Collide Gamer

A woman, with hair so red that her father had seen it fit to name her after it, was sitting in a leathery chair in an office made from metal and cables. She wore that scarlet cascade in a simple fashion, abruptly cut at the neckline but slightly messy from a lack of interest in taking thorough care of it. With closed eyes she sat there, a stylish hat sitting on her head in a loose and tilted way, as if she was using it to shield her eyes during siesta.

She was wearing a suit of high quality, black as the plastic rim of a monitor and a shirt of bright red over her modest breasts. An androgynous beauty, the kind that was still easily identifiable as female but could cause some confusion if she put on the right makeup and clothes, she had a displeased look on her face. Eyebrows pulled together, lips wrinkling, the red forced out of them by the force. Her black gloved hands lay on the terminals embedded into the armrests of her chair. Despite the fact that she wasn’t looking or moving her hands, windows popped up and disappeared.

Photos of two ships, blog posts, people wondering about a sleeping dragon being towed, reports by the lower cells about what was happening, a recently received email by the NTC, minor panic, a giant demand.

“Miss Thorne?” a voice eventually asked, causing her to open her eyes. They glowed red, with green and yellow lines running through them like circuits. A view that soon disappeared and only left behind a normal, if not natural, red colour. That was perhaps the other reason for her name.

“How many times, Scarlett is enough,” she addressed the guy, not in a friendly way but in the tone of a boss who knew what she wanted. “What is word of mouth on that dragon that just got towed into my city?”

“He just delivered his demands: he wants food, lots of it,” the man responded.

“Fine, give that dragon some food… is he too strong to poison?”

“Much too, I am afraid.”

“We’ll have to try to compensate the losses otherwise then. Is he staying?”

“It appears so.”

“Better be of some use,” Scarlett closed her eyes and leaned back again. “I don’t want to hire one of those eccentric monsters again. The collateral last time was already fucking stupid, and having someone of that power level in my city makes me twitchy. Who of them is even around?”

“Your father wouldn’t like you to swear, miss Thorne.”

“He can get out of his grave and tell me himself then,” she rolled her eyes and opened a drawer, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “I am just taking his vices; moron should have done a worse job at being a role model if he didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps. Now answer my fucking question.”

“Recent reports have said that Sigmund is in the area, miss.” She rose out of her chair with a grumble. Her pants and shoes only highlighted her androgynous appearance, being the kind a CEO was expected to wear, rather than a woman. She fixed her hat, put on some sunglasses and had already lighted the cigarette by the time she reached her window, overlooking the dockyard.

“Of course it’s the worst of all of them,” she mumbled.

There were three categories of Abyssal cities. Type ones were those where there were no permanent barriers of significant size, only residential zones or small guild halls. Type twos were the ones that had several big barriers inside the city. Type threes were then finally where the entire city was located in one giant barrier.

New York was the only type 2 Abyssal city of its size. The constant grinding of economic forces against each other, violent if need be, made it so that nobody trusted each other to put their headquarters somewhere where a hired Fateweaver didn’t have control over it. In that world, Thorne was unique in that their headquarters were broadly visible, as they were located in the largest barrier in the city, the docks.

The cigarette glowed as Scarlett inhaled deeply. She mindlessly flicked the ash on the floor. The metal wouldn’t be harmed by it, one of those imported slimes would clean it up. “Anything the social media doesn’t talk about that you would know?” Scarlett asked, looking at the Rising Tide and the two unexpected vessels accompanying it. One was the vessel one of the city states down south had built for some crew of dumbasses, the other was the dragon currently stretching.

“The dragon is called Tilgun, apparently a higher dragon; investigations are running but he was last seen in America never,” the report came. “Otherwise, the Beauty without Tentacles apparently changed hands.”

“Oh? That is disappointing.”

“Aren’t you extremely delighted that the Octopirates aren’t here, Miss Thorne?”

“They would harass the competition,” Scarlett claimed and took another puff of the cigarette. She exhaled the smoke as a ring. “Give us clues which company is currently not paying enough on security,” she said, looking through the ring at the yacht, “and whose legs to break before they learn to run properly.” The air carrying those words scattered the smoke.

“Your father has always preached honesty in business.”

“That’s why he had my mother pick up the slack, so he could have a nice clean image,” Scarlett rolled her eyes. “I don’t need any of that shit, my whole existence is a giant secret anyway - for the moment.” She took one final inhale from the cigarette before flicking the butt away. It tumbled over the ground before coming to a halt. Soon thereafter, a cleaning slime oozed out of the gaps in the floor. “Who did the ship go too?”

“A man going by the name of John Newman, the Gamer.”

Scarlett grabbed into the inside of her vest, hands connecting to a phone. “John Newman, I heard that name recently…” lights danced in her eyes as she went through her notes saved on the hard drive in the desk. “Ah, yes, the tournament that everyone got so worked up about over in the old world.”

She had little care for the affairs of Europe. The only thing she wanted was their purchasing power for an extra income. Exports over the sea weren’t their highest source of income; with how minimal their fleet was, they had to rely on others to pick up the goods. Not something that Scarlett was betting on.

She dug deeper. Inside her mind she quickly went through pools of social media from the last few months. There was a giant explosion of interest in the man, then a trickle, then nothing. Best she found was a post from a few years back by a Vanessa Hawthorne talking about some loser.

Looking at what she said about him and the reputation he had gotten for himself, that couldn’t have been him. Then again, there was a report on the Abyss Auction, and its freely available description alluded to a quick rise. Perhaps that bit of money was well-spent? After a purchase she made with the heart of the greedy, weighing stinginess against opportunity cost, she saw the rough strokes that were publicly available of the man entering her city.

He started as a total wimp, but with every few photos she saw of him, leading over to the tournament, he became more of a stud. By the final picture she had, taken by a paparazzi at a club in the Netherlands, he was just an absolute must-have for every woman with eyes in her head.

There was also a very brief and practically free report from an information broker, detailing the torture she went through when she was caught. Scarlett noted the part where she had been healed and there were no further injuries.

“A soft man in a hard world, I like that,” she monologued and went for a second cigarette. “But all so naïve, he doesn’t get the wanted results that way. Should have ripped off her arm, would have caused a lot less annoyance for him and others down the line.” ‘Then again, I am still going to spy on him and would either way,’ she added silently.

“Smoking two, Miss Thorne?” the disapproving voice of her subordinate echoed over. “You wanted to reduce your tobacco input.”

“Shut the fuck up, I just know that we are going towards stressful times,” Scarlett grumbled. “Can’t even ruin my own health around here. Do me the favour and hand me some whiskey.”

“The good, fifty-year-old or the cheap two year one?”

“Cheap,” Scarlett exclaimed.

“Looking to get drunk?”

“No, just something to take the edge off. No ice.”

“At once, Miss Thorne.”

As the sound of bottles and glasses being pulled out of a personal dimensional pocket and placed on the table echoed behind her, Scarlett pondered. “You know what the worst part is?” she asked.

“No.”

“A shame,” she sighed. “You will in a minute.”

“I… okay, Miss Thorne?” There was some obvious confusion.

“I will need you to keep tabs on this new guy’s acts on the streets. I want to know if he sticks around, and I can’t afford missing anything just because he decides to leave his phone home,” the redhead continued on, fixing her tie before lighting the second cigarette. “He seems to be a massive pervert, so hire some prostitutes if necessary. Don’t do anything to anger him. If he finds out about you, you acted on your own.”

“Of course, Miss Thorne.”

“I wonder what that man wants,” she blew smoke against the window. When it had scattered, she had view on the port again.

“What all men want in this city, power and riches.”

“Mhm, that does sound logical,” she hummed in agreement, turning around with the cigarette in her mouth. The whiskey was sitting on the table, waiting for her on the other side. “What kind of power though and what level of riches? There are massively different ways to achieve those things.”

“That I do not know of, Miss Thorne.”

“Guess I will see that,” Scarlett stated and took the glass after circling the table. She raised it, took an interested whiff of the smell as if this cheap stuff was something to properly enjoy. Then she lowered it again, swirling the drink in a slow motion of her wrist. “Tell me again, the tobacco must be clogging my brain, you have been working for my family for forty years, right?”

“I began working under your father’s care when I was just a young man and this company was but one amongst many, yes.”

“That explains why you are such a great second in command.” the swirl in the glass was almost hypnotic.

“Thank you, Miss Thorne.”

“You realized what’s a shame yet?” she looked up, her scarlett eyes burning into the subordinate.

“No, Miss Thorne.”

She stretched the arm holding the glass away from her and turned it around. The whiskey splattered on the floor. “That I will need to give all those orders again to someone else through a text message.”

“I-I do not understand, Miss Thorne,” the man stammered, slowly backing away.

Scarlett blew some smoke after him as she let the distance increase, sitting down on the edge of her desk. “In the first place, you were an asset of value by experience, not by strength of muscle or mind. That made you good at doing things you already had done a hundred times. Also, you were the only aide I could have without revealing my existence to someone new. Conspiracy against me though, really fucking stupid and outside of your area of expertise.” At that moment several drones peeled out of the mechanical walls. For stronger members of the Abyss, those would have been barely any danger, but for this person it would be enough.

He tried to run but was soon grabbed by mechanic arms and thus immobilized.

“Mixing a drug to make me more submissive into my drinks, clever in some ways, if they were as potent as you thought them to be,” Scarlett stated, her eyes flaring with technological circuits as she controlled the drones through the wireless network. “You vastly overestimate your own cleverness. I wonder, did you just want me to be a puppet for you or did you actually want more from me.”

She folded back half of her open jacket and put her hand in her pocket, what little breast she had pushed her red shirt outwards. “I know some men are into my type of looks. What do they call it, tomboy? Androgynous at the very least. I am not judging, although you are entirely not my type. I like my women somewhat mean and a bit like bimbos, don’t ask me why, but that artificial look is just giving me the fucking nicest case of shivers. Must be all the time I spent with vibrators rather than actual cocks.” She looked her former second in command up and down. “For men I want them confident, ripped and with a strong jawline. Not like some old skeleton that barely fills his suit.”

“Miss Thorne, please, I-I was doing it for the good of the company. You are so inexperienced, b-but you also never listen a-and...”

“And we grew by 35% income each of the last three years I was in power,” Scarlett interrupted him, silencing anymore backtalk by pressing her burning cigarette against his forehead. She took no joy in the moment or the sizzling sound of burning skin, but no real negative emotions either. “You should really remember who you are messing with here,” she told him, throwing away the extinguished cigarette. “I am the daughter of Ebenezer and Johanna Thorne, and I have been trained since the day I was born to lead this company. I was placed here because I was the heiress, I stay here because none of you can topple me. I ignore you, because your ideas are outdated and shit.”

She squeezed his cheeks between her gloved left, “But, as a reward for your long services, here are your three presents. First, a golden watch,” one of the drones carried the item to her. Scarlett just put it loosely around his wrist; it was a procedure her father had introduced, she just followed it out of a sense of tradition. “Second, you are free to return to your masters,” the man looked infinitely relieved. “Third, you will travel in a nice casket,” that put the shock right back in his face and he shouted in terror as he was carried away to whatever goons waited for him on the lower floors.

Scarlett poured herself a new drink. She had long since replaced the drugged bottles with normal ones. “Can’t allow them to learn how to run,” she muttered to herself, taking a sip of her whiskey. Even less could she allow for anyone else to learn how Thorne ran and where its eventual goal lay. That would garner them attention more than just her local opposition, unify them against her company, and then it would be all over. She wasn’t ready for a confrontation - yet. She made a sour face as the cheap taste filled her mouth.

“Should have asked for the good whiskey.”