ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜ ʙᴀsᴇ.
( ———- ᴄʏʙᴇʀᴀʀᴍs )
Jack took a sip from his glass. He’d gone for something imported from the inner rim tonight, (he always saved the local Pandoran booze for the really wild parties), and god, did he need it. It wasn’t often one of his lackeys managed to fuck something up (well no, that was a lie, they were constantly fucking things up. honestly, good help was so hard to find—-) and boy, was this a monumental fuck up. One that was putting Hyperion out of a lot of money. Money that should be his. Money that wasn’t his, and was, in fact, going to a different company, because some idiot kid couldn’t remember to buy the goddamned patents.
He swung his golf club down hard, driving the ball through laser of the speed radar and straight into the cavern of a gutted clap-trap shell with a satisfying clang. The flashing numbers didn’t make him nearly as happy as the thought of crushing this kid’s windpipe with his bare hands, but, he’d get to that soon enough. Jack had him called up to his office not even twenty minutes ago. He took another long sip before setting the glass back onto his desk.
He could hear the doors open just as he unbent from setting another ball on the tee. He didn’t turn around; instead he spread his feet shoulder-length apart and lined up his next shot. He called over his shoulder.
“Have a seat, kiddo.”
cyberarms:
Patents. Of all the important things to forget, it had to be the patents.
Vaughn had pointed out the mistake to him, when the first earnings mock-up had found its way from his desk in accounting to Rhys’s hands. The monetary losses were slowly, but surely, going to eclipse the gains, and he’d had to do a lot of scraping, pleading, begging and threatening with the right authorities and agencies to acquire the patents as quickly as could be. While the damage had been done, it wasn’t as exponential as it could have been, but it was still an obvious black mark on his otherwise secure deals. The financial report had reached Handsome Jack, as he’d known it would from the start, so after preparing the necessary documents to prove he’d taken every precaution to make up for the losses, the rest of his time was spent wracking his brain for reasons Jack ought to let him survive the encounter.
The elevator ride was long, but gave him no more idea about what to do than did his sleepless night. The entire length of hallway, and the cavernous depths of Handsome Jack’s high-tech office did not help the sinking feeling in his gut, nor help him focus on the task at hand.
Shit, he was so fucked.
“Yes’sir,” he mumbled, as he hurried to take that seat he was told to take. Well, what the FUCK was that supposed to be??? Yes’sir, no’sir, let me beg on my knees before you please don’t bludgeon me to death with your golf club, sir?? God damn, way to sound like a spineless sycophant, Rhys. ( Refocus. What will convince Jack not to kill you to death? )
He kept an ear on the kid as he let the club hang loosely, swaying in his grip and stopping just short of the ball. He did it again as he lined up his next shot, (this time he was aiming for the gaping eye-socket. He was going to break his 200 mph record even if it killed somebody.)
“Y’know–” A roll of his neck, a loud crack, and then he was talking again. “You’ve got a good record, kid. A great one, in fact– so why. is. it. that you’re sitting in my office right now– I mean really, what was it, huh? Bad breakup with the girlfriend? A death–” he swung the club down hard, sending the ball sailing through the air with a blur of chrome and a disappointed look. That wasn’t even close– “in the family?”
He finally turned to face Rhys. The kid looked like shit. He leaned his club against the desk, for now, and sat on it’s edge, crossing his arms and looking out over the cascading water features of his office.
“Tell you what. If you can give me a good enough explanation for your little fuck-up, champ, I won’t take this shiny metal club here and beat your pretty little head in with it. Deal?”