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◆Phon◆

Phon woke up early at the stifling hour of [200] before the sun had even risen. It had been two days since the madness of their economic scheme had ended, and she was trying to get back into a regular routine. She no longer needed to get up this early, since there was no longer a threat of having bombs rained down on them. However, she had come to like the early morning. It was quiet and peaceful, time just to herself to let her mind roam free.

She stretched after getting out of bed, loosening up her muscles. This was more a habit that she’d gotten used to in life that wasn’t a huge necessity anymore. Her new bed was one of the crazily cozy ones made by Mallea. The thing practically absorbed fatigue, meaning she couldn’t sleep more even if she wanted to. It also kept her muscles from getting stiff in the night, as if they were massaged constantly throughout. Phon was shocked that she had actually received a proper bed like everyone else, expecting it to be filled with rocks or something else painful.

After slipping into her sportswear, Phon stepped out into the hallway and headed over to the elevator. Since it was so early, no one would see her dressed like this. The others had all seen her in it by now, but she was still mildly self conscious about it. Unlike Drim, Phon thrived as the center of attention, but the concept of attractiveness was lost on her. She always prided herself on her ability to analyze people. Her years of bounty hunting had made her an expert on human behavior, similar to how Drim was for monsters.

It had become quite easy for her to predict how most people would react in certain situations, especially when they thought their life was at risk. However, she couldn’t read or understand people’s thoughts and actions when it came to feelings of attractiveness or romanticism. It simply made her uncomfortable when she thought other people would look at her with those intentions. Thoughts like these had been more prevalent recently, ever since the incident with Whill. Pictures and video of her in just her underwear had spread rapidly since that incident, and it seemed to have lit a fire in some online communities.

Phon spent a lot of time overseeing their PR. She would scan the internet for recent news and mentions of them. Ever since that incident, when she searched their names individually, only topics she couldn’t follow were the top results. Most talked about her beauty, and how they were scaredly attracted to her. She had been placed in a top ranking of several peoples lists of ‘People I want to step on me’ and ‘People I want to look at me in disgust’. There was even a manhunt to ‘Find the lucky bastard who got sandwiched between those thighs’.

It was completely beyond her comprehension. All she knew was that those people had issues, and were generally looked down upon by society, except for those in their same group. She had also received several requests for modeling gigs since the incident. At first she thought they were a joke, since they received several fake and joke requests, but then more arrived. After researching the requesters, they did indeed seem genuine. She ignored them of course, thinking it’d be a waste of her time, and also didn’t understand how being scared of someone would lead to a boost in sales.

Phon stepped out of the elevator and into the basement, then wandered over to their personal gym. It was fully equipped for every regiment, and even had a few personalized machines for the individual Fiends. Phon started off with the treadmill, as she had each day since they’d returned. Her goal was to steadily improve her speed, but at a pace she could maintain for a long period of time.

Unlike most treadmills, where the highest tier ones capped out around 25 lages-per-hour, this one maxed out at 100 lph. Drim was able to reach speeds of around 50 or 60, but that was solely from life experience. If he trained properly towards enhancing it, he could likely reach insane speeds. For now, Phon was starting out at a more reasonable 30 lph. Her goal was to try and maintain it for 20 minutes, then when she achieved that, she’d increase it by 1. This would continue indefinitely.

She had just barely managed to scrape by on the first day, but had failed going 31lph on the second. On the third day she’d made up for it, so now she was bumping it up to 32. Twenty minutes later, her legs felt like jelly, but she just barely managed to run out the timer. She grabbed a sports drink from the private fridge and slumped into one of the massage chairs in the room. For now, she didn’t turn it on, since it would likely entrap her and demotivate her from continuing her workout. She still had strength and curse training to get through.

Phon thought about her regiment as she sat there. She wanted to implement swimming into her routine for at least a few days a week, but currently the only way she could practice would be the machine in Kada’s room. This meant she had two options: either ask Kada to borrow it, or ask Mallea to build one for her own use. Either way, it meant asking a favor from two people whom she’d hate asking.

After downing the whole bottle, she started working her way through the various weight machines. She had never been a fan of free weights, and preferred the guidance which the machines provided. Granted, she didn’t have too much experience, since she outgrew the equipment a gym provided rather quickly. Plus, the stares she got were too much. Most people tend to freak out when they see a scrawny teenager bench press 500lbs.

These machines had similar weight ratios to machines at normal gyms, but everything was multiplied by 10, and the caps were higher. If she raised the weights to their highest settings, it’d be like lifting cars or trucks. She took the same mentality with the machines as with the treadmill, gradually increasing the weight over time when she could handle the current amount. Originally, she started at 1000lbs for each machine, and adjusted where needed for weaker muscles.

Finally, it was time for curse training, and Phon stepped inside a machine that greatly resembled an iron-maiden. It was pitch black inside, so her curse activated instantly, and Phonscience popped to attention. The machine was cramped, leaving Phon room to move only a few inches in any direction. Also like an iron-maiden, the machine was riddled with spikes, but none of them were currently protruding.

The machine had two modes: regiment and trial. In either mode, spikes would shoot out at her, and she’d have to use only her curse to dodge. She didn’t allow herself to move her limbs at all and could only teleport to a different spot in the machine. In regiment mode, a spike would light up for a second, then shoot out at her. This would repeat a hundred times, even continuing if she got struck by one.

Trial mode was roughly the same, but no warning was given as to where the spike would come from. Also, the rate at which the spikes would fire increased in speed over time. The objective was to see how long she could go without getting struck, and the trial would reset if she was hit even once. Currently, her highest score was only 11. For her daily training, she did one run of both regiment and trial.

Finished with her workout, Phon headed back to the elevator. She was planning to return to her room and shower. However, during the ride, she noticed that Mallea was already awake, causing Phon’s body to clench. The shower would have to wait. She had something much more important to attend to first. Once she got to her room, Phon immediately rushed to her kitchen. She pulled out ingredients with haste, and fervently began working on a meal.

The moment she was done, Phon teleported to the kitchen. Normally, she’d take the stairs or elevator, but every second counted. Mallea was waiting, leaning against the counter, tapping her fingers in impatience. Phon slammed her dish down on the counter, causing Mallea to stare at it with disdainful eyes. “Cutting it close, aren’t we?” Mallea condescended. A second later, the oven dinged, indicating that it had finished preheating.

This had become a daily ritual between the two, and was actually an idea of Drim’s in the hopes of reducing their fighting. Their most common argument was who would cook for the rest of the group, and it would get rather heated. So, Drim decided that they’d face off each morning, each presenting a dish as a possibility for one of the day’s meals. Whoever had the better dish won the right to cook for the rest of the day.

However, since cooking was officially in Mallea’s job description, she had added an addendum that it could not interfere with her own plans. This meant that the competition had to occur before Mallea started cooking breakfast, or Phon would automatically lose. Other than that, there were only two rules to the competition. First, they couldn’t use Pox balls since it would skew the results.

The second was an unspoken rule, and more of a general agreement. They couldn’t cook anything too fancy. Rare ingredients could also skew the results one way or the other, but that wasn’t the main reason. It was because of Drim’s messed up taste buds. They could present him with the most extravagant dish in the world, but he’d be happier eating something simple every time. This was helpful in one regard, allowing for dishes that could be made in bulk since they were serving a lot of people, and it’d be more likely to be something everyone liked.

Phon’s dish was a lunch sample, a sandwich filled with braised meats and grilled vegetables, along with a simple broth for dipping. The meat was something she had prepared ahead of time, having cooked it slowly as one should. She had actually stolen the basic recipe from the cooking competition she entered on their trip and added a vast array of improvements.

They both took a bite of her dish, since Phon had to know how it tasted too. They had to unanimously decide the victor on taste alone. Phon was rather proud of her creation, enjoying every flavor as she chewed it. This was only the fourth day of this competition, but Mallea had won the past three times. Surely, this would be Phon’s best chance yet.

“Hmm… not bad I suppose… for a line-cook,” Mallea criticized the dish. “Well, perhaps that is a bit too harsh. It’s certainly appealing and would provide for a good meal, if you weren’t up against me that is. I’d give it a B. If you were my assistant, I might even let you prep the ingredients and wash the dishes. Now then, Iet me show you your folly.”

Mallea pulled a dish out of the microwave, and Phon’s head started to whirl. Is she joking? How could something out of the microwave ever beat something I just freshly made?! Has she gotten too cocky? The dish was an individual-sized pot-pie, but the crust looked off. The top of it looked more like a muffin.

“This is what I plan to make for breakfast,” Mallea informed her. “It’s something I made on a whim yesterday. Sorry it’s not fresh, but even the reheated version should be enough to make you understand the difference in our level.” Phon pushed a spoon down into the pot-pie, exposing all the ingredients that dwelled within. It was loaded with different breakfast foods: eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, hash browns, all covered in a light coating of gravy.

“Damn it!” Phon exclaimed after a single bite. Her head was in agony, but her mouth was in heaven. Her body wanted to refuse that it could possibly be this good, but her jaw wouldn’t stop chewing. Everything melted together and was seasoned and heated perfectly through. Each flavor stood out, but nothing was overpowering. It was a balance Phon could only dream of. However, she did feel their gap was closing, and that she would beat Mallea one day. She just had to keep trying.

Feeling the weight of her defeat, Phon went and collapsed back in her bed, burying her face in her pillow. Her self-pity only lasted a few minutes until she rolled over and pulled out her phone. She had never been great at sitting still. If her hands weren’t busy then her mind would wander, though that is how she often came up with her best schemes.

She checked their currently available jobs to see if there were any criminals that needed taking down, or jobs where blurred morals might be required. However, none caught her interest. Since she had the liberty of being picky, she only wanted to take jobs that the others might hesitate with taking. There were plenty of jobs more focused on directly helping people, which would make the person who took the job feel better after completing it.

Phon got no such feeling, so she thought it was best to leave those heartwarming kind of jobs to someone who would actually appreciate it. There was also another motive. Phon got a strange sense of satisfaction when her criminal score increased. Since the beginning of the year, they had risen the criminal ranks faster than anyone else, and Phon wanted to keep the momentum going. Perhaps one of her life’s goals would be to get the highest score without getting caught or killed.

Unfortunately, their global heisting trip hadn’t proved fruitful at all in this regard. Originally, they were bound to have their score shoot up like crazy. Each robbery would have counted as a separate incident, easily bringing their scores into the ten thousands. However, since they ended up getting the cooperation of the banks in the end, all of those charges were dropped.

They had racked up a few other charges on their trip, but overall it just felt disappointing when the payout could have been so huge. Xard was bringing up the rear with a modest 4796. Phon wasn’t sure how he managed to get a solitary point, since she thought crimes were only scored in increments of 5. Phon and Drim were eerily close like usual, and Phon was annoyed that she had fallen behind again. They were 6260 and 6340 respectively.

Somehow, Kada had rocketed into the lead, accumulating over a thousand minor charges during their trip. They were almost all driving related from operating an unregistered vehicle, driving offroad, and just about anything else that could be applied. She even had hundreds of speeding violations even though Phon never could recall her speeding much at all. After a bit of digging, she found that apparently they hit her with a charge if she ever went even a single lph over the speed limit at any given time.

There were also a few ‘reckless driving’ charges from when Phon would teleport the car somewhere, so she wished she could take credit for those. There were also quite a few maritime laws broken, but those were mostly applied to everyone. Kada’s score was now a whopping 8990, completely eclipsing everyone else. This wasn’t what upset Phon the most, though. Sure, the thought of losing to Kada was so annoying it made her stomach churn, but there was something else vastly more infuriating.

There was now a charge that Phon shared in common with Kada, which she detested with all of her being. It was the only charge she ever wanted to refute, since technically it was done in self defense. Of all her charges, the Public Indecency charge that now stained her record was by far the worst. She didn’t want anyone to think she had anything remotely in common with that exhibitionist.

Since Phon didn’t have any intention of taking on a proper job today, she figured she could get some other work done at least. She was still in charge of maintaining the business side of things, from sorting and organizing new jobs to reading through past clients' comments and complaints. Since their organization was still relatively small, it was an amount of work she could handle in her spare time. They did have plans for expansion in the future, which meant that they would likely have to hire someone to take over running their day-to-day operations.

First, she wanted to check out their money situation, and her eyes strained when she saw the number. It had greatly increased again. It had only been two days since the Common Cards were implemented, and they could already declare themselves in the top percentage once more, as if they’d never spent away their savings. They had been expecting to make a lot of money over time, but not this fast.

Today’s haul was certainly impressive, but still not nearly as big as the huge chunk they received yesterday. It was the result of something the Fiends hadn’t anticipated at all. Over 100 million Common Cards were ordered from their reserve. It turned out that making extra had paid off more than they could have imagined. Preiche had ordered three million on behalf of the CP, but they weren’t even close to the biggest source. Roughly ten million had been bought by individuals wanting a backup, but that wasn’t the main customer either.

Casinos, gambling dens, gamehalls; any place where money changed hands as a form of entertainment had purchased them in bulk, over 90 million in total. They had also sold over a million card readers to these places. Once she thought about it, Phon understood the logic. Since Common Cards could be used by anyone, those places wanted them everywhere so people would always be able to spend their money.

The money from these sales was enough to get them out of debt entirely, and pay back Nathym who had paid for most of it out of his own pocket. They even provided a bit of interest since he had done it entirely in good faith. This had brought them to just above even, still able to live a modest life until they would get their next round of income. They weren’t expecting to make much more until the end of Quintlyber when everyone’s minimum balance would be due.

However, it seemed that people weren’t taking the new changes lightly, and were paying off their credit as soon as possible to be safe. Most likely, this would only be a one time scenario as people started to develop trust in the system. There was also another completely unexpected flow of cash, from the banks this time. With the restructure, a lot of the interest rates and policies for loans had changed. This caused many people to immediately pay off their old loans if they were able, so that they could reapply under the new contracts.

It seems that the banks decided entirely of their own volition to still give the Fiends their 10% on old loan payments as well. They hadn’t asked for this at all, and Phon assumed it was a gift in the hopes that they’d have a good relationship going forward. They had also received a few ‘donations’ from the various CEOs with the same intent.

The only outlier was the comment on the donation from the CEO of the Bank of Everyone. He had included a note with his donation to express his thanks. Apparently, seeing his competitors sweat and panic at the meeting like that was the best entertainment he’d had in his entire life, and wanted to properly pay for it and support their actions.

With her money worries out of the way, Phon decided to sort through the new jobs pending approval, since they’d receive quite a few in their absence. With Mallea’s help, Phon had set up a filter to instantly reject requests with certain keywords. This was mostly to filter out spam, joke, and troll requests which they were plagued by fairly often.

Many of the new requests were asking for assistance with Common Cards. Phon read through a few of them, thinking that since there were so many, there must be some form of problem, but no, there was nothing of the sort. It was all requests from lazy people who couldn’t be asked to read the instructions and the elderly who refused to understand technology. Phon immediately set up a temporary new filter on Common Cards until the initial idiocy subsided.

Phon then spent the rest of the morning sifting through the jobs with a break to shower in between. All she really had to do was approve or reject a job, and then apply a difficulty ranking if it was approved. However, she liked to go above and beyond. If she did reject a request, she liked to give detailed information as to why. It would be nice if they could complete every reasonable request, but they were severely limited. While there were seven people currently employed in the Fiends For Hire, only four of them would actively do jobs.

Even then, jobs being taken was entirely up to each person’s discretion. Since Phon was feeling lazy today, it meant that there were that many more jobs that’d go unfulfilled. There was a well accepted stigma when applying now that someone’s job most likely wouldn’t be completed. However, that didn’t stop a lot of people from sending in their requests, since they didn’t know where else to turn. That, or it was a job where it’d simply be ‘nice’ if it was done, and wasn’t a huge emergency if it didn’t.

They had started receiving a lot more requests that only asked for assistance rather than complete reliance, jobs like construction assistance, heavy lifting, hunting parties that wanted some extra muscle; jobs in general where a Fiend would be a great benefit but not a necessity. As Phon read through them, she would also send certain ones to the other Fiends if she felt it would suit them well. For example, there was one where a private detective was requesting backup for a stakeout that Xard would certainly pounce on when he saw it.

When she was nearing the end, Phon’s eye twitched when she saw a particular job request. It was asking them to find a mythical jelly and then give the requester a sponge bath with it. She recognized the writing style, and her blood began to boil. It was submitted by her nemesis, who originally went by the username Honk4Chonk. He was the most annoying troll they had, who basically spent all day submitting fake jobs. His influence alone was the main reason they’d installed the filter.

After his first account was banned, he came back as Honk4chonk2, then 3, and so on. Eventually, Phon banned the name entirely, and now he posted under completely random pseudonyms. Phon had hoped that she had finally managed to entirely filter him out, but now that one had slipped through, all of her rage from the past months started boiling up again. She was getting fed up with the idea that just because he thought he was posting anonymously online, he thought he could get away with harassing them. On a whim, she decided to backtrace his location from the requests.

Hmm… he’s only four countries away. I could go there and be back before dinner, but am I petty enough to go that far entirely out of spite...? Obviously, I am. After sending a text to Drim that read ‘Going smiting’ she pocketed her phone and wrapped her ribbon around her eyes. It’d be a long trip, so she didn’t want to hold her hands up the entire time. Once she got going, she was out of Bisomote in seconds.

She was teleporting with blazing speed, not really focused on where she was or where she was moving to. As soon as she appeared somewhere, she was gone again in a second. The moment Phonscience could move her piece again, she placed it as far away as she could. She wanted to get there and back as fast as possible, and it was also good curse training. Tomorrow, there’d likely be a lot of reports of strange sightings, which made Phon feel a little giddy thinking about it.

She had Phonscience put up a board with an arrow pointing towards Honk4Chonk’s location. It also displayed the distance and was rapidly decreasing. Phon only made one mistake on her trip to find him. She had accidentally placed her piece on top of an algae covered lake. Normally, she couldn’t place her piece on water, but plants worked. The algae was thick enough that she mistook it for a field in her haste. Thankfully, she could swim now, so she didn’t panic in the slightest, moving her piece as if the incident hadn’t even happened.

Phon sat on Honk4Chonk’s roof for a while, observing him. He lived in a dingy apartment that was covered in filth, and didn’t move away from his computer the entire time she watched him. All he did was post job after job on their site while smirking to himself. Eventually, he got automatically banned and created a new account in seconds.

Phon wondered what his life must be like that he could do nothing but troll them all day. She got her answer as she poked around a bit more. A room of his apartment was filled with automatic dialing machines. She teleported into the room so that she could listen in to the calls they were making. All of them were making robotic spam calls to random people, each running a different scam.

I see, so he’s rotten in every aspect of his life. Even Drim wouldn’t get upset if I killed him… Probably... Though I think I’d rather see him suffer more. Phon teleported behind Chonk, placing her hand on the back of his head. She ignored his disgustingly greasy hair, and slammed his head down onto his desk. His face went right through his keyboard, splitting it in half, and smashing the wood beneath.

Chonk was now on the floor, with blood pooling out of his face. Before he could even understand what was happening, Phon grabbed him by his neck, and yanked him into the phone room. She latched onto both of his ears and pulled hard. As he was lifted off the ground, Phon dragged his body through the room, using it to smash through each and every machine. She then returned to the main room, and began spinning him rapidly. When enough speed was built, she let go of his ears which likely would have torn after a few more seconds.

Honk4Chonk went flying through his window, shattering the glass. They were only three stories up, but the fall would be terrifying. Fortunately for him, there was an open dumpster in that alley to catch him, filled to the brim with garbage. “Well, I feel a lot better now,” Phon said aloud as a disgusting grin of her own stretched across her face. She checked that he was still alive, and then teleported away the moment she heard sirens.

The trip back home seemed to pass by twice as fast since Phon was exhilarated. She made it back just in time for Mallea to be setting dinner out for everyone. Phon was in such a good mood that she even volunteered to help set the table. Soon after, Drim and Kada came to join them. Drim had come back from a job, and Kada had been goofing around upstairs. Xard joined them soon as well, but took a plate to go since he had accepted the stake-out job. Nathym also swung by in the middle of the meal to grab plates for himself and Ahvra.

Overall, it was a good dinner. It was pleasant company, meaning Drim was there, and Phon had to begrudgingly admit that the food was delicious. The ruminating thoughts of what she had just done made it taste that much better. When the meal was over, the others scampered off to attend to whatever business they had. Phon returned to her room, and spent the rest of the night testing out recipes to try and beat Mallea tomorrow.

 

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