Chapter 274: Book 4 Chapter 36: Who's the Boss

“Hey, Vell, if you’re not busy-”

“I am in fact slightly preoccupied right now,” Vell said, as he shot several dozen zombies in the face.

“Well this stuff is easy for you, who cares,” Hawke said. “I just wanted to talk about whole ‘putting me in charge’ thing.”

“You mean more than the hours we already spent on it yesterday?”

The semi-official announcement of the looper’s next leader had generated some strong opinions from almost everyone involved. Most of those opinions could best be described as “whining”.

“I feel like we still have some salient points to discuss,” Hawke said.

“I think we pretty much covered it, actually,” Vell said. “You’re not perfect, but you’re the best candidate.”

“I feel like we could go into a little detail about how he’s the ‘best’,” Kim said. She bulldozed her way through a few dozen zombies and came to a halt by Vell and Hawke.

“Look, Kim, I love you, but you’re a little bit of a blunt instrument,” Vell said.

“I am not a blunt instrument,” Kim snapped. She bludgeoned a few more zombies as Vell spoke. She hated accidentally emphasizing his point, but there were a lot of zombies around. She couldn’t just stop punching for the sake of appearances.

“Kim, you tried to punch the end of reality,” Vell said.

“I didn’t have much else to work with, Vell!”

“The point stands,” Vell said. “Hawke is better at problem solving.”

“Well what about me, then?” Samson said. “I’m pretty good at figuring shit out.”

“Do you really want the breakdown here, Samson?”

“I just feel like the transparency would-”

“Fine. You’re not that good at problem solving, you’re inexperienced, and you lack people skills, which are an essential element of negotiating the complex interpersonal situations that inevitably arise from leadership,” Vell said. “Also you kicked me in the nuts that one time.”

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“Damn. Okay, I deserve that.”

“For the record, I’m perfectly content to not be in the running for leader,” Alex said.

“Noted,” Vell said. “God, can you imagine if we’d done this a couple months ago? You’d have never fucking shut up about how much better of a leader you’d be.”

“Yeah, can you imagine,” Alex said. Part of her was still seething with resentment that she was not in the running for leadership, but the better part of her knew it was a bad idea.

“Don’t get distracted,” Hawke said. “We’re not done talking about you thinking I can run this clown show.”

“Hey,” said the clowns.

“Look, you’re not perfect, but neither am I,” Vell said. “Even Lee had her flaws. Nobody’s ever going to be perfect, you just have to be good enough.”

“Well I don’t think I am good enough!”

“Stop saying that,” Alex advised. “Humility will only make you seem like a better candidate.”

“Shit!”

“Not actually a factor,” Vell said. “Look, if you really object, and if all you guys object too, you can feel free to have an election or something next year. I’m not going to be around, so you can do whatever. This is more of a recommendation than anything.”

“Well the fact you recommended me still makes me more likely to win an election,” Hawke said. “And I don’t like that.”

“Well you’re going to have to deal with it, because I’m not taking it back,” Vell said. “Now can we please focus on the zombies? There’s like ten million of the damn things, and-”

Ten million became zero as a wave of green-black fire washed over the campus and incinerated all the undead. Now ankle-deep in zombie ash, Vell let out a soft grunt of disgust and stepped up onto the nearest elevated surface, a small bench.

“You’re welcome,” Kraid said, as he marched across the ash-covered quad. “Was that all of them, or are there more pouring out of some zombie fountain I should know about?”

“No. Necrotic energy burst, one-time only,” Vell said.

“Fantastic. Those decomposing fuckers were disrupting my work,” Kraid said. “What were you idiots shouting about?”

“Vell says Hawke’s in charge next year,” Samson said.

“Which is completely ridiculous,” Hawke said.

“What are you talking about, you’re the obvious choice,” Kraid said. “You’re the only one here with any common sense. As you are currently demonstrating by hiding behind Kim.”

Hawke tried to hide a little harder. Kraid laughed at him.

“And besides, you’re all getting ahead of yourselves thinking there’ll be a school to come back to next year.”

“Yeah yeah, you’re very menacing, now explode our skeletons or whatever other stupid way you’re going to murder us,” Vell said.

“Well now you’ve been all sarcastic about it, it’s not going to be funny anymore,” Kraid said. He turned on his heel and started marching back through the zombie ash. Samson waited until he was a safe distance before he crossed his arms and scoffed defiantly.

“Well, he’s surprisingly easy to deal with.”

Samson’s skeleton exploded. Vell stood still for a second before wiping a few chunks of Samson off his arm.

“Yet another reason he’s not going to be in charge.”