Chapter Forty-Seven - Closing a Deal

“Interior of home-like space. Ruins in the back. Sections on fire. Sheets and furniture from Le Tres Beau’s Autumn collection are scattered on the ground.

EAST BLADE bursts into the room and looks around. His suit is dirty, his gun is smoking.

EAST BLADE

Rose? Where are you my sweet Rose?

Camera pans to side, revealing ROSE’s legs. Bare. She is partially buried in some rubble.

EAST BLADE

Rose! Oh no, Rose!

ROSE coughs. She is hurt.

ROSE

East? Is that you my blade? What happened? I was enjoying a cool, refreshing Neocola when everything exploded!

EAST BLADE rushes to assist Rose. Highlight can on ground.

EAST BLADE

Don’t worry my love, I’m here for you!”

--Excerpt from Screenplay of Katanation Street, Season 30, Episode 4357, aired Jan 2052

***

I really shouldn’t have been enjoying myself at someone else’s expense so much. It felt... wrong. Mean, at the very least. Like stealing candy from a kid.

Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure I’d stolen candy from kids before.

Jessica was sweating. I wasn’t that keen on reading people, but even I could tell that she was stressing out to the max. Her hair was plastered to her forehead and she kept chewing at her bottom lip. “That price isn’t entirely reasonable,” she said.

I shrugged a shoulder. “We could buy some other building. I’m fond of this one for... reasons, but there are others. Right Myalis?”

Myalis’ drone wobbled. “Within the next twenty blocks, there are seventeen more areas for sale with a similar footprint, two of which are on the top floors of their respective buildings.”

“See,” I said. “Not too sure how much those are going for, but it’s a buyer’s market, right?”

I had no idea what a ‘buyer’s market’ actually was, but it sounded right.

Jessica nodded. “That’s true. Would you consider keeping the price at four thousand points?”

“That’s a lot,” I said. “Half a day’s worth of fighting aliens, easy. Three thousand is a lot more reasonable.”

Jessica fidgeted. “I think my clients would appreciate a higher price than that.”

I nodded. “That’s nice.”

As we spoke, Myalis was helping me keep track of the building’s value, the graphs, which I could only just barely understand, filling the edges of my vision. The building’s top floor was now hovering just under one billion dollars in value, with three big companies holding the majority of the shares for it, and a few dozen stragglers hovering by the edges.

Of course, that wasn’t the actual value of the floor. That was the very much inflated value that some idiots had placed on it. As far as I could figure out, Jessica’s company was basically splitting however many points I sold the floor for evenly amongst those who owned shares when I eventually sold the floor.

The things fluctuating so much were parts of the ownership of the floor. Which was a bit weird. You either owned it or not, I figured, but maybe there was some accounting bullshittery going on that I wasn’t aware of.

Point was, if they closed the deal with me, then a bunch of corps would get some exclusive blueprints and such. If they didn’t, then... actually, I wasn’t sure what would happen if they didn’t, that wasn’t my area, and I didn’t care all that much.

“Let’s meet in the middle,” I said. Jessica perked up at that. “But, but, I’ll be looking over the crap you guys want with those points, if I see anything too skeevy I’m vetoing it, alright?”

Jessica nodded along. “That sounds very fair. Let me just confirm with my clients, and I’ll be back.”

I waved her off, then backed up a bit before slumping. Fortunately, I had a Lucy to slump onto. She was the perfect height for that.

“Tired?” she asked.

“It’s not even two yet, and I already want to go back to bed,” I muttered.

“You’re such a baby,” she whispered. “You know, all those fancy sorts are probably watching you right now? What’ll they think?”

“I don’t care,” I said.

Lucy giggled and pulled me into a hug. “Here, this’ll help.”

Part of me wanted to protest, but I’d be damned if it didn’t help a little. “Thanks,” I said before plating a kiss on her head. “So, what do you think we should do with this place?”

“Clear some space to have lunch, maybe?” she asked.

“I don’t know if anyone would deliver all the way over here. I mean, with the incursion clean-up. Maybe we can pick something on the way back? The kittens would like that.”

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“We have really good food in the apartment.”

“Yeah, but it’s not fast food,” I said. “Filet mignon is good and all, but burgers.”

“That’s your entire argument? Just ‘burgers?’” she asked.

“It’s a winning argument,” I said. “Jessica looks like she’s ready.”

Lucy let go of me, and I walked over to Jessica with an easy smile on. She was smiling too. It made her look a whole lot less severe. “My clients are ready to accept your proposal. In exchange for three-thousand five hundred points worth of equipment and blueprints, rounded in your favour, we at Washington, Smith and Associates are happy to close the sale of the top floor of this building.”

“So... this is mine?” I asked with a wave to the room around us.

“As soon as everything is signed. We have a notary expediting everything as we speak. The full contract will be sent to you for verification.”

“Ah, right, Myalis can do legalese, right?”

“I can manage,” Myalis said.

“Cool, once that’s all done, I guess you can arrange for pick-up of all the stuff your clients want to buy?”

Jessica nodded. “Perhaps when we sign the final contract? At the rate things are moving, that might be tomorrow. Although I don’t want to put any pressure on you.”

“Tomorrow’s fine,” I said. So I didn’t own the place yet. Just... mostly did. I extended a hand to Jessica, my meatier one, and she jumped before shaking it. “Thanks Jess, this was almost fun.”

“Ah, well, thank you, miss Stray Cat. I don’t get to do business with samurai often. If you’re ever on the market for a new home, or a new building, do remember to call us!”

Jessica looked quite pleased with herself as she sauntered off. I waved at her back, then turned back around. “Weird one,” I said. “Wonder what’s got her so happy?”

“The deal she just struck might not have been worth as much as the building was in sheer monetary value, and in so doing, her company might have lost some potential revenue, but I suspect that the clout of having bargained and, ostensibly, won, with a Vanguard will improve her company’s reputation.”

Usually, when people dealt with me they had pretty crappy reputations, and they didn’t get better just from associating with me. “Alright,” I said. “Got that list of things drawn up?”

“I do. To be clear, there are some items that would best be kept in the hands of a Vanguard and not spread to the public at large. Those were removed from consideration. I also drastically reduced the number of weapons available.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “What kind of stuff isn’t for normal folk?”

“A lot of software and many of the components of your Cyberwarfare catalogue. Non-regulated AIs are something of a nuisance. Some items from your Stealth catalogue as well.”

That sounded reasonable. I moved over to Lucy, then pointed to the main room. “Wanna explore our new place?” I asked.

Lucy grinned. “I’d love to!” she said. “Oh, are you going to princess carry me through the threshold?”

“I don’t think that’s the right tradition for this occasion,” I said.

“So what, we smash a bottle of champagne against the side?”

I barked a laugh. “Only if you plan on turning the place into a ship.”

“Hmm, nah. One of the kittens would fall off the side. Oh, we’ll need guard-rails.”

Lucy and I took maybe an hour to explore the whole floor. There was that big museum room, shaped like a stubby L that took up all of one side of the building. The rest of the floor had a few dozen rooms. One was a storage area, another a place for staff that linked up to the lobby.

There were a pair of doubled washrooms, and that one little nook where we’d stopped a few days ago to debug my aug-gear. The corridor that had the shelter at the end was lined with offices on both sides, some of them still filled with officey junk.

“The main floor can be turned into some sort of opened space,” I said. “Maybe a mega playroom?”

“That sounds like a bit much,” Lucy said.

“Eh, we can chop part of it off, turn that into a kitchen or something.”

She nodded. “Alright. And the offices can be turned into bedrooms. They’re about the right size for one-person rooms.”

“Not enough of them for all the kittens,” I said.

“Some of the bigger rooms could be filled with a few bunks. Like we had back at the orphanage, but less... you know, moldy.”

It was dawning on me just how much work we’d just bought for ourselves. Still, it sounded like fun.

***