Daisuke’s blade materialized as he unsheathed it from an invisible scabbard interrupting his father mid-sentence.
“The complexities of the motor vehicle industry aren’t for…” his father, Akihiko, trailed off as Daisuke fluidly stepped onto the fancy long table with various high end breakfast dishes on silver serving trays that were more expensive than most sports cars. He stalked past his half-brothers and sisters with the sword at the ready.
They were all dressed in their country club finest with matching blues and whites with clothes that cost more that most people’s one month of rent. He passed his mom, a young Korean woman half the age of his dad, and second wife. Daisuke approached his dad, and stared at the man with his blade at the ready.
His father was the owner of Kaze Motors, the most powerful car manufacturer in the world. It was said every road on planet Earth had touched the tires of a Kaze. Like any self respecting billionaire, Kaze represented a fraction of his wealth, and his money was just making money in business ventures all over the world.
Daisuke raised his blade, and sliced the man’s head off.
***
Daiuke strolled into his Office Pool causally wiped down his blade before returning them to the rack. Maxi, their self appointed Generalist leader, was arguing with Flav, a large Black man of the Porter class and functionally the tank of the party. From the sound of it, they were arguing whether it was Chuck D or Flavor Flav would make a better ice cream flavor.
“Flavor’s Crave has some nuance to it.” Maxi dug in. “And who doesn’t like ice cream?”
“But Chuck D’s Nuts,” Flav said between breaths as he couldn’t hold his laughter.
“I still like Chocalnator X,” Patti, their healer Customer Care Advocate said.
“What do you think, Daisuke?” Maxi said.
Daisuke rolled his eyes, flopped down at his desk, and said. “I don’t like ice cream.”
“Wait? You don’t like ice cream!” Maxi yelped. “Wait… wait… how could you not like ice cream?!”
“I can take it or leave it,” Daisuke said.
“That’s not the same as disliking it.”
“Fine, I’ll leave it then,” Daisuke said. “Now if you excuse me. I have work to do.”
Maxi strolled to the other too, and said. “Can you really believe he doesn’t like ice cream? Who doesn’t like ice cream…”
“Maybe he just doesn’t like it.” Flav suggested.
Daisuke put on his headphones and opened his character sheet.
Name: Daisuke Hax Gender: Male Ethnicity: Japanese/Korean
Office Pool: Lus3rs (Cumulative Tier 9.7)
Tier: 9.5
Class: Sales Associate
Level: 82
Stats:
Ambition: 65
Adaptability: 20
Dedication: 43
Speed: 45
Creativity: 25
Emotional Intelligence: 56
Luck: 15
Life: 666/666
AR: 34
Att: +53 Katana (54-66 damage)i
Att: +53 Wakizashi (54-62 damage)i
Att: +25 Shotgun, birdshot, 8/8 rounds, (45-65 damage, 100’ range, 5’ spread)i
Att: +25 Shotgun, buckshot, 8/8 rounds, (65-85 damage, 100’ range)i
Att: +38 Contend, (No damage, attempt to wrestle opponent into submission)
Att: +36 Unarmed Strike, (37-38 damage)i
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Skills:
Climbing (basic) +10
Close the Deal +36
Customer Service +45
Deceit +43
Dodge +33
Dual Wieldi
Listen +17
Martial Arts: +23i, Style Focus: Jujutsu +15i, Style Focus: Karate +13i
Melee Weapons +23i, Intermediate Boosts: Swords: +10i Advanced Boosts: Specialization Katana +10, Specialization: Wakizashi +10,
Range Weapons +19i, Intermediate Boosts: Firearms: +1,
Sales Acumen + 45
Sneak +26
Credits: 20,456
Items: +5 Sales Suit (common), Birdshot (16), Buckshot (16), Cloaking Scabbards (uncommon), Cloaking Holster (uncommon), Cloaking Infinity Backpack (rare), HR Implant, +10 Katana of Humanoid Slaying (rare), Ring of Speed Boost I (uncommon), +5 Shotgun, +15 Stealth Chain Mail (uncommon), +10 Wakizashi of Grutomation Slaying (rare),
Storage: (Cubicle)
+2 Birdshot (5), Birdshot (73), Buckshot (37), +4 Cereal Bars of Ambition (4), +1 Headphones of Endless EDM, +1 Khakis (10), +11 Meat Stick of Healing (1), +7 Potato of Exploding, +2 Shirt of Protection (10), +2 Shotgun, +2 Water Bottle of Refilling, Weapons Rack of Repair (3 Spaces),
Passes:
Cafeteria II (two boost foods per meal)
Domicles:
Company Apartment (Basic)
He was saving some skill points to add Krav Maga to his style focus, less for adding another martial arts skill but rather as a prerequisite for an expert sword style that he had his eye on to increase his basic attack. Daisuke’s only gripe with the skill tree was that certain aspects weren’t visible to him unless he reached the level and ability points to purchase the skill. The only exception were class skills, and he could only see the ones the next tier up.
When he had first joined the company, he had asked Terry, their AI companion that was sort of a nanny figure to Maxi, about the skill tree, and the bot had said, “People rarely know what the future holds. Will the survivalist skills be more valuable than the accounting skill? Had you been born in the 1950’s, the accounting skill would have taken you much further in life than any knowledge of survivalism. Thus the skill tree is limited to ensure you diversify your skillset, so you avoid only being good at one thing, and avoid premature termination when you find yourself in a situation where your one skill isn’t useful.”
“Unless you were born in one of the many countries to destabilize over the years,” Daisuke had replied.
“The what?” Terry said, and added. “Ah, the overwhelming exception fallacy. Attempting to disprove my statement that accounting would be a more useful skill for a person born in the 1950’s than survivalism by finding the few expectations where their ability to live of the land would be more useful than number crunching and willfully ignoring the fact that a majority of people born in that time period lived in–”
Daisuke had ended the connection with Terry before he could get lectured any further that day. The truth was that the world had fundamentally shifted since the 1950s despite some people’s attempts to go back to that era. All Daisuke saw were men like his father grow vast stockpiles of wealth, mostly at the expense of his workers physical health and well being.
Daisuke had grown up in London with his mother, Kiara, who was product of a kpop school in Seoul that produced star after star, hit after hit, but at the cost that only 3% ever made it to the upper echelons of the Korean music industry. His mom had studied dance with military discipline. She had vocal training with instructors that would swat food out of her hand if there was even a minor chance of damaging her voice.
When Kiara’s class was paraded past musical executives during their graduation pageant and were assembled in the next boy and girl bands that would capture the hearts and minds of teenagers across the globe, his mom was picked as a backup dancer. Which meant anything from stand-in when one of the real stars were sick, all the way to just another one of the nameless people on stage or in the background of the “real” talent.
She was devastated because even the backup dancers lived a life of military discipline and grueling hours like she had in school except with no hope of ever taking center stage. Unlike in America, where it seemed that anyone could do anything, she knew that if she wasn’t picked on graduation day, she never would be. There would always be another graduating class to form the next boy and girl bands in the industry.
Daisuke couldn’t blame her when one of the most wealthy men in the world had taken interest in her, and then offered her comfort and security she would otherwise not obtain on her own. However, his step brothers and sisters could blame her. She was the seductress that drove a wedge between their father and mother by targeting him backstage of a show during the VIP soiree.
However, to hear Kiara tell the story, Daisuke’s father had kept finding excuses for them to be alone at the party, and eventually, she had consented to going out to dinner with him because it was too exhausting to avoid him. She always told the story with a smile and sometimes a laugh. All mannerisms his half-brothers and sisters interpreted to be part of her diabolical nature to tear the family apart.
It wasn’t like his half brothers and sisters had anything to fear from his mom or himself. Daisuke was too much of a half breed to inherit anything, and his mom wasn’t going to get anything but the house in London, and stipend to keep her comfortable. The wealth, the businesses, Kaze motors, it was all going to the children from the first marriage, whom he adored.
Daisuke had been an inconvenient byproduct of sex. While his mother loved him more than anything, Daisuke had come to terms with long ago that his father had not chosen his mom to start another family, but more because the guy had gone through a midlife crisis and needed to prove his manhood by going after a woman who was far younger and prettier than him.
From the outside, it looked like just another billionaire with a too-young for him second wife, but to his father’s credit, he had treated well. He never hit or yelled at her, attempted to use his power, influence, and money to mold in the image he wanted her to be. In fact, when he decided to move to London, he had a dance studio built in the house just for her. He took her dance performances across the world, and even donated vast amount of wealth to the arts in her name.
There was never any doubt that they loved each other, despite what other members of the family, the media, and general public thought about the marriage. The person his father didn’t love was Daisuke. It wasn’t through anger or psychical abuse, it was disinterest.
Daisuke never earned praise or scolding from his father. The most his father ever interacted with him was asking his mother to “take care of it.” When he was caught brawling at school, his father would ask his mother to handle it. When Daisuke wrecked the family car after a binge of recreational drug use, Kiara was the one who was there.
She was just as bad as him in some ways. She would say things like, “You’re going to disappoint your father, or stop that before your father gets angry.” The truth of the matter is that his father probably wouldn’t notice if they had failed the Antitrust lawyer raid, and he was culled when the bottom fourth of the company was murdered to appease interdimensional corporations hungry for the souls of the people on Earth.
It didn’t matter what Daisuke did, and the only time his father had ever raised his voice was when Daisuke was waving around a bat as a kid pretending he was a samurai and accidentally clocked his older half brother in the head. Even then, his father rushed his beloved away, and told Kiara to “take care of Daisuke.”
Diasuke pushed memories away and pulled up his quest log.
It read:
Quest: Sins of the Father Complete.