A Concerned Citizen

Tackers - The Office Superstore!

    To most citizens of Central City this word typically brought up mental images of a blue fronted storefront with shiny fiberglass fronts and automatic sliding doors. Air conditioned interiors filled with row upon row of office needs from the lowly ten pack of pens to the mighty Printer/Copier combination, ink not included, but to one who has been in the trenches of the corporate sector they can tell you it is not a place to be lauded. It is a place of greed and machiavellian manipulations unlike any other where a person can easily lose half of their bi-weekly salary on two cartridges of ink and a little gum.

Two Hundred zeni for printing four pages? That's an actual robbery.

    This was hyperbole.

    Marie had nothing against this particular target this time but then most of her complaints were ephemeral things built off of years of stress and poor compartmentalization being overwhelmed by internal and external pressures. Even still the retail market had never been something she hated and even as a teenager when working at Giigoo, a little known part convenience store part gas station popular out in the east, the most complaints she ever had was the customers being a bit pushy.

“This one isn’t really personal. I get it’s hard but, y’know, you looked sort of down and I remember thinking ‘I wish someone would bomb the building’ back when I was working for those rotten turnips so…”

    She was speaking to the trembling form of an employee she had kicked over before stabbing her sword through a cash register and then moving it with a flourish down and cutting apart an office chair in the cart of a customer. The cut blazed with the wave of ki and made a mark from floor to tall ceiling all the way across the department store and into the panes of glass on one side. A sudden static charge and those panes nearest to her cracked before the ones at the end of where the ki expended exploded in a shower of aluminum and glass.

“Maybe I did hate retail too. I remember when I used to have to stick my hand into the wiring of the trash compactor because the machine would fail to start and I was petrified it would crush my fingers. Or the close-opens where you get off at closing or some ridiculous time and have all of a shift to sleep. What bullshit!”

Uh-oh losing it.

    Her chest puffed out as the woman suddenly took in a deep, hard breath and let it loose in a whooshing sigh. She had NOT come here to get angry and go on another rampage but it was so hard with how much it seemed to just cause her to explode!

“Faaaah--!!”

    Her eyes pinned down onto the employee and then the rest of the store which had seemed to freeze at her attack.

“Go. Get. Begone. I need to…send a message or something. This is all insured anyway.”

    Marie was a little more than learned on matters of insurance and was confident that ever since that weirdness with the aliens that the ‘Act of God’ sorts of insurance had probably begun making hand of fist bank.

    When the final employee and customer had run from the doors and the police had yet to make their appearance she would begin a mindless walk down the aisles, breaking the various bins or stands or toppling the twenty foot tall racks full of miscellaneous goods. She was not shy in making noise and anyone with two sets of ears or a radio would likely already know about the vandalism inside the store.

Zwap! Zip! Zop!

    Carmine whips of energy sang from the edge of her blade and Marie felt at home amidst the utter carnage as she flung beams of ki into the piles of rubble and goods. She had neither care nor pity for the mess she was making and only thought of how much she had wished someone had done something similarly as kind. To give them a break from the humdrum of everyday retail life and get to go home and maybe claim some kind of vacation from trauma.

    She would have done the same.

    Her blade was raised to slice out again before she stopped in between the smolder and the ash and took in the ruined department store. Chest heaving slightly as the adrenaline wore down only for it to come roaring up once more, the tingling along the back of her neck on edge and hair almost puffing with static power like some animal as she turned and leapt from the strange.

    The one she could barely feel. Even with her sensing he was like a tiny drop in the ocean despite his size. An alien but bigger and brawnier than the usual sort. Was he going to make himself a problem? She hoped not because he felt kind of puny and she actually had nothing against aliens.

“Oh.”

    Was he trying to be helpful? Most people would be trying to stop something like this but he seemed to be pointing to one of the printer’s she had yet to cleave in two and nodded before sending a sickle of ki to cut through it as well. Marie stopped and finally decided that the store was properly dismantled with even the ceiling seeming to be held together by steel superstructure that was going to fall apart soon.

“Thanks. I guess.”

    She wiped at her eye with a sleeve and was about to slide her sword back into its carrying case before she stopped and took in the absurdity of the situation.

“Uh, and you are…?”

“It’s more about what the printer is connected to. Though they also get insured for everything here so making it as unmanageable as possible means they have less excuse to fire anyone and they’ll all get to file for health leave…”

    Marie said it a bit mindlessly as her mind went to what she would do if she was a manager in this situation. Memories of team meetings and long calls about proper filing formats along with re-education programs for sudden government law changes all make a mush of her brain. So much so it took her a moment to realize the alien had asked about the INCIDENT.

Cripes.

    It was too good to be true that some other citizen had turned up to offer a hand in destroying the corporate menace and freeing the workers from their oppressive regime of eight to four with a half hour unpaid break. Was he some scab sent by her previous employers to get revenge for her righteous and self-affirming actions? She had a good feeling it was not quite that because someone this size was more likely to be working as a cop or muscle for hire and the stooges of upper management would never have reached out for private revenge.

“Sounds like a real vagabond.”

    Her mouth would shoot off before her brain could properly catch up.

“Except my hair is clearly fuschia and as we’ve established my arch-nemesis is the printer. The vile printer. The building is only incidental in my grand crusade against…”

    Out front the ‘TACKERS’ sign fell to the sidewalk in an explosion of glass and plastic and aluminum.

“Office supplies.”

    Marie had been steadily taking tiny steps towards the exit, a hand raising over her shoulder to wave at the big alien as she began to inch closer and closer to just making a break for it.

“So sorry to say I have no way to help you. Really though I’m rooting for you to find this villain of yours. She sounds like a real go-getter. A real righteous sort of person defeating an Insurance company of all things.”

The big piece of broccoli was holding back on her.

    Of course he was or else how could this alien have been so massive and odd with such a puny power level? He had been about the same as any other person until just a moment ago when he had flexed his reserves of ki and flashed before her. This would be troublesome. Was he one of those aliens who could transform? Did he have more power he was holding back? How hard would she have to go at him to get out of this? She was confident she could slip out once someone weaker was handling her custody but…

    She could reason her way out of this, all of that ‘Empathy training’ the company made her do wouldn’t be for nothing! They had stolen hours from her for that nonsense! She knew how to talk to stubborn accountants who refused to take no for an answer! The first step was to always sic them on a bigger piece of flesh!

“Woah woah woah!”

    Her hands were frantic in their waving as she leaned back and away from Shiyon.

“You just admitted the nobility of my quest and want to arrest me? That’s cognitive dissonance! We don’t need to get violent like that if this is just about money for your ‘CCC’ or whatever. Listen if you want to get money then I can point you in the proper direction! There is way more money helping me than trying to stop me.”

    Marie reached into her pocket and pulled out a slightly cracked and old model of smartphone, fingers clicking on it rapidly as she brought up pictures of different businesses.

“Those corpos always steal the cash, you see, and they keep it from the normal people! I’m not a materialist so I don’t really care about getting cash but I’m sure if some enterprising vigilante came to stop me, with legal right, then a few bags of zeni going missing is nothing to scoff at for the poor while it’s a rounding error to some of these corporations!”

    Next was bringing up a stock price for the Baskerville conglomerate and their absurd number of riches.

“See? The amount a normal person needs to live comfortably for life is literally a rounding error for these people. Isn’t that more immoral and criminal? It’s proper redistribution of wealth!”

    She peeked at Shiyon from behind her phone and offered her most charismatic grin. It was flawed by the dust and soot on her face, frizzy hair giving the woman an almost feral appearance.

“Uhh…”

    It was usually at this point in the call that the claims agent would surrender to her unyielding logic and confidence and finally just say ‘Oh of course please give me a reference number and have a good day’ because they realized she would not be sending their claims for reprocessing and-!

Wrong direction.

    Marie cooled herself off when Shiyon had agreed to her words or simply let her be and moved onto what else she knew was wrong with society as a whole. Her fingers tapping away on the phone screen to bring up a line on the division of wealth in just Central city alone!

“Why does crime happen? A lot of people want to blame it on the individual and of course you need to own up to your own mistakes but the most obvious answer is the disparity of wealth! Earthlings who commit crimes are more likely to be from lower income areas but what does that mean? It means less chances! Less avenues! It means surviving however you can and it isn’t a crime to live when people refuse you the means to in the system they devised without your consent!”

    However much she actually believed this was up for debate and even Marie knew she was being a hypocrite talking about this. She had lived an upper-middle class life through her childhood and young adult years and even when on her own the senior position in a division of a corporation offered excellent benefits. She had never been disadvantaged beyond the fact competing with the hyper-wealthy was a fool’s game.

    She was just a rabid dog chasing a mailman and barely knew what it was going to do when it caught them.

“What causes this divide in wealth? Corporations! Well the government as well but that is a much deeper conversation about local politics I keep out of for the sake of my own health because I’ve heard the President is scary strong but…”

    The pull to dredge off into tirades with no relevance to her convincing of this giant to NOT arrest her was strong. Maybe she was feeling on edge with how stern the big green man had felt. Or she could-

    Suction and the loss of sound for a full second as momentum escaped from beneath her feet and Marie was sent tumbling back a full two meters from her new friend. A short cry bleating from her like a dumbstruck goat and her hand scrambled for the case on her back to pull free the carmine blade and level it at the alien. A frown marring her lips.

“Alright! Not cool! What did you just want me monologuing so you could sneak a cheap one in? Don’t be a clown for the corporations! We could do some real great work together!”

    Marie was vaguely confident that Shiyon was offering her an out in there where she could later slip away through the cracks of some department of justice dweeb’s notice and back to a life of blasting away corporate offices and steadily avoiding the true criminals who would aid the corporations in stopping her crusade. All she would need to do for it would be to surrender to Shiyon here and now and let the big bean stalk take her in. It was almost too easy to be real.

    Marie had stopped taking the path of least resistance for a while now.

“You’re a good dude. I can see that. People like you who stick to their convictions in spite of the practical logic of it always strike a chord with me, you know? So I think you’ll understand when I say thanks but no thanks. Like you said it’s nothing personal but I laid down and took it for too many years now. Everything I’ve done here is to fight back.”

Deep breath.

“So yeah eventually there are probably gonna be people willing to kill me for what I’m doing. I get that it isn’t like I’m naive or anything. I’m nearly thirty. It’s more like…”

    She chewed on the words, a physical gritting of her teeth as she tightened her grip onto the hilt of her blade until the leather creaked.

“It isn’t much of a cause if you aren’t willing to take your lumps and you aren’t fighting if you aren’t willing to die. So yeah. Maybe one day the President gets tired of me, if I’m ever acknowledged that high up, and I get turned into red paste but it’ll be a smear that sure as hell didn’t lay down and die.”

    Compared to most of the monsters out there she was barely more than a speck. Even if she pushed her body to its absolute limits at the moment she was aware most of the upper echelon of this world wouldn’t even notice her best. She was never the smart kind to get something from just reading though and always thrived best under stress. That had disappeared at some point but right here and now with this alien she felt that thrumming under her skin.

    She was a dog who caught the mailman. Now she had to bite and chew.

“I like you. If this was a different situation we could probably get along better. So I’ll let you prep yourself…”

    Marie hopped a step back before Shiyon could close the gap between them completely and her sword rose like a pen flowing along an invisible trace. Her retreat halts abruptly to lean back in and charge into the alien with a sudden short ‘Haaah!’ as the blade moved in a dazzling, dancelike, maneuver towards him.

“Hah!”

    The sword slipped against steel skin and her eyes widened at the sheer dome of energy wrapping around the bounty hunter. Translucent and inviolable against her own power as it stopped the attack cold. Her arms strained pushing against his sheer might, just how much had the broccoli been holding back? It felt like the sixth time she had asked herself that this encounter but each time was another sheer moment of surprise.

    Her arms twisted in the grip, attempting to rip her blade free, but it was a futile attempt as his hold was steel.

“Level the game? What sort of zoomer-!”

    The blow was expected. It was only natural he would have something to send at her at this moment but the force was a heavyweight bleeding into her stomach and sending a tremble to her toes where store tile broke under an eruption of physical force and ki. For a moment she was worried something embarrassing like puking was about to happen but instead she felt momentum return and her sword slip from her fingers as she was flung back through the racks of office supplies and head over heels until she stopped two meters away with her fingers curling into the concrete beneath the tile to hold her from being flung any way further.

“Alright. I think I got it. Like even the playing field. Good line. Real good…”

    Eating that attack had been the better option over trying to dodge it and waste more of her energy. She was chewing up the pain already and clawing back to her feet, eyes on her sword lodged into the wall, and beginning to think up how she would get around jolly green to pluck it up and put a few more puckers into him.

“Yeah. Alright. You want to go mano e mano, huh? Come on then. Try me.”

    Marie brought her fists up in a sloppy boxing stance, a moment to center herself again and her feet sliding apart as she waited for Shiyon to make the next move.