[Princess] pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and rubbed a well-worn worry spot with the flat of her tongue. Ever since she started working full-time with tiny-chompers, she had to get noseblind to a few common smells: a little bit of fear, the overwhelming scent of pick-me-up, a couple copper tangs of blood. The various colognes and deodorants that they slathered on themselves only masked, partially, everything else, and so it was through discipline and training that her and the rest of her kin managed to maintain control over more primal desires.
As the tiny-chompers spilled out of her grasp and onto the loading tarmac like an uncontrolled tide of leapers, [Princess] smelled blood - which was so disturbingly normal that it barely even registered anymore, oil, grease and various industrial solvents. They’d been busy in her short absence, but as she looked around she couldn’t tell what exactly they were busy doing.
Tiny-chomper-big-energy leapt up from the floor, bounding over to a group of his cohorts that were busy kinetically disassembling an aptly-named “fork-lift”, and started to babble happily among the other tiny-chompers. [Princess] knew that it was mandatory during normal business operations to always keep her translator on, updated, and listening to all frequencies. She also knew that nobody really checked any of that, and that is a hill she was willing to get written up on.
With a smirk she gave a mental command, the tiny-chomper band clicking back on. Suddenly adorable babbling snarls and yips were replaced by a menagerie of actual, legitimate voices; accents from throughout the rim, high class touches and proper deep baritones from frames two sizes too small. [Princess] let the change wash over her for a few moments, before finishing the shutdown procedure of their food-transport.
Tiny-chompers never remembered to engage the manual clamps, and for the life of her [Princess] couldn’t figure out why. She stomped down on the lever, the metal vice clamping down on the right most landing support strut, locking the vehicle to the tarmac. As she moved to the other side of the transport to kick down the second lever, her ears started to perk up: the rolling babble and cacophany of conversation that always surrounded her tiny-chompers was forming into a coherent chant. By the time she engaged the second vice, the chant had formed a call-and-reply, but the words made absolutely no sense.
[Princess] looked up at her bosses bosses’ boss, made eye contact and shrugged.
= = = = = = =
“[Don’t raise your voice, yelling undermines your own authority.]” Azul said to the reflection of herself in the elevator mirror, as she descended to the shop floor below. “[Ask the same question multiple ways in order to get the full picture. Use small words. Remember, your size is intimidating enough to your subordinates.]” Azul felt the sudden shift in momentum as the elevator neared her floor, and she fussed over her suit out of habit. With a gentle chime the door slid open, and Azul pasted on her winningest smile.
She continued to hold up that smile with titanic effort as she was summarily and obviously ignored. Before her were two groups of warm-cuddles, One who had taken all the orange protective gear, and the other, the yellow. The two had formed a circle around what could only be described as an effigy of their work, with a chosen handful playing music with whatever they could get their hands on.
Azul frowned. Usually rituals to [O’shaa] were done for auspicious reasons, such as the birth of a drone flock or the certification in [fork lift] of a fellow warm-cuddle. Rarely such gatherings were done on dark days, like safety inspections or bring-your-daughter-to-work day. For them to go to such lengths for an initial delivery… well.
Hopefully it was a good thing.
“[Ahem.]” Azul cleared her throat, the low rumblesnap punctuating the space between the beats of the warm-cuddles’ impromptu song. “[I’m sorry to interrupt, but, could someone fill me in on what’s going on?]”
The ocean of warm-cuddles and other xenos onlookers parted, and a human with a staff made up of what looked like blinking emergency flares stepped forth.
“We hench.” He stated, and immediately chirped up from the crowd scattered words and exclamations of “hench” and “preach it!” and a couple “muahahas” before he raised his hand, silencing the onlookers. He pointed his staff at the still-smoking food truck, the battle damage still fresh.
“We now have an arch!” He roared, and the crowd went wild, the chanting resuming, increasing in timbre and pitch. Azul shrunk back slightly at the sudden burst of noise, before raising her hand in an attempt to silence the crowd.
After a few moments, she had peace. “[Thank you for that initial explanation, that cleared up a lot. Would you kindly elaborate on those words and their particular meanings?]”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The safety shaman crouched, tilting his head as if to examine Azul for the first time. “We hench. We hench for you.”
“[Yes.]” Azul began, before being silenced by the striking of the fuse-staff against the ground.
“You are the big boss.” The safety shaman said, using very small words. Azul wondered for a moment if this was part of the bit, or if it was a backhanded way of insulting her intelligence. “From grand sky-palace-“
‘
“-we receive orders from the evil league of evil.” The shaman continued, and Azul smiled despite her best efforts to remain stoic.
“[That’s one way to label upper management.]” Azul retorted.
“And so we rain fire and hate upon our enemies!” The shaman yelled, raising his staff to hold in his hands high above his head. The gesture was a bit lost on Azul, as his hands only reached her shoulder height. She shared a quick look with her fellow triads, the other xenos giving approximations of shrugs and bemused grins. “By the blood oath we swore! By the benefits promised us! We fight, and scheme and die and kill-“
“[Oh, wait wait no. No we don’t do that here.]” Azul interrupted, waving her hand dismissively as she straightened up, subconsciously asserting her authority. “[Weapons are nonlethal for [the xenos] and only to be used in self-defense in regards to other humans. Doing otherwise would be absolutely illegal, and we don’t condone such acts.]”
Her words caused a stir among the warm-cuddles, who alternated between hushed conversation and loud expressions of their disapproval. A few feisty individuals even attempted to start a chant of “New number one!” but the meaning was lost on her and didn’t take among the crowd.
The safety shaman tilted his head again, before resting the staff in the crook of his arm. Reaching up, he pulled off the welding mask that was turned into a fearsome effigy, tucking it under his other arm. Azul stared into the visibly confused and - alarmingly - worried human, his brown eyes staring into her own.
“Where do you think we are?” He said, softly but not unkindly. “You pay us through shell company intermediaries.”
Azul frowned slightly. “[Yes, but what does-]”
“Money laundering!” a human in the crowd cried out, and much to Azul’s horror was met with various murmurs of agreement.
“You give us custom weapons and battle suits.” The shaman continued, rolling his wrist in a ‘come on, think’ gesture. “They wear your emblem.”
“[That’s investing in your safety and comfort-]” Azul continued, slightly less certain.
“After arming us, you told us to destroy your enemies and all who stand before you.” The human said, matter-of-factly.
In a small voice, Azul attempted a rebuttal. “[Strong language is the core of pep talks amongst employees and is fundamental to corporate morale.]”
The safety shaman shook his head and looked up. Azul followed his gaze, up past the banners that - now that she looked at them - showed swords piercing the planet, a fist crushing the continent they were on, a snake-like creature with a fanged grin encircling the solar system. Interspersed between them were banners that proudly displayed such slogans as “All things will bow” and “We are inevitable”, which given the terrifying new context looked less like a nice company morale booster and instead looked like something much worse.
In an increasing daze, she looked back down, horizontally scanning past her employees to her glowing red and spiked [forklifts], the fog machines pumping out a gentle haze along the floor, her heavily up-armed and up-armored battle food trucks, and increasingly menacing water coolers placed every 30 meters along the wall.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth when she noticed the little buttons to open and close doors were in the shape of skulls.
“What did you think this all was?” The shaman said, before Azul’s panic attack set in and her vision darkened.
= = = = =
“[We are not a criminal organization!]” Azul chanted to herself, waking up to the repetitive mantra echoing loudly within the elevator that she didn’t remember rushing to. There was a pounding at the door that she couldn’t be bothered to deal with, her body too heavy to pry off of the ice-cold floor.
‘
Another wave of sickening panic rolled through her body from her tail to her hood at the thought of leaving the planet to flee to what was apparently now an orbital command bunker.
“[We are not a criminal organization!]” Azul cried out, inhaling deeply once again. “[How could they think that? Why would they think that! What sane person responds to an ad for an elite, discrete group of like-minded individuals to perform vague acts at the behest of a multi-system megacorpor-oh no.]”
Azul paused for a moment, her cries dying in her throat, and reviewed everything she’d done since arriving in this system in the new light of “evil boss” as she mouthed out silent words.
Additional flair for management? Officer stripes.
Employee shuttle? Untraceable transport.
Personal protective equipment? Goon squad outfits.
S.W.A.T. breakdown of competition? Hit list.
Free breakroom snacks? Bribery.
Azul had nothing that she uncovered in this new light that didn’t feed into the new narration. An underground base wasn’t “utilizing urban space properly”, a chic tower in the center of town was obviously an evil spire hiding in plain sight, and as she looked it was everything and everywhere.
‘
With a wave of nausea Azul picked herself up from the floor, pulling herself to a sitting position with her arms. The panic attack was now falling behind, replaced with cool calculation of odds, avenues of attack, and cost-benefit analysis.
“[We can stop this right now.]” Azul said, picking at her fingers as she thought out loud. “[Generously donate to local officials and make whole the people we just attacked. File for articles of dissolution, give everyone a generous severance package, take the physical assets and distribute them via other companies and fronts to the general public. Launch the primary and backup servers into the star and stay 10 systems away from this place forever.]”
Azul leaned against the wall, using it as a crutch to stand up. “[This is doable. If any reporter makes a mountain out of this, it can be brushed off as an isolated incident.]” Azul stretched her spine slightly, the staccato pops releasing small bursts of endorphines as she regained her former physical and emotional posture.
“[My plan should work if we can move quickly. All I need to do is notify the board -]” Azul lurched forward as she finally remembered: The board. The conference call that she abandoned that was going on right now. Azul pressed the office floor button, and kept spamming it the entire ride up in the vain hope it would somehow make the executive lift move quicker.