Provocations

At her hotel room, Theresa scowled as she contemplated her next move. Due to Mahi's DESPER being a fake, she could no longer rely on things being settled via it, meaning the legality shield that would have been present for killing Carol via it was gone. Worse, Carol had managed to beat Mahi at Duck chess, showing she might not be as easy to vanquish at the chessboard as Theresa had hoped.

"Damn her. How dare she use her intellect for all the wrong reasons. If I could go back in time, I'd abort her on the spot."

Theresa truly did despise Carol from the bottom of her heart. To her, Carol was meant to be the heir to both the prestigious Broadstone family, and the Kunninganna family she had founded along with her quadruplet sisters. Yet for reasons unknown to Theresa, Carol always acted immature and was always engrossed in toilet humor, which ended up evolving into dank and edgy humor later on in life. Carol's older twin brother, Zachery though seemed to be more in the mold of what Theresa wanted of an heir. However, the Broadstone family refused to allow male heirs, nor was Theresa particularly fond of having a son.

The Broadstone family was largely a matriarchy headed by the powerful Mother Salem. Men born into the family were essentially raised to simply act as tools to pass down Broadstone genes to those Mother Salem deemed worthy of bringing into the family. As such, Broadstone men often grew up to become soulless, emotionless robots. As for men trying to marry into the family, they were required to swear undying loyalty to Mother Salem via a blood oath, and while they often kept their original personalities, they had essentially sold their souls to Mother Salem and were at her beck and call. The same was essentially true for women marrying into the family, perhaps more so than the men as Mother Salem would always require them to bare at least one daughter and raise them to be worthy of the Broadstone name.

Those seeking political support from the Broadstones were also required to swear loyalty to Mother Salem. The one exception to this being Manny Pewler, who somehow managed to emerge on top during the negotiation phase, leading to his meteoric rise in politics. While his methods of doing so remain largely unknown, it is worth mentioning DESPERs did exist at the time he met with Mother Salem.

Theresa was not only under pressure from both Mother Salem, but also her elder sister, Fianna, who was the driving force behind the Kunninganna family. It could be said that Fianna also gamed the system against Mother Salem by having Theresa marry into the family instead of her. Thus, she wasn't beholden to every single one of Mother Salem's demands and could receive the critical funding and support from the family for her political endeavors. This also meant she'd constantly rely on Theresa to maintain the good relationship with the Broadstones. Then Carol brought it all crashing down.

Ironically enough, Pewler could be argued to be root cause of Carol defecting as she was showing signs of succumbing to her brainwashing until the in-person meeting with Pewler traumatized her. Though more accurately, it was her reuniting with childhood friend, Christian Barns that committed her to treading her own path.

Naturally, both Mother Salem and Fianna were furious at this as was Theresa, leading to the three mutually agreeing to assassinate Carol for the good of their legacies. At first, they believed they were successful, but upon learning that Carol had survived years later, they reignited their plot to eliminate her. Luckily for them, Pewler was willing to do the job as he saw eliminating Carol as a means to an end for his ultimate ambition, yet after his death at the hands of Iori, everything was thrown into disarray. Now it had fallen to Theresa herself to take care of Carol.

Theresa was fine with her position though. While she could have aspired for greater heights, she chose to remain as a lawyer. Her reason for doing so was that remaining a lawyer was better for the team, the Broadstone and Kunninganna families, as a whole. It certainly paid dividends in that regard and allowed her to do things she wouldn't have been able to do if she had become a congresswoman or senator. Though should her sister, Fianna become president, she was set to become her attorney general. However, Carol's seemingly unrelated video where her Kirikawa lineage was revealed had unexpectedly jeopardized Fianna's electoral hopes. Thus, for the greater good of the family, Theresa was willing to kill Carol personally, though naturally she had to be cautious so as not to become another scandalous headache for Fianna.

The DESPER loophole was her best shot at that, but now she'd either have to kill Carol the old fashioned way and hope she didn't get caught, or find a DESPER wielder willing to aid her.

As Theresa was about to turn in for the night, she received a call from Mother Salem.

"... Theresa... I heard the initial plan ended in failure... How shall you proceed?"

"I intend to find another DESPER wielder to do the deed."

"Take heed. You are not to join that league, nor strike a deal with any that could eventually sully our name. And as a precautionary measure, make sure Zinnia is told..."

...

The next morning, Carol headed over to Ryokoma with everyone for the start of the tournament. As she walked through the park, she fell behind as she noticed a peculiar sight; a man dressed as a scientist sleeping on a bench. After staring for a bit, she shrugged and began to head off, only to find her path blocked by Theresa.

"Zinnia... Seeing you in the flesh again makes me want to puke. Especially considering how degenerate you've become."

Carol's heart began beating faster and faster, but she put on a smile and tried to act calm. "And you're still looking like a hot evil milf lawyer. Now that I think about it, the last time I saw ya face-to-face was when ya drove me to my first day of college-"

"WHAT did you just call me?"

"Milf, mother I like to fuck."

Pure disgust and rage consumed Theresa as she impulsively lunged forward to deliver a slap. However, Carol dodged the blow by bending backwards and delivering a kick to Theresa's face, blooding her lip instantly.

However, the plan backfired as Theresa immediately shouted at the top of her lungs that she'd sue Carol for assault and battery. The shouting was so loud, it roused the slumbering scientist from his nap.

"You can't sue me! It was self-defense!"

"I can and will! Not to mention you faked your death-"

"Uh, ever hear of witness protection? I was nearly murdered!"

"A shame you weren't. Tracking down your address was a headache in a half."

Carol went pale as she came to a horrific realization. "Th- No way. You're not implying-"

"Yes, I'm the one that ultimately doxed you. Or rather, it was the other brat I birthed that told it to Mother Salem when asked."

Carol went pale. While she was aware of the way her twin brother was to be raised by the Broadstone family, she had tried her best to remain close with him. However, she had never told him the exact address of her boyfriend's place, meaning he likely found it out on his own, possibly at Mother Salem's orders, or perhaps...

"Did the hag order him to look up my address?"

Theresa paused as a scowl appeared on her face. "No, it seemed like he was trying to run away on his own free will, but we caught him and since then, we've taken measures to guarantee he never steps out of line again. In fact, we planned for him to be married off just next week, yet your little video has upset the potential bride as she wants nothing to do with a family descended from degenerates. Mother Salem wanted her to join the family, but now that's gone up in smoke. And said woman is now turning against us, causing us to lose some clout."

"Good."

"And we're going to pin the full blame on your brother, or rather use him as a bloody tool to fix this problem."

Carol began to go pale again, but took a deep breath and began to slowly walk away.

"Running again? Heartless trash. I-"

"Blah, blah, blah, can't hear ya!" Carol cried as she covered up her ears.

She wasn't sure how much of what Theresa was telling her was truth, but she was confident she was saying all that to provoke her into doing something rash. However, she did not anticipate that Theresa would then launch a powerful kick at her jaw, shattering some of her teeth, and bringing her to the ground.

"You're a legal adult now, and since you just attacked me, this counts a self-defense, punk."

Now PTSD began to over take Carol as she began to curl up into a ball as Theresa violently kicked her. Now it became clear to her why she had that nightmare a few days ago; the past was about to repeat itself.

"Now, now, we can't just go slugging each other in the park, even though it is a bit entertaining," a voice snickered.

Theresa let up the kicking for a second to notice the scientist from the bench standing before her.

"Stay out of this."

"Nah, see I happen to hear a lot of talk about "compassion" from some of my dear students. I'm a professor at Stanford, ya see; Manfred von Skaberghast. Now why not reconcile over a nice little game of chess," the scientist sneered as he pulled his DESPER out of his pocket and activated it.

A simple chessboard erected from the ground along with two chairs, as Theresa and Carol found themselves forcibly walking towards it.

Theresa was caught off guard, but decided to make the most of the situation. "When I win, she'll die, yes?"

"Yup, though I actually have a rather "sweet" fate in mind if you'd rather opt for that. Ya know, to make up and all."

"Then let's go with that. Loser gets a sweet fate, and gets shaved bald and stripped live on stream," Carol interjected.

Theresa shot Carol a glare, but refused to budge on her proposal. Skaberghast however explained that since he activated the DESPER, he ultimately gets to decide the punishments since he outrates both of them.

"Hey, compassion's your name n' game, right? So why not reconcile with the sweet fate I got in mind for the loser. Now, start already. 10 minutes each, no increments, I wanna go back to my nap," Skaberghast sneered as he began lounging on the park bench again.