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(BUS)Chapter 166: Hostile takeover
🕑 Added 2025-11-19 15:54:05 +0000 UTCIt was possible to come back from a bankruptcy filing but it was hard. Usually it happened because some rich person and/or group bought it out to revamp the company for profit. If that sounds familiar it's because that's almost exactly my plan. The only difference between my version and that one was I didn't need Atlas because it's Atlas, I needed it to build my own company on it's bones. This distinction was really fucking important as one meant the old employees got adopted while the other meant everyone could be dropped if needed.-
And I very much intended to do some serious pruning of that particular tree. Everyone at the top needed to be vetted and gotten rid of if they were problematic or promoted if they weren't. The military had to be rearranged from the top down with retraining, rule enforcement, reequipment and all around removal of nepotism. The board of directors needed to be recreated while what was left of the old one was politely(read violently) removed and discarded. The assets compiled and sorted by need, potential usefulness and redundancy.-
Don't even get me started on the obligation the company would have to the planets under it's rule. That was an entire civil matter that was going to give me so many fucking headaches. What all this came down to in the end was the convenience that taking a preexisting company and transforming it gave was greater than the inconvenience that starting from scratch would be. Anyways I could read the writing on the wall about how things would turn out with Jack and wisely decided to make it clear to all parties involved that I wasn't helping either or hindering them either, strictly hands off.-
"You make it sound like we did something wrong!" Lil complained.
"You did. You and Moxxi in particular. Did it never occur to you that maybe betraying and then maiming someone with a nigh infinite army before leaving them alive might not have been very smart? Oh sure you yourself are mostly untouchable with your powers but what about literally everyone else? It'd take a single well placed bullet to kill Roland, Mordy or even Brick and they are certified badasses. Everyone else is even easier because they aren't badasses. You have painted a massive fucking target on everyone you even briefly interact with for no other reason than because Moxxi wanted to be petty and vicious." I said bluntly.
"I just have to kill him then." Lil said with a dismissive shrug.
"Can you? Do you seriously think using the same trick twice will work? You already pulled the ambush card so now he'll be expecting it, anticipating it even. You'll be lucky if he hasn't already moved away in secret so you can't find him even if you want to. You forget, he's not limited to only Pandora." I said shooting that down immediately.
"It's not a problem anyways, those robots were pretty weak." she said clearly not understanding the problem here.
I shook my head but chose not to argue about it. I very much doubted she wasn't going to learn eventually anyways. It wasn't going to be my problem soon enough anyways unless Jack decided to be stupid and come after me because of my association with her and Roland. Atlas was on it's last bits of life and almost ready to be grabbed by me so I'd be gone from Pandora. I wasn't sure for how long exactly but it would be at least a few years before I came back.-
(Timeskip- three months later)
Things were quiet after that for the next three GT months and I had a few loose ends finished up on Pandora. The first was that I had finally rid the surface of all that trash the corporations had left here. I disassembled the refiners after that and returned them to raw material in my fabricators dimensional subspace. The second was that I had gotten the mining site squared away and working to extract Eridium for processing and sale for the old man and myself.-
I repurposed my small armies worth of bots from my refiners to this purpose so the Eridium was getting harvested by the truckload every minute. I wasn't worried about the deposits running out at this speed as the Eridium went on and on for so far I literally couldn't scan it's end. My mining site was the highest yielding one on the planet as a result with the profit already rolling in. The third loose end was that I visited the additional twelve Eridian sites the league found and dug out. Five of them were civil sites that had little worth beyond historic. Three were Seraph production plants that I harvested for all they were worth. I now had exactly sixty nine Seraphs of various flavors under my command.-
It was originally seventy but Brick destroyed one to set up the childish joke of a number. The remaining number of sites proved of greater value as I got more information on various subjects. I learned that the destroyer was a whole hell of a lot bigger than that bit we killed before, that was barely an eyelash on the thing in fact. Apparently the monster was the size of a planet and had a habit of wiping out solar systems by eating them, stars and all. -
I was powerful but not THAT powerful, not even fucking close. That thing was the closest to a god I ever found the description to during this life. I also learned what the great vault was and I had to admit it was a reveal that left me reeling for at least a day. Pandora IS the great vault and Elpis was it's key. I swore to keep this knowledge to myself at all costs and destroyed the sites with it as a precaution. Regular vaults had grand prizes in them, this had no prize, only an incredibly dangerous prisoner.-
Moving on the Atlas company finally was mere days from being totally disbanded when the old man and I swooped in and nabbed it under my name for almost nothing. I was generous in purchasing the company in it's entirety and the few nepo-babies trying to hold onto even the illusion of life returning to their peak in the company tried to force me to let them keep their previous positions in the signing over. They weren't seen again after vanishing a day later. The ones left over gave up the company entirely out of fear, took the payday and vacated Promethea entirely. -
"So how's it feel to the the CEO of a company?" Clay asked after the final document was signed and the deal finally finished.
"Like I suddenly have a mountain of paperwork to fight through." I said with a chuckle.
"Not inaccurate. By my calculations you have approximately one small mountains volume of paperwork to go through." Atlas commented trying to be helpful.
"WE have a small mountains volume of paperwork, you're helping remember." I pointed out.
"Of course, I will endeavor to minimize the strain as much as possible." The bot said calmly.
"That darn thing gives me the willies boy." the old man said looking at Atlas.
"You'll get used to it, besides Atlas has been nothing but helpful since I created him. Easily the best thing I've ever made bar none." I said defending my good boy.
"I think he's pretty neat. Seen all kinds of bots but he's definitely the only one who might pass for human if you threw a layer of normal looking skin over him." Clay said impressed.
"I do try." Atlas said proudly.
_______________________________________________
Alexander Drake
Lifeforce: 481,927
Integrated Traits: [Clever mind-Rare grade],[Enhanced senses-Epic grade]X2, [Energy projection-Legendary grade], [Supreme vitality-Legendary grade],[Lesser dragon breath-Epic grade],[Regeneration-Epic grade]X2, [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs-Uncommon grade]X2, [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Rare grade],[Active camouflage-Legendary grade], [Eridian engineering expertise-Mythical grade], [Efficient lungs-Rare grade]x2, [Biometallic bones-Legendary grade], [Quick thinking-Rare grade], [Minor spatial awareness-Epic grade], [Adrenal rush-Rare grade], [Mechanical engineering expertise-Rare grade]X3, [Gunsmithing expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X3, [Mechanical Savant-Epic grade], [Embodiment of destruction(partial)-Mythical grade], [Demi-god body-Mythical grade], [Martial savant-Legendary grade], [Tinkering instinct-Rare grade], [Phase-god(Incomplete)-Mythical grade], [Impenetrable hide-Legendary grade]
Stored traits: [Agelessness-Legendary grade],[Elemental lifeform-Epic grade], [Elemental embodiment(Fire)-Legendary grade], [Elemental embodiment(Cryo)-Legendary grade],
Comments
Christian Jeffress
Thanks for another fun chapter. I am curious on how hard the life lesson is going to be on the two women here, especially learning not to leave your enemy alive if you have the choice lol.
