The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (28 page)

“Well, back on topic, you're sure he was only after information on Stephanie?” Valerie asked, trying to get more details out of Kass. “Could he have been saying that just to get information on something else, disguising his motivations and target to make you more likely and compliant?”

“Huh? Well, I guess, but he was worried Stephanie would . . .” Kass trailed off as she thought back on Charles’s lecture.
He was worried Stephanie’s plans would spell out doom for humanity, that she'd been using Darwin as a pawn to destroy the people who had committed genocide against her ilk so long ago.

“Would what?” Valerie didn’t let Kass off the hook even for the length a full sentence.

“Would corrupt Darwin and turn him to the dark side.” Kass twisted her lips into a frown as soon as the words left her mouth.
Isn’t that what’s already happening though? The guy who was fighting for a town’s right to live peacefully is now talking about conquering nations. What makes him different than the White-Wing nation that set out to subjugate the collected people of our starter island or the PKs who attacked the town and butchered Alex’s comrades?
Kass felt a bit defeated. If Stephanie’s plan was to corrupt an honest and good man like Darwin, then perhaps it was already over.

While Mclean, Kass and Darwin all considered what Kass had said about Stephanie’s plan, Kitchens just smirked. “What’s funny?” Mclean asked in response.

“It’s just that the good, the dark--all that talk makes me think that I somehow got stuck in one of those awful teen dramas,” he shrugged. “It’s not about good or bad: it’s about knowing your job, your role on the field, and fulfilling your duty.”

“You don’t care how the jobs get done?” Kass was a bit bewildered. She had kind of expected Kitchens to be heartless given the way he ripped through people in fights, but she also expected him to be the kind of samurai who had a code of honor above the others in the group.

“Why should I? Pick a goal, a target, or an objective and figure out how to accomplish it. Your morals? Your enemy won’t share them. Your enemy will strap a bomb to his chest and walk into a church, and if you don’t share his dedication to victory, you’ll just be insulting him and his past and future victims.” Kitchens flashed his teeth in a way that sent chills down Kass’s spine. “Casualties, bystanders, dead civilians: they are just the unlucky and the defeated, nothing more. Any time you get a chance to worry about those unfortunate souls, feel blessed. It means you’re still alive and your country is still winning. If, on the other hand, you find yourself outnumbered, outgunned and outmaneuvered, well, you just pull the trigger and hope you take one of them down with you. You won’t worry if you shot Anne or Bob or any of the civilians. You’ll be too worried about whether or not you’re going to be dead tomorrow or if you even have a chance of winning. What you say is turning to the dark side . . . I say it’s just a man who has embraced what he needs to be in order to get what he needs to do done.” Kitchens paused for a moment, his eyes momentarily flashing with a light. “If you don’t do whatever it takes to fulfil your duty, if you don’t complete your objective, then even if you walk away with your life, it’s your country and the comrades who trusted you with their lives who will suffer. Is it honorable to let them die because your commitment wasn’t greater than your morals?”

Darwin, Mclean, Valerie and even Kass found themselves staring at the solemn, monologuing man, all maintaining a silence befitting the implications of his final lines.
Did your failure to pull the trigger cost the life of someone you knew?
Kass left the question unspoken.

“I think my role was decided for me a long time before the game even started,” Darwin poked at his horns. “If I don’t play the devil, if I don’t fulfil my role, then what’s left for me? What will happen to Alex and the people and the StormGuard Alliance if I lose my sanity during a fight? If I’m the devil, and I lose control to the bloodlust, it’s just what’s expected. People will assume it’s just par for the course and go about their jobs to protect and maintain the guild as if nothing happened. If, on the other hand, I try to play the angel, then who would join? Would I have to warn every member of the possible danger of me losing control during battle? How many would stay if the NPC-saving saint turned rogue demon on them and started attacking even his allies indiscriminately? There isn’t really a good alternative. I have to embrace who and what I am.”

So that’s why you picked this route.
Kass was starting to get the picture more clearly. He didn’t just go about farming mobs to protect the guild because he was worried he would eventually lose the ability to do so. He wasn’t trying to make a safe and sane guild, but rather a power-craving group of barbarians. That way, when he joined the ranks of the mindless, they’d stay with the guild and not leave it defenseless.
Did he plan things out this far when he started? Am I the only one who isn’t thinking that far ahead?
Kass, much to her own chagrin, slowly realized that she was the only one who wasn’t anticipating every ‘what if.’ Darwin was building a strategy based on necessary contingency plans, and she was just criticizing him for ‘following the dark side.’
Maybe I have watched too many teen dramas,
Kass reflected with a sigh, feeling her emotional rollercoaster take yet another spinning, looping turn. “Well, if you’re going to embrace who you are, then what’s your game plan? How do you seal the image of the devil?”

“You could kill a bunch of random players?” Mclean suggested. “If you want people to think you’re evil, random killing is definitely a good choice.”

“What about Peh-Ting Zhou?” Kitchens asked. “Their king is dead, their army is crippled and half their players just deserted to join us--not to mention they have a nice armory and aren’t far away.”

“So we kill everyone in Peh-Ting Zhou?” Darwin asked.

“No, we don’t have to kill everyone. We just kill the council and anyone who disputes our claim. There are a few ways we could go about it, but if cut off a few heads and toss them down some stairs, your image as the devil will be set in stone,” Kitchens said as he nodded to himself again.

He really does have a habit of agreeing with the things he says,
Kass observed, chortling a bit. Then she remembered the subject that had started the conversation. “Wait, before we get too far off topic, what do I do about the Charles situation?”

“Oh . . .” Darwin paused as if considering. “Just pretend like you took the deal. Get the money. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“You’re not worried he’ll use whatever information I give him against you?”

“No, I’ll tell Stephanie what he asked you to do tonight. We can change plans in the future if we need to, but feeding bad information at the perfect time is sometimes more productive than preventing good information from leaking.” Darwin scratched his chin as he reflected upon the nature of espionage. “Well, at least that’s what you always hear in the movies, and it sounds really cool when they say it. That said, I don’t know how or what we are going to disseminate to Charles to give us an upper hand in this little scheming war our two benefactors are engaged in.”

“So . . . taking the money is okay with you?” Kass double-checked. She wanted the money--she needed the security it afforded her--but she wasn’t going to take the cash without Darwin’s approval. After all, it was his neck on the line if his plans came crashing down.

“Yeah, just take it. Stephanie will help us figure things out.” He bit his lower lip for a moment. “Even if we don’t know what to do, she will.”

Is she really that dependable? Can you really trust her?
Kass’s heart pleaded, half from a tinge of jealousy, half from sincere doubt about Stephanie’s character. “Okay, you’re the boss,” she said, giving up the notion of arguing. It was the outcome she had secretly wanted, but, even if things had turned out well, the end result, Darwin relying on Stephanie to solve her problems, felt rather unsatisfying.

“Now, back to that idea,” Darwin turned to Kitchens. “Do you think that, if we kill the council and claim the city, it will just fall into our hands? There aren’t game mechanics to stop that from happening?”

“Well, theoretically, there might be. They may have it set so that no player can claim the city, but, even if that is the case, cities still changes hands a lot. I noticed it with the politics on the boards. A lot of kings died and the councils took over, meaning the rulership of a town isn’t fixed. So, with that in mind, there are two possible scenarios: either we can take the city as players or an NPC has to be the one to inherit the throne. If the second is the case, then we can use Alex to take the throne, and the whole city should slide into your domain as a town owned by the StormGuard Alliance,” Kitchens reasoned.

“So either way we get the town?” Darwin smiled. “And we get to have a bit of fun at the same time?”

“If you want to look at it that way,” Kitchens said, nodding.

“Alright, let’s plan this out then so there won’t be any mistakes. I have to kill a bunch of councilmen, but I can’t die either, or it’ll be bad for the guild’s reputation. Shall we start the planning process, or do you three want to go level?”

“Plan the stabby stabby? Nah. You do that, I’m going to go find Minx and Daniel and tell them that we have people that need killing. You two old farts will hopefully have something put together by the time we get back.” Mclean ducked out before Darwin or Kitchens could even respond.

“No, I’m going to ditch out on both. I need to logout and test a few things in real life,” Valerie said, half-way bowing her head and half-way just leaning forward, before she disappeared.

“Umm, I probably need to report back to Charles and tell him I’m his new mole,” Kass said, cringing a bit.
This whole thing might feel slimy, but everyone is okay with it, and I’m going to get a lot of money,
she reassured herself as she walked back to a safe spot for a temporary log out. She wasn’t sure if she had Charles’s number, but she knew her dad would know how to reach him if need be.

Darwin
:

“Darwin, it’s times like these when I can tell you’re a real gamer,” Kitchens chuckled.

“Huh?” Darwin asked, not entirely sure what he was talking about. They were both living out virtual lives in a virtual world, and he didn’t quite understand how this particular moment was different than any other.

“As soon as you start talking about game stuff, all three of the ladies vanish like a gambling addict’s paycheck on Friday,” Kitchens snickered.

“You’re saying that women don’t get all doey-eyed over gamers talking numbers?” Darwin laughed, but the joke had been an all-too-familiar reality for him for a long time.

“Well, it’s why I tried to get my daughter into the consoles at a young age: I heard none of the nerds ever hook up, and the stereotype persisted well enough through my high school and college experience to believe there was some merit to it. I should have done my homework though. It’s only the males that struggle. Now I have to buy ammunition every week and hope Minx’s stupid act works well enough to keep the dogs off the trail,” Kitchens continued to chuckle.

Darwin, not entirely sure that Kitchens was joking about the ammo line, forced out a fake laugh. “You didn’t do your homework when it came to Minx’s future? That’s surprising.”

“The signs were in bright neon lights. How I missed them baffles me. I don’t think I even have the right to be upset or surprised given how well it was foreshadowed. If I did act shocked, it’d put me in the same group as those silly people who had no idea smoking would be bad for them: ‘Oh, you’re telling me that breathing in smoke isn’t good for you?’ Right?” Kitchens shook his head.

“Right . . .” Darwin simply agreed as he pondered where to take the conversation from there. Rather than continuing down that potentially dangerous road, he decided to change the direction to something less life threatening than discussing Minx’s dating life in front of Kitchens.

“We need an audience,” Kitchens said.

“For the killings or for your daughter?” Darwin joked, drawing an icy glare from Kitchens.

“I will kill you if you joke about that again.” Kitchens stared at Darwin menacingly for a moment before relaxing. “But, as far as the actual killing of the council, that plan requires an audience. People will fill in the details they don’t know about anything with the worst- or best-case scenario. If they want to believe that someone is a wicked devil, all we need to do is give them the blank canvas and a frame. They’ll paint the picture and fill in the details.”

“So we need to keep the actual murder mysterious but make sure we have an audience for it at the same time?” Darwin thought the two statements seemed a bit contradictory. “How exactly does one pull that off? Just have them watch the shadows?”

“Well, that’s not a bad idea, but I think we can do better.”

“Going back to the old rolling-the-heads-down-the-stairs routine, what about doing just that? If we drag a body out in front of them right as they all show up, won’t that give them enough horror to feed their imaginations without ruining the mystique?”

“And how do you plan to get an audience there for the mayhem?”

“The same way every boss gets his employees to show up for the eighteenth pointless meeting on pointlessness: make it mandatory.”

“Don’t remind me. I used to hate the oh five hundred formations where we just stood around for forty-five minutes or the briefings about the briefings about the briefings about a problem that only one guy in a different unit had.” Kitchens winced at the memories.