Little projects. 

This was how The Florist saw the world. 

Little problems. Little steps to solve them.
Sunflower was late. Baines had struck, hard and fast. Both women reliable as ever in their behavior.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the horde of sniveling weasels and artificially-primped hags that would be chittering about Saturnina’s Estate Party, and the equally large swarm of villains and vultures that would be descending upon The Black Brethren once the news spread. If Casio Flores were a gambling man, he would bet one would find a considerable amount of overlap among the groups. 

A flicker of a smirk fled across his thin lips as he meandered casually through the aisles of his workshop. 

Humans operated at certain frequencies just like machines did. An animal brain tugging at the controls of a complex robot that nonetheless retained incredibly base programming. The most successful machine nature ever built. A seemingly limitless creature that had recreated itself in the image of the very gods they themselves had once created, still shackled to the bonds of primal urges. It was enough to make one scream.

Casio’s eyes glazed over as the Neural Lace took over his shopping duties. Data streamed through his perception : blueprints for buildings, schematics for a dirty bomb, the latest news. Things were largely quiet, as far as Mars went, but word of the Disc would spread like a wildfire through dry brush once it broke. He stopped momentarily to view CCTV footage of a small woman putting a bullet in a peacekeeper’s neck. An eyebrow raised as he replayed the footage several times. In a flash a message was sent to The Mouth, the footage attached.

All the while, his swift hands skillfully plucked a precise amount of screws, fittings and wires from their respective labeled containers. Careful strides brought the Florist to a new aisle, snatching up three super-condensed high payload mining charges and an accompanying trio of cellphones as he weaved passed dozens more diligently organized containers.

So few were willing to take their time. A single meticulous step was often more beneficial than a handful of heedless leaps and bounds. Though the smash-and-dash approach had its advantages, provided the ensuing chaos didn’t lead a path straight to the creator's doorstep. 

Sunflower’s delivery had certainly been a gamble, but it appeared sending the empty headed bombshell in would reap benefits after all. The delay likely meant a close encounter with the hostess herself. No doubt Saturnina would be thinking of playing the delivery girl’s employment against him. 

Such an opportunity would be hard to pass up, he knew, because he and the wealthy socialite had spent the entirety of their 'friendship' smiling daggers at one another. They were the the same beast wearing different skin, two apex-predators stalking the same prey. It was only a matter of time. Friend or foe? Friend or foe?

Hauling his loot, he interfaced with the pressure sealed, heavily fortified door which lead deeper into his domain. The Neural Lace engaging the complex security sequence to unlock the door like an invisible arm before him as he stepped through the threshold.

Every last eye, optic and camera would be on Aurora. Every last petty crook and badged criminal, all the self-important, self-financed megalomaniacs and corporate moguls would be gunning for her. Every serpent and devil on Mars would have a target now. Their greedy hands wringing in delight, their minds whirring with possibilities. 

He gingerly placed his collected menagerie on a small tray that hovered adjacent a series of much larger tables. The obfuscated images of humans, two males and a female, blurred within them, the whole room basked in a sterile green glow.

Their focus on the disk meant one thing, Mars wouldn’t be playing attention to the other pieces on the board. They would move for the Black Queen. 

With a wave of his hand, Flores removed the blur on the first body, the lights above brightening to revealing the grisly inner workings of the man’s chest, pinned back by tiny claws, his organs pulsing with life.

Mars would be red again, the coming bloodbath would see to that.

Casio, for his part, had some ideas on how to get that blood flowing.

Briefly The Florist considered the man breathing peacefully on the table despite his opened chest cavity. An irrelevant Militia grunt whose destiny was about to be hijacked by a drug-dealing super genius? It read like a bad comic book premise.

But it was just a little project.

Flores had a number of them walking around the city now. Though most of them were unaware. It was hard to find willing participants, which is why he hadn’t bothered. People came to him to be altered, to be put under, or Flores found them, broken, discarded and alone. It was only a matter of ethic and virtue which might stop another in his position to resist a little tinkering here and there, where it suited him.

It was to be a long game after all, and the opening whistle had scarcely begun to blow.