Chapter 2-28: The Voices in My Head are Loud and full of Opinions

Samurai can do a lot of “good” for their communities, yet they can also leave things worse off than before they arrived. It happens, from time to time, where a Samurai rolls into a town and decides to play hero. Freeing indentured servants, sending a bunch of credits to everyone.

But then they leave, and the corpos from before roll on back up, recapture people, and make life worse than before as a way to recoup their losses.

-Anonymous poster on Samlyfe forums.

Diving into my virtual meeting room, I see Baba Yaga sitting on a nice, green felt chair, knitting something. I see symbols representing the others on different chairs, indicating they had a presence here, but only Baba Yaga was actively here.

“Afternoon, Baba Yaga.” I said, chuckling. “You beat me to the punch. I was going to talk to Cody tonight about the hotel. What's going on?”

“It's good to see you, too, Victor.” She said, chuckling quietly. “Hiding in your room while your wife plays with her friends, bah. You better come out once we are done here.”

I narrowed my eyes at her as I smiled softly. “Sure, sure. I'm sure Alice won't resent me for stealing her friend or anything.”

Baba Yaga barked a laugh. “You didn't steal shit, boy. She stole you and we all know it. But I digress. The hotel. It is doing alright, considering it has been five days since Cody took over. To be fair, he did the smart thing and delegated the work to a smart woman who works there. Well liked and loved by the staff, great head on her shoulders, with fire in her heart and steel in her veins. She had Cody throw a number of svolochs off the building, much to the raucous joy of the other women who were no better than slaves.” She spits to the side at the mention of the svolochs, which I looked up and see the approximate translation to be scum but with quite a bit more cultural hatred behind it.

“Good for them, then.” I said, leaning back into my office chair. “I'm glad to hear that Cody didn't make things worse. Not that I thought he would, mind. Just, you know…”

Baba Yaga shook her head, saving me from my floundering. “It's fine, child. He has used your name as a guarantee for them, mind you. He figured you wouldn't mind.”

“Yeah, of course. He's the brother of a Samurai, it would be dumb if he couldn't flex that fact to help people. So, what's the problem, then?” I asked, tilting my head slightly.

“Right, it's not so much a problem as it is a few requests." She took a sip of some tea, which I find funny, since this whole thing is virtual. "Harmony, the woman Cody put in charge, has requested if you could stop by and show your face to the other women who work there. While she and a few others have accepted that there is, in fact, an actual Samurai backing them, a majority of the rest are very skeptical of that fact. She wants you to show up, flex a bit, and reassure them that they are truly safe, and that their reality isn't a cruel prank.”

“Hmm… I guess I could do that.” I said. “I have the press conference tomorrow, then the flight test for Pandora, so I could probably show up the day after and show both them and the rest of the city that the hotel is under Samurai protection.”

“Good, good. That will be nice.” She nodded as she placed the knitting aside. “Now, the other request is slightly more complex. Harmony is requesting a medical device to genetically enhance the bodies of the women who work there. No greater than Class I, mind, but the reasons and consequences should be considered before you decide.”

I raised my eyebrow at that. If it's just a Class I genetic upgrade, that wouldn't cost me any tokens, just points that I have so many of and will get plenty more soon. I should probably do the same for my troops, honestly. “And those would be?”

She sighed. “So, first is the immediate, more innocent reason. A bit of background. The original conditions that these women lived in was similar to how a pig on a farm lived. Sleeping in shitty, tiny rooms, having to shit and shower at once, not even being able to wear clothes until after, just barely before they eat. They were penalized for inane koz'i kakashki, and were forced to have sex with clients, regardless of their own will. The only good news is that none of them were addicts or were forced to become addicts, as they had to maintain a clean, public appearance, and drug addicts would cut into that.”

Sands, that actually sounded like hell. I'm so glad Cody bought the place, anything sounds better than that pigsty.

She nodded at my expression “Good, you understand. Now, from there, we have renovated the staff quarters to be incomparably comfortable, and adjusted almost all the policies to improve their lives. But, because of how shit their previous situation was, they sought comfort in each other to reaffirm that things were, in fact, getting better. This has led to a massive culture of orgies taking hold.”

My eyes widened in shock. That was not what I was expecting her to say. Her face shifted from stern and serious to a huge smile as she cackled at my reaction. “Yes, child. While not all of them, a vast majority of the women are gay or bi, and the act strengthens their bonds with each other and their leadership. Harmony very quickly realized that if this was going to be a common event, they should probably enhance their stamina, at the least.” She picked her knitting back up, smoothly resuming the virtual project.

I had to force my thoughts to focus on Baba Yaga's knitting in order to not picture the events she was insinuating. “The-” my voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “Then, what is the consequence?”

“Deliah, a fun young woman that I want to introduce Roger to, has created a gang with the intent of running a brothel out of the lowest six floors out of rescued, consenting joy toys, with the plan on raiding every other brothel they can reach and rescuing more joytoys, expanding the gang, giving them a way out, and repeating the process. By offering the genetic or Bionic enhancements, you will be empowering a gang of very angry women to run roughshod over the other gangs in the area, if not the city at large.”

“Oh. Yeah, that… is that a problem?” I asked, confusion entering my voice. “I mean, if their goal is to rescue joytoys from fucked up brothels, then run a better, Samurai backed brothel, I don't see the problem. Good for them.”

Thinking about it, if their goal was simply to be a heavily armed community of joytoys, protecting their territory, then I saw no problems there. Sure, every megabuilding in the city probably had at least one brothel in their lower levels, not to mention the “official”, high class brothels, but I would trust a bunch of women who wanted to have sex with the running of a brothel than I did any gang or corpo.

“Synaptic, what options do we have to assist Harmony and her gang?”

Synaptic's eye aperated next to us. “Considering Cody has already installed fabricators for weapons, armor, and medicine already, and their hydroponics and biomass were upgraded as well, I assume you are asking about body enhancement options.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Yes, Synaptic. I know the three options are genetic, Bionic, and cybernetic, and we should probably get a cybernetic catalog anyways for the PMC, but what are the options for the other two.”

She wiggled her tentacles in amusement. “For genetic options, there is only one real option for mass usage, viruses. Using a specific biolab facility, one can program a Crispr type virus in order to make changes on the target from the genetic level. The one I will recommend will have the changes take place over the course of a week, allowing the target to still be active while the changes take place.”

“I would recommend sticking with that one, Victor.” Baba Yaga interrupted. “A large number of the women working in the hotel went through an imperfect transition, requiring external supplements and medical aid every now and then, which the mudaks held over their heads.”

“Well then, that was easy. How much will it cost and how many women can it affect at a time?” I asked.

“Two hundred points for the Certugna Virus Catalog, six hundred for the Virus lab. It will come with enough material to affect one hundred people, and can be refilled using commercially available materials that they can negotiate the contracts for.” Synaptic explained. “As far as cybernetics, you do have a catalog for it already, and their medical fabricator is more than able to create custom cybernetics and augmentations.”

“Very good.” I nodded, ignoring my embarrassment in forgetting that I had that catalog already. “In two days, I will head over and do a press thing, I guess. Introduce myself to Harmony and her… inner circle and drop off the lab. Uh, anything else I am forgetting?”

Baba Yaga shook her head. “Not about this, no. That said, Outsider finished her hunt a few minutes ago and has brought back eighty or so forced joytoys and dolls that are being looked at in the medical bay.”

What the fuck? You know what, later me problems. “Do I need to see them? Or should we send them to Harmony after we take care of their immediate problems?”

Outsider appeared in her chair, a high back black throne made of feathers and white bone. “I will take care of them, Victor. I will make sure that that they have options to move forward with, as I have already assigned them some rooms below.”

She seems… excited, an emotion I was not used to feeling from Outsider, yet it made me happy for her. Always good to see growth in my family.

I go to say something, maybe take my leave, when Outsider continued speaking. “All this talk of brothels and joytoys, yet we don't have anything of the like set up below. Should we? It seems many humans enjoy the act of sex with strangers, so maybe we could set up a branch of Deliah's brothel here?”

Bahamut took the opportunity to jump in, sitting in a seiza position with a small table in front of him. “Much as I could see it as a fascinating, moral boosting idea, considering the amount of single men and women in the Monster Box PMC, that would go against the family friendly atmosphere that Morrigan is trying to cultivate in the tower. I would argue that we could, instead, set up a portal system between here and the Niltmore to allow more discreet access for our troops to relieve themselves, as well as a discount deal, where our troops pay less, but we subsidize the remaining fee in order to not cut into the joytoy's earnings.”

Morrigan joined the call, sitting on a Squish in the shape of a large, fat penguin. She also looked sleep deprived, which I thought was impossible. “No brothels in my tower.” Her voice was… also very tired, but sharp and brokered no argument. Then, she left.

Before I am interrupted again, I say. “I will leave the logistics up to you guys. I'm going to go and embarrass myself in front of Cari and her friends, now.”

Exiting the call, I still feel them discuss things, but I tune it out. Standing up from my bed, I get a devilish idea. Cari shouldn't know about the portal from my office to here, and my car was still a minute out.

I suit up in full combat gear and activate a feature I haven't had the opportunity to explore, full stealth. I took a few steps and not even my Scouts could detect me… well, they can because I am emitting quite a few different forms of radio waves and communications emissions, but I am invisible to audio, thermal, tremor, and visual detection.

I checked the cams and saw that Cari and her friends are in the common area playing a card game and talking about…

*************************************

“Seriously?” Opal asked, her voice tinged with doubt.

“Of course, Smokey.” Cari responded. “When have I ever lied to you before?”

Yerlette snorted. “Last year, Christmas time. You swore you saw a raccoon in the shower when you instead set a trap to-”

“Okay, okay okay!” Cari said rapidly. “But never about something like this, right?”

Alice smiled her Cheshire smile at us. “No, but you have never done it before, so not a great baseline, Mellow.”

Cari glared at Alice, while Alice just cackled. Yerlette set down a card. “It's not like you can prove it, Mellow. No way he was that big” She said.

Before Cari could respond, a voice sounded out from behind her. “And what is it that you cannot prove?”

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