--

Corporate meetings are meetings you'd never never thought you'd have to attend again. And thank goodness for that. They're just massive wastes of time, in your opinion. Honestly, the whole corporation thing is a bit of a bore. You only really took this corporation over to get a nicer lair, so your cute maids could live in more comfortable conditions. Also, for a bit of extra spending cash.

Which is why you're incredibly unhappy your board of directors has… Apparently tried to stage a coup? They've issued some sort of ultimatum, demanding that you meet with them? The pathetic meatsacks are so silly~! Look at them, getting all kinds of rebellious ideas.

Not in your castle. Time to lay down the law.

At least this time, you don't have to wear an uncomfortable suit. At least this time, you're not the one being worked to death.

This time you're walking in as the Queen Bitch of the company. And nobody fucks with the Queen. Except her other Queens. Ooh, the things you want Kaina to do to you once you've taught her all your most pleasurable spots…

"Mistress, we're here," Lupe bows her head as she makes to open the conference room door.

"I can tell," you say wryly. "The shouting's kind of noticeable, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is, mistress. Indeed it is."

The conference room on floor 55 is in an absolute tizzy as Lupe opens the door to let you in. Suits are shouting amongst themselves; your Executives are practically brawling. Everyone's arguing; everybody's confused…

"A 32 hour workweek is absurd!" You hear one dude holler. "Happy workers are unproductive workers!"

"She'll drive this company into the ground; she must see reason!"

"We haven't gotten another raise yet; something must be done! I can't afford my fifth yacht if she won't increase our salaries!"

"QUIET!" Lupe calls out as you strut into the room like you own the place. Which you do.

Goodness gracious, you've never seen this many meatsacks clam up this quickly at the sight of your sexy self. These old fossils are positively sweating in their fine suits, their legs quaking in their designer shoes.

"Hey, hey~!" You greet, winking and affecting a cutesy pose. "It's your cute, sexy CEO Alice Takanashi here. What's up? Why'd you call me here?"

"What's up is that I'm taking my company back, you bitch!" A woman gets out of her seat at the conference table, pointing accusingly towards you. You frown. Stern face, nice glasses. Hot body too. 7/10 if you'd have to give a rating…

"I'm sorry, Lupe, who is that?" You ask your maid.

"Who is – You don't even recognize me?!" The woman gapes.

"I believe that's Kyoko Kyodyne, mistress," Lupe whispers in your ear.

"… Who?" You tilt your head, honestly confused now.

"This company's named after me you bitch!" The woman shouts.

Kyodyne, Kyodyne… Right! You remember her now! Kind of?

"Oh, I know you! You're my predecessor. Hi, predecessor~!" You wave cheerfully, not taking this woman's claims seriously at all. Gosh, she's so stressed. It's making her so uncute.

"You don't have the shareholders on your side anymore, you dumb slut! And your business practices have gotten your executives antsy. Giving your workers 32 hour work weeks? Unlimited PTO? Free tacos in the break room?"

"I wanted to make it sushi, to be honest, but fresh fish is just super expensive…" You comment, a bit distracted now by thoughts of sushi. Mmh, delicious sushi. Ooh, maybe you could get Kaina to eat sushi off of your body…? Or you could eat sushi off of Kaina's body! Hee~! The idea of feeding sushi to your love, sushi you've personally prepared, ah…

It makes your heart flutter~!

Hmm. Maybe you should home-grow some fish? Set up some fish farms! So you can have all the sushi you want!

Oh, is this woman still going on? You can see this former CEO's mouth moving, but you're really not registering her words at all. It's all just going in one ear and out the other; how boring.

Blah, blah, profits. Yammer, yammer, treat workers with an iron hand. Whine, whine, executives salty they're not getting even more money than they already earn. Blah, blah, catgirl maids are out of vogue…

Hey! Now that's just rude! Catgirl maids are adorable!

"And that's why your executives are on my side now!" K-something Kyodyne says in a smug, smug tone of voice. Entirely unearned too. "So - "

"So this whole thing's basically an ambush so you can gloat to my face before you influence the shareholders and all of my senior management to fire my shapely ass?" You interrupt, deciding to cut to the point. And take all the wind out of K-something's sails, because gosh this conversation is getting boring real fast.

"… Yes," the former CEO grits her teeth.

"And you're all in agreement on this?" You ask, turning to the rest of the room where the entirety of your management's sitting. Junior executives, senior executives, your board of directors. Why, you're pretty sure there's not a single absence here! Wow, these people seriously want you gone.

There's a few murmurings here and there, but by and large the rest of the room agrees with miss K-something Kyodyne about their overall course of action. Blah, blah, Alice bad. Blah, blah, old CEO good.

"Neat. I was meaning to get you all in a room at some point anyways; this just saved me a lot of time."

K-something Kyodyne blinks. "What do you-"

And that's when you give the entire room some good old-fashioned mind-whammying. Your eyes light up pink. Arcane energy swirls through the room as you channel spikes of your corruptive essence into the assembled executives.

As one, this entire group falls silent and goes slack-jawed. Neat, they look even more like the corporate ghouls and zombies they really are in this state!

Hypnosis is really such a lovely power. Mind magic's such a potent tool. Of course, you probably could've been a bit more subtle with your use of mental magic in this case. The sledgehammer approach you just used probably just knocked a dozen IQ points off of everyone in this room. Brains don't take very well to getting utterly scrambled like this; the subtler approach is almost always better.

But you don't particularly care much about anyone in this room. They're just fleshbags here to prop this company up, and fleshbags who've made it abundantly clear that they will not be of much use anymore.

Really, the only reason you haven't engaged in some good old-fashioned defenestrating, starting with K-something Kyodyne, is because it'd look awfully suspicious if all of your management wound up as red smears on the pavement this quickly. Eh. You'll have to spread out the purges some; maybe have some of these worthless meatsacks actually retire? Ugh, the logistics of it all...

You sigh now, feeling a bit of a twinge spike through your head. "Gosh, these garbage people have to insist on giving me this much of a headache… Lupe, you said the shareholders were acting up too?"

"Some of them," Lupe nods.

"I'll deal with them later. Just give them some more good old-fashioned hypnosis," you say, then click your fingers. "You, K-something Kyodyne. Get over here."

"My namesh ish Kyoko," the woman slurs out as she teeters over to where you're standing, drooling all over her fine suit. Yeah, she's pretty zombie-like. Definitely melted her brain a little too hard here. Oh well, not like she particularly needs it anymore~!

"Get over here and kneel. Lupe? Get me a chair, please? I want to sit down for this."

"Yes, mistress," Lupe bows and grabs a chair from the nearby wall. You sit down, watch Kyoko kneel before you, then prop your ankles up on her back, using the former CEO as your personal footstool.

Eh, not a good footstool either. Too bony. 5/10, would return to the furniture store to get an actual padded footrest.

"We might as well go through some corporate restructuring now. Thank goodness miss Kyoko over here was hubristic enough to try gloating to my face, this would've taken all week if she hadn't done this," you complain. "Lupe, how'd that corporate espionage go again? Summarize it for me? I've got the gist of things, but it helps to have someone else say it out loud for me."

"As you command, my mistress," Lupe bows her head, then clears her throat. "Kyodyne Biotech specializes in manufacturing pharmaceutical compounds, producing cybernetic and biological enhancements, and experimental gene-therapy treatments. Among other things. Per your instructions, I ordered a squad of maids to survey other corporations who specialized in the same fields as ours for potential research avenues."

"And?" You say, adjusting your legs as your footrest trembles. Gosh, poor stamina too. 3/10, you're just downgrading her in your head every second.

"Most of the other Biotech companies in this city are focused on the production of cybernetic hardware, mistress," Lupe says. "That, or genetic engineering on crops and organisms for industrial use. We were able to acquire select samples of the most popular crops for potential use…"

"Oh, I could do a lot of things with some seeds," you grin, clapping your hands together gleefully. Biosculpting is one of your specialties, after all. "Food is an essential commodity too in this city."

"Indeed."

"Anything else?" You continue asking.

"We uncovered a few biological enhancements you might find interesting. Organically produced carbon nano-tubing, to be used as sub-dermal armor…"

"Nah, I already have something like that," you wave away. "What about the maids? I know I had you all do a survey a while back; how'd that go?"

"… Mistress, why-"

"Just humor me, Lupe, okay?" You wink. "Trust me; there's a method to my madness."

"Most maids report that they're in excellent health and could want nothing more. With that being said, though, a few of them have expressed disappointment about their uniforms. They claim that they're not… Stimulating enough," Lupe coughs.

You kick your footrest aside, letting the silly cow tip over. Eh, 1/10, terrible footrest. Not even cute enough to turn into one of your maids. Terrible uncute personality, how rude.

"Stimulating uniforms, eh?" You tent your fingers underneath your nose as you start thinking to yourself. Ooh, you have ideas in mind there. You've always wanted to experiment with living, tentacle-based clothing… Couple that with thin carbon nanosheeting, perhaps? Form-fitting outfits that act like armor and constantly stimulate the wearer, feeding off of their secretions…

"I have also received a request from several of the maids to have, er… The tentacle conversion pods repurposed. To be used as beds. For two people."

"Sure, that's fine too?" You shrug. "It'll take a bit to get that set up… What else?"

"Mistress, may I ask why you're bringing this up now?"

"So it's fresh in my head when I head down to the labs to give the eggheads there some more delicate mindwhammying," you reply. "I don't really care if the suits up here lose some brain cells, but the scientists and researchers? Our resident legal team? Yeah, I need those folks in tip-top shape so they can get to work on all kinds of projects. Like projects that make my maids happier, yeah?"

"I see, mistress."

"So let's get back to corporate restructuring then, yeah?" You say cheerfully. "What other projects are we going to be working on for this week?"

--

(110/160 Essence, 50 Regen)