Maniac’s Mayhem: A guide to being a corporate slave

"Philanthropy? Don't talk to me about philanthropy! We do enough of that when we deign to buy these useless sacks of meat for a handful of hours every day!"
--Corporate Stooge

I watch Deatnite yellow school bus pull into the abandoned parking lot at the edge of town. Now that I think about it, where are there even yellow school buses in Europe at any point, I feel like that is more of an American thing. Anyway, it does not matter as I run up to the driver to envelop her in a big hug.

“Hey love, I missed you too.” Claire says with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I missed you a lot. Thank you for coming here.” I say, still holding her tight as I let the warm fuzzy feeling spread to my body.

“It’s no problem at all. So, these are the people I am bringing to the hotel?” Claire asks with a bright smile.

“Yeah, that is Elena. She is their unofficial leader for now.” I say while gesturing at the girl.

“Hello, it is nice to meet you, miss.” Elena says, as she takes a step closer.

“It's nice to meet you too. Can you organise the others and set them up inside? I need to have a quiet conversation with…” She looks at me, unsure how to proceed.

I just grab Claire’s hand and drag her aside. Once we made it out of earshot, I turned back to Claire; I almost burst out laughing at how red her face was. So I give her a kiss on the cheek to show her how much I like her.

“You wanted to talk?” I say with a bright smile.

“Yeah, maybe, uhm.” She stammers out

I drag the cute thing closer, embracing her as our lips meet. Is it weird to say that I missed her taste? Her hands slide up as she wraps her arms around my neck, holding me in place. We stay like that for a while, enjoying each other’s presence.

“It’s okay. You know I like you a lot, right? You can speak freely unless you just want to go somewhere private to make out.” I say with a smile.

“No, it's just Lyssa sent me a message.” She says.

“Ooh, what did she say?” I asked, a bit disappointed that she did not want to continue making out.

“That she was worried that you were becoming more brutal.” She says, looking at me with a bit of trepidation

I frown. “Is it really that bad? I don’t really feel like I became more brutal.”

“Then do you feel any regret over the people you killed?”

“Uhm, no, not really, it is weird. How do I say this? It kind of feels far away when I kill someone. It is Like I am more of a spectator.” I explain, “Ah, fuck, I know that sounds crazy, but that is what it feels like. I know it is still me who does it, and the people I kill are not good people. They are slavers, rapists and murderers.”

“It's okay, I believe you, and to me, it doesn't matter. I know that you are a good person and do the right thing. I mean, even today, you saved those people.” She says as she strokes my cheek with her thumb.

“Thank you. Coming from you means a lot,” I say, as I lean my head into her hand.

“Yeah, I just hope you would hurry up and save yourself, too.”

“Sure, I will do that when I get back from this trip.”

“Talking about your trip, why were you in a brothel anyways?” she asks with an eyebrow raised.

“It is not what you think. It was strictly business. We were investigating these disappearances around Myca Co, so we were looking for anything suspicious, and that is how we found this other problem. It's kind of like Louis Pasteur and how he discovered penicillin.”

“Alexander Fleming is the one that discovered penicillin, Louis Pasteur, among other things, found the vaccine against rabies.”

“Ahh, that is where I got the two of them confused.”

“You should really go back to school, you know.” She says with a giggle.

“I don’t think it is much use to return to school now. It's not like I wish to be a chemist.”

“They were microbiologists. Anyway, that is not the point. Don’t you think it would be fun to go to school together?” Claire says, giving me big puppy dog eyes.

“Okay, sure, that could be fun. Do we get to wear school uniforms?” I ask, giving her my best smile

“No, what the hell are you thinking of?”

“I just thought that I would like to see my girlfriend in a uniform. I think it could be hot.”

Claire's face goes red again. “Maybe we can later.” She chokes out.

I give her another hug. Fuck, can’t I just skip this entire thing and just go home. Then again, I just dropped a giant mind-control problem at PsyCo's doorstep, so I assume I will be busy regardless of where I go.

“So, you know who is going to investigate this further,” I ask.

“Yun Min is taking the PsyCo girls to Prague, and Silver Scorpion is going to Paris, and meeting up with a local samurai there, to take care of it.” Clair explains.

“What about you, Magenta, and Jason?” I ask, a bit curious.

“Deatnite is shadowing the girls, making sure nothing goes wrong; as for me and Magenta, we have another date tomorrow.” She says while giving me a significant look.

“Don’t worry. Cierra and I spent most of the night coming up with the perfect plan for that.” I say with a smile.

“Are you going to tell me what the plan is?” she asks, looking at me expectantly.

“No, we both decided that the chance of success is higher if you did not know what the plan was.”

“Wait, what? That is so unfair.” She complains, really cutely if I might add.

I shrug. “Maybe, but I think you should not worry about it too much; what you should worry about is what kind of underwear you will put on.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Well, for when you score, it is nice to come prepared.”

She goes red once again. “You think that would happen?”

“I hope so. That is kind of the goal, isn’t it? Or were you not planning to have sex?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t know.” she says a bit awkwardly. “Won’t you get upset?”

I think about that for a bit, and then shake my head. “If I were going to be upset, I would not help you.”

“I know. It is just still a bit odd and new to me.,” she says.

“I understand, but we are Samurai. We don’t have to follow the rules.”

“You are right.” she says as she holds me closer. “Do you have to stay here?”

“No, but I want to see this through.”

“Okay, well, time to get back to the others. They must be getting nervous by now.”

We return to the bus, and after making sure the bus gets out of there safely, I turn back, walking slowly through the different mega scrapers, taking a more snaking path back. I am neither followed nor harassed on my way back, which is a definite plus. As for the hotel, well, when I enter my room, I see a combination of looks thrown my way, from annoyed to relieved.

“Hello, I am back.” I say, trying my best not to make whatever is going on worse.

“I am just a bit confused.” Heinrich said, “Your file said that you were careful, and this is not careful at all.”

“I was careful. Nobody got hurt. Well, nobody on our side got hurt.” I say, trying to defend myself.

“Yeah, not yet. What will happen when the people that were there recognise your face? Then we are all fucked.” He continues in anger.

“Uhm, about that.”

“I don’t care for your excuses. You put everyone in danger,” Heinrich continues, interrupting me.

“So, is this a good time to say that I left no survivors?” I ask, before he can start up again.

Heinrich eyes go wide “You killed all of them?”

“Technically, I burnt them all alive.” I clarify.

“Why did you do that?” Heinrich asks, now no longer angry.

“To remove any evidence that we might have left there on accident,” I say.

“And you don’t feel bad about that?” Katharina asks.

I look at her, confused. “Should I? They were all a bunch of evil people that would cause a lot of trouble if we let them live.”

“Fuck, you are a lot more scary than I thought,” Katharina says.

I just shrug. I have no problem with being seen as scary. As for not feeling anything that might need to be looked at, I know I cared before when people died because of me. Why is it that no longer the case? When I kill someone now, it feels like someone else is doing the killing. Huh, I wonder when it changed.

“Did you at least find out anything useful?” Heinrich suddenly asks.

“Not really. I asked all the dolls where they came from and who might be their most likely kidnapper, and none of that was pointing at Myca Co. I mean, that can also be a good thing. The chance that we have to worry about mind control chips is low.” I explain.

“And you don’t have any other leads?” Heinrich asks.

“I have some, but they are as tenous as the dollhouse. I have a few places with more electricity consumption than normal and some with extra guards, but this city is big enough for multiple clandestine operations to take place. So I can’t be sure if it is related.” I say.

“So you have nothing directly actionable?” Heinrich asks.

“Not unless we want to step on even more toes by accident. How about you guys? did any of you find something interesting?” I ask to get out of the spotlight.

“Not really,” Katharina says, “most people in the lower city are low-level employees and not part of some gang. And the undercity was closed due to some kind of flooding problem. So we could not find anyone in such a desperate state that they would be willing to sell us information.”

I look at both of them. “So not much either, huh? What about you two?” I ask while looking at James and Karter.

“We found nothing directly interesting, but we did mingle with the locals a lot, and there are some rumors going around that people are disappearing, but we have not made contact with anyone that knows about it first-hand,” James says.

“I see.” Heinrich says, “We should probably interact more with the locals to get a better in. Yui, Sarah, can you two infiltrate some of the events as well?”

I look at Yui, who nods. “Yes, we should be able to do so.”

“Great, Katharina and I will keep trying to make contact with the underground. You are all dismissed.”

“But this is our room,” Yui says.

“That is true, but the two of you have not removed all the spyware in our rooms yet, so we will stay here until you have it done.”

With that to motivate us, Yui and I get to work removing the rest of the devices and putting them all in a steel crate. Who knows, they might become useful. After that, we get ready for bed. I secretly throw one of my drones into the hallway and make it act as a sentry there just to make sure no one comes knocking. And after we bought the secondary lock, we installed it, before crawling into bed.