The Rise of Marquis 15 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Kejmur

The Rise of Marquis
Chapter 15: Jenkins I (NSFW)

-VB-

His name was Jenkins.

He named himself after a player character from that revolutionary MMORPG, World of Warcraft (acronym WoW), from Earth Aleph. When he first heard of the game, he thought that it was stupid. Why would anyone lose themselves into a video game of all things when there was so much to be done?

And then he himself got involved because he got curious.

He sunk time into it.

A lot of time.

If it wasn’t for the fact that De Soma, March’s Tinker, could make a portal to Aleph and connect their internet to theirs, then he might have been in a pickle. But De Soma could, and she let him use the interparallel internet even though as the boss’s woman, she could tell him to fuck off.

Everyone in the March was nice to each other. Jenkins really appreciated that.

That’s why he was with the March and not the PRT, in which he was a field agent before his Trigger Event.

Losing his daughter to the Merchants and the PRT not being able to do anything about it had … it broke him.

It was why he put so much of his time into video games when Marquis wasn’t calling upon him and his clones. Marquis always let him keep five clones for his own use, not like what he heard about other projection Masters had to go through in the Protectorate. Those five clones stayed in one of the bases, playing WoW with five different accounts. With a party of five composed to an undead  priest, tauren warrior, troll shaman, orc rogue, and blood elf paladin, Jenkins was all the way in…

For the Horde.

Fuck the Allian-.

Ring ring ring

?

Boss was calling.

Jenkins the Original picked up the phone.

“Hello, boss.”

“{Jenkins. I need your clones for a whole week.}”

A whole week?

“Including my gamers?”

“{No. The favor calls for a hundred well-coordinated individuals.}”

That was well within his abilities.

“Oh sure. Where am I sending the clones?”

“{Down south to Boston.}”

“My contact?”

“{None. You will be disguising your clones so as to not have it tracked back to us.}”

Disguising was their code word for physically altered clones. The process, an innate part of his power, made each clone appear as if they were someone else down to the genetics.

“What will I be doing?”

“{Accord thinks that his actions have gone unnoticed, but I want to remind him that I do not like others interfering in my March.}”

“... Smash and burn?”

“{I would appreciate it if the work was discreet. You don’t have to kill too many people, just let Accord know that we noticed and we are not happy.}”

“Got it, boss.”

As he stood to get up, a hand reached out and grabbed his wrist.

He stopped and looked down.

In a separate room within the safehouse he used for himself and his clones, his girlfriend looked up at him with soulful eyes. The other clones in the room continued on, but Maya always knew how to separate him from his clones.

She still looked beautiful even after he and eight of his clones had fun with her throughout the night.

“Be careful, okay?” she asked quietly.

He kissed her on the lips once, nodded, and left.

It was hard leaving behind Maya for any jobs outside the city. He felt anxiety every time he left. Maya was great. She was beautiful with all the right curves, smarter than most of the people he’s ever met in his life, and overall a better person. He was just an average guy who was a mook for the federal government that now worked for a gang and killed people at his boss’s orders.

Even meeting her had been a chance thing, and the fact that she was the one to propose to him always sent him in a loop.

He loved her so much, but he was always the dumber and immature of the two. This irked him, but even with a dozen clones trying to keep up with her, he was always behind.

But he tried and she loved him for that, because she saw value in his efforts to be … her partner and equal.

He would have said “love” but Maya liked to be very specific, and love, no matter how much of it they felt for one another, was too general of a term.

By the time his train of thoughts ended, a hundred of his clones and he finished arming themselves. This wasn’t like what the boss ordered for Brockton Bay. In this city, he lived up to his namesake; he wore the mask of a stupid projection Master incapable of complex tactics.

But outside the city?

Outside the city, boss used him as black ops. Threats to the city? Removed. Empire Eighty-Eight remnants are trying to re-enter the city? Removed. Gesellschaft was trying to muscle their way back onto New England shores? A hundred clones taking a plane to Britain and coordinating terrorist attacks on underground Gesellschaft operations, businesses, and capes’ civilian lives made sure that the Neo-Nazis remained where they belonged.

A lot of the public kept forgetting that the average cape wasn’t worth a hundred well-armed and well-coordinated soldiers. Hell, he needed only a dozen to put an end to New Wave, but boss kept them around for some reason.

Really, boss liked to play up the handsome cape, but he really was a gang boss. No, boss was closer to the CEO of a paramilitary. They just happened to run a gang at the same time.