A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 205: Chapter 205 — Worth More Alone II

”What if I genuinely love the shoe?”

”You still disclose it.”

Cillian appealed to the room and found no allies.

”The regulator doesn’t care about your heart,” Maeve said. ”Money changed hands, the post is commercial, it gets marked. Payment, free gear, a holiday — all of it counts. And disclosing doesn’t launder a lie, either. You still can’t claim the boots made you faster if they didn’t.”

”This industry is joyless.”

”This industry is why your appearance fee exists. Sit up.”

Kavanagh, on the screen, had been waiting for the rules to finish.

”While you’re all feeling organized,” she said, ”understand what Team Zero currently is, legally. The Tower recognizes you as a registered clearing party. That’s all. You are not an organization. You can’t employ staff, own a facility, run payroll, or sign a collective contract as Team Zero.”

”So what have we been doing?” Ronan asked.

”Five individuals co-signing everything. Which works until it doesn’t — a roster change, a retirement, revenue that needs distributing, or a member who legally can’t sign.” She let that one sit exactly long enough. ”Every one of those turns your paperwork into a fire.”

”The guild fixes that,” Finn said.

”A guild company fixes that. And separately — start protecting the name now, not when the company’s ready. Two different things, and don’t let anyone blur them for you.” She held up one finger. ”The company: a legal entity, owned through shares, run through votes. Separate person in law from all five of you.” A second finger. ”The trademark: the name and the crest. That can be owned by the company, owned jointly by the five of you, or licensed into the company on your terms. Who applies for the mark is who owns the mark. Decide it on purpose, not by accident.”

”Counterproposal first,” James said. ”The sportswear clock is running. The guild can’t be the reason we miss it.”

Dunne built the personal counteroffer over two days, behind his wall.

Out came everything with the team’s fingerprints on it. First-negotiation rights over Team Zero — deleted. Matching rights over future guild sponsorships — deleted. Anything touching official team uniforms, his teammates, campaigns unrelated to James personally, or the name and crest — deleted, deleted, deleted.

What remained was a clean single-athlete deal.

One year of personal sportswear exclusivity. Solo advertisements and social appearances, capped at a fixed number. A James Ganner collection — clothing and accessories, with separate royalties on merchandise. Defined territories, defined platforms. Approval over final advertisements. Renewal, new territories, expanded usage: all new negotiations at new prices.

One exception got written in bold, because Dunne had read the room correctly: the company could require James to wear its products at his personal promotional appearances — but never over official Team Zero equipment, and never inside collective campaigns.

The counterproposal went in under the deadline. Kavanagh handled nothing on it, and handled everything on the team side, and the wall between the two held.

The company answered the following afternoon.

They accepted the removal of every right involving Team Zero. All of it, without a fight — which told James they’d priced the overreach as a bonus, not a requirement.

And they lowered the guarantee.

”Expected,” Dunne said, on the call. ”The original number was buying two things: you, and a seat at Team Zero’s future table. You took the second thing off the menu. The price of the first thing is what’s left.”

The revised figure was still several times larger than James’s personal share of the entire team campaign.

What the company kept was ordinary and real. Exclusivity over his personal sportswear endorsements for the one-year term. The right to match competing individual offers when the term ended. First consideration on renewing his clothing line. The agreed advertisements, appearances, and social deliverables. Defined use of approved campaign material during the contract period.

”It’s commercially reasonable,” Dunne said. ”And the document now states in plain terms that you sign in your personal capacity only, with no authority to bind Team Zero. Nobody can ever pretend otherwise with a straight face.”

James muted the call and looked at the other four.

”Last chance to object.”

”You already asked us.” Finn didn’t look up from the map he was marking. ”It’s your contract now.”

”It’s yours,” Ronan agreed. ”The parts that were ours are gone. Decide it like it’s yours.”

”No objection,” Maeve said. ”It’s clean.”

Cillian pointed at the revised guarantee.

”Sign it before they remember you’re irritating.”

James unmuted.

”Term sheet’s accepted,” he said. ”Subject to the final written agreement.”

No signing that day. No shoot, no announcement, no number in any headline. Just a term sheet, and a company on the other end of a call sounding quietly pleased, and Cillian mouthing the figure to himself one more time like a man practicing a foreign word.

The room could have ended the evening there.

Instead Kavanagh put the first section of the guild-formation brief up on Finn’s strategy screen, and the temperature changed for the third time that week.

The heading was dry. The list under it wasn’t.

Founding ownership percentages. Voting rights. Who provides startup capital. Equal shares or not. Who serves as Guild Master. Which decisions need a majority and which need all five. What happens when a member retires. Or leaves. Or dies.

Whether personal income stays outside guild revenue.

Whether James’s capital buys him extra ownership — or is only a founder’s loan, repayable, buying him nothing but the guild’s existence.

Whether the Team Zero trademark goes into the company, or stays jointly owned by five founders who existed before the company did.

Nobody spoke for a while.

James read the capital line twice. He could fund almost all of it without feeling the weight — that was simply true now, and everyone at the table knew it. It would also be the worst possible reason for him to own more of a name that five people had built on nineteen floors before money ever found them.

Finn didn’t say James should have the biggest share, which James had half expected.

Maeve didn’t say equal five ways, which James had fully expected.

Ronan pulled a pad over and started doing what Ronan did — running the arithmetic, muttering, working out what sixty-forty or thirty-thirty-forty did to voting control, which pairs could outvote which, where a deadlock lived.

And Cillian read the line about death and retirement and expulsion, and didn’t joke.

”We have to write that down now,” he said quietly. ”While we all like each other. Before any of it’s about an actual person.”

”That’s exactly when it gets written,” Kavanagh said. ”Founding documents are the only contracts drafted by people who love each other. It’s what makes them either very good or very useless.”

She stood, walked to the screen, and highlighted the first empty field. It glowed there, patient, above all the others.

PROPOSED FOUNDING OWNERSHIP

She turned and looked at the five of them, one after another, ending on James.

”Before I register anything,” she said, ”I need to know who owns Team Zero.”