Chapter 16: Fear and Trembling

[Evana Majarae]

Evana felt a small lingering feeling of abandonement in her chest. It twisted around inside, tightening with every breath until she blinked and willed it away. She disliked the idea of loosing her sister again. "I don't understand why. How will I know you're okay?"

She looked at the chef and answered shortly, "I'm not that hungry... but if you must, anything with chicken will do."

[Kyra Majarae]

Kyra smiled and hugged her sister. She looked down at her and softly stroked her hair. "You will know where I am at all times. I will call you everyday and if I am able I will come visit, when things die down. But things are going to get hectic and very soon will they get that way. I need you to promise me....promise me that you will stay here and stay safe. If anything happens go to Russia and find Ivan, he will protect you." She smiled and stroked her sisters cheek and kissed her forehead, the chef went off to fix Eve's dinner and finish Kyra's.

[Evana Majarae]

Eve narrowed her eyes a little. She didn't like the idea of staying here and Kyra leaving. Who was to say some one wouldn't come looking for Kyra and run into Eve instead. She could try to kill them off... but she didn't like the thought either way. She nodded respectfully to her sister and was going to do as she was told. She knew more about what was going on... so she'd have to trust her insane sibling.

[Bonifaz Artz-Lehrer]

"If one Blessed got killed by Bishop here, which...I am not even sure happened, doesn't it just go to show that he was a weaker member of the Blessed anyway? Seriously, if they are so great and powerful, why do they have to send machines and what not to do their dirty work. Of course, they aren't that strong or great...and so, here you are." Bonifaz says with annoyance. He gets Alter a glass of water and becomes curious when she slips into some other language. Most languages in the world are in the process of dying since it is too ineficient for the world to speak so many languages. The world is...post globalization..or something like that.

"Here's some water, even if you can get it yourself. It is interesting to hear another language. A rare thing in the post globalized world...but I suppose we all come from somewhere..." He tells her with a slight smirk. He is going to try to be polite to these people to avoid any more trouble and because he isn't really seeking any conflict at the moment anyway.


"I was at the party and I never saw Bishop here kill anyone. So, perhaps you have him mistaken for the man in the purple suit...a man we don't know and have no connection to."

Bonifaz looks at the Creditor, who he observes isn't like other Creditors. She isn't ruthless and mechanical. He tries to consider the meaning of that.

"You are much more...human like that most Creditors. How nice. In any event, I don't think any of us here have any connection to the clown. But, there are two women upstairs in my TV room. Perhaps they do. I saw the one...arrive shortly after the clown and seemed to talk to him later. The two women...have also been mysteriously..avoiding any encounter with the two of you."

[Heikki Toivonen]

Heikki listens to everyone talk and is mildly interested in some of it. He didn't know much about the Castor oil plant or that Mussolini used the oil as a poison. He is impressed with Alter's understanding of history and wonders about Bishop's history as a plant. One of his parents must have been a full Castor plant being then. He wonders what happened to that person. Maybe because he is part plant as well, he doesn't want Emmet to go with the Creditor and Alter. He worries that maybe he will be used by the Manalists for his poison.

"You sure know more about history than most people, Alter. Do they educate...operatives like you on History?" Heikki asks curiously. He takes a seat on the washing machine. "I didn't think...most people even knew who Mussolini was...due to the education here. ..or lack of it. Much less about the poison thing. But don't take Bee. Why don't you guys take some Strawberry shortcake instead and just call it even."

[Kyra Majarae]

((Kyra nd Eve are in Paris....And no one knows except them >> cause they followed and watched everything and left when it got nasty and yeah they are now in paris =) ))

Kyra sighed softly and ran her fingers through her hair....there had to be someon she could call to hear what was going on. Then it hit her...Tyler....she didn't know him very well, but she was a fellow mercernary....she grabbed her cell and gave him a call. It was busy....she cursed and slammed the phone shut. She bit on her nails and she looked around.

This simply wouldn't do....Kyra asn't worried about her life or her safety....she was worried about Eve and her brother Ivan and her other siblings....if they found Jack....that poor girl....she would be put to death along with Jack. She couldn't let that happen no matter how crazy she was....she paced as she racked her brain for any idea. She wished someone would call her and at least let her know was she a suspect? All she did was kill her date, big deal...she kept biting at her nails waiting for something to happen.

She saw Eve watching her and she smiled at her sister. "You can go upstairs and change out of those clothes after you eat. But be aware of your surroundings." She rubbed her forhead and walked toward the kitchn to grab her food and she didn't eat nearly enough, what she didn't finish, she would finish later. She kept rushing Eve and trying to hide her, she knew that only a select few knew about her manor and how to get into it.

Just then her guard dog, that was a sweetie ever since it had been hurt, came into the room. she smiled at it and gave it some food and petted her softly. Then it hit her. She ran toward the basement and grabbed a controlling device, she placed it on the dog's collar and then smiled as she reverted to attack mode. This would be some protection at least....with the device pumping vast majority of chemicals into the dog....it would be hard to kill and give Kyra and Eve time to escape.

But where would she go then? She could flee to Russia....the Gray Zone.....she could find Ivan and bring the family together to do whatever. It was all swimming so faqst in Kyra's mind she barely had time to do anything.

[Emmet Fawkes]

Bishop's mouth twitched when he was called a fascist. His chest puffed out indignantly. “Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place!” the gas-masked man hissed, knocking the chair over as he stared at her steadily, raising his head higher. Fascism was something that was more like Corporatism, a merging of state and corporate power—something that refused to take place. He wasn't a goddamn fascist just because he was born a Castor Oil Plant. “Lady, where do you think you are? Your in a nihilist base, any one of us could chop you up like cod liver, your life's not beneficial, your just causing trouble. What makes you think you'll leave here alive?” His voice dropped to a deadly whisper, but he still kept his distance because she was coughing and vomiting everywhere.

Once Bonifaz began speaking, Bishop stopped. Hebrew. It was such a dirty, lost language—a language that people forgot about, except those that clung to their heritage. He couldn't grasp that concept, he had no heritage. What was there to cling onto? A dead language was nothing to him, just something to study about in his books, his thousands of books stacked back in his temporary home. Bishop doesn't understand why Bonifaz is trying to be so polite, because at the moment, his life is at risk—not that he really cared whether or not he was in danger—but he wasn't planning on being dragged into another cell. Manalists had no set rules. If you disagreed, they'd throw your worst nightmares at you. They'd make you suffer. That's why they needed to pay.

“This time,” Bishop strains, gesturing with an air of pride, “I haven't done anything. I've been a good boy, and I didn't waste my time setting petite explosions in a mansion when I knew that Manalists would bat their eyes and pretend it didn't happen.” Though his words were acidic and frank, he wasn't exactly lying.

Bishop glanced towards the Creditor wearily. She wasn't like most of the other Creditors, she wasn't so robotic. She reminded him of some sort of Pop Queen with her pom-poms and designer clothes. How frank. “Exactly,” Bishop agreed with Heikki, sucking in some air noisily from his gas mask. He pointed an accusing finger at Alter. “As amusing as you guys seem, I'm not being questioned about anything I had nothing to do with, or sent to any prison for crimes I... may have committed any other time.”

[Aubrey 16]

Aubrey sighed. Why were people just so difficult?! It's not like this is what she wants to be doing, dealing with poorly dressed people, bleh. As if the lack of fashion wasn't enough to make her all tense, now this guy wasn't going to cooperate either.

Ugh. Where was Annika when you needed her? This was more her thing. Aubrey was the type of Creditor to punish people randomly for poor credit, and bad fashion, of course, where she saw fitting.

Sure, she could carry both Alter and the other man, but she didn't want to have Alter's bodily fluids all over her. Nor did she really want to have to use force to take him. Cooperation would just be so much easier.

She looked at the man who gave Alter a drink. "I'm not here for the two women, its smiley over here that I need to take for questioning."

She then turned to the man who offered strawberry shortcake. ...Strawberry shortcake? Was he serious? Aubrey gaped at him. "I'm an android. I don't eat. And Alter here is to busy puking up anything that she's eaten in the past few days to concern herself with pushing more food down her throat. So, thanks, but you can keep your shortcake, and I'll take gas mask."

She shook her head, and finally directed her attention toward gas mask. "Listen, I don't care if you were a 'good boy', you're coming with me." She says point blank. "It'd be so much easier if you'd just agree and follow along, but if you don't want to do that there are other options. All which involve you coming with me." She sighs again. "I don't want to have to use force, because I really don't want to ruin this skirt, but if I have to I will. And that'll just make things harder for you in the long run."

[Hilja Kukkanen/Sasha Pisarev]

If you need something to do, Tuvi, you could post as Rose with those in Socialist Revolution who are trying to meet at Tuesday's apartment.

Some more ideas are thrown around, but we aren't making much progress at all. "We are so small...it is just hard to accomplish much. I think if we did anything right now, maybe we should try to build relationships with other groups and rebels. Maybe we could build some sort of rebel coalition...and work together to decide on things to do against the Manalists." I finally suggest after other ideas are thrown around.

"We could always plan something larger and more dangerous like Tuesday's suggestion once we have more support."

[Tristan Tuzanic]

Tristan arrives at the house of the German nihilists independently. He has been investigating the incident on behalf of the Manalists, with orders from Master Scrag to do so. As he arrives, he sees two women run out of the nice home, but isn't sure what to do. He is going to the house to question Bonifaz, but that woman was also on the list of people to question.
Confused about the best course of action, he decides to walk over to the teleportation booth. Since he isn't savy with technology, he can't tell where they went, but he makes a call to the teleportation booth company.
"Yeah, my name is Tristan Tuzanic. I'm working for Master Scrag. Could you send me some teleportation booth records." Tristan asks the operator. The operator has to call a temple to verify that Tristan is authorized to have that information, but after a few minutes, the information is send to Tristan's Manalist issued cellphone. With this information, he heads into to the mansion...which he finds unlocked. He pokes around upstairs, but it doesn't seem like anyone is home. "Hellloooo, anybody home?"

[Alter Grossman]

((I think everyone that doesn't have a socialist should make one, since we seem to not have enough. I'll have one up by Friday or Saturday.))

Alter takes the water from Bonifaz, and tries not to act to grateful. He seems more reasonable and sane than most of the other people in this room.

"Well, I wish we'd had this conversation before you broke my nose," she says, going to sit in the chair. "That wasn't another language. I was just, um... Still hallucinating a little bit," Alter lies. She is actually feeling a little bit better, now that there's nothing left in her stomach. She is careful to sip the water slowly, so she won't throw up again. Alter learned to do that after a mission in South America where she contracted malaria.

Alter doesn't want to respond to the questions about reading. The only reason she even mentioned the fact about Mussolini was because she was feeling ill, and not filtering her words very well. She ignores Emmet's threats. If it wasn't for the rogue creditor, she would have kicked his ass. She decides that he likes to talk big.

"What women? Do you know where they might have gone?" Alter didn't notice any women when she entered the house. They must have been in another room or something. "I think maybe we should take you in for questioning too, since you were at the party." she tells Bonifaz. "For you, just questioning, since I am fairly certain you were invited. I'll check the guest list. I recognize you. You're the son of that pharmaceutical company owner."

Alter is a little miffed that Aubrey 16 cares so much about her clothes. Why should a robot care about clothes?

"If your skirt is ruined, I will knit you a skirt, or anything else you'd like. I read that knit boots are in fashion right now. I could do that for you," Alter offers. She still isn't sure how human to treat creditors.

[Tristan Tuzanic]

Tristan hears some voices downstairs, so he finds his way to the basement stairs and makes his way down cautiously. He isn't aware that the Invisible Hand or the Creditors are already here. He wanders down the stairs and enters the room as well. When he sees that the Creditor and a woman who is either with the Anti Drug commision's Counter terrorism group or the Hand is down there, he is miffed. "This is so stupid. I can't believe the Master sent me on this idiotic mission and other people have everything under control. How totally lame is that. He probably just wanted to give me busy work." Tristan grumbles in front of the nihilists, Creditor, and Alter.

[Bonifaz Artz-Lehrer]

"They are probably still upstairs where they were before all of this happened." Bonifaz replies concerning the two women. He turns to Emmet, who seemed to recognise one of the women. "You seemed to know one of them. Who are they?" Bonifaz asks. He isn't too keen on leaving the mansion for questioning, but, he does figure that he has some safety in the fact that he was attending on behalf of his father and that he has some security in the fact his family owns most of Germany. He is only being cooperative and polite because he doesn't want any more disruptions at his home or to Null...especially before they can organize themselves. Manala Mas is coming up and the idea of a drug party interested him. Then he notices a newcomer arrive. He rolls his eyes. "Hello, should I be expecting anyone else? Maybe I should put on a pot of coffee."

[Calithin Crest]

The next day I head to the office and get right to work making some major changes to our routine in accommodation of the economic situation. It's difficult to try to maneuver much in this kind of market, but initiatives must be taken if things are to get better.

I spend all morning in several meetings with all of our department heads to find areas where we can cut production costs. Since it's been shown that companies who take employee suggestions save on average 30% of their normal expenditure, I have our human resources people implement suggestion boxes with initiative plans that would give employees who offer suggestions a percentage of the money the company saves.

This initiative, along with other initiatives promising bonuses to the most productive mining sectors, should serve to boost overall productivity.

At the end of the day I send a memo to the general managers telling them to go over the lists of their employees and review each worker. Unproductive staff members will be fired immediately. These cuts should make people work harder in order to keep their jobs, and also get rid of dead weight employees.

[Tristan Tuzanic]

"I'll have some coffee. I need some caffeine. The Manalists don't want us to drink coffee anymore." Tristan replies to Bonifaz, not realizing that the offer was sarcastic. He wants coffee now that it's been offered. He looks around the room and finds that some of these nihilists are attractive, as well as the Creditor. Maybe if he ever leaves the Manalists, he would become a nihilist. He thinks about that for a moment. "Do nihilists believe in ghosts, because ghosts are cool. I've seen ghosts.." Tristan offers. He turns to Aubrey and Alter. "Are you guys...looking for those two attractive women that left the mansion. They were really good looking. I really like that goth look they had going on. So few people care about expressing themselves. You know?"