[SG/LNH] Exarchs #28 - Hostile Takeover

[Dave Van Domelen]

     High atop Mount Graham is an observatory, an installation that caused a
great deal of controversy some years back for environmental reasons.  The
roads leading to the summit were thought to be harmful to the native strain
of red squirrels, who were thought to live nowhere else.  A great deal of
human public opinion was therefore swayed in favor of the red squirrel, and
against human science.
     This had, of course, all been part of a brilliant PR move engineered by
Halkyon the Rivertongued.  There had been no such subspecies in danger of
extinction, merely Red volunteers who accepted minor cosmetic modifications
to appear different.  And her plan had worked perfectly, drawing attention
away from the true centers of Red activity.
     Except for one worm in the acorn.  Jack.  He had literally fallen on top
of Project: Squirrelguy and destroyed it.  Halkyon's brilliant scheme had
come to naught, and her tiny heart still burned with hatred for the human as
a result.  She didn't dare show it, of course.  Her impartiality was part of
her professional image...give her a cause, and she'd advance it, whether or
not she believed in it.
     Still, it rankled her that first Jonkatta and now Gwen had given the Red
nation reason to cease hostilities with Jack.  Despite the fact that Jack
consorted with a Gray operative!  That alone should have been enough to keep
Jack square on the bullseye.
     But maybe Halkyon could move Jack into another killzone.  She finished
reading the spy reports from Missouri and cheebled happily.  The Grays were
dabbling with the sort of things that Jack loved to investigate, and it would
be simplicity itself to "aim" him at them.  If nothing else, it might drive a
wedge between him and the Grays, so that once her own Red nation came to its
senses and renewed hostilities with Jack, he would have no protectors of
consequence.  And she might even be able to send Gwen into it as a lure....


@>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`-     \\   //       -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@
 .|,Coherent Comics Presents      \\ //        #28 - Hostile Takeover
--X-------------------------     E }X{ ARCHS      copyright 2003 by the
 '|` A Superguy/LNH Tale          // \\        Dvandroid (Dave Van Domelen)
@>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`-     //   \\       -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@

     [cover shows Jack in a business suit, straightening his tie.
      Behind him the background is split down the middle: on the left
      is a gleaming high rise executive office, on the right are the
      flames of Hellfire.]

[June 30, 2003 - Los Angeles]

     "Bobb sounds unpleasant," Skysabre noted.
     "It's part of his job description," Jack replied.  "He's very skilled at
being unpleasant.  And he made it very clear that Satan T. Lucifer Jones did
NOT want me buying up enough voting stock in Hell Inc. to take over and
release myself from the contract I'd signed with him."
     "But he's the devil," Mairi added.  "If he tells you the Sun is bright,
don't be so fast to reach for the sunglasses."
     "Too true," Jack nodded.  "Still, he'll tell the truth sometimes if he
thinks you expect a lie, so I was pretty confused...."

               *              *              *              *

[May 27, 1999 - Hong Kong]

     Hong Kong was preparing for a party, but it was the sort of party where
you were pretty sure one of your old college buddies was going to get way too
drunk and vomit in the pool or something equally unpleasant.  Nearly two
years had passed since control of the city had been turned over to the
People's Republic of China, and while things were still pretty good for
everyone, they were all waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Would Hong Kong
change China, or would China change Hong Kong?
     Jack found that this fit his mood perfectly as he walked down streets
lit by neon signs and the occasional early fireworks.
     Here he was, a lone man, gobbled up by an empire of evil that exceeded
even the most propagandistic portrayls of the PRoC.  Could he really wrest
control of Hell (TM) away from Satan and change things for the better?  Or
would he just be swallowed up into the darkness and corruption, assuming
B.L.Z. Bobb stood by and let him try?  Was the threat real, or just a goad to
keep him on the path?  Did Satan WANT him to take over the CEO's chair?  It
seemed to be his only path to freedom, but it also looked more and more like
a trap.  Maybe he should give this up, and wait for another opportunity.
     "Hey, mister...you okay?"
     Jack broke out of his funk and noticed he was entering a somewhat
unpleasant neighborhood.  A husky beat cop was walking towards him, eyes
scanning the darkened alleyways nearby.
     "This isn't the sort of place to go wandering into while looking at your
feet," the cop advised.
     "Thanks," Jack nodded.  He could see the man's badge now, at least well
enough to make out that his name was Sammo Lau.  He started to turn back
towards the well-lit streets he had left, then stopped and asked on impulse,
"What do you think of all this, Officer?"  He gestured at some decorations
hung nearby, featuring the city's new flag of a white five-pointed flower on
a red field.
     Sammo paused, screwing up his face in an expression of contemplation.
Then he shrugged.  "Hong Kong's been under someone's rule since it was
founded, right?  We managed to be free under the Brits, we can manage it
under mainland management.  Hong Kong's a rough and tumble city, mister, or I
wouldn't have a job.  But when it comes right down to it, I don't think we're
likely to sit around waiting to see if China does us a dirty.  Maybe it'll
happen anyway, but not because we didn't try."  He smiled like the Buddha he
vaguely resembled.  "Besides, like my grandpa used to say: if you put a
teaspoon of tea in a bucket of piss, you have piss.  If you put a teaspoon of
piss in a bucket of tea, you have piss.  And Hong Kong's the strongest damn
piss in the world!"
     With that, Sammo patted Jack on the shoulder and went back on patrol.
     "What a strange metaphor," Jack muttered to himself.  Maybe it applied
to him, too.  But was he the tea, or the pee? 

               *              *              *              *

[May 28, 1999 - Hong Kong]

     Normally, when a company splits the stock into voting and non-voting
shares, it's because they want to hold a tighter rein on the company.  The
voting shares don't trade publicly, to avoid a hostile takeover of the sort
Jack was now attempting.
     But shares in Hell (TM) Inc. were little bits of Infernal Damnation in
paper (and electronic) form.  As Bobb had mentioned the other day, the whole
point was to spread them around.  Why split between voting and non-voting,
then?  To ramp up the envy of those who had non-voting shares, of course.
Sin made 666NASTYNASTYNASTY go 'round.  And to make them seem even more
special and desirable, they were only traded at one market at a time.  They
were exclusives, and any toymaker can tell you that exclusives will also ramp
up the greed.  Two sins for one share, what a bargain!  
     Hong Kong was the exclusive trading floor for Hell (TM) this year, a
deliberate thumbing of Satan's pointy nose at the Western powers who were
still anxious about China's influence.
     It also meant that Jack had to dodge a few more bullets on the trading
floor than was customary in the United States.  There was good work as a
floor trader in Hong Kong if you knew how to fight.
     "Sold..." whimpered Jack's current opponent as he signed over the stock
with a hand broken in three places.  
     It put him over the top, he now had 4% of the voting stock.  And if
B.L.Z. Bobb's threats were real, something should be happening right about...
     A swirling portal suddenly disgorged a horde of slavering demons wearing
red sportscoats and brandishing clipboards and personal digital assistants.
     ...now.
     "A stock buyback!" was the whisper that shot through the crowd of
Shaolin stockbrokers and Wu Shu moneymen.
     Jack stepped back for a moment and watched.  It was an awesome sight,
demons cleaving through the crowded brokers, gobbling up voting and non-
voting stock alike in a frenzy of financial bloodlust.  In mere moments,
almost all of the available shares had been acquired, and only a few
exceptionally hardy holdouts were being negotiated with.
     He smiled.  Perfect.
     "Louie?  Give the signal."
     Louie jumped onto a wall-hanging and transformed into his true shape,
that of a monkey.  He hooted, and it was as if the floor had exploded into a
mass of fur as every member of the trading firm Baije, Sanderson and Monkey
assumed *their* true monkey forms and lit into the demons with clipboards and
PDAs of their own, hooting and throwing donuts and coffee as they capered
about.
     The demons formed a defensive wedge, passing their stocks inward to
their leader to keep them safe from the simian assault.
     "We're too much monkey business for 'em, Jack.  Hee!"  Louie emphasized
his point by throwing a half-eaten danish square in the middle eye of a
five-eyed horror.  "I swear, sometimes I forget how fun it is to just let it
all hang out like this!"
     Jack nodded, but his eyes were fixed on the demon at the center of the
mass, a nattily-dressed and slender woman with long black hair and
cream-white tusks jutting from her mouth.  Her eyes blazed with a violet
flame that roared up ever brighter as she shouted commands to her forces.
     It was starting to work.  The monkeys were no match for an equal number
of demons, and they were bring driven back.  Time for Jack to play his part.
     Jack pulled out the sea-fixing pin that had been handed on to him by his
father, a weapon once carried by the Monkey King of his home reality.
Holding the slender rod pointed at the demonic pitboss, he commanded it to
grow to tremendous size.  It slammed down, crushing a few demons and
scattering the monkeys (who knew it was coming).  
     He ran along the path that his staff provided and was next to his
objective before she had time to move.
     "Fifty and three thirty-seconds!" Jack shouted, feinting with a low
kick.  
     "One hundred!" the she-demon countered, jumping up and into a hard punch
to the neck.  "ACK!"
     Taking advantage of her momentarily stunned condition and the fact that
the monkeys had all swarmed in behind him, he grabbed her shoulders and swung
her around in a complicated dance move, subtly applying leverage.  "Fifty
two!" 
     "Ah...eighty?" she hesitated.  She knew something was wrong, she had
strict instructions to not sell at all, but for some reason she was being
forced into negotiations nonetheless!  She sent out tendrils of her hair in
an attempt to bind the interloper.
     Jack shrank his staff back to a manageable size and twisted the hair up
in it as if he was about to give her a permanent wave with the staff as a
roller.  He pulled back hard.  "Fifty six!"
     She whimpered as she was bent backwards nearly double.  "Sold..." she
whimpered, signing the papers and handing them over.
     With an imploding sound and a reek of sulfur, the demons vanished.  And
then, a moment later, so did Jack.

               *              *              *              *

[May 28, 1999 - 666NASTYNASTYNASTY]

     The carpeting was a deep burgundy.  The desk was, of course, mahogany,
but with inlays of ebony.  A computer screen was built into the desktop,
which was almost entirely clear, save for an elegant pen and pencil set and a
small Tiffany lamp.  And the chair?  
     The chair was naugahyde.
     Satan T. Lucifer Jones stood behind the chair, gesturing to Jack that he
should sit.
     "You're the boss," he smiled.  "So take your place of honor."
     Jack was stunned.  "You've got to be kidding me.  After all I had to go
through, you're just inviting me in?"
     Satan smiled more widely, and the effect was not at all comforting.
"Oh, the demonic hordes, sending Bobb over to threaten you...I just had to
make sure you had what it takes.  Frankly, I'll be glad to take a vacation
from all of this," he gestured, and Jack could barely see out of the corners
of his eyes enormous mounds of paperwork on all sides.  They vanished when he
looked directly at them, however.  "Incorporating Hell (TM) has turned out to
be more hassle than it's worth...this place isn't supposed to punish ME,
after all!"  He chuckled.
     "Oh, so you're sloughing this all off on me?  Well, don't start packing
for Havana yet, I plan to fire myself and then leave," Jack replied.
     Satan chuckled again, almost definitely a bad sign.  "No, it's not going
to be this bad forever.  I managed to get an Author to fix things for me, but
it'll take a few more months yet.  But I certainly wouldn't mind a few weeks'
vacation before having to take care of all the wrap-up details, eh?  And you
do have a few pieces of unfinished business you could take care of before
handing in your fuschia slip."
     "Like?"
     "Well, you never *did* finish that job checking on the spaceship that
was stolen from us and renamed the Alamo's Revenge's Revenge," he ticked off
the point on one finger.  "You could always anonymously donate the Five
Brothers to a museum somewhere...it's not in my personal collection, it's the
property of the company," he ticked off another point.  "And, of course,
there's your, ah, health plan to consider."
     Jack narrowed his eyes.  "Are you threatening me?"
     "Not at all!" Satan put in his best innocent expression.  Which,
frankly, wasn't all that good, being who he was and all that.  "But don't
forget that the gods of 973HONGKONGFILMS would very much like to throw you in
an oven and refine immortality pills out of your essence.  As long as you're
an employee of Hell (TM) Inc., they won't touch you.  Resign, and it's only a
matter of time before they come after you again."
     "That still sounds like a threat, even if you won't be carrying it out
yourself," Jack scowled.  "Resign and die, eh?"
     Satan made a negating gesture with his hands.  "No, no...of course not.
I still want to be the boss again soon, go ahead and resign.  But you might
want to take advantage of your current position to effect a more permanent
solution to your godly troubles first.  A nice short invasion, extract
binding promises from the Celestial Bureaucracy in exchange for un-invading,
and you can be back here resigning by the time I'm ready to come back to
work.  Say, 4th Quarter."
     Jack was at a loss for words.  It certainly made sense.  Sure, Hell (TM)
Inc.'s forces had failed to conquer 000SUPERGUY's Earth, hence the Alamo's
Revenge's Revenge now being in orbit as a protector.  But 973HONGKONGFILMS
didn't have such dedicated defenders, plus he wouldn't need to conquer it or
even do much damage.  Just scare a promise out of the Jade Emperor and go
home.  Heck, he could probably get half the world's defenders on his side.
Sun Wukong certainly owed the Jade Emperor no favors!
     Slowly, he circled the desk and sat down.  The computer screen lit up
with information...ship counts, troop disposition, attack plans (a quick
scroll showed attack plans had been worked out for a rather large number of
Altiverses).  
     "You don't do good by giving in to evil, son," a voice drifted up from
the back of Jack's mind.  He stifled a gasp...it was the Father!  He Who New
Best, And Just You Wait Until He Gets Home!  He of many names but only one
haircut, the WardOzzieJimSteveMike.
     The Father said no more, but he never needed to.  A single bit of
Fatherly wisdom was always enough, if you paid attention.  And it was pretty
clear this time.  This was Satan's game.  No matter what Jack did, it would
end up serving evil, even if it seemed to be good at the time.  And the only
way to win was to not play at all.
     Jack quickly tapped a series of keys and then slammed his thumb down on
a spike that emerged from the desk before Satan T. Lucifer Jones could do
more than widen his eyes.
     "EMPLOYEE TERMINATED," the computer screen read.  "SHARES CASHED IN AT
CURRENT MARKET PRICE."
     Jack blinked at the second phrase.  He hadn't intended to get any money
for those shares.
     Satan cleared his throat expectantly, and Jack quickly got out of the
chair.  Satan smiled and sat down as Jack walked back around to the other
side of the desk.
     "Ah well.  You're immortal, I'm immoral and immortal, I can wait for
another chance.  But I was *so* looking forward to that vacation.  Enjoy the
severance package, and don't let the door eat you on the way out...."

               *              *              *              *

[June 30, 2003 - Los Angeles]

     "And that's how I got out of working for Hell," Jack summed up.  "I
donated most of the money I'd made to various causes, but kept enough so that
I could wait awhile before looking for a new job.  It's not like I wanted to
use my last job as a reference on applications, after all," he smiled
weakly.  "Father came back for a visit that turned into a permanent thing,
and he convinced me to get into archaeology.  It's been rewarding, if a bit
dangerous.  And, until the other day, Erlang hadn't come after me.  But I
guess he finally found out I wasn't protected anymore and has started sending
goons.  I'm not sure why he didn't just come himself...last time he whupped
me bad, and I don't even have my magical sea-fixing pin anymore!"
     Skysabre nodded, then clapped his hand on Jack's shoulder.  "Well, now
you have a team to back you up, even if we *are* still figuring out what
powers we have left.  And if you managed to beat Hell at its own game on your
own, how hard could it be to take on Heaven?"

HOW HARD *COULD* IT BE TO TAKE ON HEAVEN?

WILL ERLANG TEAM UP WITH THE SQUIRRELS?

IF SO, WHICH FACTION?

AND HOW WOULD HE EVEN FIT INSIDE THEIR BASES?

AND WHAT'S THAT PLUSH NYARLHOTEP DOING IN MY OFFICE?

     Answers to some of these questions, and some sentai dubs, on the
next...SUPERGUY!

============================================================================

Author's Notes:

     When I originally outlined this story, I misremembered my recent history
and had the handover of Hong Kong to China being in 1999 instead of 1997,
oops.  I don't actually know if there were really celebrations of the second
anniversary in the real world, but I'm positing that there were in
000SUPERGUY, so there.  Nyah.

     RX (Roger Christman) was setting in motion the process of dis-
incorporating Hell even while I was actively writing Crazy Guy, and by 2000
had completed the job.  So, in a way, Jack's actions may have been ultimately
pointless...there's a good chance he could have freed himself in the shakeup
RX created.  But, of course, isn't that just like Satan's bargains?  You go
through all sorts of Hell just to get what you would have gotten anyway
without his intervention.

     For new readers, or those who've forgotten, Jack's religion centers on
classic TV programs, especially sitcoms from the 50s through 70s.  To him,
Nick at Nite is inspirational programming.

     I should also probably note here that while some stuff in the Series
Wrapup I posted in 2000 did come to pass here, a lot did not, or has been
outright contradicted.  Those were my vague plans as of three years ago; now
that I'm salvaging them for Exarchs, things have changed and will continue to
change.  And, of course, rather than having Jack be CEO for several episodes
and exercising his new power several times before pulling back from the
brink, now Jack managed to reject it before giving in to any of it.  Overall,
though, I think it works better as a two-parter in flashback than it would
have as a twelve-parter (or however many it would have taken had I actually
written it).  Having Jack reject the path himself rather than having to be
dragged off it by Mairi makes him a stronger character, and also lets me put
in the "downtime" in their relationship I might not have had the patience to
do if I'd written this plot as originally planned.  Now that they've had four
years off-camera to consider things, then a big meeting in Exarchs, I can get
things moving again for them without having to skip more eps.

     Hey, if I can wrap up Crazy Guy, can the finale of Road Race From Hell
(TM) be far behind?  Well, yeah, probably.  Very far.

     And now for Mairi's Feng Shui stats!  Like Jack, I finally decided to
build her as a Supernatural Creature with added Martial Arts skill.  She has
Armor because her skin toughens while she screams.  Like Jack, she's not a
shambling horror, she can be healed by regular Medicine, and her Abysmal
Spines represent her ability to hit really hard.

Mairi Wynn AKA Ben Sidhe
Archetype: Supernatural Creature, sorta.
Juncture: 000SUPERGUY
Attributes: BOD 6, CHI 5 (Mag 8), MND 6 (Per 7, Cha 7), REF 7 (Agl 9)

Skills: Martial Arts +6 (15)
        Guns +4 (11)
        Creature Powers +4 (12)
        Deceit +3 (10)
        Intrusion +5 (14)
        Sabotage +2 (9)
        Info/Underworld Connections +4 (10)

Schticks: Ben Sidhe's Scream, Armor x2, Abysmal Spines x2

Weapons: None (she knows how to shoot, but generally doesn't carry a gun)

Wealth Level: Working Stiff

     Ben Sidhe's Scream: This taks 3 shots to activate and adds 1 shot to the
time any other action takes while it is active (if her current Shot Count is
1, she has to stop screaming to take a 1 shot action).  All targets within 8
meters must make a Willpower check with the Difficulty being her Creature
Powers AV.  Failure means they suffer -3 Impairment as long as she screams.
Plugging up ears only reduces this to -2 Impairment.  Also, while she
screams, her Armor activates.  It does not penalize her Agility, but it goes
away as soon as she stops screaming.