<blockquote>


    Reason for Termination


    These are the directions for the meeting. Please read them!!!


    </blockquote>


    You’d think a nice and long conversation about fraud would take place in a cold conference room with a team of investigators questioning me for hours on end. Nope. It was instead a nightclub at a crisp eleven o’clock at night. Gorgon’s, which was popular in this part of town because of the specific clientele it attracted: Slayers. This club was operated by and for Slayers.


    Why here of all places? Not a Glory off-site but a public place? Maybe I should’ve just gone directly to the Camps.


    Well, I couldn’t chicken out now.


    I approached the bouncer, a massive dark-skinned man with a sleeve tattoo down his right arm. He was clearly a Slayer given the cig snug between his lips, mana-infused like most of the products inside. The whole place stunk with this distinct acid smell, and already, my stomach was pretty unhappy.


    That got me thinking. Unlike Slayers, normal humans couldn’t process mana. A concentrated drop was enough to kill an adult man. Being around smoke was fine for a few hours—I had used [Temporary Registration] before—but why were we meeting in a Slayer bar? Me, a human?


    Questions for my contact; better act like I belong.


    “...Who the hell are you?” the bouncer croaked, eyeing me down like a fresh cut of beef. “Never seen you before. Rifle?”


    “Something along those lines, yeah—” (“A contract.”) “—I’m here to meet a friend. Gave me a magic word and everything: Aegis Green.”


    “Of course,” he moaned. He flicked his cigarette into a nearby trashcan and pulled a bright blue marker from his pocket. “Your hand.” He wrote a big fat “C” on the back of my hand.


    I cracked, “C for ‘contract’?”


    He smacked my hand away. “C for ‘clear,’ merc, so you don’t accidentally drink something you’re not supposed to. But if you vomit blood on the floor, we’re not at fault. I’d watch your glass, though.”


    I rubbed the ink, feeling it smear on my opposite thumb. “Thanks.”


    “Mhm.” The bouncer stepped inside the bar and called out “Jess! Jess!” a few times before a slender chick popped out. She wore a loose tank-top, showing off the couple dozen scars on her arms. The bouncer pointed my way. “This connie is our AG. He’s a ren.”


    “Rog’. Follow me.” Jess led me inside Gorgon, and I entered a brand new world of bright lights and dancing and clubbing and smells of intense acid and vomit. On stage, a man with a coarse, raspy voice was blasting his vocal cords with chaotic instrumentals behind him. Around me were swords, swords, and more swords. Taking shots of neon-blue drinks, blowing blinding pink smoke from their noses and lips, and judging how some of these guys had glowing veins… They were using stims. That was definitely illegal.


    After the surprise wore off, this wasn’t so different from your normal nightclub. It was a party with a shade of superpowers. Everyone here had [Skills]: access to superhuman feats and magic beyond my imagination. Lots of power concentrated inside a single building. Literal drunk power, and I was a ren.


    My guide grabbed my wrist so I wouldn’t get swept away in the crowd and eaten alive. She took me into the back which was surprisingly chill—my eardrums didn’t feel like bursting and my nostrils didn’t cry anymore—and we entered a hall of doors. There was silence beyond the walls. Uncharacteristic, eerie silence.


    Jess let go of my hand and noticed me staring at the doors. “Each lounge is equipped with isolation bubbles, so don’t worry about eavesdroppers. What goes on here is no one’s business but yours.”


    She knocked on the furthest door on the right three times in rhythm. The door clicked, and she saluted. “Find your way out on your own. Good luck, connie.” And she left me there.


    Awesome. Here I go.


    I braved inside. The bubble briefly popped and soft classical music poured through the open door. You couldn’t get a more drastic switch-up from drug-filled rock to serene strings and winds. In fact, the lounge looked completely out-of-place from the rest of Gorgon. It was near spotless, smelled nice, and didn’t have a lick of mana in the air. Refreshing, professional even. This place could fit six comfortably. Tonight, though, it was a date for two, where we would dine on carbonated drinks and finger-foods.


    I glanced right and saw a mounted TV, then glanced left—


    “Huh?”


    “Eh?”


    Holy shit, I didn’t expect that.


    My contact from Glory Guild was Ordo’s sweetheart. If Japan had the Nine Foxmaidens, we had her. You could write a thousand sonnets to describe her beauty and you’d need a thousand more to start scratching the surface. They say seeing her in-person for just a second could change the way you think about beauty and aesthetics. It wasn’t a result of mind magic but natural charm. This sort of attention—fetishization—was inevitable. After all, she was the ideal outworlder that TV shows and movies peddled: an ethereal elf, tall and had pointy ears and ivory skin and mesmerizing viridescent eyes—the whole package. Plus, amnesia and an unknown history? The story wrote itself.


    Meet Head Officer Silverhonor, Lyressa fey Suntear, the last person I imagine I’d meet. Hell, I half-thought I entered the wrong room—


    The door automatically shut and scared the shit out of me. I startled, Silverhonor yelped.


    We looked at each other. I had a very good reason to be surprised, but why the hell was she surprised to see me? Her mouth was hanging there and her ears were pointed to the ceiling in alarm.


    “Please tell me I’m in the right room,” I said, hands raised. “I’m Alexander Shen, and I prefer if you don’t prick me with arrows.”


    Silverhonor continued to sit there like a statue. I would think she was a doll if her ears weren’t twitching. I had my terrible experiences with women, but this already topped the chart.


    “Alright!” I reached around for the door, clawing for the handle several times, before thankfully taking it. “I got the memo, have a good night—”


    “Wait, wait, wait!” Silverhonor snapped out of her trance and sat up. “Alexander Shen, correct? System Articles?”


    Fuck me, she was actually my contact. I let go of the handle. “You’re my correspondence? You—? I’m sorry if that sounds insulting, but I wasn’t expecting a sword.”


    “I was expecting—” Silverhonor stopped herself and inhaled. “Nevermind. Let’s, erm, let’s restart. Let’s forget the last sixty seconds. Please settle down and we can finally begin our discussion.”


    “Yes ma’am…” I sat across from her, setting my bag next to me.


    Silverhonor cleared her throat and laid a hand across her chest. Her ears were still stiff as arrows—was she still alarmed by my presence? “My name is Silverhonor, Head Officer of Glory Guild. While this isn’t public knowledge, I’m receiving training in corporate roles, which is why you’re meeting with me instead. Archknell believed this would provide valuable experience.”


    Okay, that made more sense. Actually, it was a good move. It wasn’t everyday you saw a corpo-sword. For someone like Silverhonor… People would open their ears more to a pretty girl than a sleazeball, and so, Archknell could theoretically hold greater control of his corpo-suite. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    “Right…” Let’s hope, though, that the amnesiac was capable. “Why here? Why Gorgon?”


    A couple pointy ears perked upward. “Why not? My report says you’re a Slayer.”


    Instead of ears, my eyebrows perked. “What.”


    “It says you’re often in-charge of communicating with Slayers due to ‘personal experience,’ so—”


    “No, there’s been a miscommunication. While we do employ a couple crunchers, I’m a ren.” (“Pardon?”) “I have experience because I hang around swords, not that I’m one myself.”


    Silverhonor blinked at me a few times. “You are not a corpo-sword?”


    I shook my head and showed the “C” on my arm. “Regular human.”


    Her wide eyes drifted around me. “But you look—”


    “Let’s snip that conversation in the bud, SH.” I adjusted my collar. “I’m not interested in rehashing the same dozen questions everyone gives me.”


    Silverhonor cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. “We can change the venue right away—”


    “It’s alright, I’ll survive Gorgon.” If it had been anyone else, they would be chased away from the atmosphere alone.


    Silverhonor’s ears slanted perpendicular to her head. I couldn’t read her expression. What was that? Concern? Frustration? Confusion? All three? Most of all, I think, she was cautious, reading me like I was reading her. There was a reason why the bouncer thought I was a mil. If she had the ideal image of an outworlder, then I was on the front cover of Slayer’s Digest.


    “You…” she said so quietly that I thought it belonged to the music, “…you’re different than most people.”


    “And we’ll do things differently. Save the interview for later and get started on what’s important.” I dug through my bag and got my personal laptop and a flashdrive. The latter was flicked across the table. “This drive contains my findings. Take that to your team and have them comb through it.”


    She held the small drive between her thin fingers; I had backups, of course. “Thank you. I know only the basic details as stated in your report. May we begin with that? The background?”


    “Sure.” I already had a summary pulled up on my laptop for reference, and she had a notebook ready.


    We talked. The awe of meeting the Silverhonor waned as my mind switched gears to business, and it was like I was almost speaking with a normal person. We discussed basic background info and context around System Articles. What we do, the office environment, the who’s who, my job as an exped broker, our day-to-day affairs, the boring stuff. Constantly, I had to remind myself that this was one of Archknell’s closest confidants. Sharing too much about me was asking for trouble; you had to practice basic precautions against influential figures like her.


    Soon, the conversation shifted toward the meat of the meeting.


    I crunched an empty chip bag in my hands. “…They’re double-dipping: harvesting junk expeds then pushing them off on buyers. You’ll find more details in the flash-drive, but Fujimura Kieta’s partner-in-crime is Yoshita Guild. Coincidentally, his cousin is the GM. So Yoshita purchases these junk expeds and exped rights from netters; then, they scrape it clean and pocket the merch to sell later.”


    “That’s standard practice,” said Silverhonor. “However?”


    I pressed my finger down onto the table. “However, Yoshita sells the expeds to System Articles for pennies, without updating the conditions on the market. That part is illegal, and what my bosses do next is even more illegal.”


    “System Articles sell functionally worthless expeds onto desperate buyers, then?”


    I snapped my fingers. “And they recoup costs and make a hefty profit.”


    Double-dipping came in various forms; all the fraudsters had their own artistic take on this genre. Fujimura was one of the most tortured artists I’d ever seen. He targeted immigrants and foreigners, relying on his victims’ obliviousness and the apathy of the system. Oftentimes, these people only had the clothes on their back and dust in their wallets, but they had high dreams of stardom in the Slayer Capital like everyone else.


    Instead, they got chewed up and spat out onto the cold streets. No support. No comfort. No justice. In a game of superpowers, superhumans, and superstars, there was absolute power, subhumans, and fallen stars. The System was a gift that we kept snatching.


    “Shen, are you okay?” a sweet voice asked.


    I had a hand on my head. Yeah, that was the natural reaction. A normal, human reaction to something completely vile. “…No.”


    Silverhonor sighed in mild concern, like a disapproving aunt, though I could tell it was somewhat forced. “I understand. Going against your employers is stressful—“


    “Fuck them.”


    “Pardon?”


    “Fuck. Them.” I stood and started pacing around. “You know why I’ve had the cold shoulder since March? One of their victims—his details are in the files—showed up to our doorstep bright and early in the morning. He begged for answers and soaked our doormat with tears. Badges came in and dragged his ass out. I asked questions and got told to shut up and forget about ‘that damned bum.’ That’s when I knew my time there was coming to an end.


    “During my investigation, I located his apartment. His former apartment, because I found the landlord instead. The landlord said four men had broken in, shattered his legs, then burned everything he owned. Clothes, trinkets, worship, gone. Reduced to cinders. So he left town, and frankly, I hope he never comes back.”


    Silverhonor listened, her expression stoic but it didn’t suit her. She pretended to hold a distant and professional exterior, but like a dog’s tail, an elf’s ears never lied. They were sharply inclined like daggers ready to strike. She looked at the flashdrive sitting on the table. “…Are there more anecdotes like this?”


    “A few more. I cataloged them all. Recorded interviews, transcribed them, everything.”


    “You weren’t caught during your investigations?”


    “I haven’t been fired or confronted.” She frowned. I sighed and leaned against the nearest wall. “Yoshita hasn’t tailed me. According to the Ordoian Open Profile Database, none of them are trackers. Plus, I could spot them from a crowd. I memorized their names and faces.”


    “You…memorized them?”


    “I’m fighting against swords here, SH. A man’s best friend is intel, and a corpo’s best friend is profit—and I’m squeezing as much value out of every detail I can get my filthy hands on.”Silverhonor visibly gulped and hid her apprehension by hiding her mouth. “You’re talking less like a corpo and more like a secret agent. You single-handedly gathered this much evidence while avoiding suspicion from your superiors. You waited until System Articles became an official partner of Glory Guild to pawn this case onto us, knowing the law would listen. Most of all, you’ve been glaring at me since this meeting began.”


    “Yeah.” Only because you’d been giving me mixed signals, but I’d be cautious if I was in your shoes too. No, actually, you were completely right to stay on-guard. “Sorry for being so on-and-off, but I’m dead serious about this case. For your sake, I hope your execs take this seriously too.”


    “Excuse me?” Silverhonor stood, her ears once again raised in alarm. Her height startled me; she was an inch or two shorter. “Are you… Are you threatening me, Shen?”


    “Not you, specifically, but your adoptive guardian.” I marched to the table and picked up the flashdrive, then wagged it in her face. “What do castles hate the most? It depends on the horoscope. Some days, it’s the Union. Others, it’s Essies or competition. But when it storms? Scandals. They hate scandals. The media, though? They love it. If they hear that Glory knew about a certain trading partner’s crimes but did nothing? Headlines for weeks, calls for regulation, and terrible statements from your crisis team. A GM’s worst nightmare.”


    Her ears, which had been standing, went north to south. In her beautiful eyes, I saw anguish, but that didn’t stay for long. Adrenaline washed away her shock and fear, turning the engine to fuel a new emotion: anger. I was witness to the rarest sight in Ordo, the Silverhonor glaring at me and waiting for an excuse to kill.


    I slowly exhaled, letting my own anxiety leave through my breath. “This is where I say a cliche: it’s nothing personal, it’s business. To me, at least. This is how I enforce your side of the bargain, because I’m a powerless, weak corpo shaking hands with the Big Four. Now.” I shook the flashdrive. “Take it, and don’t lose it. There won’t be any back-ups.”


    Silverhonor snatched the drive from me, gripping it so tightly that I was afraid she might break it. “You are a horribly ruthless man.”


    “I know.” I shoved my belongings into my bag. “I’m ending the meeting early. Next time you contact me, it should be about the investigation. Otherwise, don’t bother.”


    I was about to leave, but I parked at the door. Holes were burned into my back, and there was a little bird called “guilt” pecking at my heart. Coincidences were a blessing and a curse. All SH wanted was hands-on experience, but she met me instead. With this stunt, I most likely earned Archknell’s ire—the second-worst GM I could anger—but I couldn’t take any chances. Better to make a big splash and have him second-think about steamrolling me.


    Hopefully, he wouldn’t personally come to my house and kill me.


    But Silverhonor? The fish out of water?


    “...I mean it, though. I have no beef with you or Archknell personally.” Unless they gave me a reason. “Any other time, I’ll act my place.”


    “Don’t apologize, not now,” she spat. “Leave, corpo, and don’t look back. If all goes well, we’ll never have to see each other again. I hope I’ll never meet you again, Alexander Shen.”


    Yeah, my worst interaction with a woman by far.


    I said nothing and left the room. New problem: where the hell is the exit?