It is now the afternoon of the Friday, and Brakagi has already conducted successfully the first four renegotiated trade deals for the Big Ten. The first few to answer his calls are Rocky Labourer's Alliance, Galactic United Mines and All Intelligence. Then, Star Bank and Dynasty Investments followed the trend and replied as passionate second fiddles, as they have always been.
As the president of the One Rock Government, he has obviously opened up the first day of negotiations with the company created by his own people, which is also instrumental in the development of Geb 4. Then, at the request of RLA's representative, he met and signed the mining deals with Galactic United Mines, which is closely tied with the RLA in a variety of business ventures. The first two days went by smoothly, and it wasn't much of a battle at all, to Brakagi's surprise.
It appeared those few mega-corporations are also looking for changes in the status quo of the galaxy, particularly after what has happened to the Infinity, the single biggest company in the galaxy. The most troublesome meetings are surprisingly the slimy pair of Dynasty Investments and Star Bank which actually offered up the third and fourth earliest meeting dates, pushing All Intelligence back into the fifth day.
They all came in saying how much they appreciated the work that the One Rock government is doing before trying to push forward the outrageous deals which will all subtly offer their companies clever workarounds for the taxes, regulations and policies put in place by the Galactic government. Some of it are straight forward redirections and redistributions, but Brakagi's fellow loyal analysts quickly pointed out a few of the more cheeky proposals.
The representatives initially denied the accusations, but soon gave in as even Brakagi, the economically inept Rocky is able to see the loop holes. He wanted the One Rock government to be able to compete fair and square with the Galactic government after the opportunity created with the power of his ring of Instability. He doesn't want to go against the laws of the government directly, or even support shady activities done by the Big Ten.
In fact, part of his motivations are to prevent such mega-corporations from doing whatever they wanted and gain political influence as they have with Dr Dorry May's galactic government.
The two days of intense negotiations are tiring and left a bad taste in his mouth, as the overweight human representatives continued to flop about in his pond and trying to figure out every nooks and crannies of detail as they presses a yard forward whenever Brakagi is willing to offer an inch.
But those humans are finally out of the way, and the expectations are such that the more technologically oriented humans from All Intelligence, the biggest artificial intelligence design and distributor, are going to be more pleasant to talk to. Looking at the list of itinerary to be covered today, it is mostly about general policies and infrastructures, and every appeared to be very simple and straight forward. He has his advisors and analysts on call at any moment, but he doubt he will really need them for today.
The representative is to arrive in early afternoon, and Brakagi has assured that it is fine for him to train the three artifact users instead of overlooking the boring political and economical matters, as his talents are better used on the battle field.
'President Brakagi. The representative is heading up the elevator now.' The security guards alerted Brakagi, breaking away the silence. Taking a sip of the spiced Rocky coffee courtesy of Rocky Laborer's Alliance Rep, Brakagi prepared himself for the chat.
A pair of security droids are constantly on standby right outside his giant office as a corridor cuts across. There are various empty offices, storage rooms and bunkers on the same floor if one is to turn left after exiting the office. The elevator is positioned on the right-hand side of the office, and there is no direct lines of sight from the elevator towards the office for security reasons.
A screen on Brakagi's table showed the position of the elevator, and as it reaches the top of the tower where his office is located, the elevator in the corridor lets out a gentle chime before opening up. The security droids remained still, and an arrow on the ground guides the representative into the office, as the doors slid apart automatically upon her approach.
The representative is a short human girl with white hair, and she is dressed in a purple hoodie and a pair of brown jeans today with a pair of decorative dark edged glasses. A classic human techy look that stemmed all the way back from the modern ages. Back then, it was more of a necessity and habit, but that has developed slowly into it's own branch of fashion over the past few centuries.
'Welcome.' Brakagi said, leaping off his chair and pointing towards the set up of tables and sofas at the front of the office next to the window where he met with Hong Fu and Vindy way back. The small talks are a human tradition, and Brakagi intended to respect it as he has a variety of drinks and snacks prepared on the table for the consumption by his guests, 'Miss...Delevaine, of All Intelligence?'
'Miss D is fine, Mr President.' The human girl said with a pleasant smile as she gently bows towards Brakagi, a standard gesture of respect and politeness across the three species.
'Please...just call me Brakagi.' Brakagi said, as he took a seat onto the sofa and pressed a button to turn up the brightness of the room just a little bit, allowing more of the afternoon sun to come in, 'titles are no longer meaningful to me.'
'Oh? How so?' Miss D asked.
'Because all that matters is whether things get done.' Brakagi said, 'and titles are just means to an end.'
'That's noble.'
'Maybe.' Brakagi said, as he focuses his gaze on the spiced biscuits that has now become his go to over the past few days, 'how's was your travels? Have you had a chance to look around Geb 4?'
'Just a little bit.' Miss D replied before pointing her finger towards one of the sweet chocolate wafers laying around, 'may I? That looks delicious...'
'Of course! Where have you been?'
'Well.....I went to the Western Park recently, but the thing happened.....' Miss D said, snapping the wafer in half and sending it down the shoot, 'I also went to the reserves outside. I like nature.'
'Yeah.....sorry about that.' Brakagi replied with a bureaucratic smile, 'We are working on it.'
'I am sure.' Miss D said before reaching to the vanilla flavored wafer without a moment's hesitation, and Brakagi's like it. The slightly overweight representatives of Dynasty investments thought of the snack's station as a test of sorts, and despite them constantly eyeing towards the pile of snacks, nobody made a move. In comparison, the one he has today seemed a lot more straight forward.
'Now.....speaking of work, should we get down to business?' Brakagi said, gesturing towards the table located up a few flights of stairs towards the back of the room, and Miss D nodded in response. She only brought up a small backpack, and looked much more like a student on the first day of an internship rather than the representatives of one of the biggest companies in the galaxy.
The two joined at Brakagi's work table, and a glass of mineral water is offered up automatically by the hidden mechanisms in the table as the two of them took their seats. Then, Miss D took out a holographic projector and placed it on the table as Brakagi began to set everything up.
As Miss D worked her fingers on the holograms, entering the security codes, she nonchalantly comments, 'quite a lot of things have happened recently, hasn't it?'
'Excuse me?' Brakagi asked as he switched on the anti-spying interference generator at his table, ensuring this conversation staying private.
'I mean, around the entire galaxy.' Miss D explained, still looking at the hologram in front of her, 'of course, the drastic societal and political shifts creates more opportunities for us, but just to the everyday people around.....it's been quite a year, hasn't it?'
'I guess you are right.' Brakagi said, not thinking too much of the remark, 'so where should we start?'
'Let's start from the beginning.....' Miss D said, her voice now darkening as she took the initiative and showed three holograms next to each other.
The first one showed the decaying trajectory of Olympus B, as it nears it's exit from the Olympus system at the current moment, the second one showed the news conference where Senator Zender pledged for the help of the artifact users and the third one showed the sudden disappearance and reappearance of Olympus Prime.
'What are these for?' Brakagi asked, as he sat and waited for Miss D to begin. He has seen just about every tactics used in beginning the pitch of a trade deal, and yet this is the first time that anyone has started with the not so current events in the galaxy. However, those are the few biggest things that has happened. All the other events before and after kind of paled in comparison.
'We have been using artificial intelligence since singularity back in the late modern age,' Miss D said, remembering from the script that Hong Fu has provided for her, 'but the developments of hyperturings, or hypercomputing, where the intelligence and computation capabilities of such programs far exceed what we can do, has been slow and methodical. Because we are never certain of what those powers can entail, and the human and sub-human level intelligence often works well enough.'
'However, All Intelligence has finally decided to take such a step, and in it's training process, we used modified events based off what has happened recently, and the program connected the dots all by itself.' Miss D said, as a pre-made symbol of the hyperturing is showed as part of her slide show, 'given the known physical laws and what is assumed of these things known as artifacts, the hyperturing suggested that only an artifact can lead to such things happening.'
'Of course, as designers of this program, we wanted to verify and figure out why such a conclusion can be drawn, so we did some searching elsewhere...' Miss D said, before bringing up a GBI internal report, courtesy of one of Hong Fu's long-standing sources, which recorded a break in by two armed Rockies possessing seemingly metaphysical superpowers, and among the identified Rocky is Brakagi.
'What are you suggesting? This is nothing but fortified evidence done by the GBI to discredit me.' Brakagi asked, maintaining his stance, though mentally he has been preparing for a day where the past has been dug up, he isn't expecting today to be the day. Checking that the interference generator is functioning as normal, he continued, 'I thought we are here to talk about trade deals?'
'Well, you can't talk about trade deals without all the cards on the table, can you?' Miss D said with a sly grin on her face, 'Brakagi, you are one of those artifact users, aren't you?'
'What actual evidences do you have?' Brakagi said, leaning back and trusting that both himself and Jozzor has done all that he needed to be done to clean up everything on their end. As for whatever GBI's saying, Brakagi has already ensured that the GBI's public standings are at it's all time low with the reveal of their involvement in his previous downfall.
'That's the thing.' Miss D said, shaking her head disappointingly, 'we don't have any evidence further than that. And the conclusions of the hyperturing can only go so far. But I just wanted to put forward the fact that we know something is going on with you, Mr President, and we intend to utilize this to our advantage in the trade talks. Of course, this won't be too much trouble for you, but it will still seem suspicious to some people in the galactic government.'
'Noted, now.....shall we begin, properly this time?' Brakagi said, rubbing his chin and suppressing his anger.
The trade talks then continued as intended with the backdrop of Miss D's presentation. However, Hong Fu dialed up all of the conditions up to eleven, hoping to put more and more pressure onto Brakagi. For the first few clauses, Brakagi is still patient enough deal with it, but as time goes on, the demands of All Intelligence became more and more aggressive, as they have also asked to have exclusive share of the distribution of artificial intelligence in the entire region of New Olympus, and that is before half the trade deals are done.
The pricing they are asking is also outrageous, and especially so given all of the recent spending that Brakagi has put the One Rock Government in just to get to this point in time.
The replies from the analysts on stand by is as expected a resounding no, and Brakagi's reactions is as expected.
'Miss D.' Finally, Brakagi consolidated all of this anger into a single point, as he came to realize that there are truly no easy days on the negotiating table, 'You are pushing way too many buttons here. You know this negotiation is to the interest of the both of us, and all of the terms of the deals are simply way too far out of line, and you know it.'
'Mr President. That would have been the case, but ever since we know that you have a hand in forcing the galaxy in it's current state now, we planned to be proactive in this future that you alone have created.' Miss D said, as she pushed even further forward, 'who knows that you won't drop a sun on us later down the line if we do not lay everything out nice and early.'
Compared to the slimy representatives from Star Banks and Dynasty Investments, the tech company turned out to be way more troublesome!
'If you wanted to leverage the information to prevent any suspicions of future activities, go head.' Brakagi said, still watching his words extremely carefully, 'but don't mistake that for doing whatever you want in the trade deals too.'
Miss D lets out a sign and murmured something that Brakagi couldn't really hear.
'All of this would have been much easier if you had just admitted that you had a hand in the decaying orbits of Olympus B, but I guess it can't be helped.' Miss D said, stretching her arms out, 'I guess this will have to do.'
Brakagi looked at her closely and observed her movements, 'you are not really the representative of All Intelligence, are you?'
'Nope.'
'Who are you?'
'I am Miss D.' She said, 'and I was hired to take you down.'
'Oh really?' Hong Fu said, pressing a button to summon Jozzor, but it was unresponsive, 'you couldn't have carried any weapons past the security levels.'
'You are right.' Miss D nodded her head, 'but I don't need weapons.'
'You are awfully confident.' Brakagi said, preparing the ring of Instability and summoned the security droids from the outside with a snap of his finger. He would have no issue engaging in the fight himself, with both the aid of his enhancements and the artifact itself, but he wanted to know what Miss D is really about, and he can tell a lot from just how Miss D fights. Deep down, he has a suspicion that Miss D may be linked to the mysterious attacks around, but he didn't actually ask for much further details of the attacker beyond the most basic of information, trusting his right hand man to handle this matter by himself.
And obviously, that wasn't the best idea. Brakagi will have to scold Jozzor later, and it appeared that an even more effective interference generator is placed in the area as his emergency summoning for Jozzor is disabled. He tapped his finger on the alarm button attached to the bottom side of the table, and it is also disabled as expected.
Whoever Miss D really is, she came prepared, and a fight will have to happen no matter what.
The security droids budged in through the door, and they locked their rifles on Miss D. She lets out a grin before stretching her arms up overhead back as she flicked two tiny pieces of an unknown substance back towards the two droids. Brakagi's sharp eyes caught onto the general shapes of them before two gassy explosions went off right on top of the security droids, throwing the two mechanical bodies back through the glass doors and into the wall. The shielding are completely obliterated as the internal electrical circuits are exposed with sparks popping in and out.
At the exact same time of Miss D's movement to take out the droids, Brakagi leapt onto the table with a hand outreached towards Miss D, but she kicked down onto the ground and propelled herself away along with her backpack.
There is no mistake now, she is the mysterious artifact user that attacked the monument and fought against Jozzor. Just now as Miss D was tossing the two exploding substances back, her hands lets out the unmistakable glow of artifact activation. However, Brakagi is fairly certain that those things ain't bubble gum, and it probably explains why the explosions are very different from what could have blew up the monuments.
Explosions are drastic release of energy, but it can come in many forms, and the one just now are not resultant of bubble collapse, which is actually one of the most violent physical processes. The one just now are more akin to a sort of rapid gas release.
It is just as Jozzor have reported. She seemed to have some sort of amplifying and strengthening artifact.
'What was the weapon you just used?' Brakagi asked, jumping off the table and approaching Miss D slowly.
'I didn't carry weapons. Only food.' Miss D said excitedly with a grin from ear to ear, 'that was a popping candy, and it will give off gases once moisturized. Very nice pop in the mouth.'
So this is how it is going to go? Brakagi thought, as he prepared himself for the fight. He had an energy pistol attached to his belt, but isn't sure if it's actually going to cause any substantial damage after hearing about how she can also amplify the durability of her clothes with Amplifier.
Funnily enough, Jozzor and Hong Fu provided all of the intelligence they have gained the artifact itself, but didn't actually give Brakagi enough clues about the actual appearance of the user.
But still, regardless of what Jozzor and Hong Fu has said, Brakagi still wanted to see things for himself. Pulling out the pistol rapidly, Brakagi unleashed a barrage of shots onto Miss D, and her fingers glowed brightly onto the hoodie she's wearing as the bolts are dissipated as heat, leaving nothing but a tiny black dot on it.
'You know it, don't you?' Miss D taunted as she stood still and tossed her backpack aside, 'you have to use your artifact.'