How to negotiate?

The meeting at the war room finished. They decided it was Jason who should do the negotiation. After all, he was the soldier among them and he knew how they thinked. Jason sympathized slightly to these mercenaries, he hoped he could strike a good deal with them at which both parties would get the best results.

Athena suddenly talked. "We can do it. You've done negotiating before. Although most of them ended with more dead that needed hehe." Athena was teasing Jason for his notorious team. Although Jason was a good negotiator in itself, he had a team member that was really bad at holding emotions. Furthermore his temper was the worse among the team.

There was one time that was as simple as negotiating a small charter with a faction that lead into a full encounter just because that team member lost his money from gambling and vented his anger at the leader of the faction. Since then, Jason always left him outside the negotiating table. But the damage has been done and their team name was given the nickname "The Warmongering Negotiators" among their peers.

Jason arrived at the basement. He opened the door and still marvelled at how clean this place was for a basement.

"Who ever maintained this place definitely had OCD, this place is really pristine and clean for a holding cell." Athena said. Jason also wondered the same. Jason walk through the hallway arriving at outside the first cell. He looked at the soldier, some seated, while some stood up.

"Give me a representative within a minute." Jason said sternly. The some of them understood immediately what was happening. After a minute a blond soldier went to the front.

"What's your name and rank brother?" Jason asked.

"Louis, Captain." Louis answered. He looked back at Jason and indeed felt a similar spirit of a soldier. The feeling was somewhat different though and he could not point out where the difference is.

Jason continued going through the three different cells getting a representative. "Three captains are indeed good enough", Jason thought. Jason was surprised they were seemingly docile. There was no hostile intent or if there was it was well hidden.

Jason and the three captains arrived at another room at the end of the hallway. According to Celine she planned to use this as a interrogation room but scrapped the idea because Karen was really against it.

Jason prepared the seats and asked them to seat.

"I feel like you three know why I asked you here right?" The three captains looked at each other and nodded.

"Straight to the point, this is our offer. We will take custody of the incapacitated captives as test subjects for an experiment. If it succeeds they may return to normal, if not... they die. As for the most of you, our offer is employment, or we will you as hostages for your employers, the Auger Family to pay for. If you choose employment, there are three routes you can take. First, become a bodyguard. Second, becoming a spy. Third, become an employee on one of the offshore companies we manage." Jason said. He stood up and walked to the corner but still watching them. The three captains went into deliberation for fifteen minutes.

"Took you guys long enough, so what are your decisions?" Jason sighed, he actually got a bit sleepy from watching them. Jason started to think this was the reason why he was never given guard duties but more on away missions.

"We want to ask something, for our dead comrades... What do you plan to do with them?" Captain Formont asked.

"Don't worry, we will give their bodies back, after all they still deserve a proper burial as former soldiers. We will leave it up to your discretions." Jason said.

The three sighed with relief, after all, it was hard to explain to family of the fallen a death of a person more so if there is no corpse to give.

"So far, we decided to try to persuade the others on employment. Although it is indeed a breach of contract for us it really doesn't matter. We know the Auger Family will not give in to paying for mercenaries like us or if they did, they would kill us for failing this mission." Another captain by the name of Ricardo spoke.

Jason nodded and escorted them to their cells. Jason went to the war room where only Emily and Celine were waiting..

"So far so good. But I doubt everyone will be more open to it though. Nonetheless, I could say the negotiations went well." Jason said.