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+--- Thread: When your next-of-kin is yourself, you get no death benefits. We checked. (/showthread.php?tid=157025)
When your next-of-kin is yourself, you get no death benefits. We checked. - Teresa Brooks - 01-13-2018
A meeting on Kemmerer...
The darkened meeting room holds many possibilities. In this case, a hooded figure and a man in a blue jacket.
"I've moved your two ships that you don't want found onto the Carrier. I shall return to my duties... Well, you know where I'll be."
"Thanks, My Lord." The bejacketed man leaves the room, mindlessly tossing a small rock from hand to hand. Said rock would be unremarkable except for the fact that it is not affected by gravity at all, only inertia.
A few minutes later, Kemmerer docking control logs Mama Brick launching and leaving the system.
Meeting on Kemmerer redux
Teresa looked at her longtime associate through under the stupidest robe and hood to date. Yes, it was black and made her look cool, but oh, how it itched. The Dark Lord dismissed Carpenter and returned to her ship, taking advantage of the spaceflight suit she donned to conceal her secret identity. She was now Senior Staff who had just concluded an inspection, and she had witnesses to prove it.
Because...
Teresa walked the length of the Supply Station that her very good friend and split personality of her adoptive father owned. It was fairly bare-bones, but the sheer amount of export goods and other sundries gathered in such a short time amazed her. "Elroy has done well for himself. Shame he owns all the station, because I'd love a piece of the action." The indomitable antagonist stopped, and pondered. "I wonder if Meg would enjoy the view of the fights from the observation deck. I should take her to watch sometime."
Her inspection tour completed, she joined the other Teresa in boarding the Mama Brick. "Give Blackburn my regards, would you?" "I certainly will. Senior Staff or those other fellows?"
"Use your judgement, damn it."
Teresa and Teresa felt the ship lurch into Einstenian space, and so ended their Kemmerer excursion.
RE: When your next-of-kin is yourself, you get no death benefits. We checked. - The League - 01-21-2018
So our Senior Staff, in their infinite wisdom, had seen fit to move a collection of Fighter and Bomber craft into the disused hangars on Mama Brick. It was then that I saw the Penumbra, among other ships. We're either kitting out to fight a guerilla war or we're about to knock something big over.
The meeting of the three maniacs breaks into laughter. "Is this guy for real? We discreetly arrange the purchase of ships for a proper security wing and our guys assume us to be getting ready to fight a war? Elroy, Teresa, this is the most amazing thing I have ever read. It's almost as though we actually don't have a super secret terrorist group that kills everything in our pocket. What? Why are you giving me those looks? Oh, right, because we don't. Right?"
Carpenter and Brooks share a glance that says "No, you tell her." Finally, Elroy speaks up. "Right. We're squeaky clean."
Willow breathes a sigh of relief. "Oh, that's a huge load off my chest. If you guys actually were those Lost Company fellows you claim to be accused of being, I would be mildly put out. I'd still love you, but..."
Teresa pipes up with a classic "Didn't you engage in piracy in a Stargazer?"
"Shaddup. I left that life behind for you. Be grateful."
The meeting continues on a fairly boring tack until Willow reaches into her duffel bag and produces a single miniature rocket, around the size of the standard tungsten-round pistols issued to all Senior Staff bodyguards. "THIS is what I have called you two over for. Hollow-point tungsten shell, but with a nanogram of fullerened antimatter up top. I have a very special plan for this. Teresa, you have a couple spare yous running around, so I want you to..."
"I hate this plan already."
RE: When your next-of-kin is yourself, you get no death benefits. We checked. - Teresa Brooks - 01-22-2018
The friendly local antagonist takes one look at her adoptive family, such that it is, and goes back to her old Earth-style laptop. "Let me get this straight. Your plan entails...
- me getting close enough to something that wants to rip me in half
- me doing so in a room with at least one soft body in it of someone I literally don't care about
- I am forbidden from using them as a meat shield
- my girlfriend will be in the same room and isn't aware of the other two of me
- the aforementioned soft body has to witness my death
- nobody else in the room save what I'm shooting can die
- I die in such a way that nothing could survive that
- the payoff is the elimination of my most pernicious adversary
- and maybe the respect of that other person
This is the most outright outlandish, stupid, and horrible idea I have ever agreed to. Make sure to get some cameras on the outside to catch the huge explosion."
She giggles. "If anyone asks after all this, just tell 'em something cryptic and edgy like 'Teresa Lives'. It'll be funny when I actually do return. Oh, the things I do just to get some time off around here... And when I get back, I expect everything to not be smashed, thank you."
Willow speaks up. "Hey, you only live like... five times. May as well make it memorable."
The get-together dissolves into laughter again.
Then Teresa perks up. "Remind me again, why do we need to kidnap them and have them brought here? Why can't we just invite them over for talks with objective third-party observers requested?" "Because, dear sister, we have to keep our villain cred somehow." "Wait, we're villains? We're twenty klicks away from a bastion of humanity's bulwark against a total alien invasion and I would prefer not to be called villainous around them. They may get the wrong ideas. Also, Nobrain Hanavirgin and her pack of robots and infected sellswords are the villains if anything. Don't her subordinates openly treat with Nomads that merely claim to be different in front of the Freeport? With that level of cooperation, we have no choice to assume that the rot has reached all the way to the top. It's gotten to the point where I came across one of her Harpies in Inverness who tried to talk me into a hare-brained scheme to capture pilots she claimed to be infected. It was clearly a trap to entice me to fire on military vessels in a restricted area, and proof that Harpy Squadron is a terrorist group dumb enough to openly associate with the Freeport's administration. The fact that she killed and disposed of a couple of the pilots right in front of me particularly offended my sensibilities.
To be honest, when I look at it, one would think that the outrage that someone we met once shooting one of her pilots, the assumption that it was us, and the grating overblown reaction is merely a cover for their activities. Food for thought, huh?"
Willow snickers. "That would be too easy. Yes, it's clearly smoke and mirrors, but I don't think Harpy is actually a terrorist group in the style of Lost Company. At best, they're misguided, and at worst, they're infected, but they are just as safely ignorable as everyone else on that fleatrap Freeport. Hey Elroy, you're still embargoing them, right?"
The Bursar nods, whilst juggling budget numbers for the project on Freeport 12. "Yeah, until they take back the mean things they said, their goods won't find a market here. Not that they would anyway, come to think of it; they have nothing we want, but at least now it's symbolic instead of practical."
Then he starts fidgeting with that gravity-defying rock he acquired somewhere. "Come on, you two, lighten up. You know what, let's hit the observation deck and see who's shooting the stuffing out of who in this 20-minute interval. It'll be cool. Put your thoughts of those liars aside and just enjoy the view. Though I have to wonder, what are they doing over there now? They don't seem the type to particularly enjoy life what with the general whiny attitude I got from them when I tried to talk to them, so I bet their recreation is boring as hell. Now come on, let's go watch The Core wage war!"
"Woo-hoo! This is gonna be awesome!"
"This is why I'm here!"