Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-26130256-20170711055926/@comment-26130256-20180127093019

Azulius Cardamom was not a person given to much cringing, but Ceb and Bazz were starting to strain his limits. Not only did Ceb's flask look nothing like Trigo's actual symbol, but his angry face was just sad. For the overwhelming majority of fights, the head enforcer would be borderline jovial, becoming more serious as his foe proved how dangerous they were. Getting the man actually angry was a rare and terrible occurence, but even then, his face never looked like that.

"So, you guys were out partying last night, right?" Edom asked after swallowing another enormous bite of his sandwich-wrap-construct-thing. He had been looking for some way to change the subject, and if Bazz wanted to help with that, so much the better. "Find any places worth writing home about?  I knew a lady back home from here, and she mentioned a few clubs in town that she liked.  If only I could remember the names of 'em..." And truly, Azulius could not, for the life of him, remember the names of those two clubs Honara had mentioned during their first date. One was that high-rise building with the split dancing floor, and the other was some kind of star-themed place that had banned Eliminators after either Honara or Stella ruined their planetarium projector. Astrology, maybe?

"What kind of lady are we talking about here?" Cebada immediately perked up. Edom had seen neon signs that were more subtle than this guy.

"The kind that's too smart and classy to get involved with chumps like us," he replied curtly, then reached for the orange juice once more.

"As of yesterday afternoon, there is no front in Vacuo, at least as far as the Order of the Black Dawn is concerned," Trigo explained solemnly once he had capped the bottle. "I got a tip about a small cell planning some sabotage of the factory, so I lead some of your boys and mine to deal with it.  Standard stuff, until that rookie Crusader dropped in.  He put my soldata in a wheelchair, and I put him in the morgue.  A pity, she had just earned her pin a few months previously.  Great with a lantern shield, used a version of the Prussian Leper's Defense." He took another deep drink from the rum, as if he was toasting the memory of Fresa's potential career cut short.

"And trying to play the turtle will only get you so far, in my experience.  I'll give you the example my nephew always gives.  Who has the harder job, the man who builds a safe, or the man who must crack it?"

"I'd guess the cracker, though I have no clue either way," Sangfroid admitted after a minute of silence.

"Not quite.  The safemaker has to consider every possible angle the safecracker could use, and protect against it.  But the safecracker only needs to find one possibility the maker overlooked.  You can try withdrawing everything and waiting for Master to die of old age or the Order to run out of steam, but eventually, somebody is going to find your exhaust port and cram a pair of proton torpedos into it.  To say nothing of the other effects of abandoning the factory and withdrawing all the company's business ventures."

"As for making an example of them, that's one of my areas of expertise.  But if you truly want to make an example, there's more to it than just leveling the place.  There's almost an art and a symbolism to the affair.  Cancel out his greatest strength, or even smash it over your knee.  Cripple his pride, make him eat his words.  Oh, the stories I could tell about revenge..."