page 1004 – Selfless Altruism
(Historical Notes: This is another one where I REALLY wish I actually had the original comments, because I seem to recall a chorus of “Oh wow, Layla really CAN be evil” on this one… or at least that she can be really scary with that kind of lighting. And also, we don’t get to see enough interaction between Layla and the Cap’n. We need to see Far Out There’s two biggest grumps bouncing off each other more often, especially since we KNOW Layla would end up winning the confrontation.)
money money
That would be the 20% booking fee Layla will be charging the rich parents as the agent responsible for negotiating their passage on the ship, not including the large “hush money” payment the Cap’n, Layla, and every passenger on board will be getting to cover up the potential scandal of Avi, the famous supermodel family’s child, attacking and potentially destroying a passenger ship. (Except Ichabod, since the Guild already has a NDA with the rich kids’ parents) If Layla can’t squeeze a significant amount of wealth out of this incident for herself, Ichabod’s original nitpicking was right, she really isn’t qualified to run a crime syndicate.
Ichabod isn’t a part of the NDA, that’s focused around Mariska and the people who are actually MEANT to deal with the kids, even if only indirectly.
Nah, there’s no way that the rich parents’ army of highly paid lawyers would allow such a poorly written NDA – the contract is with the Nitpickers Guild, so all members, managers, executives, employees, contractors, subcontractors, vendors, affiliates, friends, pets, mascots, and summoned entities (along with a list about 200 pages long of other covered persons and groups) of the Guild would definitely be covered. If for some bizarre reason someone screwed up when writing the contract and only Mariska were covered, then she violated the NDA by disclosing incriminating details to Ichabod when she called him, voiding a very, very lucrative contract, which she wouldn’t do, so we know he definitely is covered.
On the other hand, rich parents’ lawyers might argue that nobody should get paid:
Ichabod, Mariska, May, Marshall – Covered by NDA as employees of GNG
Layla, Trigger – receives spending money from Ichabod, thus a subcontractor of GNG
Cap’n, Blip – being paid by Ichabod for Transportation for work assignments, thus a subcontractor of GNG
Avatar – gets compensation in the form of free passage from Cap’n, thus a subsubcontractor of GNG
Tabitha and Kids – customers of Cap’n, thus commercial affiliates of a subcontractor of GNG
*Vengeance(???)- Lawyers could not find any information about him in any database, thus were unable to determine his status nor verify his existence. Nobody was willing to ask him.
*Stilez, Tax – has no concept of money, thus unable to be paid off. Also none of the Lawyers would even go near them to begin with.
Layla, on the other hand, might counter-argue that she she’s a career criminal, didn’t care whether the GNG nor Ichabod got in trouble for NDA violations, and could easily leak the incriminating information without it being traceable back to her, thus was still entitled to an
extortioncompensation payment.Actually, Vengeance ends up being the reason why they ALL get paid. They DO find information about him in their database, and IMMEDIATELY capitulate in order to get him away. Even Stillez didn’t illicit a raised eyebrow, but Vengeance’s history scared ALL of the lawers off, to the point where they recommended that it would be easier & cheaper to just pay everyone involved, including the Nitpicker’s Guild.
Also, the Nitpicker’s Guild are NITPICKERS. Looking through complex legalese is what they do for FUN. Do you REALLY think that they’re going to sign a contract where they aren’t going to get paid? Particularly since they seem to regularly get sent to places which regularly undergo catastrophic meltdowns (regularly) completely irrelevant to the Nitpicker’s actions, or due to some “minor” oversight that the client knew and the Nitpicker wasn’t informed of?
Vengeance’s thing is being secretive, clandestine, and generally mysterious. He’s definitely not going to have anything findable about him. Even a professional Nitpicker and Avatar, knower of everything, don’t seem to have any idea. IF he really would be the cause of them getting payouts,it’s not that the lawyers found something that scared them, but rather the fact that they couldn’t find anything IS what terrified them. In either case, we know nobody gets huge payoff, because everyone suddenly becoming super-wealthy is never going to be a plot element in FOT*, so I’m just justifying it retroactively. (*unless they all coincidentally simultaneously incur a huge ironic debt that cancels it out leaving them with net 0, which is a thing that might happen)
Of course Nitpickers can nitpick the contract and be aware of its details, but they’re not going to get much, if any, business if they refuse to sign standard NDAs – nobody is going to give them that option – if they don’t sign they get paid nothingbecause nobody will hire them -nearly every customer we’ve seen them nitpick would require them to keep secret the highly embarassing or criminally involved details of their clients (criminal syndicates, shady businessmen, corrupt governments, mad scientists, etc.). That goes exponentially more so for the super-rich, who won’t hire a pool cleaner without a 300 page NDA. Naturally the Nitpickers would insist on exemptions for “Acts of Stilez” and other similar things out of their control, that’s why there’s a 1500 page addendum to the 300 page NDA. But it still would not exempt them from actively ratting out their employer’s secrets, nor negligently allowing said secrets to be ratted out by failing to prevent associates from knowing.
On Vengeance: These are supposed to be the lawyers of the some of the richest people in the story, period. As in, it’s entirely possible that the petty-cash of ANY of the families has more money in it than the entire Hoch’ren Honnee, and each of the families definitely does. I feel like Ichabod not knowing Vengeance is entirely due to the fact that his name was changed after what he was made famous for, or him not making a mental connection to the famous Vengeance. And if it occurred while Avatar was floating in the void of space, it makes sense for Avatar not to know about it, even if she would have had it shoved into her head otherwise.
NDA’s are based around industry standards. Nitpickers in this story are an industry in and of themselves. I’m sorry, but you can’t claim “Standard NDA” when ignoring the basis of that standard. Mariska is 100% affected by a NDA for the kids. Ichabod probably isn’t, but could be included due to Mariska calling for his help. Everyone else on the ship isn’t. And the “Acts of Stilez” clause alone would mean that the entire NDA was defunct from the moment the kids got onto the ship.