what to do with her day.
Deborah was acting diligent afterall and taking everything into consideration. Kada would say they should pay her more for her competence, but the woman already received a higher salary than anyone else in a clerical position anywhere on Rathe.
But just as The Mermaid was about to dig into the details of both requests, she got an alert on her phone that made her groan. While no emails or messages from her business could get through to her personal profile, if the system detected urgency or an emergency, it would send an alert. Most of the time, though, it was a mild crisis at best.
So the big boss elected to ignore it. But then it happened again. Then there was another alert, and another, then once more for good measure. Maybe just a quick peek… the woman’s worries were getting the best of her. No! They’re all big boys and girls. Whatever it is, I’m sure they can handle it!
But then she got another alert she couldn’t ignore, a text on her personal side. 『Victori: Umm, Kada, is something happening at your resort you need to tell us about?』
Well that was certainly jarring, and enough motivation to actually check things out, but then there was another text to pile on the panic. 『Chorus: The hell, Kada?! A little heads up next time! We’ll do our best to spin this in our favor, and I don’t think we need damage control just yet, but get your zjik together!』
Just what had happened that their personal PR agents would have already found out about it? Kada quickly shifted over to her business side and was immediately bombarded with notifications. There were emails from her board of directors, texts from her staff, inquiries from media outlets on whether the allegations were true.
It took a while for her to sort through it all and figure out exactly what was going on. But one thing was undeniable: something new and exciting had happened to shake up her life, and she was certainly no longer bored. Yet a single thought prevailed above all the others as she let out a deep sigh, Hahhhh, this is going to be my whole day, isn’t it?