"Okay. Let's first stop the bleeding." - Said Lucas, in a strangely calm tone. She pulled her cell phone.
"Hey, Neruite? Yeah, Crono's awake at this time, right? Er, well, WHEN is it there? Yeah, one of those days. That's time travel for you. Okay, just do something for me, then, please. Yeah, Wings is preventing the paradoxes from spreading, but I need the times to, well, reconnect with one another, at least mostly. So I'll need to call in a favor... Yup. Once Crono wakes up, should be a couple years from then, tell him to focus on the time Wings stops for a moment... I know, we'll need to find some other way to fix this. Yeah, it's just a workaround, but it'll have to do for now... Yeah, bye. Thank you."
"Right." - Said Lucas, calmly - "Use the technology you stole from better people than yourselves to see if the timelines are at least correctly connecting now, General Ironic Codename."
General Makepeace sighed and gave the order.
"There are portals everywhere, but, at least, the times and places are connecting correctly now." - Said Perry.
"Good boy. Now you guys can leave. I'm taking this tech for myself and giving it to people I think I can trust. This is a nice base. Hmm, I wonder if my porn stash will fit that locker..." - Said Lucas.
"What?" - Asked the general.
"What what?" - Asked Lucas - "Isn't that fair? I mean, it's what you folks do. You're strong, you try to take from the weak. I'm stronger than you. That means I get to take your tech, by killing you if need be! I mean, you're following orders! Guess what! I'm following orders too! MY orders! Now, General, give me ONE good reason why it's not the SAME thing you guys were doing and I might not evict you from your own base!"
"You don't understand." - Said the general - "This power should not fall into civilian hands. It's too dangerous."
"Oh! And you guys are so trustworthy, aren't you? You guys, you just-following-orders guys. Good little soldiers, and you really deserve to be trusted with power. I mean, sure, you did unspeakable things, you staged coups, you tortured people AND THEIR BABIES, you disappeared people, you nearly tried to kill my friends, you guys gassed people, you guys bombed civilians, you guys committed GENOCIDES, but that's fucking okay, because YOU WERE JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS!!!" - Her halo flared VERY bright and the soldiers found themselves having to force themselves to remain standing up - "I could kill you. I could kill each and every single last one of you. And you know what would happen to me? NOTHING. I could go after your families if I so wanted. I could be just as evil as you fuckers are. The people that would die under your heels are lucky you never got access to this power. And YOU are lucky I'm better than YOU are!"
"You are lumping us all with-"
"What would you NOT do out of that list if following orders, general?" - Asked Lucas, in a sociopathic kind of calm mood - "You guys nearly had Jen killed! You nearly had LILLY killed! In point of fact... I want the files on myself. NOW. Give the order to fetch them for me, uncensored, no pages missing. I'll know. Give the order, General, because I'm a translator. So trust me when I say there are no words for what I can do to you if you don't bring me those files. I had it with you guys and decided to bring judgment. I am judge, jury and, if you guys put me in bad enough a mood, executioner."
"We do not answer to you." - Said General Makepeace.
"You're authorities. I am the Angel of Chaos. ALL authorities answer to me." - Said Lucas, as she paused and looked at the General, seemingly feeling exactly what he had the most empathy for. - "Give the order, General Makepeace, father of Juliet Harris, right now at Center School in Minneapolis."
General Makepeace blanched.
"You wouldn't..."
Lucas smiled a sadistic smile.
"What? Target innocent girls to get what I want? Why not? I thought you guys had just told me that was okay!"
The general looked at one of the soldiers.
"...do it. Get her the files."
"Good choice." - Said Lucas.
A while later, she was looking at her own file.
"So. A bunch of milicos in my country doing secret ops... I assume you fuckers gleaned my views on such things, even before this delightful little encounter?" - Asked Lucas, coolly - "Oh. And you perused my e-mail as well. Tisk, tisk. I'll have to leak all your tech breakthroughs online for that. Nothing personal, you see..."
"What?" - Asked the general - "Do you know what this research could do in the wrong hands???"
"You mean the hands of people that invade private e-mails between me and my clients?" - Asked Lucas - "Or the hands of people that, upon being ordered, would try to kill a fourteen-year-old innocent girl that SAVED THE WORLD a few years back? Or maybe, just maybe, the hands of people that would set up covert operations in Brazil... I wonder how far you would be willing to go to get a piece of this..." - She pointed her sword - "...and I wonder, general, if propping up an authoritarian regime would be within your comfort zone. Who knows of my communications with my clients, general? Those are confidential. And their confidentiality is more important than your life."
The tone was calm.
The files on her didn't mention a thing about how sociopathic she can get when enraged... - The general thought, darkly.
"No one knows about the e-mails." - The general said, finally - "Read the rest."
"Huh. So... When reading my e-mail, the guy clicked on the wrong window... got a PC virus... Which overheated his HD. Which caught on fire... Which set the desk on fire, then the drapes... Then the guy's house... The man escaped by a miracle... Knocked his head in the process... And remembers nothing... And joined a cult. All due to a click." - Lucas smiled sweetly at that - "I like it. Was he, like, a good soldier to you? A father to your men, you are, after all..."
"...why are you doing this?" - Asked the general, clearly disturbed by Lucas's display of utter glee at the misfortune of the spy.
"Because, General I Can't Believe You Have This Codename, you were willing to attack people I care about. Because, General, you were violating my right to privacy and Lilly's and those of a lot of other people I care about, all in the name of getting tech you DON'T DESERVE. Because laughing at the suffering of your little spy and making you picture me gutting your daughter, general, is the LEAST I can do against that which you are and that which you represent." - Said Lucas, grabbing the general by the collar - "You are scum. You are an authoritarian monster that lacks free will as we know it and proved willing to trample on the rights of people to get tech you'd likely use to trample on the rights of MORE people."
Lucas kept going, never once raising her voice, yet with a cold, detached rage that was very much there and that - the general felt - could turn into anything.
"You are everything I hate about militaries, you are Lawful and you are Evil, general, and you rationalize it all behind a supposed need to 'protect the technology' and to 'ensure it's used right' much like atrocities in my country were rationalized in the name of 'fighting communism'. That, general, is what you represent to me. A military that is willing to do unspeakable things against civilians. Coups. Dictatorships. Masses of faceless men committing atrocities because they are 'just following orders' against some random enemy or for some meaningless cause. You are now protecting Lilly. Cute. That's because you couldn't KILL her to get the tech, a tech you are stealing anyways. So, no. It ends now. It ends now, General Makepeace, father of Juliet Harris. I'm doing exactly what your kind always did in Latin America. I'm couping you out." - Lucas ended that speech and let go of the general.
"We are not the monsters you think we are, Lucas." - Said the general.
"Does it matter? You were trampling on rights, you were willing to kill people I care about and you fucking INVADED MY COUNTRY SECRETLY to get a piece of me. So, yeah, I call you Lawful Evil, but why in the nine darkest realms of fuck should I care about your 'actual' alignment? Anyways. Leave my office."
"This is my office." - Said the general.
"For a milico, I'm not sure you're quite grasping how a coup works." - Said Lucas - "Out."
The general swallowed his anger and left.
Thank GOD I had that experience with Aurelius back then. - thought Lucas, pale(r) with anger - If I hadn't, this man would be all kinds of dead now. Of course I'd not harm the man's daughter... But I'll let him think I would for a while longer. - She thought, as a dark side of her personality enjoyed itself - It's fun.
