6 Automatic Cleaning Service

Eighty percent of the island-continent of Lagarina was submerged beneath the ocean. Most of the land above the waves was monopolized by the rich and the powerful. Besides the gnomes who lived underground and the sea-folk who didn't mind the briny wet, the rest of the populace had to figure out novel ways to make due.

One method of adapting was the construction and use of floating properties. Buildings, and whole city blocks would be built on massive boats and floating platforms.

The Suddene was one such floating structure. A boat-shaped, night-club, in the city of Nerissa. Having once upon a time been the private vessel of a former-hegemon its outsides were tasteful and impressive. The magnificent vessel that housed the establishment being made of finely carved wood, and non-rusting steel.

Even in the current age, when its bow was decorated in bright lights and suggestive neons signage, the vessel still had a certain presence.

The inside of the vessel, however, was another story entirely. Garish, loud, filled with smoke, and deafening music. The upper deck and first lower floor of the ship was occupied by writhing youths.

Each night the popular and trendy Suddene would be filled with the young and sexy who'd come in from the city. Paying to be clustered together, for the sake of splashing sweat, saliva, and alcohol all over each other while they pulsed and bounced in sync with the music that blared through the nightclub's state-of-the-art speaker system.

They were worshippers in a temple dedicated to hedonism, and the DJ who stood upon the stage behind an electronic setup, that was even more complicated then it looked, was their priest. The shimmering robe and ruby lensed, sigil covered, sunglasses marked the DJ as an actual priest of the temple of Amethyst, the god of youthful decadence.

In the lower decks, there were private booths and rooms, with the more expensive rooms coming with certain illicit privileges.

Desmond-Octavio and a party of five others currently occupied one of the Suddene's three platinum suites. The most expensive rooms in the club.

The room was soundproofed, with its own client-chosen playlist playing in the background. The air was filled with a kind of sweetly spiced smoke. The center of the room was occupied by a table laden with trays of food, bottles of wine, and small paper envelopes that once held various substances.

The party was waited upon by a group of scantily-clad beauties. Some of them pouring drinks. Others sitting on the laps of their patrons, feeding them snacks. Others simply standing in place, dancing flirtatiously.

At the moment, Desmond had a mermaid sitting in his lap. She was bikini-clad, wearing a see-through shawl, that left nothing to the imagination. Besides playing the part of eye-candy, her main purpose in the room seemed to be ensuring that the mood in the room remained a good one.

"So...what's this deal you wanted to tell us about, old boy?" said a middle-aged gnome with a thick walrus mustache.

"It's nothing much just a venture I was planning with a friend I've got in the Royal Yang Military, and a pal he has in the 'hinterland'," said Desmond. Using the term often used to describe the small free-states that were built on the periphery of the distorted realms.

"Oh-ho? Is that so? Alright, laddy buck. I'll admit you've got me interested." said a balding goatkin man. He clapped his hands, and the room was immediately vacated, left empty except for Desmond and the five other men.

The mermaid in Desmond's lap got up trailing his chest with a manicured, webbed, finger. Her hips swaying magnetically as she walked away.

"Till next time, sugar." said the mermaid.

Desmond simply smiled, his eyes following the ladies as they left the room. Once the room was empty of the night club's staff, another gnome, this one slightly younger, spoke up.

"Now, tell me more." said the goatkin man."

"So we at Otieno Corp...we've just finished with a big, hush-hush, military contract, right? We gave them new tech, and they gave us a bunch of their old clunkers to see if we could fix 'em. Since they're certainly not expecting a 100% success rate, and they're paying us to dispose of the failures...it opens up certain opportunities...I was wondering if you wanted in." said Desmond-Octavio. Taking a sip from the glass he held in his hand and letting the mermaid in his lap fill the glass back up again.

"Now when you say hush-hush, what exactly are we talking about. Weaponry? Next-level stuff? The kind armies pay extra to make sure no one knows about it? Exactly what did our great kingdom of Yang have your company building?" said the younger gnome. Eager to know if war was on the horizon.

There was a whistle from a tentacle-haired merman who'd been sitting a little apart from the rest of the group watching an adult film and taking in contents of the envelopes that littered the floor around his feet.

"The military gives you a contract...you've got the balls to try and double deal? Naughty, naughty, Octavio baby." said merman.

"Eh, if you don't want in, Murray, you can just stick to watching your nudie flicks and turning your brain to mush with those 'cookie crumbs' you like so much." said the mustached gnome.

"Fellahs, fellahs. Please, I called you all here for a reason. I'm not crazy. The deal I'm setting up is already all but done. And nothing we'd be doing is technically illegal since the contract allows for the dismantling and 'reprocessing' of failures. Getting caught would only make for bad press." said Desmond.

"Heh, try telling that to the firing squad they'll put you in front of when they catch your ass." said a frogman who sat in the center of the group. His furry face and muscular body looking like they were seconds away from exploding out of the business suit he was wearing.

Desmond-Octavio shrugged, sitting back in seat. His posture confident, his expression relaxed.

"Hey, I'm not forcing anyone here. If you don't like money that's practically free that's fine by me. I just figured that as a bro, I was obligated to say something." said Desmond-Octavio.

"Tch, cut the sh*t, Octavio. If this deal was already done, you wouldn't be trying to bring us in." said the younger gnome.

Desmond simply sighed.

"Well...maybe there 'is' one thing I need from you guys. Okay, okay. Maybe two things."

"Just spit it out already, Octavio. Hearing your damn nasally voice is making my steel commander go soft, and I've got three smoking hot nereids waiting for me on the floor below!" sneered the merman.

Desmond rolled his eyes.

"You know what? If you wanna go, just go. I didn't even invite you, Murray. You're just Nelson's tagalong. Like f**king usual," said Desmond. Carefully remembering to keep up Octavio's ongoing hostility with the merman.

"Hey! Hey! Cool it, guys. No need to fight," said Nelson the frog.

"Tch...whatever," said Murray. His tone whiny and petulant. Desmond watched as the octopus-headed merman threw aside the cup he'd been drinking from and brought the entire bottle of wine he'd been holding up to his lips.

Then with a look of feigned annoyance, Desmond returned to the topic at hand.

"So, I'm already supplying the tanks, autostaves, but my new client has other needs. Needs like Armor. Food. Medicine. Guns….and Women." said Desmond. Looking to each of his 'friends' as he named the product that each of their families primarily traded in.

A smile slowly crept onto the face of the mustached gnome whose family was known for making high-tier g-mantles, a type of wearable robotic armor.

"Ah...Now, I see it. I can't imagine that it'd be easy to found a country out in the hinterlands. Right on the fringes of the distorted realms."

"Neither can I...Neither can my friend. That's why he's paying a metric sh*t-ton of raw materia cores for me to get him all those supplies." said Desmond-Octavio.

There was a moment of quiet, punctuated only by background music in the room, and the sighs and groans coming off the screen of the television that Murray was sitting in front of.

"Well, what the hell. I'm in." said the mustached gnome.

With his assent came the agreement of all the others. Desmond smiled, and soon there was laughter and the clinking of glasses as the men shared a toast.

Roughly two hours later Desmond would leave the platinum room, heading up to the higher deck and the floating streets that lay beyond the nightclub.

As he passed the bar on the upper deck, he stopped and handed a card, and a recording device, to the bartender. The man pocketed both without blinking. His only acknowledgment of what had happened being a slight nod.

Desmond walked out of the night club and into the open air. The bartender was an agent for certain neutral intermediary parties between Yang's legitimate and illegitimate worlds. He would ensure that all the people the real Octavio and his pals would least want to have a record of the conversation that just took place would get both the recorded conversation and the digital contract agreement that followed.

Yang itself sat fairly close to the hinterland that separated the distorted realms from the ground world. Most hinterland warlords tended to opt for conquering their neighbors in the grounded world rather than attempting to break ground in the distorted realm. Desmond-Octavio's unnamed pal was a warlord in a small nation that bordered the kingdom. A nation that was antagonistic to Yang.

All of this combined resulted in a scenario where with just a few hours of drinking, and a lot of hot-air, 'Octavio' had effectively just implicated himself and all five of his friends in a conspiracy to commit treason against the kingdom.

Treason against the kingdom was a capital offense generally punished by execution and the extermination of all nine generations of one's family. This meant all six families, the six families that headed the Otieno Corps controlling board, were now all living on borrowed time.

Sure, it'd take a little time for the people of the Yang government to actually move on the matter, but they 'would' move. And it would assure that anyone who survived what was coming next didn't survive for long.

Desmond smiled as he hailed a taxi for himself. The kingdom of Yang would serve as a perfect automatic cleaning service. Dutifully sweeping up any loose ends that might be left behind when he was done getting revenge for his client.