Part 1- Pledge Your Servitude to Me
I simply can do nothing but cover my mouth with both my hands in disbelief. The Nikke I now regrettably welcomed over to my quarters knocks her seat backward as she stands and covers her right eye with her right hand. A sinister grin creeps onto her face as she slowly breaks into what I feared she inevitably would.
One of her slow-burn, sinister cackles...
"MwahahaHAHAHAHA!"
She throws both hands out in villainous glee.
"Oh, my woeful servant! How destiny mocks your every endeavor and how fate spits on your unavailing efforts. It brings a solitary tear to my untainted eye to see all your toils against me ultimately ruin you!"
Hands still covering my mouth, I look at Guillotine de Mephesto, who now stands at the other side of the table, as she continues to ramble on with her monologue. I swear these rants she goes on are more for her than they are for the one who is supposed to be listening.
She crosses her arms, closes her eye and grins
"Alas, I can spare you this and any further humiliation you will undoubtedly suffer if you simply get on your knees, admit defeat and reinforce your complete and utter servitude to me as my servant within The Association."
She nods to herself as if she was thinking to herself: yeah, that'll show him. I'm so damn cool!. I uncover my mouth from the disbelief of landing on the income tax spot for the fourth time in a row and simply place my elbows on the table. I'll have to knock her down a peg.
"Guillotine, you can hardly say you're beating me. If anything, the game is kicking my ass more than you are! Also your chair fell behind you," I say pointing to the chair laying behind her.
She obviously ignores that last part.
"HA!" she covers her right eye with her hand again, "Spoken like a true knave. You simply have failed to see how my very essence has affected the outcome of this game...Er, uh, contest from the very beginning!"
She's reaching so deep for words, I can't help but smile. She continues.
"My sheer will power radiates so fervently it has already dictacted your defeat. So is the fate of all fools who blindly follow the Big O!"
Knowing she is going to go on for a while, I sigh, sit back in my seat and cross my arms trying not to smile.
"As much as I relish in watching the spineless sheep under the Big O's thumb fall before my splendor, I do not want you, of all people, to perish so violently within the shadow of the One-Winged Dark Lord. He longs for your blood and beckons me to spill it for him-"
Hey, that is pretty violent!
"-He draws so closely now. He claws at my momentarily sane mind so that he may be emancipated. I can feel it yet I have staved off his influence just enough to still think clearly. You need not suffer this as I know you are better than…than…uh…"
I grin. She's lost for words. Probably because she's so far gone on a tangent, she forgot what she was originally trying to tell me. I know she's also noticed me grinning. I take the moment to interrupt, as wittily as I could, to possibly save her from embarrassing herself. Giving in, I play along and throw my hands into the air in supposed agony.
"Oh Guillotine de Mephisto! Better than what!? NOTHING!"
She jumps at my 'nothing'. Shock fills her visible eye. Yes! She totally wasn't expecting me to play along let alone admit my "weakness". I continue my stupid rant.
"I am but a troglodyte in the eyes. . .er. . . eye of the almighty Guardian of Balance herself. Had I been more than just a lowly servant of the Big O, I would not have ever landed on so many income tax spots and obtained so many go straight to jail community chest cards! Woe is he who ne'er sees the light of passing GO. Ne'er does he ever earn the simple boon of...salary."
Like an edge lord, I cover my face with my right hand and turn away, feigning shame. I think I know why Guillotine speaks this way so often, now. It's so much fun. I sit there in my position waiting for some kind of response. Besides the sound of the TV in the living area playing whatever drivel was on before Guillotine came over, I am treated to nothing but silence for what seems like a few solid seconds. I open one of my eyes to see what Guillotine is doing. She's just standing there, dumbfounded? She notices I am peeking and something snaps her back into her signature act. She crosses her arms, tilts her head down and speaks. She sighs a most dramatic sigh.
"I feared that you would one day break down like this" She says, taking off her gloves.
"Let me save you, servant. Cement your brand of servitude upon the back of my hand with a kiss whilst you kneel before me".
She holds her gloves in her left hand and holds out her bare right hand toward me. She whips her head to the right, getting her hair out and away from her left eye making sure she had complete visibility of me. At this point, the game was basically over. We had been playing for a little over an hour, which included a bathroom break and a run to the kitchen for snacks. I was essentially bankrupt at about only having less than 20 in-game dollars under my name. This, of course, was not due to Guillotine pulling cunning financial moves on me but rather my terrible luck at constantly running onto bad spots and getting bad cards. I figured forgetting about the game wouldn't trouble us much. I decided that playing along with her act and submitting myself to her would insinuate admittance to my defeat. In addition, Guillotine was getting into that mood which I find so cute and sometimes even endearing.
She absolutely hates to admit it and hates it even more when I have called her out on it. She hides an otherwise level headed, loyal, highly skilled and hardworking Nikke under a mask of ludicrous grandeur to the point of near parody. Inside though, she is someone truly pained with her mission set forth by her manufacturer, Elysian: Execute corrupted and/or irregular Nikkes. Only she and Maiden are part of the elite Extrinsic squad and it is they alone whose purpose is to look into the dying eyes of the poor souls who involuntarily become corrupted. It is they who are the last visions of a programmed girl, put to war, and corrupted by the very enemies they are forced to fight against, before they are shut down, recycled or possibly destroyed forever. Guillotine goes on in her ridiculous manner about how she lives a "lonely fated existence". However, she isn't wrong. Besides Maiden, who is the only other member of Extrinsic squad, Guillotine is the only Nikke whose sole purpose is to kill other Nikkes. Though she and Maiden work together and are both efficient at their jobs, the two of them don't get along as friends as much as they do business partners. Guillotine probably wishes for me to forget, but she once admitted, in an uncharacteristically unceremonious way, that having such a mission is sometimes "a hard pill to swallow". I told her that I wanted her to share her pain with me, to lessen it for her, so that we may bear it together. Pain shared is pain lessened.
Since then we have become friends. She's learned to ease her insanely cold demeanor around me. She learned to feel comfortable around me. Many times has she served with my commando unit squad, Counters, on multiple missions and has proven to me an invaluable ally, comrade and friend. To commemorate our friendship she had me knighted as her eternal servant within her inner group known as The Association. Even though, really, I am a Nikke commander, I gladly accepted my eternal servitude to this wonderfully macabre plight this Nikke has deemed her existence. A kiss to the back of her hand sealed the deal. She thought she was embarrassing me with the act. In fact, I loved the prospect and gladly gave it. The proud, powerful guardian of balance's face had never become so red to either I or herself. It was priceless. She expressed to me how she couldn't believe she had gotten so flustered over it. Now here she is, asking me again for the same thing. She's doing it on purpose and yet again I will give her what she wants. Service her? Aye, and gladly.