42

Abjuration 4.5

Another one of the perks of having a magic circuit beyond my own ability to cast spells was the unlocking of additional functions in my bond with Agate.

Now that I could send my prana to her, the two-way link was complete.

After a bit of time to attune again, it was no longer necessary for Agate to be the one to manage all of the mental contact. Just as she could perceive through my senses and share my consciousness to know my thoughts, I could now do the same with her, without her having to package, format, and stream the information to me.

One effect was that it was faster. To a very limited extent, I could even borrow her processing power. It was just that my brain was far too slow. Even though I could theoretically perceive how she did Parallel Processing and Parallel Acceleration, her counterpart to the Atlas Memory Partition and Thought Acceleration spells, I couldn't actually follow it because my brain was bottlenecking.

A much more important effect was comprehension of the spells she knew. While it wasn't possible for her to simply upload the information into my brain, when fully connected to her I had a natural, intrinsic grasp of the spell theory she knew. I still had to learn it properly, but it was much faster compared to learning it independently.

This is how we developed a Geas spell so quickly, using Agate's own Kaleidostick partner contract spell as a base to derive a simpler contract spell according to the canon one I remembered. It had only been a few days of experimentation, and now I was able to cast it just by myself or through Agate. The same was true of reinforcement, which I could also cast on my own now.

As a result, we started to share thoughts again.

Today, Agate was off on a mission away from me. The plan to acquire Canary was already in motion while I simultaneously participated in the victory party. A while ago I had trouble focusing on Agate's senses while doing something else myself, resorting to having her make recordings, but now we were in sync even when away.

Once the mayor finished with his remarks on the economy, full of misleading stats on the "underground economy" which included far more than just criminal activities, as the acting emcee for this part of the show, I shook his hand again before calling for Congressman Ian Rodney to the stage.

Similar to the mayor, he made his own remarks congratulating us and sliding in some comments about the need for more government action on crime and how we were a shining example of the American spirit.

This man was a member of the New Republican party, which had supplanted the old Republican party shortly after Scion. He was a friend to the gun lobby, who were also our friends now as our organization was heavily armed and promoting pro-active self-defense, as well as openly advertising our new private security service offerings.

These politicians made time in their busy schedules to rush over as soon as my people contacted them about an opportunity to be associated with an excellent publicity event, where they could even deliver politically relevant speeches in a faux-rally setting to a mass crowd and media.

Before they went on stage, we had of course met them in private to discuss important political issues of the day, and praise their good work in representing the people of Brockton Bay.

I offered them no money for their campaigns, or any other underhanded bribes.

That was natural, because the laws on gifts were quite strict, and even trying to do something like that with a politician you didn't know very well was a dangerous game.

If we even invited the Congressmen to an expensive steak dinner, that would be an easily traceable federal felony.

It was also unnecessary, because they knew our value as influencers over voters and the significance of our achievement in the eyes of the pubic.

More importantly, the event itself was a perfect opportunity for them to be in the spotlight, and we'd made it easy for them to look good, just riding on our success.

People were gathering here by the thousands, and I already knew that the media was broadcasting this live. Our video online was one thing, but as much as it would spread by itself online, if we wanted to hit the mainstream national news, we needed an event like this where the media would be out in force and there was a lot to report on.

A simple press release or news conference wouldn't be interesting, even the kind of party they threw in canon after the ABB's defeat wouldn't have gotten major media attention, because that one was targeting mostly business people instead of the public. At the time, the PRT cared more about taking credit, maintaining their reputation and getting donations.

But here? Our goal was to make headlines and draw crowds.

I spared no expense to make this happen. Free food and entertainment were the key to creating an explosive event.

A community fundraiser and gala hosted by the Mayor was something to be reported on because it was important to the community, but it wouldn't make the headlines or go beyond the city. It was just a bland and obvious PR move.

A huge party with thousands of people filling the street and famous celebrities coming in for an evening concert was whole different story. It was a cultural phenomenon, the kind of thing that the media would all over even if we didn't bother to invite them.

As the speeches finished and more entertainment on stage proceeded on schedule, the crowd kept growing larger.

And of course it did. Not only did we provide free food, which always attracts tons of people, especially in a city with a lot of poor middle class, we provided entertainment that otherwise people would normally be paying expensive tickets worth hundreds of dollars for.

Besides the local performers who had decent followings of their own, the rumors that we had spread about Mickie Oswald and Renee Silvers coming in were legitimate.

While I wanted to keep it as "rumor" for now so it would morph and turn into rumors about even more celebrity artists, I had in fact made such arrangements.

They were the most expensive part of this operation, but well worth it.

The costs of hosting a hundred and fifty victims for the night at the hotel only cost about $100 per person. The reason it was so cheap was because one of Coil's legitimate businesses owned the hotel, but even the list price of $250 per person would be $37,500 total, and the hotel would more than likely make it all back with the free advertising they got out of this event and all the very impressed victims and their families.

The free food for the first three thousand people, the cheapest kind of food you can get really, with hotdogs and burgers, only cost $30,000. Everyone else would have to pay for their food or if they wanted better things than hot dogs and burgers, and we would be getting a small cut of the profits on that.

The cost of setting everything up, hiring the event management company, renting out the venue was only about $200k. The lesser known performers combined cost $500k.

All in all, it was actually less than the money I spent on Cranial's services. After the martial arts for me worked out perfectly, Taylor got a set of martial arts skills of her own, we both got gun shooting skills, and I further bought a bunch of foreign language skills for myself. We couldn't get Amelia any skills because there was no one to check her brain for foul play.

Mickie and Renee cost $800k and $1.2 million respectively each for an hour. That was pretty exorbitant, but the ridiculously short notice was the main reason for it to be so high. I had reached out late last week, but I couldn't confirm the actual timing until Bakuda scheduled the meeting with Coil over the weekend.

It was still a drop in the bucket compared to the assets now under my control, and the annual profits from the legal businesses I inherited from Coil.

More importantly, I wasn't really the one that would have to pay for it in the end.

The key to financial success in life and in business is to use other people's money, applying leverage and managing risk.

Typically, that took the form of taking investment capital in exchange for equity, or borrowing money from the banks, government, private lenders, or your suppliers by dragging out the accounts payable.

With big money in legal businesses, it was rare to have to pay in cash immediately. So most of the biggest expenses were only on paper, and I'd paid a deposit of about 10% on average for each line item to each vendor. The rest would theoretically have to be paid within 30 to 60 days.

And it wasn't CRUCIBLE's non-profit entity that was paying these because we were barely finished setting that up. We could have paid it legally with the spoils seized from ABB/Coil, but…

It was the company that owned the Marienton Hotel and Conference Center, being previously controlled by Coil, that decided to generously sponsor CRUCIBLE's event, after taking out a $17 million loan from the bank using its prime real estate close to downtown as collateral, representing 90% of its last appraisal value. The Marieton company was the one that signed the service contracts and the one who would owe the money.

Next week, the Marienton company would pay $13m in cash to the CRUCIBLE Foundation after signing an exclusive contract to host all of our future events in Brockton Bay and receive a license to use our image and brand for new business lines such as branded products, movies, and franchised hotels in other locations as the company seeks out new revenue sources. A partnership made in heaven, or so it would seem, after the tremendous boost in business brought by the CRUCIBLE event, as projected from the huge influx of bookings made over the week.

Next month, Leviathan would attack, tourism and business travel around here would be dead, the building might get destroyed, real estate values plummet, and Marienton tragically files for chapter 11 bankruptcy due to insufficient liquidity, defaulting on all its debts. The bank, being a fully secured lender, would be forced to collect on the worthless real estate that was originally put up as collateral and locked out of the chapter 11 creditor restructuring discussions.

The only creditors left would be the unsecured ones. Because the company had no other significant debts, they were mostly the suppliers who were owed accounts payable. Now normally when a business is so obviously dead, it would be forced into chapter 7 liquidation instead with everyone getting pennies on the dollar and nobody happy.

However, CRUCIBLE Foundation, upon realizing that the vendors at their event weren't getting paid, using the rest of the money that was loaned out to Merianton but transferred to CRUCIBLE, would honorably offer to pay off the vendors who had been owed money from Merianton on Merianton's behalf, as we were the true beneficiaries of the vendor services, despite its own grave financial difficulties in providing sufficient humanitarian aid to the Brockton survivors.

The famous out of town singers would likely be advised by their PR people to donate it back to CRUCIBLE in the wake of the Endbringer attack instead of taking the money from us. I believed at that point I could probably even convince them to come back for another performance for free, this time as a charity fundraiser event and to give hope to the survivors.

The other smaller vendors were owed small amounts, so it was no trouble to pay them if they didn't voluntarily forgive the debt as well.

And thus everyone ends up happy, except the bank who has no recourse in claiming the money from CRUCIBLE Foundation because Marienton obviously couldn't have deliberately moved all the money out in anticipation of an Endbringer attack as fraudulent asset transfer.

The vendors would be paid $1 each symbolically so that the legal proceedings could end, and the company would emerge from bankruptcy by paying some legal and misc. fees. It'd be debt-free and back under the control of my puppets, albeit without the core asset that made it a hotel.

If Leviathan didn't attack, then I'd just pay the vendors and the business would continue, actually following through on the CRUCIBLE brand partnership plans as I left $4m plus existing operating capital in the company, which would be enough to cover all the short-term liabilities. It would simply become the primary vehicle for the businesses I intended to get into anyways.

Now obviously if Leviathan did attack, I'd still be losing the equity value destroyed from plummeting real estate prices, which would might exceed the loan size if it went to zero if the building was outright destroyed. But I was going to lose that money regardless if it happened, and there was no way to sell an illiquid asset like this in a month. A big commercial real estate deal like this usually took at least half a year to find a buyer, and even the due diligence period was typically at least 60 days before cash closing, if the buyer even paid in full cash instead of a partial vendor note. It was a dead asset already, so any money I made would be a profit.

It was just unfortunate that you couldn't get insured against Endbringer attacks, they were too common and expected so no insurance company was willing to risk getting bankrupted by the massive damages that would have to be paid out from a destroyed city. At least, that is what my insurance consultants told me, which they explained by pointing out to a few big name insurance companies that went under following the destruction of Madison and Newfoundland.

Because I couldn't buy insurance, I had to come up with this scheme to turn a bank into my unwilling insurer.

Coil also had other assets in Brockton Bay that would be impacted by the attack, and I was already trying to liquidate as much of it as possible, but this hotel was the biggest and most illiquid piece.

Additionally, a significant amount of money would have been funneled into CRUCIBLE through legitimate, legally traceable channels, regardless of what happens, so we could explain where we were getting the money to pay for all the things we were doing and all the employees we'd hired.

It would be obvious that CRUCIBLE had previous ties to Marienton and possibly hired Coil's mercenaries, but none of the guys I kept were already known criminals in their civilian IDs, so it didn't matter if people speculated as nothing could be proven.

Planning this, I felt like I was back in the old business. A nice relaxing break from the stresses of being a hero and being in a different world.

Of course, making money off this was just a bonus. The real reason I organized this was for Amelia and Taylor. So they could see for themselves that our decisions and our methods, even the strategy of using Coil's forces to temporarily help Bakuda—and everything else that was ethically questionable—were right and justified. I wanted them to hear approval not just from me or their own conscience, but to hear it from the masses and political leaders.

When we went off stage and returned to our executive suite room to change into casual clothes, I took a good look at the results of my efforts.

By the looks on their faces, it had worked.