Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

To anyone who didn't know what a Juliet Rose was, to give a brief description, it was this apricot-colored, fully-cupped rose that had this peachy smell that was sold for $15.8 million in 2006 because of the time and care it took—which accumulated 15 years—to produce such a flower.

And before the world ended, it was sold around 5-10 times as much compared to a regular rose in retail but even to a non-flower guy like myself, it actually caught my eye and made me read about it for a bit.

I actually thought I was gonna catch Rosie off-guard but she gave me a gentle smile before suggesting something much better:

"Dear lord, that request is inherently easy but would you mind an arrangement of mine for the lady's taste coupled with the bouquet of Juliet Roses?"

I nodded with a smile, "That's great actually— but could you humor one of my students here, Seb, for a friend of his as well? You can put it on my tab, no worries—"

"My lord, as I stated— Well, I stated something different but a bouquet of flowers means nothing—"

I waved her off, "Don't say that. This is your life's work, be proud of it a little, yeah? I'll let you treat us with your flowers but you gotta give me a quotation for everything else we'd find interesting. You have something other than flowers, right?"

A genuine smile crept on her face, "Very well, my lord… I'll have one of my people fetch some of our products in the gazebo and the lady and Miss Nancy could take a look at them…"

"Alright, then…"

Surprisingly enough, a normal person could mistake Rosie's garden of flowers for Edith's but there are slight differences in how they were arranged and there was a gazebo in the middle of Rosie's garden which had this walkway made with slabs of differently-sized stones.

Furthermore, there were already a couple of maidservants waiting for us with some refreshments though Kuzma walked up to them and stared them down before ordering them to take a sip of the tea and the random biscuit he picked up.

"S-Sir?/ W-What's this about—"

"Just do what I said," then he turned to Rosie, "You too—"

But I quickly flagged him down, "It's okay, Kuzma. I know when someone's trying to kill me."

He never looked so confused, "What?"

I smiled as I released the tiniest bit of killing intent, "I'm pretty sure you know what it's like. You'd feel something like this— *then casually turns it off* Some people do this involuntarily while a select few like myself have complete control over it. That's also why I went a little overboard with those people from the Roxas Family…"

He almost rolled his eyes, "That's not 100% accurate. The most dangerous ones are the ones who can do it without—"

"Oh~ trust me, I know those people. I'm one of them, as a matter of fact…"

'One of those fucked in the head…'

In any case, my reply only received awkward silence but Rosie took it upon herself to drink the tea and bit a small piece of the biscuits first so Kuzma could have his peace of mind. But yeah, the time limit I gave to the five was close to running out and it didn't take long before we saw them running for dear life in our direction.

And as they reached the walkway, they immediately slowed down so as not to kick the rocks around and damage the flowers but boy were they out of breath. I know that they scrambled to change clothes and all but they honestly looked the same compared to the aftermath of lobbing a stun grenade at them.

'I wonder who patched up his ear…'

"WE MADE IT! HAA~ HA!"

"I'm so~ not used to running…"

"My knees… Ha… Haaa…"

"G-Guys, shut up! Just try to control your breathing… Phew…"

"E-Easy for you to say…"

And as we met eyes, they stood straight and maintained eye contact—though not all the time, because that would be weird—without the hate or animosity I felt earlier but another group of maidservants came with the Villegas Family's specialty products.

I just mouthed at them, "Stay there for a while…"

Since this place's main thing was flowers, other than selling them as is, in a bundle, or inside a resin mold, they had them made into soaps, perfumes, creams, bookmarks, bath salts/bombs/, sprays, makeup, etc.

"Ooh~"

"Wow… T-This smells really nice, don't you think?"

"Yeah!"

It definitely made Kaley more interested compared to simply picking out flowers from the bunch because I had this small inkling that she didn't favor them as much as I thought she would. But yeah, it wasn't like she hated them or anything but she was more interested in the bath products and the perfumes that had a lighter scent compared to the more overpowering ones.

And as I turned to Seb who was eyeing one of the flowers in a resin mold, he picked up a smaller one before turning to Rosie:

"U-Umm… Excuse me, some of these aren't real flowers, right?"

Rosie nodded approvingly, "Good eye. As you can see, as much as I'd love to use fresh flowers, they'd just rot inside and they wouldn't be as vibrant if we used dried-up ones so the next best thing was to replicate them with synthetic materials so as to imitate the vibrant colors of a real one…"

"I-I see… Can I have this one then? I think I could make this into a nice keychain…"

"Splendid idea, I apologize that we haven't thought that far ahead but we can give you a care package for the lady that would receive such a gift?"

"R-Really? Thank you, then. I appreciate that…"

In any case, we spent a bit of time perusing their display and purchasing different items—in a tab, of course—because Rosie reminded me that they weren't allowed to have firearms and the like for safety purposes but everything else was free game. However, I still couldn't believe how valuable entertainment was because her face instantly lit up when I mentioned I could give her a terabyte's worth of movies, TV shows, and music.

Terry couldn't hide his excitement as well but as Rosie and a few of her maidservants excused themselves so they could work on our flower arrangements, I decided it was time to talk to the five to straighten things out.

At this point, they were still in the same position, patiently waiting for me to beckon them over, but the guy who could speak the language of cocksuckers already looked uncomfortable and a little bit pissed off from the time limit they needed to meet but was then tossed aside for close to an hour. To add to that, the spot he was standing on only provided shade for half of his head while the other half was directly in front of the sunlight, making him squint.

But to be fair, I didn't tell them to stand in one spot but just to stay put for a while being able to move around, so I'll just consider it as a misunderstanding.

"Alright, I'm sorry for the delay—you did come here in a hurry, but let's talk. Come here, all of you."

As I said that, they looked at each other first before walking into the gazebo and standing in front of us at attention. They were now maintaining eye contact with a little bit of respect but as much as I wanted to show Kuzma how psychopaths work, as we've established earlier, it would just go over their heads because sometimes, it would be simply done on a whim without a lick of killing intent involved—akin to a person simply squishing an ant just because.

So I first went with the route everyone could understand.

"Alright, now's your chance to talk freely but before that… Has… Has everything that happened not sunk in yet? Even if you didn't have direct involvement with whoever from the Roxas Family—and any other families who tried to mess with the Rivas Family, this is how it goes. They— no, you guys lost. End of story."

"..."

"It fucking sucks, I know. But unless you have a way to turn things around, causing trouble and glaring at me for god knows what reason isn't helping your case. Whether you want it or not, the five of you are now under the Villegas Family who is now under the Rivas Family who is allied with me and a few other much, much bigger families who definitely have zero tolerance for rich brats like you."

"..."

"Any one of you could be now working as a prostitute, a target for a shooting range, a crash test dummy, or if worst comes to worst, one of the corpses pushing their lifeless bodies around to power up a generator from this *pointing at Logan* handsome guy's place. I'd hate to say this but you're still one of the lucky ones who could play as maids or butlers and have three full meals each day, a room to sleep in, and not be used for sexual release, but we here could talk to Sal and change it for you, if you want. Plenty— and I mean, PLENTY of people would definitely kill to trade places with you lot, just saying..."

"..."

"And yeah, that's my piece so now it's time to hear yours."

At that point, I was genuinely interested to hear what they were about to say but a good five minutes have passed and no one had said a goddamn word. I was this close to lobbing another stun grenade but one of them walked up and looked at me with dead eyes before opening their mouth.