There was a common misconception in the demonic world that Anthracite’s ninjamarketers were nothing more than foot soldiers, goons whose sole purpose was to provide muscle for his various plans and strategems. However, it wasn’t really fair to see them this way. Sure, the three squadrons of ninjamarketers (lead by youma who had taken the monikers Cash, Check, and Charge) often engaged in various covert (but still technically legal) activities, but to focus solely on the “ninja” aspect of their function was really a great disservice to their work as Hypercorp’s de facto marketing department. True, Gerald Stewart’s company did have a more traditional marketing department as well, but it was, in a sense, a figurehead branch (particularly now, when Hypercorp was cutting back on their telemarketing).
In practice, this elite group of youma gave new meaning to the phrase “guerilla marketing.” The concept was simple: they would use their stealth to place marketing information, card applications, and other assorted information in places where selected customers were certain to take notice of it. It was actually quite tricky: if the customer wasn’t in the right state of mind, the advertisments would be ignored and/or thrown away, and the timing had to be perfect, or else the customer might become paranoid and start to believe that Hypercorp was watching his or her every move (not true—generally, a potential customer’s every move was not observed quite as rigorously while they were asleep).
The three captains took great pride in being the only youma that made substantial contributions to Anthracite’s legitimate non-magical business, and, accordingly pursued this responsibility with great vigor. Check, in particular, had a great dislike for doing nothing during any period of time that could be spent encouraging consumers to use Hypercorp’s services. Therefore, when he’d sent some of the youma under his command to “scout the area” around the Royale Megaplex, he’d also ordered them to surreptitiously distribute some promotional material for the company’s new HyperBusinessGold card to the administrative offices of some of the surrounding small businesses.
This proved to be an extremely wise move, because as one of the ninjamarketers was returning from the office of the Crown Arcade, he noticed that the target, Naru Osaka, and her friend, one Usagi Tsukino, had arrived rather earlier than expected….
Usagi moaned as she was forced to admit defeat to the Sailor V arcade game again. Darn it… why can’t I beat this stupid game? I know the real Sailor V, for crying out loud—heck, I outrank her! She was pretty sure that Minako had once said this game was intended to be used as a training device, and considering the level of skill she’d shown in her capacity as Sailor Moon, she should have been able to pwn its sorry butt several times over by now. Unfortunately, “should” and “could” are two completely different concepts, which meant that she’d have to plunk down yet another token in an attempt to defeat the infernal machine.
Naru just shook her head as her friend made yet another go at the videogame that had taken countless hours of her time over the past few years. “You know, there are other games in this arcade, Usagi.”
“That may be,” the rabbit-haired girl replied, her eyes still fixed on the screen, “but I want to beat this one.”
“Heh. So you plan to give your life savings to Sailor V, then?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, Sailor V is a real person, and this game uses her image. I think that means she’s entitled to a cut of the profits—in fact, she should be getting some of the profits from all of the Sailor V merchandise that gets sold.”
Usagi’s eyes widened as she considered the implications of that particular bit of information. Sailor V merchandise had been a positively huge seller back when she first appeared—and even though the fad had died down in recent years, Sailor V merchandise was still widely available. If Minako was getting money from all those sales, that meant that she was one of the wealthiest teenagers in the country, putting her on an even keel with, well, Haruka and Michiru. I wonder if Mina-chan even knows about all of this—what the heck?! In the midst of her speculation about the financial status of Minako Aino, Usagi had allowed the digital representation of her friend to be dragged off-screen by a stereotypical tentacle demon, and the machine was now emitting comically perverse noises as a result. Clearly, the programmer of this game was a total hentai. One of these days, that mooncat is going to get what’s coming to him. “You know what? I think I will try out one of those newer games.”
“Did it just get colder in here?”
“I don’t know, Artemis, but I do know how we can warm things up.”
The white mooncat’s eyebrows went up as he looked over at his significant other. “Please tell me that means you’re ‘in the mood.’”
Luna sighed. “Yes, you perverted idiot, I’m in the mood.”
“Woohoo!”
Check had assigned two of his most skilled ninjamarketers to make sure that Llobewu actually did his job. As it turned out, however, it probably would have been a better idea to send his two most patient ones instead.
“Dun! Dun! Dun! Dun! Dun dun dunnnnnn….”
The green-and-black youma was apparently attempting to “train” by going through a “training montage.” It was also apparent that no one had told him that the images in a three-minute montage take place over an extended period of time (usually much, much longer than three minutes), and that simply doing one push-up, one sit-up, and one pull-up, slamming away at a punching bag for 30 seconds, and drinking 2 or 3 raw eggs while singing the opening hook from “Eye of the Tiger” (off-key, naturally) would not make him as good a fighter as the main character of Cop Land, let alone the famous fictional boxer.
Clearly, Llobewu had absolutely no understanding of the basic concepts of filmmaking.
Once his “montage” was finished, the youma decided to test his new skills in the most appropriate arena possible—by sitting on his ass and playing video games for four hours. Naturally, he “rocked the hiz-ouse,” as he put it.
“Take that, Dhalsim! Hadoken! Yeah! I am teh awesome!” (Yes, he actually pronounced it “teh.”) “Oh, yeah! I am ready! Bring ’em on! I am so going to go all ‘Rocky’ on that Oobus Magoobus!”
Of course, Llobewu had conveniently forgotten that Rocky Balboa lost the match in the first movie.
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(Posted Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:35)
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