Debauchery Hunter 19

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Debauchery Hunter

Chapter 19

-VB-

It took a week for us to reach Regensburg, defeat the duke's army, and get him to agree to hand us both a county and our independence.

Which nominally put us under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire.

This was a situation that we cared little about.

The cold facts of reality was that we were strong and the HRE was weak; we would do as we pleased.

They should just be thankful that we haven't done more.

-VB-

Remnant

It took about the same duration for Ruby to come back to see us.

Nervous, anxious, and uncertain, she entered through the employee's backdoor and met us in the staff room.

She didn't look up at us.

"Ruby," we said her name with a smile. "Was it a little rough at home?"

She shook her head. Hmm, her attraction towards us hadn't changed.

"Well, welcome back."

She looked up shyly and smiled when she saw our smile. "I'mbacksorryaboutmissimgwork."

We laughed. "Don't worry. We understand," we told her.

Her attraction rose up a little just now. Wonderful.

"So … how has it been since then?" she asked as she picked an apron from one of the hangers and put it on, neck strap first and then back straps next.

"Bah," we grumbled. "No problem whatsoever."

"Really?"

"The biggest problem we had was a customer coming back to order some off-world items in bulk."

"Oh, what did they order?" she asked as her natural curiosity took over.

"Construction materials, mostly. It's hard to mass produce concrete in your world."

"Where did you get them from?"

Our conversation continued casually, questions and answers going back and forth as well as gossip and rumors.

And bit by bit, her attraction rose. It was a simple thing, really. People appreciated when they were given an ear that would actually listen.

All we did that day with her was talk with and listen to her.

We did not miss how she looked at our hands.

-VB-

For the next month, nothing significant happened in any of the five worlds we resided in.

Our little kingdom on Earth Malachite was officially titled as a county within the Holy Roman Empire.

On Earth Gimel, reconstruction was still going strong, but once we began selling more products, we quickly became a large trading partner, especially for metals and electronics.

Our little recycling outpost on that one Star Wars junkyard world continued to operate smoothly with very little deviation.

On Earth Fate, Taiga and we traveled about in our honeymoon. We already visited France, USA, and Brazil. Fujimura Group bought a plot of land on an uninhabited world and began opium farming. Yeah, we knew where that was going.

And on Remnant, our business saw ever increasing flow of customers and sales, large enough so that we decided to buy another plot of land and build a smaller fort for specific shops. Vale also bought a piece of land on the same uninhabited world (which we called Earth Blaket[Black Market]) that we sold prime farmland to the Fujimura Group. They were starting a colony. We used their money to buy Dust.

Of course, life cannot remain normal, not when we were a multiversal corporation.

Someone just had to poke the bear.

-VB-

Earth Gimel

C16 groaned as he pushed himself up from the debris of what used to be our shop. Our first shop within the City proper, in fact.

"Where the fuck are your goods, homie?!"

He glared up before pulling out a revolver-.

And got beheaded for his trouble. As C16 fell lifelessly to the floor, our armed and armored clone troops portaled in and jumped onto the scene. By this point, our shop and a few other adjacent shops had been blown out in the middle of the busiest commercial street in Gimel.US's "the City."

Standing in front of us were a bunch of shabbily dressed and armed parahumans.

And they just killed C16.

"You sons of-," we muttered before firing.

Surprised by our lethal response, they couldn't defend themselves in time. The leader fell forward with holes all over his body and the others dropped dying, screaming, or both.

We moved forward to secure the area.

And put a bullet through each of the villains' heads. Sucked that there was no woman among them for us to take advantage of as per our agreement with Gimel.US.

The first to respond was Legend. He dropped out of the sky in neon blue laser lights and stopped. "What happened?" he asked.

"Bastards blew my shop up thinking they could steal whatever survived the explosion," one of our clones stepped up to explain. "But all they got was exploded potatoes because we don't keep anything else here."

"So you just killed them…?!"

"Don't forget our agreement, Legend," we snapped back. "We told you that we don't give any shit about shits like these."

He gritted his teeth at the obvious sidestepping of law and order but nodded. "Will you need help?" he asked after a moment.

"No, we can fix this ourselves."

On cue, one of our clones portaled through and began to build a Rust-styled, four story stone building similar in size to the one the idiots blew up.

"... Would you be up for a revision in the contract?" he asked.

We turned to him as one, which spooked him. It was an unintentional move on our part, and while we tried to keep ourselves cordial with him and his new team, this wasn’t something to be celebrated.

So we gave him a bland response instead of a scathing one that he deserved for basically insulting us to our faces by calling up the contract into question. That the first and only retaliation we have dished out was worth more than the months of donations, work, and cooperation we gave Gimel.City.

"We are fine."

"What if you received policing power and funding in return for policing duties and following the law?" he tried anyway, which was only making his situation worse.

Again, he may have been the PR face of the Protectorate, but it was clear to us now that he was no diplomat capable of thinking beyond the immediate aftermath and clean-up. Or perhaps he was, and this was merely his attempt at leveraging the situation to his favor.

Whatever.

Was the City running out of manpower against a tide of villains or did Legend want to leash us? Ha! Fat chance of that. Following the law was good and all until "untouchable" individuals fucked with you. We were the untouchables right now, so why would we demote ourselves? "Not interested."

When the reconstruction ended and all of the bodies were taken care of, we opened a portal to home and left, leaving C80 and C91 to man the store.

However, we did see a need to change how we operated in Gimel.US and the City. Obviously, we succeeded in helping them get on their feet. We could try to cut off contact with them and stay out of that multiverse's grimdark shenanigans.

… you know what? We can't risk the geas acting up. It had been written too open-ended. If Gimel ever got into a crisis and fell on hard times, the geas was sure to act up again at times when we could not afford such an event.

Just as Legend was about to fly away, we cleared our throat. He stopped and turned to look at us.

"We won't become your police, but we are willing to sell gear to you for cheap."

He nodded. "Thank you, Hive. It will certainly help. I'll have my people talk with you, soon. Goodbye." And then he flew off.

We supposed that such an offer would be a small victory for him, Chevalier, and … what was their new team called? Whatever, they weren't important anyway.