Greed God chapter 146 (Patreon)

March 20th 2016 Gemworld 10:00 AM EDT

The  next day or so was mostly downtime. Now that I was up to two million  points I kind of wanted to splurge and spend them, but I decided against  it. I wasn't done with my acquisitions yet by half, and now that all  three gangs had been contacted we'd laid the groundwork for the plan to  move forward. It took the entire next day and a half before Zee finally  broke down and asked. "Alright, what are we doing? The plan is  officially off the ground right? Shouldn't we be pushing the factions to  actually attack?"

I snorted in amusement as I watched her  walk across our room, enjoying the view of my still naked sorceress.  "Hardly. Don't forget, the plan requires multiple moving parts. The  gangs are taken care of, but Opal is far from vulnerable to that kind of  thing. No, we're waiting for the sources I've arranged to start leaking  more information. Carmine has to have spies in the city, not doing so  would be absurd, but they aren't people we can find easily. The smarter  play is to let them come to us. Which Cherry and the others have been  arranging while we had our down time."

My pet psycho  stirred from her spot against my side, just as naked as Zee. "He's right  Zatanna, calm down. We've been spreading word that the pills came from  Carmine. Sindara and Gioto have both gotten the information to everyone  they can safely manage, and I've been picking up the slack. Carmine WILL  hear about the pills, and once they do, the next part of the plan will  go into effect." She snuggled against me, staring up into my eyes  adoringly. "Right daddy?"

I chuckled at her shameless  pandering and leaned down to give her a quick kiss. I always thought  Cherry was adorable when she was being a conniving snake. I could tell  she was baiting Zee a bit, but it was harmless fun. She actually liked  the sorceress, she just enjoyed a little spicy fucking and seasoning  with some frustration and annoyance was her favorite recipe for a  threesome. Zee, for her part, pouted at the blonde. "I'm calm. I just  don't see how Carmine finding out anything will be a benefit to us. Them  realizing that Opal has access to a force multiplier like that will  encourage caution, won't it?"

"Not exactly." I said  patiently. "You're missing a few factors. First up is The Empty Door.  The leader of that gang has Carmine blood in him. While he would be too  obvious as a spy or even a sleeper, there's no chance that he isn't in  touch with SOMEONE he can call about the issue. Second is that the other  factions both got the pills, which will put him on the defensive. Third  is that Carmine knows they didn't supply the pills in the first place,  which makes their appearance alarming to them."

Seeing she  hadn't put the sequence of events together yet, I smiled and spelled it  out. "The Empty Door is connected to Carmine, vulnerable, and in a  position to actually need to receive aid from Carmine because of the  power imbalance. For their part Carmine has a neighbor who has suddenly  gained access to a massive advantage and a powerful ally inside that  kingdom with an axe to grind. Given all of those factors, what do you  think we're waiting for?"

Despite enjoying her pussy, I'd  always planned to corrupt Zee into something more like a partner,  someone who could help me steer the League from the outside until such  time as I no longer needed them around. Part of that was teaching her  how to think critically in situations like this. Morality tended to  blind people to properly executing their goals. Machinations should be  clean and cold. If you looked at everything objectively, it was easy to  corral people into the course of action you wanted. Zee hadn't learned  to look at things with that lens yet.

She turned around to  look at me, chewing her lip cutely. Being from the magic side of things  Zee was much less persnickity about ethics than most heroes, but she  did have a conscience. I'd structured this plan to avoid any direct  intervention on my part specifically for that reason. We weren't going  to be doing anything but robbing a dictator. Carmine and the gangs would  be the ones to do the actual damage to this place. I'd steered her in  that direction with my question already, and I just let her reach the  conclusion herself.

Her eyes lit up quickly. She wasn't  stupid or anything, just not used to thinking about things this way.  "Carmine is going to support The Empty Door in a revolution! Rather than  wait for the other gangs to attack with their now superior numbers of  powerful nobles, The Empty Door is going to contact Carmine, and once  the leader finds out he won't be able to get more pills he'll look for a  solution that lets him survive. Carmine would be idiots not to back the  play and even bigger idiots not to take advantage of it to sneak a  force into the capital using it as cover."

I grinned at  her. "Exactly. Sadly we don't have an actual mole in The Empty Door, but  Cherry has been casing the place since I stopped, and has an ear to the  ground. The big boss over there is too loyal to his people to blindside  them. He'll prepare his crew for any incoming attacks, so all we need  to do is keep our eyes peeled and wait for them to start acting out of  the ordinary and we'll know the time to strike is near. In the meantime  I've got Sindara and Gioto taking turns making trips up to the palace,  or as close as they can get, whenever possible. When Carmine attacks,  they'll push their groups into action and we'll take advantage of the  gap to slip in and steal what we need cleanly. No muss, no fuss."

Which  wasn't really accurate. There would be LOTS of fuss. It would just be  other people's fuss. Growing up in a world with League I suspected Zee  would underestimate the sheer chaos a plan like this would cause. When  you have people like Superman to impose order you tend to lose track of  exactly what the ceiling for anarchy is. Even on the magic side people  avoided being too overt outside apocalyptic nutjobs. There was no cap  like that here. The nobles gave zero fucks about the peasantry despite  their presumption of rule. This would be a bloodbath without a doubt.

Not  that I cared at all. If Zee got upset I would just pretend to be  shocked and act like I'd fucked up. Zee didn't really care about people.  She just had an ingrained reflex for empathy. That kind of thing could  be trained out over time, and I'd already started that process. As long  as I gave her an excuse she could cling to she would happily believe  that I'd overreached with this plan. Once we were done we'd be heading  back to Amaranthine and then hopefully on to Gotham before the week was  out. At that point this would all just be a sad memory of a time we were  in over our heads.

The only real potential blindspot was  The Empty Door themselves. I'd studied them for quite some time to make  sure this plan would work, and while I couldn't be sure, the information  from both their actions and from the appraisals bore out my  predictions. More than that though, the nature of an organization worked  against them. Any large body of people would betray leaks or clues when  performing a wide scale operation. Based on the information I'd  gathered when I was casing the place they were pretty touchy feely for a  gang. The boss wouldn't let them all twist in the wind during the  attack, and as long as he tried to prepare them, SOMEONE would let on  details, no matter how accidental that might be.

My only  real gap was the boss himself. The man in charge of The Empty Door was  something of an enigma. I had managed to get a name, Cameron, but other  than that I was completely in the dark on the details. I'd put together  all the info I had from appraisal notes and hearsay, and while I trusted  those sources to a point, until I laid eyes on him personally he was  going to be a potential problem. No plan was perfect though. I'd left a  ton of wiggle room in this one, and I'd done it on purpose.

My  particular style of planning was always a bit slapdash. Micromanaging  and coming up with perfect strategies was nice, but I rarely had the  patience. I'd leaned more in that direction this time, but I'd tried to  stick to broad strokes in terms of action and response. The more room I  had to improvise within the bounds of the actions I needed to take, the  more my natural proclivity for turning situations to my example had to  work with. The biggest downside to being a perfect chessmaster was that a  lack of unpredictability made taking advantage of spontaneous  opportunities more difficult. As someone touched with the blood of  Apophis I'd come to believe those situations cropped up more often  around me.

Regardless, I had  preparations to make. I had a few thousand points to play with after  converting Gioto and then Sindara. While that wouldn't be enough to make  any grand weapons or anything, I could swing a few necessary utility  items before we had to begin out heist. The better I set up the  preparations the easier it was to react to whatever got in our way or  take advantage of the opportunities that might come our way. I hopped up  out of bed, getting a pout from Cherry, and headed over to get dressed  giving Zee's fat rump a smack on one cheek in greeting as I passed by  where she was bent over rifling through a bag of her own supplies.

She  wiggled her ass at me enticingly, arching a challenging eyebrow over  her shoulder, but I ignored it for now. "Alright girls, we have a few  days at most to get ready. Carmine won't miss their chance, which means  they're going to be rushing to put together an expedition before the  Bone Barons and Shadow Lords can stage their assault on The Empty Door.  Cherry, head back to watch The Empty Door's base, you know what to watch  for. Zee, get in touch with Gioto and Sindara, let them know to stay  back during the fighting, Sindara's cute little ass is mine, and Gioto  is surprisingly useful at times. No use breaking my stuff if I don't  have to."

I  glanced at each of my girls, getting nods from both, and I headed for  the city market, ready to pick up whatever odds and ends I needed to put  together my toolkit for this job. I had more than a few ideas, but I  didn't want to focus on anything too specific, mainly utility items that  would be useful in a number of situations. I checked the pouch,  confirming I still had more than a few opals to spend.

As  I walked I looked around at the Opal capital. The place was...drab.  Amaranthine was a beautiful series of amethyst spires, but the Opal  capital was made from boring dark stone. The designs were boxy and  utilitarian, and the whole place had a gloomy vibe to it I didn't enjoy  at all. Dark Opal was your run of the mill tyrant, lording over his  people with an iron fist. Not that I cared enough to save them. Still I  couldn't help but smile wickedly as I looked around. I wasn't a bringer  of salvation, but this place was far too orderly for my taste, and I was  absolutely equipped to bring a little chaos to people's lives. They  could thank me later.