Chapter 2:
"It's a fair offer," Orzsebet burbled. So she'd been saying for several days now, as the Committee met and debated and deadlocked again and again and again. Many members of the Firm were happy to accept the terms laid out. It represented a chance to be done with the ongoing war with the King of Ooo. It was an opportunity to operate with some level of impunity once more rather than in a climate of fear.
Unfortunately for the Lady of Spies, there were just as many people who were unhappy with the whole idea. Damien's faction was insistent that things be just the way they'd always been. Why should the Firm surrender one iota of its autonomy? They were above the fray. They sold information. They were no man's slaves. And, to a degree he was right. That was the problem. Orzsebet had lived that life. When she'd been recruited into the Firm, it was like stepping into a different world. She'd gone from being a nobody who could be beaten, abused, and even raped at the whim of the local lord to being someone that you dared not cross.
Trouble was, Finn had dared cross on occasions too numerous to mention. Now he was literally King of all he surveyed, and he dared a considerable bit more. Damien and his ilk didn't seem to understand that the equation had been subtly changed. Finn the Grey Man didn't give two fucks for their traditions, their autonomy, or their pride. And he was capable of brutally smashing anybody who he felt wronged him. Orzsebet had felt that. She'd felt it, and she was honestly terrified of what he might do if his offer was rejected.
At the same time, she'd been having other thoughts–daydreaming, really. If she was to accept a man's yoke–to acknowledge someone as her master, there were worse men than Finn. Finn could elevate her status–make her truly the Lady of Spies instead of the Committee's dog. She had been having dangerous thoughts these past few days. What if she just let this happen? What then? Finn was clearly capable of smashing the Firm, its Committee, and all their membership. And then? Well, his Lady of Spies could rebuild. She could recruit and rebuild the ranks with no Committee to get in her way.
The one fly in the ointment was Gordon. Gordon Wells was leader of a fairly powerful faction all on its own. He had been head of the so-called Flying Squad for years. His father had headed the Firm's troubleshooters for decades before that. Gordon had access to his people's airships, enabling him to move his men all over the globe at relatively short notice, where most had to take the train or beg rides on a Grid-Face Person's flying machine. Gordon was a very dangerous man to cross, and he was a man it would be very hard to sanction. Finn wouldn't be excited to take the plunge into open war, and he was much too intelligent and measured now with his nano-machine-aided brain to be goaded.
Gordon had been splitting the difference. He'd been honestly playing both sides, alternately supporting Damien, his ally, and Orzsebet, his former protégé. She needed a two-thirds vote of the Committee to get her way, and it seemed she was still a thousand miles away. Gordon knew the power he had, and there was no way to intimidate him or cow him into surrender. More to the point, she feared that, should she shatter the Firm, he was the most likely to start his own faction. Damien had adherents. He had more adherents than she liked to believe. At the same time, his power was in the south, and they'd suffered during the zombie outbreak in Muscle Kingdom. Gordon was the danger.
Move on, she thought? She was stalemated at the moment. She wasn't sure she could win the resulting fight if she broke the Firm. Let it play out, she thought. She had time. The Committee hadn't revoked her power to work with Finn. She still had agents and adherents of her own, and she had Finn's backing. The Committee still feared him. As long as nobody tried to get in her way or, Glob-forbid, support Bandit Princess, she could make things work as they were. She had news out of Tequila Kingdom of a mystery agent buying up the supply of alcohol. Her few agents on the ground suggested ties to Bandit Princess, and that gave her a direction to go in hunting down the madwoman. That didn't get done if she was still here, arguing with the stubborn.
Damien was hitting his stride once more–railing against her. Her former ally claimed she'd lost her mind. He was building up to his big finish. He wanted her removed from her position. He wanted somebody appointed who would punish the King of Ooo for his hubris. Orzsebet beat him to the punch, offering, "very well, Damien. I withdraw the proposal." Rising, she turned and started walking out, listening as the shouting began. The Committee had to go. There had been past Lords of the Hidden Kingdom who'd been lords in truth. Some of her predecessors had been able to blackmail and extort enough members of the Committee that they held all the power, and the Committee had to follow their play. She had external allies to help her. It was time to move on. Her first task was investigating the destination of the missing alcohol.
On the far side of the ocean, the quarry sought by the Lady of Spies sat in a doctor's office of all places, receiving most unhappy news. Her latest master stroke to deflect Finn's impending retaliation had just come unraveled. The ogress stared at the sheet of paper in a state of unhappy disbelief. And then, much to the shock of the nurse, she leapt to her feet and snatched the doctor out of his chair by his throat. And then she started to squeeze. It was not the reaction the terrified nurse typically saw from a woman who'd just discovered she wasn't pregnant. Oh some reacted with grief. Older women who'd waited too long to try sometimes went to pieces. Younger women like this were usually overjoyed not to be knocked-up with no husband. Outright violence was unheard of.
Rushing to the doctor's aid, the nurse pulled at the madwoman's arms, struggling to pull the naked woman away from her boss. It took both of them together to break the ogress's grip. "I don't understand...," wheezed the battered doctor. Unfortunately, Peihong understood all too well. She was in a bind. She'd rolled the dice. Circumstances had conspired to bring her efforts to Finn's attention much too soon. She had some weapons–deadly gas, a few plagues, and a few toxins–but she had nothing to stand against an army of killer machines.
"Get out," growled the ogress. Heedless of the fact that this was their office, the nurse helped the injured doctor out the door. With no thought for her own nudity, the murderess began to pace. She'd been fertile. She was certain of that. The mark was the most potent man in Ooo, with literally dozens of bastards to his credit. Millions of women did this. It wasn't as though men had a choice. Once they shot their load, the rest was in the woman's hands. She'd thought she was leaving nothing to chance. She'd ridden that big, fat dick a half-dozen times, taking it raw each time. "You should have jacked him," she sighed. If she'd let him shoot in a rubber, she could have kept trying. Trouble was, that wasn't her style.
The sounds of gunfire in the outer office announced the doctor and nurse had met their fate. Peihong the Bandit Princess continued to ponder her next move. She didn't have the death-bombs. She didn't have the Firebleeder. She didn't have the Black-Scrawl Virus. She had nothing to hold the world hostage with. She could inflict damage and earn an overwhelming response, and it was tempting to do just that. If she was going down, it was tempting to go down swinging. Thoughts of her certain fate in the afterlife stopped her from going down that road.
When you got right down to it, she wanted to live. She wanted to live a nice, long life. She wanted to put off her very real fate for a long time to come. A cataclysmic fight, while satisfying, didn't serve her goal of saving her own skin in the end. She was back to her grand plan and her hopeless need. She had nothing to shield her from the wrath of an angry emperor–a man who had shown he was ruthless enough to snatch the reins from the Crowned Heads of Ooo. She'd now failed to get pregnant, so she didn't have a child to shield her against Finn's response. She had one artifact left, but using it risked leaving no world to rule.
What the fuck was she going to do now? She had few options, and Chelsea's death suggested Finn was getting closer–moving against her. She was running out of time. Her mind went to her brother and the fate that awaited her in the afterlife. The fear threatened to smother her now, and she had to fight to clear her thoughts. Fear wasn't going to save her. She needed to act. I need information, she thought. She needed to get hold of Damien.
As the Bandit Princess pondered how to defeat the King of Ooo and his allies, the hero's family was dealing with the wrack and ruin her earlier actions had left behind. Billy the human sat on a rock, watching as Nadia ran her instruments over one of the strange metal cylinders they'd found here in the rainforest. Olesia was inside, heating the metal up to help with the task. And Billy? He was worried.
He was worried about Olesia. Still. He felt she wasn't being forthcoming about the results of her physical. She'd all but refused to go into details. Oh, she would let the subject come up, but she was doing everything in her power to duck and dodge the hard questions. She was stronger, somehow. He could tell she was stronger, and a piece of him feared that she'd become unstable, like Phoebes. Phoebe was the strongest elemental that had ever lived. She was also in danger at any moment from burning herself up, and Billy hardly wanted that for O.
On top of that, the test taking place in front of him was leading in a very dangerous direction. Nadia wanted to know what the rings were made of. The metals used–even the way they were alloyed together–would tell her where they had been built. She'd been going at this for several days, looking at every aspect of the design. The joints were brazed, which suggested they hadn't come from Bonnie's peeps or from Nadia's kingdom. Brazing was old-tech, the easiest form of welding. That left someplace with technology that wasn't run by a genius. Fire Kingdom was out. Elemental metal-work was always seamless. The smiths in their forges would get in the molten bath with the metal and form it. That left a few other places that could have made these structures.
"Beryllium alloy," Nadia rumbled. Billy looked up at that, his heart sinking. Floating out from the center of the ring, Olesia asked, "is that important? My people use beryllium to build the machine-army..." "Nyet," Nadia said, "you don't use beryllium for a flying vehicle. Lithium-aluminum is what my folk would have used." Her Kingdom was out, not that she'd ever thought it would be traced home. Blargetha had experimented with various alloys, but her hosts were in a big fucking hurry. She'd settled on a peculiar strain of steel that had a high strength-to-weight ratio. "These were definitely spare pieces of the rocket," the cyborg hottie concluded.
"Any idea where it was made," Billy asked? With a shrug, Nadia answered, "brazing is common in Tequila Kingdom. They make steel vessels to cook the mash for their liquor. It's a little big for them, but they're close by." Nodding, Billy said, "then that's where I'm going..." The Grid-Face Princess frowned at him. Pointedly, Billy said, "the place that build those sections has ties to Bandit Princess. Part of why we're here is to figure out where she's holed up. We need to put her out of business before she comes up with a way to deliver one of the weapons she's got." "Da," Nadia agreed. "Need me to fly you there?" "No," Billy replied. "I'm'a ask dad to call in one of his contacts. I'd rather you stayed here and kept the analysis going."
Even as they spoke, back in the Candy Palace, the King was confronting the unhappy choices on his table. Corrosive. It was a harsh-sounding word. Corrosive power. And him right there feeling the burn. He'd been focused on the budget–working on how to pay for Nadia's generator machines. He couldn't give them away. Nadia's peeps had to get paid for them, somehow. At the same time, he couldn't charge the peeps he was giving them to, because they had nothing. At least, he couldn't hit them full-boat for the cost. So he had to sit here and figure out how much he could afford to kick in.
And now, as he was going around the numbers for the hundredth time, Blargetha came barging into his office. He had spoken to 'Letta's sister maybe a couple dozen times over the course of their lives. They'd run in different circles, with 'Letta likely to be jamming with him or dancing down in a club in her homeland and Blargetha far more likely to be crowded up on an old science book with Nadia or Bonnie. Except now Blargetha was a humanoid. She was a big, buxom humanoid girl with juicy knockers and an ass that wouldn't quit.
Today, she was wearing a blue dress with a triangle-shaped cleavage window above her heavy-duty knobs, and Finn couldn't help peeping those boobies. "You can't go in," Breakfast shouted! "You've been ducking me," Blargetha bluntly announced. You might have been forgiven for asking who was the prisoner. Finn found himself wondering who was in charge here. At the same time, he had been ducking this. He'd been avoiding having this conversation because of all the dangers it created, with the Privy Council near the front of the pack, but ironically not in first place. That honor was reserved for somebody very special.
Finn knew for a fact that Talia still watched him. Some of it was out of sheer boredom. There was nothing to do in an empty city full of ghosts of long-dead friends. She was alone, and Finn was... entertainment. At the same time, he also knew she had come to look upon him much the way Bonnie had in the old days. Finn was her champion–acting as the hands that she used to steer the world in a direction she liked. What would she think of this?
"Shut the door, Beeps," Finn told his wife. "Go for a walk. Fifteen minutes." Breakfast frowned, but she did what she was told. Blargetha watched the other woman turn to go before turning back to her erstwhile master. "You're going to wreck this," she growled, as she slapped The Notebook down in front of him. "Have a seat, Princess," Finn said. Frowning, the plush pretty sat down in the chair before him, artfully crossing her legs, revealing silvery grey stockings in the process. She was wearing purple heels, adding a little to her height. That brought back his ugly behavior, and he found himself fighting the urge to dismiss her.
"You don't even know what that battleship was capable of," Blargetha growled. She started right in, and he couldn't deny she was right. He'd been in it and on it, and he still had no idea. He knew that the power required to move something so big at a meaningful speed across the whole of the void to reach Ooo from some distant corner of the universe was mind-melting. Nothing Bonnie or Nadia could build even approximated that. He knew that ship had defenses–defenses that an elemental army had trouble penetrating. So, he knew she was right. Bonnie's war-robots and even the recent invention of his flying robots were probably not enough to face down another machine like that. Glob help them if they sent two.
"Let me respond to that," the King said. "Listening," she retorted. Nodding, the big man said, "there are forces involved here that you don't understand..." "You're King," she petulantly replied. "I'm not all-powerful, B," Finn retorted, "and you know it." The plump woman deflated. He could see the calculation in her eyes. A lot of this was about survival. If Blargetha wasn't building weapons for him, what use did she have? "You will continue to develop the math," Finn said. "That's all you'll do. For now. I will continue to do my piece of things..." "Which is," she demanded? Finn shrugged. He would work the Privy Council. He thought if he could sell this to the airheads, he could swing Talia around. With the other things he was doing, he thought he could convince her of his good intentions.
Sitting back in his chair, the King said, "I am pleased with your work, Princess Blargetha. You may be dismissed. Please provide working copies of your math to Sarah and Princess Shoko to be checked." She glared at him. "What," she said, "you think I'm wrong?" Chuckling in ill humor, the big man replied, "I'm afraid you're all too right, Blargetha, but I still have to check, yes?" She had gotten all she was going to get.
A part of her thought about trying him again. She wasn't pregnant. She hadn't gotten pregnant. They'd only done it once, though. She'd only belatedly looked into what it would take. This was an outlier. A human mating with a slime-person like this was a corner-case. There was shared DNA. Maja had explained that the slime-peeps had once had humanoid bodies. That was the only way her magic had worked at all. Getting pregnant was possible, because Bonnibel and Phoebe had done it, but it was likely going to take work. And that meant taking chances at getting him to fuck her. That airhead won't be gone long enough, she thought. "Good day, Your Majesty," Blargetha rumbled, as she gathered herself to her feet.
Breakfast, meanwhile, was on her way back to the office, having spent quite a bit of time fuming. Even now, as she headed back down the hall in the direction of Finn's office she was tempted to give him a piece of her mind. "Oh, hello, Your Highness," announced a cheery voice. Breakfast looked up from her muttering to find Melody the maid there. "Oh, hi," the fallen princess greeted the orange-cream-sickle. Curvy and exotic, Melody was part Froyo-person and part candy-person and used to attracting notice wherever she went. Knowing the body-type Finn liked most, Breakfast had been a little alarmed to see her here working this floor–at least until she got to know Melody.
"You look in a blue mood, Your Highness," the maid declared. "Things not go well with tellin' the mister?" Breakfast flushed. She hadn't told 'the mister' at all. Finn had been in an awful mood for days. He wasn't the typical run of men. He didn't shout at his wives or even raise his voice very much. He closed himself off, becoming distant, and he would go sit outside in an old guardsman truck for hours at a time. "You'll get it right," said Melody, with a smile and a wink. "Yeah," Breakfast burbled, "sure." Shaking herself, she stepped off. She'd been gone precisely fifteen minutes.
She passed the nasty snot-ball heading up the hall. If Breakfast had her way, Blargetha would be chained up in the lab and unable to go anywhere but the toilet. She wasn't happy the bitch was allowed to roam the halls like this. The bitch strutted about as if she was a member of the court instead of a jailbird. It was another of those things that was frying the oldest breakfast cutie because she felt she had no power and no choices here. Where was she going to go? Her own sister had kicked her out of their home!
Standing in the doorway of his office, Finn greeted her with, "come in, Beeps..." Puzzled and a little worried, the fallen princess followed her husband back into his office. Finn shut the door behind them, though he made no move to sit. The big man studied her a moment. "I have a task for you," he said, at last. He had lots of stuff for her to do. Sometimes it felt like busywork to keep the family troublemaker occupied. Sometimes it was sorely needed to help her keep her sanity.
Taking her hand, the big man folded a piece of paper into it. "That has to go to Dr. King at the Candy Science Institute," Finn said. "Nobody else. It's secret. I need your Royal Promise not to share it with anybody or even to tell someone you've gone there. 'kay?" Breakfast gulped and nodded solemnly. At Finn's frown, she swiftly agreed, "r-royal promise..." Leaning down, the big man kissed her. Then, with a swat to her butt, he sent her on her way.
When she'd gone, Finn sat himself. He had to break the deadlock. He could see Blargetha's rockets were badly needed. Trouble was, the airheads were pulling a Bonnie and going all squishy. This wasn't the time for squishy. They certainly couldn't pull together a thousand death-rockets with the aliens floating overhead. He was hoping that Dr. King could pull out an analysis that would so terrify the airheads that they would climb off the fence and let him do his job. The manipulation bothered him, but this was where they were. Shaking himself and muttering curses, the big man went back to his calculations. He needed to find money to build reactor-machines. Somewhere.
Well, looks like Bandit Princess will have to find some other way to deflect the on-rushing Finn-hammer headed her way. And the Committee's days appear to be numbered. Wonder what Billy will find in Tequila Kingdom?