Changeling Part 111: Agency (Patreon)

Stupid stupid stupid. Nestra had been so focused on getting back to Earth that she’d just forgotten to use her damn brain. It had only been around nine months in her perspective, a little less here… Shit, she should have just asked Riel to take her with him! Except he didn’t know where Threshold was, and he had made it clear he would be busy… but she could have at least told him to —

“Palladian, have you forgotten there is a price on your head?” Ragnarok asked.

Nestra had to blink. A price? Oh yes! Before she’d left, someone had put millions on her head.

“Wait, there still is?”

“Palladian, are you any less of an alien right now?”

“Errr…”

In the diner, the waitress appears to be hesitating. Nestra realized she was wearing her armor so it would be normal to be alarmed. She gave a little wave.

“I will have… someone pick you up,” Ragnarok said.

There was a pause.

“In one hour. Try not to get captured by then.”

Nestra looked around for cameras, finding none. She was left with a choice: play it cool, or leg it. The waitress was still waiting for her to make that choice. Nestra looked at the parking lot to her side where three old pickup trucks waited in quiet torpor.

Maybe she could bluff it. It had been six months and this was a busy world. Maybe they’d forgotten her. Most people would have forgotten her exact face, at the very least. Probably.

She sighed, approached the armored gate, and knocked. The waitress opened it without hesitation. She was an older black baseline Nestra would generously call ‘stout’. Her graying hair was held back by a band but otherwise let free. Her domain was a bit of a dive. It smelled of grease with plastic tables bolted to the floor. Neon advertisements on the back wall gave almost as much light as the tired lamps overhead. Three men in baseball caps lingered in silence, each at a different table, none of them looking up. Still no cameras.

“You alright there, sugar?”

“Ah, well, sort of? I’m lost. Portal accident.”

“I knew you were lost, sugar, no need to tell me that. Do you need help?”

The waitress had the kind of careful sympathy reserved for those who might be a danger

“I called a friend. They’ll pick me up in an hour. Do you mind if I wait here?”

She barely gave Nestra a second glance, instead waving her in with one arm because the other one was holding a shotgun. Smiles upfront and shells at the back was something Nestra could understand. 

“Not at all. Take a seat, sugar. You want to take out that jawn you’re wearing?”

Nestra looks down at the Bellerophon, a piece of gear so heavy it might just crack the old plastic furniture.

“That might be for the best. I have a change of clothes,” she lied, tapping the small back at her back.

The waitress gave her a dubious look, but she pointed at a sign for toilets. The three men looked up at some point but they were soon back to watching their screens. Nestra went to the surprisingly clean toilet to get changed into one of her more casual clothes, as neutral as she could make them, but there would be no hiding it.

She was clearly a raider. Her gear was expensive. Her clothes were fashionable. She had an accent. The waitress may not have recognized it yet, but she would soon. Nestra listened in on the main room while she used her dimension pocket to switch clothes. The locals were, as far as she could tell, doom scrolling, watching baseball, doom scrolling, and cleaning a grill respectively. She was still safe for now, but for how long? She still hadn’t spotted the cameras.

Nestra decided to bite the bullet. She would have to stay around if she wanted Rag’s contact to find her anyway. Or maybe he would simply follow the tracker on her phone. It might be wiser to hang around just so she could tell if some started acting nervous. The waitress gave her a good look as Nestra returned to the main room. Nestra finally realized she had a name tag with ‘Rosie’ on it written with a sharpie some time in the past two decades.

“Want something sugar?”

Nestra sat at the bar, sadly ignoring the tables.

“Don’t think my payment would go through. Unfortunately.”

It was one thing to show her face but another to try and use her account. Even if they weren’t frozen, maybe the US government had a way to track money transfer coming from a Threshold bank. She wasn’t sure how it worked anyway.

The waitress placed a cup of black coffee in front of her. Nestra’s eyes widened.

“On the house, sugar.”

“Thanks! Uh, thanks Rosie”

She gave it a try.

Oof.

“How is it?” Rosie asked.

Nestra hesitated.

“Well, it’s, uh… it’s hot.”

The older woman chuckled with amusement. 

“Maybe you want some wooder instead?”

“Some what?”

“You really aren’t from around here, are you?”

Nestra lowered her gaze. Infiltration: failed. She expected it, but still.

“It’s that obvious?”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve seen a raider with such fancy armor before. Well, let me know if you need anything. Creamers are over there, on the counter.”

Nothing could salvage the coffee but some things could absolutely make it worse. Nestra would stab a lava leech but not this.

“Mind if I ask if you get monsters over here? I, uh, you feel exposed.”

Nestra closed her eyes as soon as she said this. Aunt Claire had complained about Nestra obsessing about the lack of fortresses in Switzerland, forgetting that most of the world now used regular purges and reinforced structures to protect itself from the much, much lower portal density. This wasn’t her continent. She needed to calm down.

“I got my Italian handshake here,” Rosie said, grabbing her shotgun from under the counter. It looked fine. “But that’s just if some goblin species gets uppity. The glass is reinforced here so it will last long enough for us to get underground to wait for the cavalry. I’m more concerned about idiots walking to their cars with their heads in their visors getting snatched like teenagers.

“I got it, Rosie, I got it,” one of the men grumbled from his table. “And thanks again. Wouldn’t have nailed the beast otherwise.”

He patted his waist where something that could give her Window Maker a run for its money rested. 

“I see.”

“So yes, I’m more worried about those fools, and drunken strangers starting something.” Rosie continued. “You’d think they’d know better than to fight in a Waffle Castle but here we are. Idiots.”

This opened the flood gates of Rosie’s decades-long retail-generated frustration. She had an accent Nestra struggled a bit to follow, but otherwise was a fine storyteller. Rosie had seen some shit in her years. It was clear that this place of the world had nowhere near the number of monsters Threshold had but as a result, they also had nowhere near the same protection and as usual it was the poor people who got the brunt of it. With the near collapse of mankind, affluent citizens had moved back to city centers while the less fortunate had replaced them in the more isolated, indefensible suburbs. People organized themselves into militia and raiders did their best but there wasn’t a week without some child getting eaten on their way home. The way Rosie painted it was disheartening. Threshold raiders were arrogant cunts, but at least they hunted strays with rabid determination. 

“How about a surveillance system? Cameras? No?”

“Cameras! Pah!” Rosie snorted.

By then, the three other patrons were shamelessly following their conversations.

“You’re not thinking about the cost, girl,” the oldest and fattest explained while playing with a half-eaten donut. “Cameras aren’t free and they’re just one thing. You also need an AI to spot a goblin racing across the street in half a second. Getting one means paying for servers, maintenance, bandwidth, and most importantly, electricity. Nowadays, corps eat Gigwatts as quickly as plants get built… built and defended. You don’t have to worry about the big cities: those are under surveillance. But out here in the ass end of nowhere? Nobody gives a shit.”

No camera coverage. No fortifications. In a way, it was to Nestra’s advantage, but her Threshold instincts just made her feel terribly unsafe. Rosie picked up on it, though she didn’t comment. By then, the other patrons were more than happy to regale her with stories of resilience in the face of constant, background tragedy. It reminded her of the end of MaxSec: the feeling that no matter how hard she fought, life was just a fraying thread between her bloody fingers. But those people were different. They were fighting another kind of battle: one of adaptation, not one of defiance. The oldest patron’s grandchild had recently awakened as a gleam. Another’s wife was one, and so would their daughters be when they grew up. It only lasted for an hour, but Nestra was almost surprised when her phone rang. 

“Are you secure?” a modulated voice asked from the other end.

Her phone qualified the connection as secure so she assumed this was the pick up Ragnarok had promised.

“Hmm yeah, I’m in the Waffle Castle.”

“Please come out on the main road then turn left.”

“Ok. See you soon.”

“Your friend?” Rosie asked.

Nestra nodded. Looked like she wouldn’t get to try the fries after all, a tragedy. She exchanged farewells with everyone, giving her heartfelt thanks for the welcome. She was almost past the door when one of the men stopped her.

“Young lady?”

“Hmmm.”

He looked a bit awkward.

“Look, I can give you another hour but then I got to report you, or I’ll lose my job if it’s ever found out you came here. Sorry, everyone. I can’t afford it.”

One of the guys clearly had no idea what was happening, but both Rosie and the old one had recognized her as a Thresholder. And they’d still welcomed her.

“One hour’s more than enough. Thank you… and good luck out there.”

Nestra left at a brisk pace. Light from many stars lit her path. The warmth of the day had now fully dissipated, and the cold offered a welcome resonance to her mana. She spotted the outline of a car parked some distance away from the road, hidden behind trees. A pair of high-tech binoculars inspected her from behind dark windows. She waved.

No reaction. The passenger door opened, which was invitation enough. The car itself was armored and spacious though there was only one person inside: a tanned aug with eyes a brown so light they were almost amber. His buzz cut was clean, giving him a military bearing that the unadorned shirt only reinforced. He immediately scanned Nestra with a disturbingly familiar black box device.

“One moment, please.”

It beeped green.

“No bug then,” she said.

He blinked. 

“You’re familiar. Ah, of course. First thing first, were you recognized?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

The car roared on the road.

“They said they’d leave me an hour but we should still probably get out of here.”

“More than enough. We’ll get my car and get away long before that.”

Nestra frowned.

“Whose car is this?”

“Private security. I stole it from a gated community.”

Nestra laughed. 

“I have a house. We’ll go there first, then talk about what Ragnarok wants from you. Before you do it’s better if we don’t learn too much from each other. You can call me Smith.”

“Ok Smith. Anything I should know?”

“You don’t need to know anything, but I could use some help splashing gas on the car before we leave.”

“Not here for two hours and I’m already committing arson? It’s a party.”

***

Smith was actually named Jones instead, or at least that’s what his cover was. The aug worked as a sort of freelance telecom engineer for those parts of the countryside that couldn’t depend on larger corporations. He was doing pretty well for himself. More importantly, his job justified a van, odd hours, and a house full of tech stuff Nestra couldn’t remotely identify. He led her to an underground bunker installation complete with living stuff, weapons, and a large meeting room. Although it was approaching 10 PM here, the morning had barely started in Threshold. Ragnarok called for a conference call which connected on the spot.

Nestra struggled not to whistle.

“If I had known the meeting would be so loaded I would have worn something better,” she joked.

Ragnarok was decidedly unamused in her crisp uniform, but both Shinran and mayor Kim smiled. It was her first time seeing the baseline who ruled over Threshold’s political scene outside of an official setting. Ah, who was she kidding? This was as official as it could get.

“Palladian, you have been gone for six months,”

“Felt longer to me. Probably time shenanigans.”

“Regardless,” Ragnarok continued with a pointed glare, “you have an unfortunate tendency not to mention important facts until prodded so we would like a summary of your findings with a priority on those that affect us. Any impending disaster?”

“No, only impending opportunities,” Nestra replied, which made Ragnarok pale a little and that was honestly such a blatant lack of trust, Riel.

“First and least important, I can leave this place and return to Threshold without physically getting out of the house thanks to my amazing space powers. I’ll explain more later. I’d like to keep it confidential.”

“You have the three people with the highest clearance in the nation currently sitting at this table,” Shinran diplomatically reminded her.

“Oh ok but please don’t share it anyway. I can make tiny, temporary bridge worlds. About one every six hours for now. That means I can be in Threshold in… ten hours or so. I haven’t fully recovered yet.”

Shinran and Rangarok exchanged a glance.

“How many can you keep active?” the false monk asked.

“Only the one at a time for now, and not for very long.”

“Still,” Shinran whispered. 

“This is vital information, Crescent. Thank you. But you mentioned you had more?”

“I found Riel. He left for Beirut.”

The mayor spat his coffee all over the table. Shinran was so shocked he didn’t react when arabica stained his orange cassock. Ragnarok’s mouth opened in a ‘o’ of disbelief. 

Nestra allowed herself a smug grin, pushing muscular arms behind her back.

“Was a bit difficult but I managed. He should make contact soon.”

“Is this a joke?” Ragnarok whispered.

“Nope! Found him alive, brought him back. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“This is… this is…”

“Impossibe, it changes…”

“Masaka da…”

Nestra basked in the shock for a grand ten seconds before losing patience. 

“Nestra, please tell me you are not, what was it, yanking my chain?” Shinran said, eyes shining with hero worship.

“I already confirmed it once so get a grip. I still have the most important announcement to make.”

Never had she caused more terror to stronger people. It was intoxicating.

“So my home species is rather curious about humans. I suggested establishing an official diplomatic channel between my two favorite people, with the added benefit that the male members won’t come to hunt you for sport. The female coven I belong to is going to show up in, uh, about two weeks I think.”

“You think?” Kim asked, aghast.

“Yeah so time flows differently in different parts of the multiverse so it’s hard to be fairly exact. The expedition will consist of one C-class…”

She could see Shinran relax, the fucking idiot.

“Three A-class.”

Kim slowly put his glass down and honestly he should have known better than to try and get more coffee.

“And an S-class.”

“Pardon?”

“I mean, I guess we’re going for S-class, right? That’s the easiest way to continue the scale?”

Shinran had his eyes closed while Ragnarok had facepalmed but not in an embarrassed way, more like an overwhelmed way. She understood. Still funny.

“That’s all! I’ll let you guys digest that. I’d like to talk to my family.”

“Palladian, do you have any notion of the significance…”

“I do that’s why I told you. And don’t forget to attribute finding Riel to me because it was my doing. He won’t let you anyway. Cool guy.”

They stayed silent.

“Palladian, you invited a group powerful enough to ravage Earth to discuss diplomacy with us?”

“Yes, so make sure to be polite. So, can I call my mom now?”

“Yes, Clytemnestra Palladian,” Kim said. “you have given us much to consider. We will be needing some time.”

“Neat, wired. See you later.”

Nestra used Jones’ sophisticated indirect network to call her mom’s phone. Fortunately she wasn’t raiding at the moment so the call connected.

“Who are MY DAUGHTER!”

Her mom’s face went from arrogantly cold to excited in an instant.

“Mooom, I’m back!”

“Larger daughter, where are you and why is it not where I am?”

“I just came back to Earth! I portalled in!”

“And where did you portal in?”

“.... Philadelphia.”

“Clytemnestra Palladian. Why are you in Philadelphia?”

“I, uh, I was in a rush to get back to Earth and just portalled wherever. I should have been more patient.”

Mom gave her the glare.

“Mooooom, I was in a rush to go home.”

“What did I say about portal raiding and rushing?”

“But Moooom!”

“Nestra Nestra Nestra Nestra!” Helena screamed from the other room, and Nestra knew she was saved. “I got your nuts! Do you have more of the nuts? Sashimi was so cute.”

“No she wasn’t.”

“Hold on Helena, your sister might be in trouble. Do you need us to come pick you up?”

“No, I called work and they took care of it. I’ll let you know when I can return, but it might take a little while. Also I have sort of adopted a little sister of my species when I was away. She’ll come and visit in two weeks or so. I hope I won’t be intruding.”

“Nonsense. Obviously I wish you had discussed this with us beforehand.”

Dad also showed up in the frame, silently bringing his dependable presence.

“But we’ll be glad to accommodate her. The more the merrier. I’m sure we shall all have a blast!”

Nestra considered asking them to secure a human corpse for Grook’s mask before deciding against it. The timing felt ill-advised.

***

Ragnhil Lindstrom sat at her desk after what promised to be an extremely complex series of new issues dumped over a plateful of extremely complex unresolved issues. A part of her wanted to repatriate the young genius’ butt on the spot for a deeper debrief, but access to the American mainland offered… options. Options perhaps worth the risk even when the agent had become one of the most vital diplomatic assets on the planet. She knew Crescent would be up for the task.

Once, Ragnhild had entertained the possibility of using Crescent as a counter to Shinran should he go rogue. The option remained as a long-term solution, but obviously her dual nature complicated the issue. The main point was, however, not the girl’s ambitions, but her mind.

Ragnhild had been an Olympian, then her protegees had brought five gold medals in cross-country skiing in the span of her long career. It took not just physical abilities but a certain mindset to triumph over the entirety of mankind, to not be just one in a million, but one in six billion: a certain kind of madness balancing fortitude and near maniacal drive. Palladian had it. She was as driven as she was talented. Moreover, her human self cultivated a helpful blonde persona that made others underestimate her, but Ragnhild wasn’t fooled. It had taken cunning and preparation to establish ‘Cooking with Crescent’ as a massively successful PR campaign. She had found Riel and thus brought mankind its savior back, a deed that would set her up as a hero. The girl was sharp in her single-minded kind of way. 

Hence, possibilities.

It was notoriously difficult to inject a gleam in the continental US because, even though monsters still ran rampant, their border control was devilishly effective. But Palladian had somehow landed there.

Ragnhild was familiar with the young woman’s recorded abilities. Now, she had a motivated B-class elite raider with unmatched infiltration abilities as well as a tendency for mayhem embedded deep in enemy territory. Someone with a shadow and void affinity. Someone who had orchestrated the prisoner rescue in the bridge world, despite a rather lackluster exfiltration. She had been C-class then. All but one member of Vanquisher were with the fleets in the Pacific in an effort to prevent the loss of more carriers leaving exactly one A-class to defend the entire mainland. That meant, Ragnhild had the mother of all foxes in the fat henhouse. The only thing required of her, provided young Palladian was inclined, was to set mission parameters and watch the sparks fly. 

Without hesitation, Ragnhild activated her communicator.

“Ma’am?”

“Get me agent Winslow. Tell him I want him in my office with all versions of Project Quiet in one hour.”

“Yes. Ma’am. He’ll be delighted.”

Ragnarok hung up. There was something else young Palladian had said that suddenly occurred to her. Something about opening a portal to another plane, then back to Threshold…

Wait a minute.

“Helvete, I have an idea.”

***

It might have been night here but portal lag and her own anxiety prevented Nestra from thinking about sleeping. She was given a datasheet with internet access hidden behind several layers of redundant security to read the news, allowing her to catch up to what proved to be a clusterfuck of biblical proportions. 

After her departure, most of Earth’s more influential government had scrambled to react with a speed that hinted at triggered contingency plans. Threshold had come ahead, at first, by entering agreements with almost all surrounding nations. This had sundered the usual alliances to form a benevolent core around the city. South Korea had been the first to declare for Threshold thanks to deep-rooted cultural ties. An agreement for a ‘research corps’ had been signed in three days. Nestra was no fool. The agreements must have been prepared ahead of time precisely for this eventuality. Even China had been placated, though Nestra was certain it was more to oppose the US than anything else. The response from the US had been a complete mess. It seemed that Rebirth — the transformation obsessed rabid cunts — had jumped the gun expecting massive popular support, only for their propaganda effort to fall on its face. It turned out that most of their fellow citizens didn’t actually want to go to war over access to the bridge world while a large portion of their territory remained under monster control. Imagine that. A diplomatic back and forth had occurred for months while everyone sort of tiptoed around the big conflict, talked in emergency summits and generally engaged in backroom deals of unprecedented complexity. It was clear Threshold was willing to allow guests in so long as they were this: guests. Nestra was sure an old fox like Mayor Kim would turn those agreements into profitable leashes soon enough.

But for some reason the conflict had heated up eight days before when repeated failures to advance a deal led to a ‘provocation’. People had died. Boats had been sunk — historically a big nono. For a while, it looked like the world would descend into a conflagration, but a new balance had been achieved. China sent her own carriers in the Pacific while additional American fleets joined the ‘besieging force’. Threshold had Shinran and a newly discovered ability to attract kaiju, which, of course they would weaponize it the bastards. The Americans had a massive fleet, their own A-class and experimental missiles that could kill kaiju and wound A-class. At least two of the adversaries had access to nuclear weapons. Even with blood in the waters, everyone hesitated to pull the trigger again. New emergency meetings were called, with the occasional missile toss and sunken ship to put additional pressure on both sides. One of the news articles showed the Beacon, a gaping hole in its side burning in the night while another gif showed it the next day, the wound already cleaned and attended by a literal swarm of drones. Some enterprising flying bogan had defaced the windows to the side with eight thick letters in red paint that read a defiant message, large enough to be read five districts away.

“OUCH CUNT,” it said. 

Actually, there was something familiar about the way the ‘c’ curled and… oh no she fucking wouldn’t. But who was Nestra kidding? Of course, she would.

“Dammit Claire. Ugh.”

The most interesting part was how split the Americans were on the issue. Clearly, the fundie assholes had overestimated how hateful people actually were. A dangerous flutter of hope moved her treacherous heart. 

The coven was going to show up in… a bit more than two weeks or so given the difference she’d experienced. They could come upon a warring mankind, or… Nestra could do something about it. 

Among the covens or the heavenly court, Nestra was a tiny potato with a dream. Here, she was a B-class and not a weak one either. A part of her just wanted to portal back out, wait five to six hours and then return to Threshold, and that was the better plan. It was safe. She missed her family.

On the other hand… the future of mankind hung in the balance.

Nestra leaned forward on her rented bunk. 

“Guess it’s up to me again.”

***

Nestra wasn’t sure she’d heard Ragnarok right, but Jones sitting by her side only nodded.

“You want me to hit a troll farm?” She asked for confirmation.

“It’s nothing as simple as a ‘troll farm’, but rather the headquarters of a complex and highly refined propaganda organ under the control of Rebirth.”

Nestra paused, not fully understanding.

“We’re talking dueling A-class and carrier squadrons dishing it out over the Pacific. And this will decisively change the course of the war?”

“Kim believes so, and I trust him,” Ragnarok replied. “Him and his army of PR experts.”

“I know information is important, but…”

“It’s not about information, Nestra, it’s about manufacturing consent.”

Nestra waited for Ragnarok to arrange her thoughts which only took a couple seconds, but it was telling that the old monster even needed it.

“We are facing a democracy. In democracies, power depends on elections, and elections depend on public opinion. That public opinion can be significantly altered with some effort and techniques, to a degree anyway. The key is, if every piece of media talks about an issue all the time and that the discussion draws engagement from viewers, this issue becomes central to public opinion, and thus to elections, and thus to power. In theory, a country can pay tens of millions of credits to a large media corporation to portray them in a good light. It is being done by Threshold right now.”

Nestra wasn’t surprised, merely disappointed.

“Do not give me this face, Crescent. We all do it. The issues selected to be the main focus on media corporations, as well as the way the information itself is presented are all part of the process to manufacture consent, to convince the public that the conclusion they reached came from themselves while they were fed data in a specific way in order to achieve the required result. Selected footage, interviews with ‘experts’, hand-picked statistics, portrayal of the other side as unreasonable and emotive: those are all tools in the hands of the propagandist. Right now, those propagandists have slightly overestimated the result of their work on the general populace, but it will not last.”

“Their own work on isolationism hamstrung their efforts,” Jones explained.

Nestra almost expected Ragnarok to chew his head off for interrupting her, but she merely nodded. She reassessed his level of expertise to ‘super high’.

“The information gathered by Jones allowed us to identify this center as Rebirth’s prime propaganda center, which gives us a unique opportunity to act,” Ragnarok continued.

“You want me to go in and, what, break everything?”

Ragnarok shook her head.

“People, servers, those are all meaningless. Or at least extremely replaceable. What we need is the accounts. The center has control over a dense network of websites used for circular reporting.”

Nestra frowned again.

“I will explain how it works,” Jones said, voice cooling noticeably. “They create a bogus study which they publish in a serious-sounding science magazine owned by a for-profit university with a grand name like Anthropological University of Pennsylvania or the like. Website A publishes an outrageous article citing this study, then website B picks up the story, quoting website A. Website C does the same quoting website B… and then website A quotes website C as source. Now, all the clickbait articles dangled under the nose of viewers come with a list of apparently reliable sources. Of course, they control every organism involved from the start. It’s just a ploy…”

Anger flew over him like a passing cloud, but he soon reasserted control.

“There is no truth. It’s all buried in an ouroboros of muddy bullshit.”

“I get the idea,” Nestra replied. “So, those websites…”

“Not just the website admin codes, but also reports, payments to influencers, everything. If Winslow’s plan works, we can pull off the mask.”

“And that will help with the war effort?” Nestra said with some doubt.

“Kim believes that it will. If anything, it will grant us a few days of silence.”

Nestra nodded. She didn’t really get it, but it didn’t matter. She trusted Ragnarok and Kim. It was an infiltration mission. Those were kind of her specialty. 

“Am I reinstated by the way?” Nestra asked.

“You were on administrative leave so no, you are not reinstated, because you were never off the force.”

“Ok, cool.”

“Unpaid administrative leave,” Ragnarok elaborated.

Nestra rolled her eyes. She was filthy rich now so who cared? No, what interested her was something money couldn’t buy. 

“I have a request,” Nestra said. “I will need some specific gear.”

“Name it?” Ragnarok said with mounting dread.

“I want access to Threshold’s proprietary point defense cannons so I can pick one for myself.”

The meeting turned awkwardly quiet. Ragnarok crossed her arms.

“This again, Crescent?”

“I swear I really have a use for it.”

“Palladian… This is an infiltration mission. A point-defense cannon designed to take down incoming missiles and small crafts isn’t conducive to stealth.”

“Boss, do you want a B-class alien infiltrator or not?” Nestra said, crossing her arms in turns. “That’s the price and it’s not even a big one. Come on.”

“You don’t have clearance to use those,” Ragnarok said.

“Which is why I’m asking politely instead of helping myself. Meet me in the middle. I will not budge,” Nestra said, her tone final.

Seriously she was going to be taking some major risks. Least they could do was to keep it entertaining.

“Alright, alright. Fine. Point defense cannon it is.”

“You won’t regret it!” Nestra exclaimed.

But she knew they would regret it.