Unity [Limen]

Aurora wasn't surprised she showed up, but she was surprised that she showed up on time and actually sat down. For once, she looked content, at least until Limen started talking. Normally agreeing with her would be a good thing. However, this was Limen and the fact that she agreed with so little resistance left Aurora suspicious. The way she continued left Aurora even more suspicious. She was agreeing to stop, yet still felt the need to push her reasons at the same time? It was like she was trying to point out why stopping was a terrible idea in the most passive-aggressive way possible and it was irritating. Her expression flattened and one of her eyebrows started to twitch.

"That's not going to make me materialize the sweets any faster Limen. But yes, yes you should contact them and tell them to stop sending us stuff as soon as you possibly can." She folded her hands in front of her face. "I've been trying to eliminate the organized crime in the area. Even if Pandaemonium technically qualifies, I want to be different. I don't want to replace the people I'm trying to destroy.

"I've been trying to move away from stealing too. I can't create a society like that. Hell, I wouldn't have to at all if the people running the stores would just sell their goods to me, but I'm consistently refused service," Aurora sighed. "As long as you hit acceptable targets I won't stop you."

The distaste in her voice was obvious, but that wasn't a battle worth fighting. It wasn't the same thing as demanding goods in exchange for basically being 'safe' from anything Pandaemonium might do. She didn't want to be the new mafia, and she didn't want people to think she could be bought. Limen going in there on her own, or possibly with a few friends, didn't contribute to that like effectively demanding protection money did.

"If you can hack bank accounts you can find some corporate asshole's phone number, stop pretending like this is hard. If you're worried about their reaction, I can make time to go with you and explain the situation. I don't care how they feel about it, sending me good is not going to protect them from me and I am not going to take their goods under false pretenses like that no matter how much it helps me. Just sending them money won't change that, and I don't want to buy that many luxury goods right now anyway. We don't need ice cream, and the ones that do can get a fucking job. If they can't get a legitimate one they can ask me, there's no excuse. I spent the last two years accumulating money for this. Even with triple my expected spending increases I should have enough to last a year or two without even touching the money I set aside for grabbing real estate."

Aurora sighed again and started rubbing her temples. Limen was talking like she had no idea what she was doing, but it was Limen that had no idea what she was causing here. Aurora was well aware of how badly a lot of people would take this, and that the companies would likely face a lot of backlash for it. It was more work that she was going to have to deal with because Limen ran off on her own to do something stupid.

"Yes, I'm well aware of how much extra work you're creating for me, that changes nothing. I had been trying to manage peoples' expectations when I first took over. We are inevitably going to have less than we have now because I'm competing with 2000 years of civilization and I can't do it. It will take time for us to build up or own infrastructure and it will take time for people to build everything that we have now. I'm still focusing on the things we need just to survive, I don't have time to focus on things like ice cream or colored lights or dishes. Which means people aren't going to have them, and because they have them now, there's going to be problems. This is exactly why I told you to stop the first time because now it's yet another thing I have to worry about on top of everything else I'm doing."

Her eyes perked up again and she looked directly at Limen. "We're all supposed to be a team now even if I let people have a large degree of autonomy. That means you can't just run off and do things on your own anymore. If you didn't want to work with me why the hell did you even bother pushing me into doing this in the first place? You should have stuck with the guy that didn't give a shit about anyone or anything."

"I should be able to make time at around 8:00 AM tomorrow. Meet me outside, and don't be late. I want to get this over with."

At least then it'd be done and she could finally put this whole debacle behind her, even if it would immediately replace itself with people complaining about the lack of ice cream in the freezer. Just thinking about it made her more tired than she already was.

The rest of what Limen had to say was met with only skepticism. For a moment, Aurora only stared at Limen blinking slowly a few times. It was times like this that Aurora had trouble deciding if Limen was a complete idiot or brilliant. She leaned towards the latter just because it was easy to pretend to be stupid to avoid responsibility and to appear less threatening. At this point, Aurora couldn't trust anything she said. She knew that Limen would say whatever was convenient or whatever would get people to do what she wanted, and was often convincing about it. This felt like another one of those things. The fact that she was still trying to avoid any kind of responsibility made Aurora's eyebrow twitch again.

"Then why the hell didn't you stop when I told you to stop? And why are you conveniently never around when I actually need something? That manual labor you're dismissing is important. All of this is going to be completely pointless if none of us actually build anything!"

"So you just think I'm incompetent and that you somehow know how to run my organization better than I do." Aurora paused for a moment, looking out the window while her fury simmered before turning her attention back to Limen. "I had to kill someone to achieve this," despite her anger, her tone was somber. "I wouldn't have gone through with it if I didn't at least know what I wanted to accomplish with it, and how I wanted it to function. It's not something I take lightly."

As infuriating as that part was, the rest of what Limen had to say made her anger boil over. Aurora shot up out of her chair, knocking it over from the sudden movement. She slammed her hands on her desk and hunched over it once her hands were firmly on its surface. Any sadness and discomfort from the previous topic was gone, leaving only a glare.

"What the hell is wrong with you? There should be absolutely no reason to be afraid of me. My retribution is reserved only for people who deserve it. If you know you're doing something wrong, then don't fucking do it!"

Aurora turned around, slamming her fist on the side of her desk this time, in order to pick up her chair and set it upright so she could sit in it again. With the outburst done, she seemed a bit more calm, though no less irritated. She leaned back in her chair, resting one foot on the other knee, resting her elbow on one of the arms and then her head on her hand.

"And people wonder why I never fucking sleep. Do you expect me to have any sympathy for people that don't want to do boring tasks? It doesn't change that they need to get done. Do you know who ends up doing them when no one else is willing? It's me. I can't just let them not get done if I want to accomplish anything, so I end up working until my fingers bleed and then I have to go handle something else on top of everything else I have to fucking manage. And you expect me to give a shit that some of the work just isn't all that interesting? That's not what working with someone is, that's just doing whatever the hell you want and then pretending you're being useful because sometimes it benefits other people. All of you are so god damn useless and still expect the results of what you're not willing to do because it's just too much work."

"Then maybe you should think for two fucking seconds before doing something. My retribution is always proportionate to the offense, so you have to really fuck up in order for me to do anything even remotely dangerous. I fail to see how people shouldn't kidnap and tie me up is somehow unreasonable, or that what will happen if they try isn't obvious. Stop being an idiot, you're not fooling anyone."

Aurora considered shouting in her face the moment she said something obviously ridiculous, but that would defeat the purpose of all this. Instead, her free hand gripped her chair as hard as possible to at least direct the feelings somewhere. This whole conversation was ridiculous. It should have ended a long time ago, but Limen kept wanting to push things as though saying she shouldn't go off on her own and ruin everything was this unreasonable thing and like Limen had any idea what was even going on anymore. It was laughable. Even worse, she kept trying to claim she wasn't saying certain things and then went and listed off exactly what Aurora said she was saying in different words. Aurora chewed on her lower lip while she waited for Limen to finish, then took a deep breath. This would be easy to tear apart, there was no need to get hysterical.

"Then talk to me," she was still raising her voice, and her tone was firm. "I do listen to what people have to say, even the really fucking stupid things. I put a great deal of effort into knowing what people are doing, what they need, and what they're doing. Hell, people started outright reporting to me before I even took over Pandaemonium! None of this is new, and based on what other people say, I'm the only one that actually takes the time to do this; I'm the only one that even knows what everyone is doing. I don't care about what you do for yourself, but if you want to do something big with in the organization come find me first. I'll at least listen to peoples' cases, I always have. That way we can come to a decision that's within what I want Pandaemonium to be; we can come to the most effective conclusion and I can determine who else should be working on this; we can make sure no one is stepping on anyone else's toes or that it's not already being worked on. Don't just unilaterally make a decision. You didn't bother talking to me about any of this! Even when I went to talk to you, you just blew me off, lied to me, and continued as though I was never even there. And you're lecturing me about not listening to people? Don't make me laugh.

"I'm not blaming anyone. Why the hell would I blame anyone for my own decisions? But I can't just slow down. Eventually, I'm going to go into battle against a dragon and I'm not going to come back. I have to make sure everything is ready for that moment, and I'm not going to leave anything unfinished." Aurora scoffed. "This entire situation is so fucking ridiculous and it pisses me off. You're not even the first person that's told me I need to rely on other people when I have literally just said that I am in desperate need of help. If I intended to enslave everyone I'd be doing a better job. The fact that I don't want to do that is exactly why I have to pick up all the slack myself. It's fucking impossible to get you deadbeats to do anything unglamorous. I'm not surprised, just frustrated. We're not going to be able to mooch off of people forever, we can't survive off of stealing from people. Eventually they're going to leave, and we have to be prepared for that. We're going to have to produce things ourselves, but no one is even willing to make the slightest sacrifice to make it happen. I already know that all these people that are going to complain about the dwindling ice cream supplies aren't going to do anything to make it on their own. They're not going to try to build the infrastructure we need to churn it. They're not going to help me figure out how to get livestock and the resources necessary to raise them in the city. They're not going to help me figure out how to find the space or the manpower to grow corn or sugar so we can have that. And it pisses me off. It's obvious that I need help and it's obvious that I know I need it. People keep acting like it's not because I'm not asking them to do the things they want to do.

"Stop lying to me."

"Why I keep saying you don't seem to really be interested in being part of the team, or that you don't actually have that much interest in Pandaemonium itself is because you talk like that. You keep trying to lecture me on working with people, so maybe you should take your own advice, even if it means occasionally doing something you don't want to do."

Aurora lifted her head to rub her forehead with the hand it was leaning against. She still couldn't tell if Limen was being serious or if she was just saying stuff to get her to shut up again. It was impossible to tell. After a moment's thought, she decided to go with it for now. Even if Limen was lying, there wasn't much she could do about it. She layed down her reasons for disliking her actions, she explained what she expected and why she should do that, so there was little more she could do than to hope for the best at this point. About the only thing she was willing to fully believe was that Limen would never stop lying.

"I'm not mad at them, I'm frustrated at the situation. I was well aware of how difficult it would be to turn a lawless gang where everyone was only looking out for themselves into an actual organization. That doesn't mean I can't get annoyed with it sometimes. And I see no reason to delegate those things right now. They're not what I need done, I'm not going to pretend like people are being useful when they're not."

Aurora huffed and paused for a moment, still bothered that she wasn't sure if Limen understood what she was saying and if she was really willing to go along with it. Once again, she quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn't anything more she could do. This time, Aurora stood up gently, her chair slowly rolling back behind her as she did, and walked over to one of the windows. Her aurora covered her desk and much of the room. The various sweets she'd been holding onto started spawning on the desk first, and then spread out everywhere because there wasn't nearly enough room on her desk to hold them all. Aurora herself just continued staring outside with her back to Limen.

"Take what you want and get out."

With that done, she started thinking about what she needed to do next. Getting the food downstairs was obviously the next thing, but that didn't require any planning or even much effort on her part. It was what to do after the party that was important. The food smelled good, and she was going to use the gathering as a chance to get some food, it was a little difficult to wait. She was feeling a bit light-headed and tired, but she was used to these feelings by now, even if this one was worse than normal. Before she could think too hard about much else she started seeing black spots, and her legs gave out underneath her. Her head collided with the nearby book case on her way down to the ground. Aurora was only crumpled and motionless for a few moments before she started to pick herself up again while rubbing her head. She couldn't be at her limit yet, there was still too much to do. She had to fight it, as always. She was used to shoving the pain aside and ignoring it, but this might be a problem.