Claw and Heart

4.

"But I am willing to offer you a choice. Your company Sunflower compound bricks Ltd. has a bright future; my experts predict your company will continue to grow larger and larger throughout the next decade and will excel during war times. But because of this little incident, now with the CIA crawling everywhere, your only future is with me. So now given the circumstances...my experts predict your company will have a market value of a billion dollars as soon as it hits the market, but since it never will, I will buy your entire company from you, all your man power, machinery, shares, technology, everything! Right here right now, for a total of two hundred million. So what do you think about this deal?"

This was war, a war not fought with guns, planes or missiles, but rather one fought with paper, pen, money and power. Mr. Wu was like a helpless little soldier right in the center of an atomic strike, and his only chance of survival was to sign a treaty with God himself, a treaty that seemed too good to be true.

Mr. Wu looked like he was about to open his mouth to say something, but in the end he decided to keep his mouth shut; because the next words he would say would make all the difference in the world or no difference at all.

"Don't worry we can give you all the time in the world to consider about the deal, but remember, the CIA might think otherwise."

"...even if I wanted to sell you my company this instant, there would still be loads of legal documents we would have to go through, and there has to be conferences held between my own company's shareholders, this whole process a could take months, perhaps even a year!" Mr. Wu said standing up so quickly that it made people think if he was sitting on a knife edge.

"Don't worry; I have already contacted all your shareholders. And they have all agreed to this deal. They have already sold all their shares to my company, and your employees have been notified that your company under my name will receive double the income and double the yearly bonus. And I have already hired a team of the world's finest lawyers, and let's say I have some connections...This entire process will only take a month at most."

Mr. Wu didn't know what to say. He felt like a child, one who thought himself standing at the top of the hill thinking he could see the entire world, but standing next to the tiny hill was a temple of gods that stood higher then tallest mountain and gazed down upon mortals like him as a sport. And as a mortal all he could ever do is ponder the gods. When the gods decide to strike him, there is nothing he can do except then pray that the gods maybe good and merciful. And now Mr. Wu faced a choice, to hold onto his company with the CIA about to burst in on him any moment, or to sacrifice his company, like offering a living sacrifice to the gods and may they spare him out of the kindness of their heart; but then again the gods will always get what they want; in the name of 'fate'. A tool they use to fool mortals into thinking that they have a choice, when the truth is whatever they do, the result is inevitable, because from the very beginning they are in control of everything.

"I...I don't have a choice do I?" Mr. Wu slowly met his eyes. Eyes like glowing red hot ambers, contained, but with the potential to burn everything to the ground. He also reminded Mr. Wu as a power hungry warlord with an eternal thirst for conquest and plunder. The silence stretched on a quick glance around revealed that even Mr. Wu's own man had already begun to sweat and cast his eyes down upon the table, and that's when Mr. Wu realized he made a mistake.

"Life is full of possibilities!" Mr. Di slowly stood up and threw his hands in the air wildly. "Once a choice always a choice. As humans we shouldn't be blinded by the choices we face right now, but rather we should try to get around it, cross over it, even break through it!" Mr. Di threw a straight punch at the air, and would have defiantly badly injured the air if were a living human.