Three days after Jaid’s brief visit back to her home country, she entered the conference room of the general’s mansion. Even though it was now an extension of her own home, she still felt a bit like an out-of-place intruder, almost wanting to ask permission to enter before being so bold. Fortunately, it wasn’t a far journey from her room. So after getting properly dressed and eating her breakfast which had been made by Mallea—another thing she’d need to get used to—Jaid only took a few steps over to the world of serious discussions.
It felt good to be jumping back into making plans and preparations, though—actually getting things done. The past two days, she’d been rather listless and slow. On the first day, the woman barely left her bed, consumed by her new bedding that felt like it was feeding itself on her exhaustion. Her friend, Worretta, seemed to be in a similar situation, so motivation to actually do anything was low.
The following day, though, Jaid had sat down with both Worry and Dura to discuss their future plans, not that anything was finalized, but they talked about what they wanted to do with their lives now that they’d been freed. And since the talks ultimately went nowhere, Dura took it upon himself to hang out with Worry and show her around the campus, guiding her as if he’d lived there for years.
With her free afternoon, Jaid decided to go wander around the mostly-vacant Bisomote and spent some time discussing its reconstruction with Roque. She then spent a few hours with a good amount of the heavy lifting, her army of clones becoming a one woman construction crew. Wanting her favorite bakery to reopen as soon as possible certainly had nothing to do with it.
But now it was time to get serious. And while Jaid doubted that she’d have too big of a role in their world domination schemes, she’d been invited to oversee their plans to ensure that her expectations as the requestor were being met. “You know I didn’t really expect that you’d choose this route,” the knight mentioned to those sitting in the room while waiting for the meeting to start. “I genuinely never imagined that Drim would run for President of Rathe.”
“And what did you think we were going to do?” Phon stared at her with intrigue. “Let me guess, you thought we’d put a stop to the elections altogether, reveal them as a farce, have them forced to be shut down, and use that disturbance to grab power for ourselves?”
“Uhh, something like that, yeah,” The Paladin couldn’t deny.
“Sorry to disappoint then,” Phon shrugged. “We chose this avenue because we believe it would lead to a more cooperative world afterwards. If it’s done legitimately, no one—well, less people will have anything to complain about. That said, if things aren’t looking in our favor, we’ll need to go back to the idea stage, both for what to do and reevaluate how we’re viewed by the world.”
“Unless your request has a time limit we don’t know about. Are things moving too slowly for your tastes? We could take a more direct approach, assassinate every major political figure in the world. It’d be pretty simple from there. Is that what you want, Jaid?”
“Err, no no, no complaints,” Jaid tried not to play into Phon’s teasing, but it was difficult in situations like this, especially since she wanted her intentions made clear. “Take your time, really. I know it’s an insane request, and I trust you all to do it the way you think is best. Just let me know what I can do to help, however I can.”
“In that case would you be so kind as to—!” Chorus jumped on the opportunity, ready to name a dozen insane proposals.
“Oi, down,” Phon scolded them like a misbehaving dog. “All that can come later once everything is worked out. Let’s not scare off our dear requestor on the first day.”
The group sat in silence for a few minutes longer, waiting for everyone to show up before they began. So far, the group consisted of Jaid, Phon, Drim, Chorus, and Victori. The last of which Jaid had never really had any interaction with, but the woman wasn’t quite what the knight had been expecting.
Even though Jaid had stubbornly tried to avoid news and talk about the Fiends For Hire while she was still acting as a stuck-up captain for the Central Peace, she’d catch snippets every so often. It was inevitable with how prevalent they'd become in mainstream culture.
And the knight had heard tale of the Darquees heiress who had virtually imploded her house and then joined the Fiends For Hire. Then after she’d been freed of her noble restraints, how she’d delved into a life of slobhood. But Jaid saw not even a hint of that. The woman was adorned in an elegant and stunning business dress, and her hair had been clearly styled by a pro. She looked ready for anything, more professional than everyone else in the room combined.
Surprisingly missing were the other two Greaters. Xard had returned to his crusade already, and Jaid guessed his mission was deemed more important than his presence. As for Kada, she’d left for an extended stay at Ledmer. Or rather, she was literally dragged kicking and screaming by her board of directors so that she could be caught up on everything—not allowed to leave until a year's worth of decisions had been made.
“Sorry for the delay,” Tize finally arrived with their new visitor in tow.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“It’s entirely my fault,” Callum Briz sprung forward, bowing his head in apology, accepting full responsibility. “When Tize offered a tour of the compound, I couldn’t resist. I asked too many specific questions and we lost track of the time.”
“No worries. We know it’s a pretty interesting place,” Phon happily boasted. “And as we discussed previously, you are welcome to stay whenever you are working here. We have one more spare room in this mansion. And since you’ll be splitting your time between our compound, Regend, and The Central Peace, feel free to reach out to either myself or Valen, and we can shorten your travel time.”
“So why don’t we start with a few introductions,” the woman mentioned as Tize and Callum sat down. “We’ll start with Jaid. I believe you’ve already met. She won’t be participating directly in the campaign process, but you could somewhat consider her as our benefactor in all this, as this wouldn’t be happening without her. And there is a good chance that she will be participating in missions related to our campaign, should any arise.”
“And Tize here also won’t be directly participating either, but he’s been appointed to Operations Director of the Fiends For Hire, to ensure that things continue to run smoothly day-to-day while Drim and I are busy, but we’ll still be handling the more executive business dealings.”
“Next, we have Chorus, our PR manager. They’ll be handling any messages we make publicly, whether it’s direct statements, interviews, shows, clips, campaign ads, whatever is needed. Anything that goes out will be drafted and edited by them first, but we still have the final say.”
“And lastly, this is Victori Darquees, who will be our campaign manager. She’ll be handling all the fine details and organizing any events. If there’s anything you need for our campaign, let her know, and she’ll retrieve it. We will also be making use of her Curse where applicable, but we’ll get to the fine details later.”
“I guess I should introduce myself then,” Callum stood up from his seat and bowed to everyone again. “I am Callum Briz, a Vice-Representative for Regend. And I’ll be upfront that my background is fairly abnormal for politics. I have no pedigree, no nobility, no sway or dealings of any kind, and honestly, it’s by sheer happenstance that I’m where I am today.”
“Given my age and experience, I should just now be getting my feet wet as a political aide, but I was picked up by Merigauld Viscelli. She actually hijacked my internship as part of her own scheme to use me as her pawn. And now as a result, I was essentially railroaded into my position through no merit of my own. Hell, I was even made a presidential nominee through even more of her scheming. This time, I think she did it just for fun, to see how far I’d go.”
“But… I don’t want to be anyone’s puppet. While I am appreciative of everything Gauld has done for me, and would do all I can to assist her in her goals, I don’t want her to write my future. And the same could be said for all of you. Under the circumstances, it could certainly be framed that you made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, especially after such a display of violent acts and impulsion.”
“I just want to make it perfectly clear that it’s not the reason why I’m here. While I can’t deny that I have immense interest and respect for your group and Fiends in general, that isn’t why I accepted. It has nothing to do with your standing, and I have no interest in exploiting your names or fame.”
“I’m here because our world is in turmoil, and I feel powerless. The Central Peace is getting worse by the day. Almost all progress has stopped, with every faction refusing to work with any other. They’ve begun treating this election like everything rides on it, afraid to be on the wrong side of whoever’s elected, postponing all voting until they’re certain who they need to appease.”
“It’s disgusting. The Central Peace was founded on the belief of coming together to make a better world, to prevent a travesty like the Drazah War from ever happening again. But now that the CP has cemented its foothold, our political system has become a mad-grab for power, and this election is no different.”
“The thought of it terrifies me, but if the wrong person is elected, we could have a new dictator on our hands. And they would be entirely unchecked. The Central Peace is supposed to be there to balance them out, but only a fool would actually believe that. Whoever wins will use the same strings they pulled to obtain the position as a resource to make sure that they keep it. They could get away with anything.”
“And from everything you’ve shown me, Drim, I genuinely believe that you would be the best candidate. Now I don’t know the exact reasons why you want this position. Given the creation of Fiendish, how it was initially to stop this election from even happening, most would probably guess that you’re running solely so that no one else could hold that power.”
“But my guess is that it goes deeper. You’re scheming something, or you wouldn’t have gone so far in the extreme reveal of your candidacy. The CP is losing their minds after that stunt, wondering if they need to call the election off, if you’ll just attack every candidate, what the purpose of running for President could be.”
“Personally, it doesn’t matter to me what your end-goal is, because I have faith in you. That might be stupid, but you’ve earned it. Through the amazing work that the Fiends For Hire has done everyday, reforming the economy, saving Bastion, and now dismantling Humanity when everyone else turned a blind eye. I have absolutely no reason to doubt that your intentions are to not only save the world from itself, but to improve it, make it the best it can be.”
“Regardless of what happens, whether we can convince the rest of the world or not, you have my vote. Because out of every other candidate, you’ve proven you deserve it the most. So now we just need to make everyone else see what I see.”
“Oh, uh, sorry for that rant,” Callum sat back down, his face flushed with embarrassment. “I can get a little passionate at times, but I wanted to make my position clear.”
“Rousing stuff, Callum,” Phon applauded sarcastically. “But you might want to wait until you’re in front of a camera for it.”
“Oh don’t worry, I recorded it,” Chorus huffed, as if they should expect anything less.
“Well then,” Phon pressed a button and the conference table flickered, illuminating a screen that displayed a map of the world. “Let’s get started.”