Frozen Soul, and other works: Prologue

(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)

Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, M.Mollen, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l44tpally, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Lord_Kickass, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Dolcett, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, and DarkAngel are in the chat.

BurtBacharach: What the hell’s up with the Arena on Dimiya? They dropped the limit on total bets to 100K per Corporation, and slaves and indentures count towards their master’s limit! That’s not bets per bookie, but for the whole thing!

CrazyCelt: That’s for the OFFICIAL bookies. You can go bigger stakes if you find some of the underground ones.

ElfMama: It seems someone got REALLY lucky, and almost bankrupted the Arena. If a local businessman hadn’t stepped in with some cash, it would have been ugly.

Anonymous3: ‘Businessman’. Sure. That’s the local Oyabun. Yaks now own 35% of the Arena, thanks to whatever went down.

Number5Alive: I heard that there was a Nomad who came in, challenged one of the Oyabun’s fighters, lost, and then suddenly everything happened like that.

MarcoPolo: Yeah, but they looked and the Nomad hadn’t placed any bets on themselves to lose, and the Oyabun only placed a small wager on the match, so what gives?

HaveGunsWillTravel: They only looked at the main bets for the match. You get past who will win or lose, there’s lots of side bets going down.

MacD: Huh. I’d noticed that they squashed a lot of those after the incident. What happened?

M.Mollen: You see, it was like this…

Dolcett: Oh my. What now?

Lord_Kickass: I am not surprised. Fucker is always ruining things for other people.

DarkAngel: What did you do?

M.Mollen: Well, the Yakuza and I have had some… difficulties in the past.

Guardian: Meaning we killed a bunch of their people, they killed some of ours, and we killed a whole lot more of theirs, before taking the local Oyabun’s family hostage as a bargaining chip.

M.Mollen: Of course, just dropping the bounty and handing over the prisoners would be a loss of face for them, so the match was arranged to cover the transfer when I lost, plus a small tribute to the local Oyabun. This allowed everyone to save face.

ElfMama: And what does this have to do with the new restrictions?

GunKitty: The Captain had the brilliant idea to exploit the 300K limit per person to place 1800K in bets. He then fought the match in such a way that his bets paid off, to the tune of almost 44 Million credits.

l44tpally: 44 MILLION?

Anonymous3: Damn. But that still wouldn’t have bankrupted the Arena.

Guardian: Turns out the Oyabun noticed us placing bets on Master’s behalf. So he had his people place bets, too. And the 300K limit is removed for ‘preferred customers’.

Dolcett: So he bet the same as M.Mollen, but with higher stakes?

M.Mollen: Yes, indeed. In fact, with stakes high enough that they were worth just about 35% of the Arena. Funny that.

DarkAngel: Why’d he risk so much on you?

M.Mollen: I didn’t collude with his fighter, if you’re asking about that. The match was a fair one, even if I held back to make it more showy. I simply did my best to control the battlefield, so she did half the work for me.

Lord_Kickass: I don’t believe this!

Guardian: Believe it. I was watching the whole time. And then we went back to the hotel to celebrate.

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: So those rumors about you and the whole crew of his ship being his harem are true?

M.Mollen: The crew, yes. Passengers, no. GunKitty is more of a one-on-one kind of gal, and we respect that.

GunKitty: Because if you didn’t, I’d shoot your ship full of holes.

M.Mollen: That too.

Bennie has entered the chat.

Bennie: Is someone available for a discrete transport from Sol to ANYWHERE outside the Empire?

Guardian: What’s up?

Bennie: I’ve been in some trouble since just after game start, but I’ve managed to get clear, for now. But I need to get out of Sol or it will catch up to me again. And the Empire is going crazy!

M.Mollen: What is the news from the Empire?

Bennie: This isn’t going out of the newsnets, but a lot of top level people are suddenly getting crazy religious. You can tell them by their eyes.

MightMakesRight: And how did YOU get word of it if it isn’t on the nets?

Bennie: Because my former owner tried to do his ‘protection’ thing on a new admin here on Choson Ring. They almost killed eachother, before some more of them came and hauled him off.

Bennie: I might have escaped with the Admin’s gear while that was going on, and found a way to shield my collar so they can’t track me except at close range.

SEA-TAC_Sweetie: You said you can tell them by their eyes. What do you mean?

Bennie: The ones who’ve gone crazy have augments. Not always obvious, but you can tell by the eyes. They all have fake eyes. Greens do admin work. Blues are security, soldiers.

Chummer: Oh, frag.

Guardian: What is it, Chummer?

Chummer: Did any of you get a look at the Emperor’s recent address to the troops? His eyes are white now.

SEA-TAC_Sweetie: Oh. That’s not good.

M.Mollen: Bennie, just how much info do you have?

Bennie: Not a lot. But the whole group is going crazy, like those big tent revival preachers. Keep talking about something my translator is saying is a God from the Machine.

M.Mollen: Oh, that’s not good. That’s not good at all.

Bennie: Oh shit, they’re closing in. I gotta move!

Bennie has left the chat.

HaveGunsWillTravel: Who gets to tell the Princess about this?

Guardian: Not it!

GunKitty: Not it!

M.Mollen: Not-- *sigh* Damnit.

HaveGunsWillTravel: This is going to be… interesting.

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):

Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT