Author's Notes: Inspired by and dedicated to Plunderer01, who not only accidentally dragged me into this fandom but also seems to have made me start to liking this couple (sorry, MAL, but I am a multishipper). Prompts come from the LiveJournal 10_Themes Community.
Looten Plunder was a greedy, greedy man.
He made no attempt to hide this fact—on the contrary he reveled in it, took pride in it, showboated his cupidity and developed an entire philosophy dedicated to the glorious sin of avarice. He didn't feign being humble, in his $5,000 suits lined of imported animal skins and his pointless walking stick with its delicately crafted ivory head. He did not give a cent to charity, and no saccharine do-gooder would ask for it without a very long and nasty lecture for their efforts. He paid as few taxes as he could and bragged about it, driving envy into the other billionaires with his multiple tricks and loopholes.
Money, as Plunder saw it, was power, and he knew what it was like to be powerless, he remembered his father scraping and saving to get the family by, and he had worked damn hard to make sure that sort of powerlessness wasn't going to happen to him. He had made his way through business school with sweat and blood and all the hard work he could muster, and then he had planned and connived every day that it took him to get his way right up to the top. He had paid his parents back every cent they paid for his education, but the moment that was done he saw no reason to give anything to anybody else. They called him greedy, but if greed simply meant keeping what belonged to you then he didn't see much of a difference between "greedy" and "smart." Oh, you want some money? Then go out and work for it, you lazy bum! Don't expect Looten Plunder to give you handouts, because no one certainly ever gave him one. Call it greed if you wanted, but don't you dare act as if you deserve anything more from him.
Money was power. And once you had enough power, you could get anything, anything you wanted. So when you got down to it, being "greedy" just meant you knew how precious money was. Being "greedy" simply meant that you knew the things that were important, you knew what power was and how to use it, and that you were smart enough to realize that you should not go giving that power away very freely.
Barbara Blight had other kinds of power. But she was greedy with them, too.
"Sorry, Looty, but I'm not looking for a job," she said, leaning back in her seat and sipping vodka from the crystal glass her host had provided.
"Oh, but I would be very happy to have you as the new head of my R&D Department," Plunder said smoothly, staring across his desk at her with his fingers tented between them. "And I'm sure we can come to some sort of an arrangement."
She scoffed, rolling the one eye that Looten could see. "Such as?"
"Well…"
Plunder took a folded scrap of paper and slid it across the table to her; she snatched it up, flipped it open, and her cocky grin fell into a jaw-dropping look of shock. This number was huge, much, much more than she had dared to expect; this was the kind of budget whole wings of the U.S. government would kill for, enough to pay for any insane project she wanted in a lab plated with gold.
Blight tore her eyes away from the paper and stared in shock at Plunder. He merely grinned at her, an odd, vicious gleam sparkling in his eyes.
Looten Plunder was a greedy, greedy man.
But sometimes greed was about getting things more important than money.