The Problem Exterminator

Brad froze as Ixthia stopped at the counter.

“Regional Manager Ixthia… Allouiscious,” Ixthia unfurled the right side of her cardigan and tapped a nameplate, feline chompers stretching out into a grin that promised nothing good. “I saw your interaction with these three… customers, Mr. Pimm.”

“I…” Brad let out a small dog noise.

Ixthia planted both hands on the counter, each polished, jet-black claw clicking against the laminate surface. She leaned forward, until Brad could mentally tabulate the individual whiskers on her feline cheeks.

“Mr. Pimm,” she said. “I’ve been sitting over there for fourteen minutes.”

Brad’s mouth moved. Nothing came out.

“Fourteen,” she repeated, rolling the word around with devious delight. “I counted. I had time to count because nobody came to ask me if I needed anything. Nobody refreshed my water. Nobody acknowledged that a regional manager was sitting in her own franchise location watching one of her employees negotiate stamp philosophy with a dog.”

“She’s always…” Brad started. “I…”

“Was the stamp card issue resolved?”

“No.”

“Are the nuggets cooking? Did you even manage to put in the husky’s order?”

“Not yet.”

“Hrmmm.” Ixthia straightened. “You know what I find interesting, Bradley? May I call you Bradley?”

Brad nodded once, helplessly, a man adrift on an edge of the counter in an ocean of abyssal panic.

“I find it interesting,” Ixthia continued, “that in fourteen minutes of observation, I watched you use the word ‘promotion’ at least three times, and the phrase ‘I was not involved’ once. Do you know how many times you used the phrase ‘how can I make this right for you’?”

“Zero,” Brad said, swallowing nervously.

“Zero!” She agreed jovially. “Bradley. I’m going to share something with you. A philosophy I’ve developed over many, many years of management… Raw fear is lazy.”

Brad blinked.

“Any fool can make someone afraid of losing their job,” Ixthia said, tilting her head. “Raw fear, akin to an inattentive prad accidentally slipping on spilled fries and burning their face off in a fryer, is a blunt instrument. Unsophisticated. You slap on a bored face, yet you clearly walk around terrified of this counter, terrified of your oversized uniform, terrified of the fryer and stamp cards and especially of poor little Nessy.” A small, almost fond gesture was offered toward the husky who was now collecting the spilled cups off the floor on all fours, tail wagging. “Your panic produces… Paralysis. The nuggets aren’t cooking. My water remains unrefreshed. The promotion remains unresolved. Terrified employees, Bradley, are simply useless employees who occasionally cry in the walk-in freezer.”

“I have never cried in the walk-in freezer,” Brad lied.

Ixthia raised an eyebrow.

“I haven’t!”

“And if I were to check the hall cameras and track how long you’ve spent in the freezer?” The Legate smiled deviously. “What will I find?”

Ixthia came around the counter, into Brad’s territory, which was a violation of about four separate understood social contracts. She moved along the prep station, sliding a sharp claw along it, producing sparks. Brad tracked her the way a small, domestic animal tracks a larger predator about to pounce.

“Here is the thing about customers, Mr. Pimm,” Ixthia stated. “They arrive broken. Tired. Carrying minutes of stamp card grief into a fast food restaurant because the rest of their life is not going especially well. Your job, your actual job, the one printed nowhere on your contract because no regional office knows how to articulate it, is to make them feel briefly, marginally, adequately like someone on this planet noticed they existed.”

She looked at him sternly, looming over the wolf.

“Did you make sure that the dog customer felt noticed?” the Legate asked, demolishing the prad with her words. “Did you grant her… the sense of Satisfaction?”

Brad let out another canine noise.

“That’s what I thought.” Ixthia advanced towards Brad, making him retreat away from her until he bumped into the fryer. “You have failed MacPaws today. And failure…”

Brad nearly slipped his hand backwards into the fryer.

The dream suddenly wobbled with a loud buzz, interrupting the Wendigo’s fun.

“Ugh, really?” Ixthia pursed her lips as the wobble intensified, rushing along the walls, washing and twisting the MacPaws interior.

Priority one call. The problem exterminator.

“This better be important or I’m going to have to strangle a kitten,” the Legate ground out.

Brad blinked at her, mentally sliding out of the nightmarish noose, his yummy fear dissolving like fog being hit by rays of sunlight. “M-my lady?”

With an annoyed groan Ixthia dove out of the dream and opened her eyes to her opulent, private bedroom in the heart of the Abyssal Sorrow warship.

Unlike Evelithria, she’d lost absolutely nothing, because the kobold rebellion and the destruction of the Slayer’s Sword fell within one of Ixthia’s many plans of absolute dominion over the others.

The Others… Her best friends from so long ago. Now, Elder Omnids, broken, corrupt, stuck in their ways, blinded by absolute power, failing to see that the path they were on was flawed but refusing to budge.For this, they all had to die, be brought down from their mountain-sized hoards.One by one.

Bradberry lay beside her, breathing in the slightly uneven rhythm of a male ‘bold freshly yanked from a nightmare and now pretending very hard to be asleep. His tail gave him away. It moved in small, anxious twitches, the involuntary betrayal of a wolf brain still chewing on upsetting truths.

Ixthia rolled onto her side and hooked one claw lightly under his chin, tipping his face toward hers. His eyes opened, pupils contracting.

Lovely.

Pure anticipatory dread, threaded through with the warm amber note of someone relieved to find a familiar face even when that face was hers.

“Bad dream, Bradberry?” she asked with a honeyed and low voice.

“I…” he began, “…had a strange dream, my Lady.”

“We’ll speak of it after my call,” Ixthia stated.

She tapped the loudly buzzing V-ring twice with a claw, accepting the priority-one call.

“Report, kitty,” she said.

“My Lady.” Nexxali’s voice came through. “We have a problem.”

“As I expected,” Ixthia said, settling against the headboard and examining her sharp claws in the low, golden-red light of a thousand kitlix lanterns hanging above her bed. “Do proceed to clarify what Evely’s done now in her senile madness.”

“The ex-Admiral,” Nexxali said, “hired a hunter-killer. A Krampus named Niktavia. Private cruiser, one gater, at least eight core predator prad operatives.”

Ixthia tisked.

“Niktavia’s ship came through as a registered charity vessel. The Stabalists waved it through.”

“Of course they did,” Ixthia murmured. “They see a charity stamp and they see virtue made manifest. Absolute knobs.” She looked at the ceiling. “How did you find out about this?”

“She called me to gloat about it. Wasn’t thinking very straight after her incarnation.”

“That does tend to happen to Elder Omnids who lose their kobolds and hoards.” Ixthia sighed dramatically. “How… unfortunate. Tell me more about the hunter ship and its armament.”

“A Crestfall-class 1950 Qola space freighter registered to… Goodwill for All, aka Saint Nikky’s Workshop Foundation in Omnithornia. The crew wields Stabalist high tier weapons. Concept-rewriters linked to sacred belief matrices. If the target is hit with such, they cannot be brought back with the Incarnator.”

“She’s spent personal assets to hire mercenaries,” Ixthia half-grinned. Her old best friend’s incarnation sabotage worked quite well. “Just as I suggested. Who are they set to take out?”

“You and the other Legates. Everyone who voted to depose the Ex-Admiral. Plus, they plan to turn as many people as possible on this lovely planet into pine trees to derail your Pleasure Paradise World plan.”

“Deal with it,” Ixthia said.

“I intend to,” Nexxali replied, “The mercenaries already scattered across the Earth via dimensional gates. It’ll take time and effort to catch them all. I’ll need… full resource access. Maximum budget. Division 881, fabrication authority, non-tracked gateways, Corpse Seeker intercept clearance from the Abyssal Sorrow’s traffic control. The freighter is armed well enough that a quiet approach requires prep. Concept-rewriters means I’m doing this once and cleanly… Perhaps a rapid strike of Seeker and symbiote guns moving ahead of living units.”

“Granted. Full 881 access, for my favourite problem-fixing kitty,” Ixthia stated jovially. “Anything else?”

“My… compensation.”

“Obviously, darling. List your desires.”

“My two best girls are still recovering from their deaths,” Nexxali said, “They’ll be back, but not soon enough to be useful. I want new… talented kobolds. Someone… Mrrr… Outside the fleet for me to enjoy breaking with my voice.”

“You want the freighter’s crew.” Ixthia guessed.

“Yep,” Nexxali confirmed. “All of the prads. Plus whatever is inside the freighter.”

“You want the concept-rewriters?”

“No. According to my investigation, the concept-rewriters are Stabalist artifacts extra-aligned to their wielders and their Omnid Master. Breaking their contract and binding the prads to me and Division 881 via Charmchain words and blood contracts will disrupt their connection to the guns, making the weapons unusable. Whatever See-Mass shit they’re hauling could be useful though, I reckon.”

“How?” the Legate asked.

Ixthia mentally pinged her Datamancer, asking the crow whether the fleet managed to scan the freighter.

“The freighter’s packed with generic magic toys,” the Serval explained. “I could slowly give them out as presents for the lower ranks to lick. Evelithria pulled out way too many bubble-spawnlings from Citadel One to chase after our wayward princess. They don’t have hoards and are barely in control of their divisions. I suspect that we’ll be camping on this planet for a long time, yes?”

“M’yes,” Ixthia agreed.

“And this planet has abyss-all in terms of dungeons,” Nexxali said. “I can’t do my fleet-motivation job as well if I can’t even reward our Wendigo girls with basic hoard-starters.”

Datamancer Erebiss finished her report. According to the Astral scan, the 75-year old freighter contained about seventy tons of generic See-Mass themed toys and outfits, nothing excessively magical.

“Fine,” Ixthia said. “The freight-toys are yours to dispense to the lower ranks. If you find anything high end though, do let me know.”

“Of course, my Lady,” the Serval agreed. “I doubt that such exists within, the charity is after all… just a front for a small gang.”

“Do make sure the ex-Admiral gets buried.”

“I intend to.” Nexxali replied. “I’ll report everything when the freighter is handled.”

“Anything else?”

“What are we doing about the Emperor of Earth? Putting a bullet through his head did nothing. He drove the Capital ship into the moon and survived too. He seems like an incredibly powerful Archmage or an Immortal Cultivator, psychically stronger than all of our Scruts.”

“Colette intends to speak with him and the Princess. Since killing him didn’t work we’ll try… tactical negotiations. Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“You intend to meet him and the Princess?”

“I intend to build my Pleasure Palaces. Colly can handle the negotiations with the locals for domain acquisition.”

“And if the Emperor refuses to sell land to us on the account that Evely’s been an absolute knobfold?”

“Colly’s a pro at the slow grind,” Ixthia said. “She’ll give him gardens. Abundance. A clean planet full of well-fed, happy, obedient humans. Hard to stay furious at someone growing you a paradise.”

“And what if he’s clever enough to recognize a golden cage?”

“Smart and grateful are different muscles,” the Legate replied, “Most intelligent creatures underestimate how much they enjoy being comfortable. Colette is patient, as am I. She’s been blessing planets with dryads for a century and not one of them made a fuss about it afterward.”

“And the Princess?”

Ixthia exhaled slowly through her nose. “Prima Aquillianne is my problem to manage. We’ll take it easy on her, invite her to a luncheon conversation and ask her nicely about the shipyard keys.”

“Doesn’t the Empress want the Builder Shipyards fixed ASAP?”

“She certainly does and she can demand such, but we have no idea what the Princess did with the keys. For all we know she dropped them into a gate to the edge of Eureka, had the all-consuming clouds devour them. Acony must learn to accept that the era of rapid expansion is over,” Ixthia stated with a hearty smile. “Omnithornia knows about our fleets. Threatening to drop the moon on a world being monitored by a Stabalist Overseer ship would be a big accord violation. We must work within the Omnid Omnicorp Consortium rules, appear nice and friendly and slowly smother this planet with gifts and pleasure into submission.”

“No executing the princess then?”

“Indeed. No executing anyone at all. We must look extra-presentable to the eyes of Omnithornia.”

“Hrm,” Nexxali voiced. “With that in mind, openly attacking a charity freighter with a Corpse Seeker could be seen as… unpresentable to the Stabalists, even if the said ship is full of armed ruffians dressed as charity workers. I will have to… adjust my strategy.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We… could use the Emperor of Humanity,” the serval purred. “Direct him to attack the Qola freighter. He’s already seen by the Stabalists as a savage warrior prince. We should lean into it more, use him to do our dirty jobs.”

“Good thinking, kitty. How exactly can we get the invincible human to attack a ship in orbit?”

“Hrmmmm.” The serval considered the problem. “I could ask a low ranked Wendigo commander to pretend to defect to the Princess’s camp. We’ll officially… fire and delist her from our fleet roster, but in reality she’ll be doing our work while dramatically shouting that she’s a defector.”

“Inventive,” Ixthia slid her black claws along Bradberry’s neck making the prad shudder. “And the Emperor falls for this… how exactly?”

“It doesn’t matter if he falls for it or not,” Nexxali stated. “If he’s smart and has mind-reading powers, he’ll know the defector is planted. I’d know she’s planted. She’ll know she’s planted. We’ll all know. The beauty of it is… it won’t matter. He’ll use her anyway because she’ll be genuinely useful to him, and I’ll have eyes inside his operation, and he’ll have a hammer for orbital problems. Everybody gets what they need while loudly pretending they’re not cooperating.”

Ixthia turned this over, pawing her ‘bold. “Mutual performance.”

“A co-production,” Nexxali agreed. “He attacks the freighter, which he’ll want to do anyway because our Wendigo girl will tell him that the mercenaries inside are aiming to fuck up his planet with matter-conversion bombs. We supply the info and the teeth and pretend we didn’t. The Stabalist overseer watches a plucky human warrior prince defending his planet against unexpected hidden mercenaries. Very moving. Very legitimate. Nobody looks at us.”

“And how would you get the freighter’s cargo and the prads out of his hands then?”

“Mrrr… Perhaps such could be negotiated with him or the Princess in exchange for… freighter weakness information? Aquillianne isn’t a fan of keeping Pradavarian kobold girls as far as her behavioral file shows and I very much doubt that the human would want a useless pile of slightly magical toys aligned with See-Mass. The locals don’t believe in the Slayer and don’t collect visible hoards.”

“Fair enough. Doing such would show us if he’s reasonable for future negotiations. Do try to figure out the limits of his powers. I have no trust in the nonsensical local lore that entwines fact with fiction.”

“He’s done nothing about us destroying an island, so he can’t stop space rocks falling from space. He’s allowed our Scruts to endlessly harass the locals and to execute a few national leaders, so he’s not omnipresent. But all of this could be a game to him if he is a System Wizard.”

“System Wizards radiate Syntropy and openly declare themselves as such right away,” Ixthia pointed out. “They’re self-aggrandizing knobs.”

“My Lady,” Nexxali contemplated. “What if he demands us to leave, starts to take out our ships in orbit the same freakishly impossible way he’s taken the Slayer’s Sword?”

“The Slayer’s Sword loss was Evely’s foolish mistake. Leaving this world isn’t an option,” Ixthia said. “I’ve been looking for this Earth my entire life and I will not surrender it just because some puny immortal man makes demands.”

Her lanky fingers wrapped around Bradberry’s neck and squeezed tight, making the wolf choke for air.

“Your job is to figure out the Emperor’s weakness and then take him out of the game.” She stated, squeezing harder and making the kobold thrash on the bed. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, my Lady,” Nexxali replied.