Someone snickered loudly when they heard her claim of doing good for the world. Kelvin didn't need to wonder why. He would have snickered too if not for his professional ethics.
It was a small interlude, though. Red Dream continued. "But some people have developed a counterfeit of my product. As if that isn't bad enough, they want to eliminate me from the market."
"Negotiations have failed with the Blue Crystal Gang. Now it is time for war. You lot will be my weapons of war. If you have more questions, refer to the dossier that will be passed out soon. I'll give you 5 minutes to make up your mind. After that period of grace, you can leave or you can follow me into battle."
A heavily tattooed man passed across a tray around the room. Each villain picked one of the booklets on it and passed the tray on. Kelvin was not an exception.
He wondered briefly why all of this information was not made available over the terminal, but he glossed over it to concentrate on the dossier.
The dossier was a little book full of pictures of people and information about them. On the first page was their boss. The information about her was mostly about her gang, its location, and the market share of narcotics that she controls.
He didn't like what he saw about the location of her factory. It is on a large farm outside New London. That meant it didn't have the protection against incursions.
His dislike is important because her factory is the most important target to protect. That meant he would have to leave New London.
It didn't help that the location of the facilities of the Blue Crystal Gang was also outside New London. All of the other viable targets were outside of the city too.
The dossier was basically a summary of the targets for protection or destruction. Most of it was full of images of the leaders and officials of the Blue Crystal Gang. There was information about their abilities and the bounty for their heads.
With this information, he can decide to either protect the interests of Red Dream or take the fight to the enemy by destroying their facilities or killing their officials.
He is free to do anything that pleases him. They will pay him for each head he brings if he decides to take the fight to them. Or they will pay him for each hour of protection duty he performs.
And in the likely case where the factory will be attacked, they will pay him for each kill he makes plus the bounty on the officials he kills. He can also give up and return home. All in all, it was a mission with a lot of freedom.
He was still reading the dossier after the 5 minutes he was given. So he had to put it aside to follow their boss to the transportation she had prepared for them.
There were large, heavily armored trucks down in the garage beneath the skyscraper waiting for them. Each truck had two benches in its back where everyone could sit looking straight at the person opposite to them.
There was no rush, as no one was in a particular hurry. Everyone got on one after the other in relative order and peace. Then the buses moved out of the district and away from the city.
Kelvin used the time to continue reading the dossier. He focused on the leader of the Blue Crystal gang. It was a man called Blue Crystal. He was blue and made of crystals. He was essentially a talking and walking humanoid blue crystal.
His ability is the blue crystal. It is highly durable, which grants him all around protection. He can also break away pieces of his body and plant them in the flesh of animals. These would cause the pieces of crystal to grow.
The crystals would infect the whole body and turn the animal, be they human or beast, into a crystal statue. Unlike the crystal of Blue Crystal himself, these crystals are fragile. They will shatter with the slightest force. Also, if crushed into powder, these crystals can produce an incredibly potent high.
Only the crystals from Blue Crystal himself can grow in flesh, so only he can produce the blue dust, and it is safe to consume after growth. It is incredibly addicting, but that doesn't count in the assessment of its danger.
What mattered was that the blue dust was incredibly potent. Unfortunately, producing it comes at a cost. It is not a particularly high cost since any kind of flesh will do. While a living creature is preferred for maximum thorough put , any meat will do.
Red dust, on the other hand, comes from plants that grow with soil just like any plant. Red Dream produces the seeds from the flowers in her vine hair. They will just need time to grow but she can plant as much as she wants. So she has an advantage over blue dust.
The fact that red dust is cheaper to make makes it cheaper to buy, which bestows it with a large market share. People also look favorably of it because it is not as addictive as its competition.
She is not the largest producer of narcotics around. There are other movers and shakers in the narcotics game. Unfortunately, the fact that she can't move her production easily and her plants can be destroyed, which will cripple her production, has made her a viable target for Blue Crystal to destroy in order to open up market share.
From the information Red Dream provided, Blue Crystal had tried to buy them out. He did so without money. Instead, he had one of his officers use her powers of seduction to forcefully recruit her workers and subordinates.
The allure of sex from this officer and the pleasure of blue dust combined with the threat of violence made Blue Crystal's attempt mostly a success. This is why Red Dream decided to hire external helpers to protect her interests.