Meeting Invite

The first thing I do, of course, is check the email headers… which tell me the email was sent from my provider's servers - so whoever sent it has access to my account. Great.

Well, I'm not exactly using a stock OS… I download it and look at the file in a simple text editor. After ignoring all of the formatting, the message itself is quite simple: “Dan: We should talk. We WILL stop you, one way or another, but would prefer getting you to stop voluntarily. We've set up a meeting; be there, or not.” It also, of course, has a time and location, plus a few details.

I look the spot up on Moogle Maps (the street view function is great for Greater Teleport): A state park, quite a ways from my apartment… which I've largely abandoned. Hmm. I notice I have some time… so I set up a specialist summon for holding prisoners long-term (Extradimensional Torpor twice for an unlimited capacity; Stasis Storage so they won't die of starvation, thirst, or old age; and of course, the various prerequisites for those), and run the transfer of the sleeping prisoners. I then send the summon to a Permanent and nonmagical Magnificent Mansion to hang out, warding the area with Mage's Private Sanctum (made Permanent, of course) and that minion specifically with Mind Blank, and copy the security footage stolen from the facility into my magic computer.

I then prepare Decoy with some upgrades, make him look like the old me, set a few scouts in the area (Permanent Greater Invisibility plus Mind Blank), and head to the meeting point. Dropping Decoy and the scouts off, I park myself a mile away and fifty feet underground (having a Burrow speed is handy), and focus on Greater Link to direct my minion from relative safety.

When the time rolls around, a John Smith in a jogging suit sits down on the appointed bench next to ‘me’... and speaks in a woman's voice, “You can't keep doing this.”

Rather than directly answering, I have my proxy ask a question, “Do you know what happens at the facilities where you keep the Mythics your organization captures?” I have the proxy keep a conversational tone.

“So you took out the Kansas facility?” The John's face is expressionless… but voice inflection and body language still apply. The woman seems less than surprised. “No survivors there…”

“No escapees, you mean. I have dozens of prisoners on ice, the only casualties of my raid were a number of meat puppets; all the actual people lived,” I have my own puppet roll his eyes, “but tell me: Do you know what sorts of activities your people order the perfectly obedient mind-controlled slaves to engage in?” It's easy for my proxy to stay calm, which is good, as my blood is boiling just thinking about what I saw that day.

“That facility produced proxies and related gear,” she answers easily… and I think she actually believes that.

“That's not all they do. I took the security footage so you wouldn't know my methods,” my proxy relays, “but if you happen to have an email address handy, I can send you a Moogle Drive link to a few clips from the day before.” I select and upload a few clips of the Johns **** the Mythics as I speak, labeling the folder, ‘Evidence of Misconduct.’

“I can at least look at what you have,” the woman's voice replies from the ridiculously masculine body, and recites an email address.

I send a share link to the folder from my email, and continue the conversation by double proxy, “Sent. This was taken from the facility security cameras. Take a few minutes to watch it.”

“Sure…” she answers, the puppet going completely still… and while I wait, my scouts report back, and I set a few to do some quick research on what the others found.

After a couple minutes, the expressionless meat doll returns to animation, “This has to be an anomaly. I can assure you, we will investigate and punish those involved.”

“Really?” Again, ordered eye roll, “Even assuming for the moment I release the prisoners so you can interview and punish them as appropriate… what are you actually going to do? Put them in prison? Legally, due to your organization's machinations, the Mythics you capture aren't considered people, so you can't exactly have them arrested for ****. Even if you did, who's to say who was piloting which puppet? Even if you get around that… you're a secret organization: You can't exactly put the folks in front of the courts, it's all classified. Worse, this is the security footage, and they had an entire porn stage set up that showed on camera: There is no way anyone who works there wasn't in on it. And they were making videos: When the source material is so available, you don't do that unless you're spreading them around: This goes FAR beyond that facility.” I have my proxy sigh, “Your organization is rotten, and is well past the point where reform is feasible.”

She pauses, “Did you ever read ‘Carrie’ by Mr. King?”

“I saw the 1976 film and the 2013 remake,” I have my proxy answer.

The puppet continues, “Close enough… the events occurred in 1963. Mr. King was a witness who capitalized on the story and used it to launch a career. He scrubbed the identifiers and phrased it as fiction, so we let him publish… but that's the kind of thing we exist to stop. Do you really want another such on your conscience?”

“You're not the first to mention that,” I have my proxy smile, “and I've had time to think. ‘The Greater Good’ isn't a valid argument when the cure is worse than the disease. That poor, abused, confused girl killed… what, a few dozen people when lashing out after being tormented, over sixty years ago, and that's your go-to. Meanwhile, how many Mythics have been killed, enslaved, tortured, or **** at your hands since then?” I get the results back from my researchers, and do a few things while conversing.

“Mine, none, I…” she begins.

I have my proxy interrupt, “We're talking about your organization, not you personally; I thought that was clear.” Although you certainly help enable it.

She sighs, “It's the catch-22 of law enforcement. If you do the job well, there's few examples of why it's so necessary. If you don't, everyone screams at you for not doing it. Fine, we need reforms, sure. You still can't go around spreading magic, it…”

“Will burn your organization to the ground, the right way, by exposing you to the light of day and letting society rip you to shreds,” again, I have my proxy interrupt. “Yes, there will likely be nasty incidents along the way before society adapts properly, and those will haunt me for the rest of my life, as they should. I do actually agree that Mythics need some form of law enforcement… but when the options given a Mythic are ‘utter slavery’ or ‘****’, it's not policing, it's tyranny.”

“You're an arrogant bastard…” she sighs, “...and this would be so much simpler if you were some malevolent demon. But you really can't do this unilaterally.”

“I have slim pickings,” I have my minion shrug, “I'm not going to be a **** myself, I'm not going to lay down and die, I'm not going to let any more of my friends be enslaved or killed, I'm not going to just stand idly by while untold numbers of folks are killed or enslaved for being what they are, and I can't exactly trust a representative of an organization I KNOW engages in ****, ****, and slavery. You want me to pick a better option than dragging you all kicking and screaming into the full light of day? Good: I don't actually want a fight to the ****. Give me a better option.”

“Give me a month to make inquiries,” she has her puppet respond, “you've made it clear we need to clean house.”

“How many people will die while you're doing so? How many rapes, how much ****, how much **** labor?” I have my minion shake his head, “And that's assuming I can trust both that you will follow through yourself, AND the higher ups will agree and follow through as well… which I really can't. I'll give you a day. You will all be exposed, period. Up to you whether that's booking your own press interviews and having the news tour your facilities, warts and all, or if that's me turning over copies of your own security footage to the news.”

“That's not a reasonable demand,” she rightly points out, “Any change takes time.”

“It's an unreasonable situation all around,” I have my minion agree, “but we work with what we've got. Twenty four hours,” I drop some data from one of my researchers, “Mrs. Florence Balts, wife of Hernando, mother of James and Samantha, living at…” I don't bother with reciting her address, as the scout with eyes in her van reports that she's scrambling into the driver's seat, no longer piloting the remote, frantically placing calls on her phone as she starts the engine.

Instead, I have my proxy place a call to her… which she picks up because I'm using her daughter's phone, “They're not picking up because I've already collected them. They're perfectly fine, just stuck in stasis, along with all the employees from the Kansas facility. I HAVE set up something of a dead man switch, though: Their stasis is supplied by my Myth. If that fails, they'll fall back into reality at the location of a specific tulpa, which is… inhospitable to baseline humans.” A decent description of a location sixty miles north of the south pole: They'll all freeze to **** in a few minutes. “I can't have you trying to stop me by teying to kill me a third time… you might just have something that can do it.”

My scouts report her stopping her van as she cusses me out.

“That’s fair. I am playing dirty,” I have my proxy admit, “but your organization went after my chosen family, you're the ones that set the rules of engagement here… and I am being FAR **** to them than you were to my friends. I give you my word that I am ONLY using them as insurance against your organization killing or enslaving me. Whether you walk into the light of day yourselves, or whether I drag you into it, has no bearing on their well-being. I will release them all in a safe location once I'm confident enough that you won't kill me without the insurance they represent… and they are not feeling the passage of time. Sure, Samantha will be missing her classes at Colorado State, James will miss his senior prom, and Hernando may get fired for not showing up at work… but they're all perfectly fine beyond that sort of thing. Also, your supervisor, Miguel, is in the same boat,” and I have more minions working up the chain as we speak. If they still have something that can kill me, it is going to cost them VERY dearly to use it.

She cusses me out more.

“Yeah, I get it,” I shrug, and have the minion continue, “You backed me into a corner, of course I'm fighting tooth and nail to survive. Anyway, I've said my piece. Twenty four hours, and I go national with the security footage if I don't already see several of your facilities admitting their sins on the news. Your move,” I have the minion hang up.