Securing Northside? [Exemplary]

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

He opened his eyes.

His head was pounding. Ugh.

Someone was speaking... their voice crackling faintly? Oh. That guy on the speakers. Yeah, that's right, that's what it was they'd been doing; fighting for their lives against a bunch of vengeful gangsters who'd invaded the barracks.

He slowly sat up, wincing at the sharp pains that shot through his chest the moment he moved. Looking down, Hijiri saw that his jacket and shirt had been removed at some point and almost his entire torso was wrapped in bandages... most of which were by now more red than white.

Still, he hardly had room to complain; now that he could think more clearly, the Battle Rabbit knew he'd been so close to death that only a miracle should have been able to save him... even with urgent medical attention, surviving that would have been a long shot... so how...?

Wait! Yes! Jallus had forced him to summon that medical droid!
He must have done an amazing job for it to have managed so well.

Dragging his eyes off his own bloodied body, the Rabbit looked out across the-

“Holy fucking shit!” he shrieked, shoving himself backwards with enough force not only to fall but to topple the rickety hospital bed as well. He then screamed once more, though merely in pain this time as opposed to shock and terror. By falling – and bringing a bed down on top of himself – Hijiri had managed to reopen every one of his wounds, more or less.

“I see you're awake, Takanomiya.” Kroll's amused voice came from past... whatever that thing was. A mass of jagged, skeletal metal limbs, scalpels, needles, saws, drills, glowing lights, tubes and wires filled fully half the room... and as he watched a stream of sparks cascaded out of some part of it, the thing shuddered and trembled, and a few lights went out.

“Iechtelsteir, what the hell is this thing?” Hijiri demanded, still staring wide-eyed at the abomination as a claw-like appendage grabbed the fallen bed and dragged it back up into its proper position.

“This is your handiwork, corporal. You didn't exactly manage to replicate the medical droid. On the bright side, it was working really well to start with. Rather than treating everyone separately, it sorted us all out at once. Of course, it seems to have worn down pretty quickly, so not really the best long-term investment... still, we shouldn't complain; it's as a result of this thing that not one of us died... well, apart from those four who were already gone before you summoned it.”

“What? Four?” the Rabbit asked, suddenly filled with dread. They had lost one 'trooper not long after entering, and another two during the ambush... which meant someone else had died since.

“Yeah. You can relax, though; it's no one whose name you know.” Brandon was the one to make this statement. As was the case with the 'sergeant', the elf was completely hidden from his view behind the monstrous contraption which occupied the centre of the room.

Though he felt a little guilty for it, Hijiri was relieved. These generic Tier One reinforcement stormtroopers who'd barely finished basic training before being sent down to Tier Five meant a whole lot less to him than those he actually knew.

“I see. Okay then... and how long was I out?”

“Funny you should mention that,” Kroll said, a touch of humour in his voice, “we were actually just discussing it before you woke up. Right, Mr Villain?”

“Yeah.” growled the voice from the speaker system, “You lot have been in there for more than five hours now, and I'm getting really bored over here. So I've decided, if none of you make it to where I am in the next half hour then I'm coming to you. Good luck keeping all your unconscious guys safe in the middle of a fight.”

“Five hours? And now another half hour?” Hijiri asked incredulously, “... Why would you even give us that long? You had the perfect opportunity to kill us all.”

“Because you suck.” the man told him bluntly, “How am I supposed to enjoy my revenge if you just drop dead at my feet before I even get the chance to shoot you? And as for your backup here... well, it's not like they matter. You could have dozens of Secondaries all well rested, fully healed and equipped however you saw fit for all I care; it wouldn't do you the slightest bit of good against me.”

“Confident, isn't he?” Kroll asked cheerfully... then came walking round from behind the hideous robot which had been intended to be a medical droid, with Brandon in tow. The ex-noble's arm seemed to be fully functioning once again, though it was still bandaged, and for his part the technophilic elf had bandages around his head – where he'd lost an ear – and his shin, yet seemed similarly unimpaired by those injuries. Whatever the medical monstrosity had done for them, it seemed to have made a pretty good job of it.

“You heard the man, everyone.” the 'sergeant' announced, “Up and at 'em. Singh, Leben and a couple of our nameless mooks here are two injured to keep going. Nash and one more of our faceless companions are going to stand guard, while Takanomiya, Windvale, Reiner, Dodson and the three other 'troopers are going to head for the training section to keep this guy occupied... and I have a special mission for myself.”

Uproarious laughter could suddenly be heard from across the announcement system, “Hahaha, 'special mission' my ass! Your 'brave' leader here is leaving you all to die. Hah! Well, at least one of you Secondary fuckwits seems bright enough to realise how hopelessly outmatched you are.”

“No.” Kroll declared coldly, “I can't exactly delegate this task, since you're listening in on everything we say... but trust me, I'll be coming for you when I'm done, Prime or not.”

Their foe simply laughed again in response, before cutting his transmission.

“I'm asking you all to trust me here,” Kroll said to the others he'd called upon to leave the medical bay, who were slowly making their way into a rough group standing before him, “can you do that?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Brandon was the first to reply, not showing the slightest hesitation... barely even paying attention, actually; he had taken out his Dataverse Device and was casually flicking through Omnitwitter.

“Are you sure I can't be one of the two who get to stay behind?” Jallus droned in a dull monotone, showing a lack of interest to match the elf's... as he stood there waiting to march off to his probable death, he was calmly reading another of his trashy romance novels; this time it was a book with a picture of a buff, shirtless guy on the front, signed with the name 'Fabio'.

“No. We need all the elites we can get for this. Leon's only getting to stay because Singh hasn't regained consciousness yet,” here their leader glanced briefly across at Hijiri, who felt the swell of guilt in his chest once again and avoided meeting his eyes, “and we all know there's no way he'll be willing to leave her before then... so, Dodson? Corporal? Other guys? Any of you have anything you'd like to say?”

“No, sir!” answered Trevor forcefully, standing straight and rigid, his face set in a mask of determination. He looked almost like some handsome and heroic knight straight out of a fairytale... if such fairytale knights were in the habit of donning armour made from hardened, white plastic.

Hijiri gaped his way confusedly... disbelieving the evidence of his own senses. The coward was apparently utterly unafraid in the face of danger... what the hell was up with him now?

“Takanomiya?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry sergeant. Sure, sure, you go do your thing, I'll lead this group.” the Battle Rabbit shook his head to try and clear it. Whatever was going on with that craven, incompetent idiot didn't matter right now.

“And you three? Any issues?”

“No, sir.” the helmeted newbies chorused, as disciplined and unimaginative as ever, even in a situation as dire as this... it was enough to make Hijiri wonder how much it would actually take to overcome whatever indoctrination the stormtroopers went through in their training...

“Good. Everyone inject yourselves with a couple of these, then let's move out.” Kroll said it as though it was nothing, as though casually sticking random liquids in your bloodstream without even first hearing what they did was a totally regular, sane thing to do.

“Uh... what are those, exactly?” Hijiri asked apprehensively as he eyed the small pile of syringes on the platter which Kroll had just swiped from that horror-movie medic-droid. They were filled with a bright orange liquid.

“Just a little something I had your bot here whip up for us. Fifty percent painkiller, fifty percent adrenaline shot. Don't worry about your wounds or fatigue; a couple of these'll make you feel right as rain.”

“Uh-huh... and why two, exactly?”

“Well, the recommended dosage is just one, but given what we're about to do, I figure we'll probably need a bit more.”

Hijiri sighed and shook his head, “No. No way. One each, at most. We're absolutely not listening to your dumbass opinion over a professional's when it comes to drugs. I'd rather not overdose on some weird chemical concoction of yours, thanks.”

The droid chose that moment to make a strange screeching noise and convulse violently as a few of its limbs dropped off and a small fire started up somewhere within the madness that was its body. It was then that they found out that Hijiri – in his exhausted state – had apparently been under the impression that medical machinery ought to come with a built-in fire extinguisher, as that was exactly what it used to put out the flames before they could spread.

A couple seconds passed in silence as they stared at it, fully expecting some other failure. When nothing more happened, though, Kroll spoke up again, “I get your point and all, corporal... but it was this droid that said we should only take one... and it doesn't exactly seem like the type to know best...”

“It was also this droid that made them in the first place. Should we even be putting any of that stuff in our bodies?”

Kroll sighed, “Uh, fine. One each.”

And so they – somewhat begrudgingly, in some cases – injected themselves with the former nobleman's strange cocktail, then moved out.

Kroll split off as soon as they'd left the room, heading away on his own... not back towards the exit, though. He was planning something, and it apparently didn't involve running for his life.

For their part, the others made their way quickly through the rest of the corridors and rooms between themselves and the indoor training section... not that they really need have hurried. The 'racks was large, but not nearly large enough that it would take half an hour to cross, and the medical bay was actually pretty close to their destination. It only took a couple minutes to reach the doors they sought.

Getting through them, on the other hand, was considerably more arduous and time-consuming.

Three huge bruisers – wearing battered white bowler hats and tattered white suits with grey patches sewn on to cover old tears in the fabric – blocked the entrance. Each of the three carried an SMG and crouched behind an enormous metal plate which seemed almost to have grown out of the ground... no doubt these objects were the handiwork of their Prime. Between them, the massive shields occupied the entire breadth of the hallway... the only way past would be to climb – or jump, in Hijiri's case – over them... something which would likely be pretty hard to accomplish whilst being shot at.

They simply hung back at the nearest corner for a while, discussing their next move in whispers... before realising that that did no good when the enemy Prime began taunting them by quoting much of what they'd said right back at them. Clearly, whatever audio recording devices were set up around the 'racks were pretty powerful.

Eventually they realised that they'd have no choice but to hit their foes head on.

When doing so, Hijiri reduced his weight as usual, and once again began building up energy in the blade he wielded, before charging forward whilst the others did their best to lay down some covering fire.

It... sort of worked. By the time all three goons had fallen, the Battle Rabbit had taken another couple gunshot wounds; one in the shoulder and one in the same leg as had been shot previously. Despite Kroll's painkiller thing, it did still hurt. So far as he could tell the drug seemed to be taking the edge off his pain and weariness (though in this latter case the main reason was likely more to do with the five hours of sleep) and not a whole lot else. It was better than nothing, though, he supposed... and he sure as hell wasn't going to admit that the fake sergeant may have been right about having to double the dosage they should take.

Once the others had crossed the strange, metal blockades, they shoved open the double doors and moved in, their blasters and Hijiri's katana at the ready.

“Finally.” their antagonist drawled.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

The man stood up, pushing back the wheeled swivel chair upon which he'd sat. Before him was a desk covered in numerous computer monitors, a microphone and a bundle of wires which trailed away, off to his right; this must have been the set-up he was using to monitor the security footage and speak through the announcement system, which meant at some point before they'd returned from their patrols he had summoned all this junk and had his Secondaries connect it to the main security network in the barracks' aptly named 'security room'.

He stepped out from behind the mess on his desk – which sat in the dead centre of the training area – smirking at them... and completely unarmed.

The man in question was old, but clearly no weakling despite his advanced years. His lined skin was weathered and his build lean and tall. His hair was grey, bedraggled and just past shoulder-length, he also had a short, wispy grey beard on his chin, like some sort of crude attempt at a goatee. He wore an unbuttoned grey leather waistcoat with no shirt beneath, ragged, loose white jeans and a pair of black boots.

He smirked condescendingly at them as they walked trough the doors, but the group paid little attention to him... less than might strictly have been wise, actually, considering how little they knew about their foe's powers and abilities...

Their eyes were all drawn past the old dude, to the curious sight a few feet behind and slightly to the right – from their perspective; it would the left to him – of his desk. There were two things that caught their attention there, the first of which was the weaponry; it would seem that they had discovered the source of the traces of gunpowder they'd found in that Bentley outside. There was an enormous pile of double-barrel shotguns and ammunition for them stacked on the floor. Honestly, it was a wonder the car had even been able to hold all that. Why one man would ever need so many guns – let alone all guns of the exact same type – was beyond them.

The other surprising thing was stranger still, though. The only other people in the room were three well-endowed young women with builds and faces so similar they could have been sisters... perhaps identical triplets, even. Their hair styles also matched perfectly, with each of them having had it cut to chin-length and set in a bob... only their hair colours differed, with one woman being a redhead, another blonde and the third black-haired. The most immediately eye-catching thing about them, though, was their outfits; all three women wore nothing more than a simple black bikini, for some reason.

“What's the deal with them?” Hijiri asked the old man, lowering his blade slightly and standing up straighter. Despite their proximity to the weapons, none of the women seemed intent upon fighting, and the geezer was unarmed currently, so perhaps they might be able to stall for time by questioning him a little, and hopefully Kroll could get here soon with whatever trick he had up his sleeve..

The Wolfpack's Prime scowled.

“Of course you'd be interested in the fucking Secondaries.” he sighed, glancing back at the three, who all looked up at him imploringly... like dogs begging their owner for treats, “Alright, fine, if you want the full villain spiel, let's have some introductions before I slaughter you and these insignificant swine you've brought along.”

He held out his left hand and the redhead – who was kneeling on both knees by the pile of guns – hurriedly snatched one up at random and passed it to her blonde sister(?), who then turned, bowed, and presented it to the old guy, who lazily snatched up the weapon... pointedly ignoring the 'troopers with their blasters all now suddenly aimed directly at his back.

He had been allowed to get himself armed, and Hijiri could feel the others' judging stares burning into his back from where he stood at the forefront of their little group. Perhaps it would have been better to simply attack from the get-go, rather than take the risk of letting this happen... especially given that they had no idea what their 'sergeant' was actually doing?

The geezer spun to face the black-haired woman and gestured towards her with the weapon... though 'gestured' might have been something of an understatement, as what he actually did was lodge the shotgun's barrels right in between her breasts. Rather than back away from the presumably loaded weapon, she smiled tentatively and took a small step forwards, pressing her body as forcefully as she could against the gun, showing not the slightest hint of fear.

“Master...” she moaned in a needy voice, just above a whisper.

“This one is Eleanor. I just call her Ell.” the old guy told them without looking back, his voice hard, cold and uncaring... seemingly unimpressed by 'Ell''s actions.

He turned back to the blonde, and in her case he actually jabbed at her forcefully with the weapon, the strike to the chest causing her to wince and back up a step... before moving forward again, an identical smile to her sister(?)'s on her face as she reached up with both hands and gently placed the shotgun against her chest, aimed directly at her heart... then began stroking its length tenderly. The insinuation in this latter action was hardly all that subtle.

“This is Lisanne. I call her Liz.”

Jerking the gun roughly to get rid of her, he turned and pointed it at the third woman, the kneeling one. This time, however, he actually tightened his finger slightly on the foremost of the shotgun's two triggers. As fearless as the other girls, though, the redhead moved forwards... though in her case she simply crawled. Once close enough for her liking she got back onto her knees, opened her mouth, and leaned forwards... beginning to gently suck on his weapon's shaft...
Her innuendo being even more blatant than the first.

“And this one is Bethanie. Or just Beth for shot.” after letting her continue with her suggestive antics for a few seconds longer, the geezer yanked his shotgun free of her lips, causing the young woman to fall forwards onto all fours once again.

“Ell, Liz and Beth, my three worthless Secondaries. Or just 'Elizabeth', if you wanna speak to all three at once.” he said, finally turning back to scowl at the small band with their own weapons aimed his way, casually resting the shotgun on one shoulder as though he truly was completely unconcerned at the prospect of fighting Secondaries; the gangster's eyes were glued to Hijiri.

“What did you do to them?” the Battle Rabbit asked in a quiet, horrified voice. He couldn't even comprehend what might have happened to turn ordinary women into these... sex objects...? Or whatever it was they were supposed to be.

The old guy sneered back at him, “You're a Prime, but you don't even have the slightest clue what we're all capable of, do you? I didn't do anything to them; I made them.”

“Made? What's that supposed to mean?”

“I summoned them from Omnilium, obviously. When Omni summons a Prime here he tells us all the same thing; that Omnilium can be used to summon anything we desire... meaning not just random items from our home worlds... why so few of us seem to actually get that, I dunno, but it pretty much lets us play god if we want.” the old geezer smirked condescendingly at the Rabbit, completely ignoring the 'troopers around him, “I didn't need to do anything to these three, because I designed them myself.”

“You what?” Hijiri had never actually summoned a Secondary himself... he hadn't liked the idea of dragging any of his friends into this place after him... but this was so much worse. These poor women were just... so pitiful. He felt sorry for them, forced to live like this... not even knowing anything different their entire lives. He shook his head, revolted, “You summoned actual people... created people... just to get laid? That's sick.”

The old guy barked out a laugh, before sneering again, “Oh please, where do you think all of Coruscant's hookers come from? Plenty of Primes before me have had similar ideas... I just did a better job of it... besides, it's not just sex I was after; they also do pretty well at regular slave labour... but hey, that's enough about the whores. I'm Shotgun Steve, y'know? The strongest of the NSW's 'Four Claws'; the de facto leaders of the whole Wolfpack... wouldn't you much rather hear all about me while we pass the time here?”

“... 'Pass the time'?” Hijiri looked back at the others, wondering if that choice of phrase had them as concerned as it did him.

“Ha! Worried, are you?” clearly, whatever the character flaws of 'Shotgun Steve' here, inability to read the mood was not one of them, “I can't exactly say you shouldn't be, not given who you've picked a fight with... but if you're afraid I might be planning on pulling some dirty trick, don't be; I'm just waiting for the same thing you are. I want you to see whatever it is that Secondary worm of yours actually thinks he can do to affect the outcome of this battle... so what do you say? Order the rest of your minions to stand down and we'll wait around a bit longer to see what he comes up with.”

The old guy snapped the fingers of his free hand and the black-haired woman, 'Ell', hurried across to his swivel chair and pulled it a couple metres to their left, over to where he now stood. Without even looking back, Steve sat the moment she stopped moving, completely certain that his seat would be in place. Lounging casually as he faced them, with the shotgun held loosely in his left hand, not even aimed their way, he was either incredibly powerful, or incredibly stupid.

The bikini-girl manoeuvred herself around the seat, then slid gracefully into his lap and pressed her body against his, leaning her face into his neck and beginning to kiss it gently. For his part, Steve placed his free hand on her knee, using the joint as a sort of armrest, but other than that showed not the slightest interest in her... apparently having hung around with this little makeshift harem of his for so long that he'd almost lost interest in them...

Behind them, the other two girls looked on with actual envy in their expressions... the Battle Rabbit clenched his jaw, struggling to contain his anger. Rationally, he was sure that they enjoyed this life of theirs... after all, if the old bastard had really created their personalities from scratch, what better way to make sure they would always remain loyal than to cause them to feel happiness whenever they served him? And if that were the case, it really shouldn't have mattered to Hijiri how they were treated... not if they liked it like that.

He wasn't being rational, though. For all his cold, stern demeanour, back on his own world – before the Omniverse – Hijiri had dedicated his life to hunting down Ogres... aliens who could possess the bodies of humans and manipulate their thoughts... and to him, this felt so, so much worse. This wasn't just manipulation... it was utter subjugation.

He wasn't even sure it would be possible to give them their freedom, no matter what he did or how much Omnilium he spent... yet he had to try... he couldn't bring himself to leave anyone in such a pitiable condition as this.

“So... is that a 'no', then? You don't feel like calmly having a chat?” Steve raised an eyebrow as he spoke, one side of his mouth twisting up into a smirk, “If you wanna get a move on with the fight I get that too. Just say the word... or... perhaps you're feeling a little jealous? Hey, d'you wanna borrow one for a bit? We might be enemies, but we're both still Primes... so I don't mind sharing my toys.”

Eyes flashing dangerously, and even – to those nearest him – visibly trembling in rage, Hijiri had been holding the scabbard which contained his sword in his left hand, and now flicked that thumb up against the weapon's guard, pushing an inch or so of the blade free from the sheathe. His right hand twitched.

It was abundantly clear to all of them watching that he was almost to the point of giving in, drawing his katana and charging the guy... though the viability of such a move was still questionable, at best.

Beyond a love of shotguns and a complete disregard for Secondaries, they knew next to nothing about this man... simply assuming that the Battle Rabbit would be capable of traversing the distance between them – over a dozen metres – before their foe could react, would be the height of folly... yet that would seem to be the direction Hijiri was headed.

“Corporal.” Brandon said, stepping forwards. The Rabbit paid no attention.

“Takanomiya!” this time, the elf actually grabbed the other man's arm. Visibly flinching at the unexpected contact, before glancing back at him, Hijiri actually snarled through bared teeth at his friend, like some savage animal.

“What?” he spat venomously.

“Control yourself. If you do something stupid and get yourself killed then most or even all of us might end up going down with you... so calm down already. It isn't like we haven't killed plenty of these Wolves before, right? If you're offended by him playing god or whatever it is, we can easily wipe out these things once the fighting starts; they're not exactly well armoured, in case you hadn't noticed... so just keep your cool for now. Whatever it is the sergeant's doing, I'm sure he'll come through for us, and then we can attack.”

The moment the tech-obsessed 'trooper had suggested killing the women, Hijiri had found himself shocked to a standstill, all rage evaporating instantly, to be replaced with horror instead... it had never even occurred to him that others might consider these women as anything besides the helpless victims he knew them to be... the thought that someone he considered a friend would even contemplate simply gunning them down in order to make him feel better was just... abhorrent. Sickening. He actually felt the bile rise up his throat for a moment at the mention of it.

Yanking his arm free of the elf's grip, he backed away, shaking his head, “No, no, how could you even suggest that? They need our help. There is absolutely no way we're killing them, okay? None. It isn't happening.” he turned at this point, making sure to glare at every one of the other squad members present, even though no one else had yet to speak up in support of Brandon.

“Are you actually serious?” the technophile raised an eyebrow sceptically, despite knowing full well that his corporal was; the man's tone of voice hadn't exactly been indecisive, “They're helping him of their own free will. That makes them our enemies.”

“Free will? What free will!? They're clearly under his control!”

Responding calmly to the Rabbit's outburst, and with an utterly deadpan expression, Brandon simply pointed past him, towards their nemesis, “Oh yeah, she's totally being forced into that.”

Following his gesture, Hijiri saw that Ell had straddled her 'master' and was now passionately kissing him, her hands reaching down past his waist as she sought to unbuckle his belt.
Also, Steve had begun groping her butt with his free hand at some point during their kiss, clearly getting into the spirit of things... despite this, though, out of the corner of an eye he still looked past his Secondary, over at the EPD corporal.

Relaxed, he may be, mocking, even, but certainly not distracted. No, there was absolutely no way he wouldn't see it coming if Hijiri charged him right now, and his left hand still clutched a loaded double-barrel shotgun. A head-on charge would be crazy. Practically suicidal.

Taking in a deep breath, holding it a second, then letting it out, Hijiri focused on calming himself down, clearing his mind... his face took on a serious, uncaring, almost ruthless countenance as he stared at the Wolfpack Prime and his living, breathing plaything...

“So this is to be our entertainment while we wait on Iechtelsteir? Watching you make out with this woman?” it was as he spoke these words Ell succeeded in finally removing her master's belt. Tossing it aside, she began working on his jeans' button next, “Or... more than just making out?”

Now, after this latest sentence, the old geezer ceased his fondling for a moment, just long enough to give the Battle Rabbit a quick thumbs up, before getting right back to it.

Hijiri hesitated. Beside and behind him, the others all waited in silence, ready for any tricks, but hoping that this guy actually would be dumb enough to simply sit there enjoying himself for a while, giving Kroll ample time to return with whatever surprise he had in store for them.

A couple seconds was all it took the Battle Rabbit to come to a decision.

“Alright...” Hijiri declared in a calm and measured tone... “fuck it.”

He drew his katana, tossed aside its sheathe, and, in a blinding flash of light, unleashed his True Form. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to just sit back and watch this.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

“Ha!” Steve laughed, surging to his feet the instant the Battle Rabbit transformed, shoving his Secondary away roughly and swinging up his firearm, he pulled back the first trigger. The shotgun jerked in his hand as it spat forth the slug towards his foe, yet despite his advanced age, the old geezer was plenty strong enough to handle the recoil.

Ell's back hit the floor first, closely followed by the back of her head. Surprise flashed briefly across her face as she fell, but the moment she landed her expression twisted in pain and she cried out, her back arching for a moment as she bounced once, before landing again and rolling over onto her side with a weak moan. Steve hadn't exactly paused to consider her well-being before he moved.

Hijiri had anticipated the shot and tracked the weapon as the old man raised it. With the small boost in speed he received whilst in this form, he was – admittedly, just barely – able to turn his head aside as the lump of steel tore past him.

In his place it struck one of the double doors leading into the room... missing Trevor's head by a couple inches.

“Shit! Get down!” Brandon yelled to the others, diving to the floor himself.

Since there was no cover to be found anywhere in the huge, empty training room, however, the effectiveness of this tactic was debatable... though they would at least present smaller targets this way and as such would be less likely to be hit accidentally if their corporal kept dodging those shots, so there was that, at least. Seeing the sense in the elf's suggestion, the other five followed his lead.

On their stomachs, blasters aimed at their foes, those who could target the enemy Prime without risk of hitting Hijiri took their shots.

The others were forced to simply lie there and do nothing, though; he may not have been a stormtrooper himself, but the Battle Rabbit was still their superior, so when he had ordered them not to kill those girls in league with the Wolfpack, they were left with no choice but to obey... well, unless those three – called 'Elizabeth' – actually started shooting at them, of course.

Appreciating the adrenaline boost from Kroll's 'medicine', Hijiri zigged and zagged across the bare floor towards his target. In spite of his aggressive actions, he was actually perfectly under control at that moment, his expression chilling and stern, rather than burning with rage... the anger he had felt earlier suppressed, pushed away into a back corner of his mind.

Steve fired again-

At the last moment, though, he was forced to side-step to avoid a laser from one of the stormtroopers over by the doors, and as a result this shot ended up being almost two feet off target; harmlessly striking the metal panelling of the floor. His gun was unloaded, now. He held no ammo. His Secondaries had yet to even react to their enemy's approach, and the EPD corporal had just a fraction of a second left before he would be in range to gut the old man.

Yet still Shotgun Steve smirked.

At the last moment, as the katana whipped out towards his unprotected abdomen, the older Prime twirled his gun around in his hand – almost casually – and knocked aside the sword with his weapon's stock.

The Rabbit jerked his blade to a halt, flipped it around so that the edge again faced the Wolfpack's Claw, and immediately struck once more, aiming this time to injure the arm holding the shotgun. Continuing the same spinning motion from before, however, Steve used his weapon's twin barrels this time to bat aside the strike.

Suddenly shooting a hand up above his head, the old geezer swung his shotgun in a horizontal sweep like some kind of club or baton.

Rather than try to block himself, the Rabbit took a quick step back to avoid the blow; despite their weapons having clashed only twice so far, Hijiri had felt the strength in the old man's arms... greater strength than he possessed himself, even in this enhanced form.

No sooner had he done so, though, than the old man caught another loaded shotgun in his upraised hand after the red-haired girl had tossed it to him from the pile, then mirrored Hijiri's manoeuvre, opening up more space between the two Primes. That done, he brought his weapon down to fill this gap; he now had Hijiri at point blank range.

His lips parted as the condescending smirk he wore shifted into a savage grin, and he pulled back the trigger.

Hijiri leapt into the air; instantly made light as a gain of sand, he easily kicked off the ground and flipped over the other man's head, successfully avoiding the cloud of metal pellets which burst from the weapon's barrel, then spinning like a top to slice at Steve from behind.

The unloaded gun swung around behind his back, though, effortlessly blocking the negligibly weighted strike. Even the additional strength he had available to him in his True Form made little real difference when it came to attacking whilst using this ability; there would only ever be so much damage one could hope to inflict with essentially no weight behind any of their attacks.

Before the Rabbit's feet had even touched down on the floor, and with their weapons still locked together, Steve flicked his wrist, the force of the gesture easily tossing Hijiri back up into the air. Realising what must be coming next, the corporal began charging up the energy he would need to restore his weight to normal.

Barely a second had passed, though, by the time Shotgun Steve had spun to face him and aimed the gun with one shell still loaded.

Hijiri was drifting down slower than a falling leaf and the last shot Steve had fired had been actual shot, rather than a slug, as with the first gun. Something which would make it a lot harder to miss. Not the best combination from the point of view of the guy serving as the unwilling target dummy.

Just before he pulled the trigger this time, however, three blasts of energy struck him in the back, one after the other, searing through his waistcoat and charring the flesh beneath.

“Aargh!” the old Prime screamed, flinching just before he fired. The shot went wide and just afterwards, the Battle Rabbit released his building energy. He wasn't back to his normal weight, not after such a short time spent gathering power, but for the time being weighing as much as a small child would be plenty for his needs; he quickly dropped back to the floor.

It wouldn't have been enough, if not for the stormtroopers. His reaction speed had been just the tiniest bit off... but that 'tiniest bit' would still have left him taking a round of shot to the face, had it not been for the squad throwing off the Claw's aim.

Steve cursed, turning as slightly as he could to face the 'troopers, whilst not letting the Rabbit out of his sight either. He had put enough distance between himself and his enemy to allow him to fire upon Hijiri... yet in doing so had given the squad just as easy a time firing upon him.

Not to mention, both his shotguns were now empty, so he couldn't even shoot back in retaliation. Instead he snarled and wordlessly tossed first one gun, then the other, to his blonde Secondary.

The first smacked loudly against her palms, the force of the throw making her wince and back up a step. With both hands still occupied clutching it, though, the second slammed into her ribs with a worrying crack, then fell, clattering as it struck the steel ground.

Eyes wide with pain, her breathing ragged, the scantily-clad young woman was knocked back a couple steps further. Her legs trembled and tears welled up in her eyes, yet she remained standing. Turning quickly, she tossed down the shotgun she had caught to land by the redhead's side, and was handed another pair in return.

In the time it took them to make this exchange, Hijiri had charged the older man and had successfully forced him to back away from his women; being unable to block now, his only option was to dodge the katana's swings. As a result, he now found himself caught between the Rabbit and the stormtroopers.

With their corporal having closed the distance again, though, the 'troopers were less able to fire freely now, lest they accidentally hit him. Even so, a couple of them did manage to hit Steve again; once more in the back and once in the thigh.

Though the old bastard cried out in pain each time, and his flesh was visibly charred, the shots had not burnt straight through him as they would to an average person; it seemed that in addition to being much stronger than he ought to have been, this geezer was also more durable than normal.

The blonde was stumbling after them now, her face white as the fractured or broken rib which her own master had given her sent spasms of pain through her body with every step... all her effort would be for nothing, though; Steve was on the back foot now, and it wouldn't be long before a shot from one of the 'troopers would distract him enough for the Rabbit to get in a slash with his blade...

Admittedly, as light as he was right now, it wouldn't do a huge amount of damage even with the enhanced strength of his True Form... it didn't need to, though. So long as they could keep this guy at a disadvantage it wouldn't matter how strong he was; speed was their major advantage here, not raw power, and if winning this fight meant having to inflict a death of one thousand cuts (and lasers), rather than a cleaner, simpler killing blow, then so be it.

It should have worked.

Alas, their plan was upset when the black-haired woman, Ell – whom Hijiri had previously discounted entirely and had been paying no attention to at all since Shotgun Steve had roughly thrown her to the ground – suddenly rushed across from outside his field of vision to stand behind her master, facing towards the squad, her arms thrust out to either side as she tried to shield him with her body as best she could.

“No! Leave master alone!” she screamed at the 'troopers, her voice hoarse with grief... as though she couldn't bear to see Steve being harmed like this, even though it was clear that their lasers weren't dealing enough damage to kill him any time soon.

As easy as it would have been to say that she was fearlessly throwing herself in harm's way, like some insentient machine, from where he stood, just feet away from her, Hijiri could clearly tell that that was not the case; he might not have been able to see her face, no, but what he could tell easily enough was that she was visibly trembling. The poor woman was terrified out of her mind, yet had been unable to resist the urge to protect her creator, no matter the cost to herself...

And there would be a cost, the Battle Rabbit realised, as his gaze drifted over her shoulder, time seeming to slow down in the intensity of the moment. Leading the squad by example, Brandon Windvale, their technophilic elf, had his blaster aimed directly at her... and though he couldn't be sure from this distance, Hijiri could have sworn he saw the corners of the 'trooper's lips twitch upwards slightly, as he took his opportunity to do what he'd originally wanted from the start.

“Don't!” the EPD corporal yelled, taking a step forwards which seemed to last an eternity. They might look as though they were moving in slow motion, but in reality there was no way he could hope to outrun lasers.

The instant the first blast of superheated plasma struck the woman's chest, everything seemed to snap back into its proper focus, as time moved normally again.

And somehow the old man was bent low, moving forwards, his left fist slamming into the Rabbit's gut like a truck. Despite his enhanced resilience in this form, the blow was more than powerful enough to force the air from his lungs, leaving him winded and choking... even worse, though, as he currently weighed no more than a kid, Hijiri was sent flying by the old bastard's punch, spinning and careening wildly through the air until he struck a wall.

He fell back to the ground, then groaned, lying in a crumpled heap at the wall's base.

Hijiri forced his head up though, looking over at the fight as it progressed... and was horrified by what he saw. Shotgun Steve was still unarmed, but now held Ell by the back of her neck... he carried her like a shield, held out before him as he advanced on the stormtroopers, who were now getting back up off the ground so as to be able to back away.

They were completely ignoring their corporal's order, firing unhesitatingly at their foe, apparently completely unconcerned for the life of the young woman whom the Battle Rabbit could only hope was dead by this point. If not, she must have been in excruciating pain.

In the end, though, their ruthlessness did them little good.

As Hijiri watched, the old man reduced the distance between himself and the group to just a couple metres, then stopped, spun three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and launched his Secondary's corpse at the squad.

One of the helmeted 'troopers and Jallus Reiner managed to dive aside in time. The other four were scattered like bowling pins.

In the sudden, brief absence of gunfire, the blonde woman, Liz, made it over to her master. She held out the two shotguns she carried, stock-first, to the old man... but like Hijiri, her expression was tormented and her gaze drawn to Ell's broken body.

Barking out a harsh laugh, Steve yanked the weapons from her hands and swung them round to target the stormtroopers as the Battle Rabbit forced himself slowly, tediously, to his feet.

Jallus was the first to recover and coolly, professionally raised his blaster. He was calm, despite the fucked-up nature of this battle. He moved quickly, but didn't hurry so much as to mess anything up. He was careful. Methodical. Practised and precise.

And it meant exactly fuck all.

Smirking, the geezer casually leaned slightly to one side just before the 'trooper fired, causing the energy blast to speed harmlessly past his head. For all the extra training they had undergone over the course of the last week or so, it was clear that even the 'elite' members of the squad had a long way to go before they could fight on an even footing with an experienced Prime like this guy.

Before Jallus had time to even take a second shot, Steve's right-hand gun launched a slug straight through his knee. The dark-skinned stormtrooper screamed and came crashing to the ground.

The old Prime wasn't done yet, though; he still had another shotgun. Before Jallus had even hit the floor, their enemy had raised his left weapon and pointed it directly into the face of the other stormtrooper who had not been knocked down.

“Wait-” was all the helmeted man managed to say before the trigger had been pulled.

This one was loaded with shot, though, rather than simple slugs.

His head – helmet and all – exploded.

***

Hijiri, still struggling to breathe properly, began stumbling forwards.

Liz moved to intercept him, and over by the pile of guns, Beth, the redhead, picked up a weapon, clutching it uncertainly in both hands... looking almost as frightened of the shotgun as they both clearly were of the Battle Rabbit.

Neither one was backing down, though... and if Ell's example had been anything to go by, they'd rather die themselves than let their master suffer such a fate.

***

Trevor was the next to engage the Wolfpack's Claw, screaming and firing wildly the moment he was back on his feet. One shot actually grazed Steve's arm, but then the old guy sent a slug straight into Trevor's gut and the stormtrooper dropped.

Brandon and one helmeted guy tag-teamed him, with the technophile rushing him, intent on using some of those close combat skills he'd learned from Sarah and Hijiri, whilst the noob backed him up with covering fire.

“Worthless filth!” Shotgun Steve roared, flipping his now-unloaded right weapon around and swinging it like a baseball bat. Before Brandon could so much as throw a punch, the weapon connected, fracturing the white plastoid armour around the elf's waist with a loud 'crack' and flinging him back, to come crashing to the ground almost three metres away. “You pitiful Secondaries should be bowing and scraping before us Primes! You're nothing more than puppets! Figments of our imaginations brought to life! Yet you worms, dare to take shots at me!?”

The reinforcement stormtrooper managed to fire twice before Steve had closed the distance between them. One laser struck him in the ribs and the other landed directly over his heart.

Against any normal opponent, that would have been the end of the fight... however Steve's Omnilium-enhanced body was beyond the level of normal human durability, and so neither of the blasts managed to penetrate bone.

It was obvious by this point that the old man was actually feeling the pain of his wounds... rather than weakening him, though, they seemed to only be making him angrier.

The 'trooper had remained crouching rather than getting to his feet, so it was a simple matter for the Claw to knock him down onto his back. A knee to the face followed up by a kick to send the blaster spinning off into the distance was all it took to leave his victim helpless before him.

Infuriated at having been injured by this 'puppet', the old bastard wasn't going to make this quick or painless. He lifted his left leg, then stomped hard on the 'trooper's helmeted head. The plastoid surface cracked, slightly, and so he repeated the action. Again. Again. And again.

The final member of the squad – another of the reinforcements – had by now gotten up as well and sought to save his ally. Shotgun Steve saw this coming, though, and before the stormtrooper could even pull his trigger, the enemy Prime had beaten him to it.

The helmets may have been strong enough to at least put up some resistance against regular kicks and punches, but they could do little to protect their wearers from a faceful of shot pellets.

Done dealing with that guy, the old geezer turned back to his victim, still intent upon stamping the man's head into a bloody pulp...

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

“I don't want to hurt you. Please, just stand down.” the Battle Rabbit begged the two women as they slowly closed in.

Beth could have fired at him from this range easily, had her hands not been shaking so much, and Liz was breathing in harsh gasps, the hit she'd taken to her ribs clearly affecting her; he didn't want to hurt people he viewed as being closer to innocent bystanders, or even hostages, than actual enemies... but what choice did he have?

His eyes briefly flicked down to the silver ring on his right hand. Back on Earth, that item had been an extremely advanced piece of technology, with all sorts of impressive powers, including the ability to hypnotise people. Alas, since arriving in the Omniverse, the ring had been reduced to a mere bauble...

It sure would have been great if the ring still functioned. Mind control, like so, so many other things, was an easily abused tool which could often seem pure evil when utilised by those with some dark purpose... though obviously it was actually totally fine when the Battle Rabbits did it.

As he was continuing to agonise over how to get past them without harming either woman, Steve decided to speed things along.

“Hey! Bunny-Guy! You'd better get your ass over here right now, or I'm gonna start pulling the wings off a' some flies!” looking over, he saw that the Claw had tossed aside his unloaded guns and now had one foot planted on Jallus' back, the dark-skinned man having been forced to the ground face-down, with Steve pulling one of his arms up behind him and into the air in a painful-looking hold; the expression Jallus wore confirmed that he was indeed in extreme pain...

Although that wasn't saying a whole lot, considering one of his knees had been blown off by a shotgun slug just a minute ago. 'Extreme pain' would be the expected state after something like that, with or without the twisted arm.

“Dammit! Damn you!” Hijiri spat, his temper rising once more. He ground his teeth together, hesitating just a moment longer.

He had always been rough on his subordinates during their training, both in the Omniverse and his own world... but these two weren't trained soldiers, just ordinary civilians, being forced to fight by a cruel taskmaster... apparently just for the pleasure of seeing them beaten, since even a totally impartial observer could have easily concluded that the Rabbit would wipe the floor with these two... much less some kind of Prime-supremacist lunatic like the Claw, who would be prone to underestimating Secondaries even when they did have decent odds of victory.

Steve twisted harder, and Jallus screamed.

The Battle Rabbit dashed forwards, flipping acrobatically into the air and spinning to land a solid kick in Liz's side, just inches from where he suspected her broken rib(s?) to be.

She cried out and collapsed immediately, gasping in pain and clutching her injured side, as tears welled up in her eyes.

And then Beth fired...

…

And fell over, missing the Rabbit completely despite being so close she could almost have used the firearm as a melee weapon. Steve sighed.

Rushing past the pair before either could get back to her feet, Hijiri was almost upon his foe when the (self-proclaimed) Strongest of the Wolfpack's Four Claws decided to rearm himself.

In fairness, what Steve did then certainly leant weight to his claim of enormous strength.

He literally ripped Jallus' arm from its socket. The bookworm gave a shriek of pure, undiluted agony, before mercifully passing out. Given the rate at which blood was gushing from the ruin that had been his shoulder, though, it would be a pretty safe bet to assume he'd be lucky to last five minutes.

With an enraged roar, the Rabbit attacked... only for his first blow to be met by his friend's disembodied limb.

They fought a surprisingly even battle, considering one of the combatants wasn't even armed with a proper weapon, but slowly the Battle Rabbit began to push back his foe. Steve was still blocking all the most serious of his blows, and taking the occasional swing of his own, yet small grazes now littered the old geezer's arms and legs.

It actually seemed like Hijiri might even be on the point of winning...

... when his transformation ended.

The sudden flash of light shocked both the Rabbit and the Claw... but when he realised what had happened, Steve grinned wolfishly. Hijiri's long, black coat and white boots had vanished, along with his rabbit-ears... his 'Power-Up' had run out of time and he had been forced back into the form which had originally been just a disguise used to fit in on Earth; that of an ordinary human in a black formal trousers and shoes... there should have been a shirt and suit jacket as well, but as those had earlier been replaced with bandages whilst he slept, now all that he wore on his chest was a vest of blood-drenched gauze...

Apparently, his many gunshot wounds had begun bleeding copiously at some point during the fight. Luckily, their 'sergeant''s painkiller had kept him from feeling the worst of it.

Hijiri tried to continue applying pressure, but whilst he was still lightened by the effects of his gravity manipulation ability – and could therefore still move pretty quickly – he had lost much of his strength, so Shotgun Steve was able to easily bat aside his weakened attacks, leaving him off-balance and vulnerable.

Needless to say, the old man lost no time in taking advantage of this. After swatting aside one more desperate blow, Steve stepped in close and socked him in the jaw with a right hook more than powerful enough to shatter concrete.

Lacking the enhanced resilience of his True Form, this affected the Rabbit exactly as severely as one would expect a blow such as that to affect a normal human face. Bones shattered, flesh was shredded, and shattered teeth fell from torn gums as the lightweight Rabbit was sent flying. He crashed to the ground, bounced, and rolled across the floor.

None of the cuts or bruises he'd received so far – nor even the multitude of gunshot wounds – came anywhere close to the agony that now seared his mutilated face like a acid. He couldn't even scream, so intense was the pain... his vision started to darken around the edges as his body approached its limits and his mind sought to protect itself from the shock and pain by shutting down...

He wouldn't- no, couldn't let it end like this, though.

He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, but the Battle Rabbit slammed down an arm on the ground and gave an agonised cry as he forced his body to roll over, before pushing himself up onto all fours. His vision blurring and fading, he paused then to struggle to marshal his thoughts, trying to beat his subconscious into submission, battling to keep from passing out.

So much for that painkiller Kroll had given him. Hell, if this was what the injury felt like whilst under the effects of medication, he wasn't looking forward to the point when that finally wore off.

He heard something... mumbling?

It was only now that he noticed his hearing didn't seem to be operating any more effectively than his sense of sight. Hijiri looked up, noticing Shotgun Steve striding casually towards him, having retrieved both his empty shotguns and discarded Jallus' severed arm.

He smirked sadistically at the injured corporal as he spoke... Hijiri couldn't make out a single word of his bragging speech, though. Everything sounded strangely quiet and fuzzy.

Behind the old bastard, Brandon was struggling back to his feet, blaster in hand... all the other members of the squad too severely injured or dead to follow suit.

Off to one side, back the way he'd come before attacking the Claw, Liz and Beth were picking themselves back up as well.

The Rabbit painstakingly forced himself upright, dizzily staggering and almost falling again the moment he made it, waves of pain racking his head. Blinking rapidly, he tried – unsuccessfully – to restore his blurred vision to normal.

Steve wasn't rushing... he still had quite a few metres to cross before he would be upon the Battle Rabbit when the double doors leading into the barracks' indoor training area burst open.

No...

Not simply open... the metal was torn and twisted as the two thin panels were torn right off the wall.

They had been bent and broken by the immense force of a nine-foot-high, seventeen-foot-long black wolf charging straight through them. Steve turned, first confused, then surprised... and finally, afraid.

Riding on the back of the enormous wolf – Sarah Watt – were Kroll and Kevin. Whereas the ex-noble stormtrooper clutched Sarah's fur tightly with both hands, hanging on for dear life as she charged, the smiling skinhead never even bothered to hold on at all... apparently completely at ease in such a position.

Instead, he scanned the room until he found Brandon, then tossed him something. Hijiri couldn't make out what, and nor could he tell what exactly the suited man had yelled as he threw the object. He did notice, however, the enormous grin which spread across the elf's face as he pulled a fist-sized object from whatever he'd been given... presumably it was a container of some kind.

Steve was now entirely focused on the enormous beast charging his way, fangs bared... but he was not the only one. Both of his Secondaries had begun rushing to protect him the moment they realised what was happening. Liz was still unarmed – and what she hoped to accomplish in such a state was anyone's guess – but Beth had one shell remaining in her shotgun... and with Sarah's Wolf Form being as huge as it was, even a person like her – with terrible aim and so little muscle on her bones that the recoil would knock her flat on her back – could surely manage to land a shot if she got close enough.

Sarah was paying no attention to them, perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly, assuming that the two bikini girls posed her no threat... the moment Brandon glanced across at them, though, Hijiri knew what he was thinking.

No! Don't do it! He tried to yell... managing to stumble a few feet closer to the elf. Unfortunately, there were over a dozen metres between them, and his cry had come out as a loud yet utterly unintelligible moan, which achieved nothing other than to send even sharper, more intense waves of pain through his face as he attempted to use his ruined mouth. There was no way he could possibly stop what was about to happen.

And then, it happened.

By the time the elf had tossed the small, metal orb, and it had covered the distance between the 'trooper and his targets, the werewolf was already upon her own opponent and though he tried his best to beat her down with his spent shotguns, Steve was already wounded from his unexpectedly trying fight against the Battle Rabbit and his squad; his reactions were growing sluggish as his many wounds finally began to take their toll on him. He batted at Sarah's head ineffectually with his twin shotguns, the blows made ineffective by the awkward angle from which he was hitting her... and the awkward angle being a direct result of him having just been snatched up in the jaws of an enormous wolf and shook around violently, like some oversized chew toy.

He was still screaming and roaring in pain – and Sarah was still roughly shaking her head from side to side, maw clamped tightly around his right shoulder, upper arm and much of his chest – when the grenade went off with a tremendous cracking noise.

Hijiri's eyes had been locked on the spectacle to begin with, but when the orb detonated he was left aghast by the result. The ensuing conflagration swallowed up not only the two women, but some of the outermost flames even reached Sarah and Steve, several metres away.

That said, the inferno lasted barely a couple seconds before vanishing almost entirely. Fire needed fuel to continue to burn, and with nothing but metal in this bare room, their surroundings weren't going to be going up any time soon. What was more, the two 'battling' – if such a word could be used to describe such a one-sided beatdown – Primes barely seemed to suffer more than a few singed hairs... clearly, their superhuman resilience was more than enough to resist this heat.

Unfortunately, not everyone present had such great durability... in fact, given the abilities they'd displayed thus far, it might be a pretty safe bet to assume that Steve's women were even weaker than the average Secondary.

And it seemed that the trend held true in this case as well; whilst the Wolf and the Claw had been scarcely touched by the flames, this pair were engulfed entirely. The Rabbit stared on in horror as they collapsed, flailing wildly, shrieking in agony.

Tearing his gaze from the horrific spectacle, he looked over at the elf instead. Brandon simply looked relieved. Not smug, not sadistic, not at all like pure, unadulterated evil... just glad to have survived another fight.

As Hijiri watched in a daze, the technophile pulled something else from the bag he had been tossed and immediately headed over to Jallus and began wrapping him in what must have been bandages. Going straight from cold-blooded killer one moment to concerned friend the next...

The Rabbit ought to have been able to do the same, he knew. He had been able to, when they were simply dealing with the normal NSW goons... his eyes were drawn back to the writhing women, their screams resonating and rebounding inside his skull, until he felt as though they were the only sounds that even existed...  those three had lived their lives as slaves, and then died horribly...

They hadn't deserved what had happened to them.

They hadn't.

Yet they were being treated just like all the others. They were the enemy, so they had to die. Nice. Easy. Simple.

This was the Empire's way... right?

That should be enough for him, shouldn't it?

He stumbled, barely managing to remain standing. The flames seemed to blur and grow, as darkness closed in around him, narrowing his vision to just what was directly in front.

He hadn't done this before, though.

Back home, on Earth, they had killed Ogres, yes, but never humans... much less innocent ones...

Someone shook him by the shoulder, and he truly lost his balance this time, falling down to his knees. He cried out involuntarily, sharp, rending pains tearing through his face as his shattered mess of a jaw was jostled slightly by the impact.

Kevin's face was in front of his suddenly. The man smiled awkwardly, apparently embarrassed to have knocked him down. He said something which Hijiri couldn't hear over the screams.

But... wait? Weren't those two dead already?

Why were they still wailing like this?

Hijiri shook his head, eyes darting from side-to-side as his breaths grew faster and shallower.

Why could he still hear them!?

The suited man turned back and shouted something indistinct across at the elf.

Whatever it was, or what Brandon's response might have been, the Battle Rabbit never found out.

At long last, the blissfully numbing darkness washed over him...

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

The Battle Rabbit had woken up in a bed in the medical bay, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, rushing between beds, their individual conversations indecipherable amidst the general hubbub.

Doctors and nurses, by the looks of it... and human ones, at that; there were no droids in sight. Well, no functioning ones at least; the spiky, many-limbed abomination which he had summoned previously seemed to have been reduced to scrap metal and its various parts all piled up in one huge heap at the side of the room furthest from the door.

Other beds were occupied by the other injured members of the squad. After that last battle, they had lost almost all of their 'by-the-book' stormtrooper reinforcements from Tier One... and given that they had already begun their own unauthorised recruitment campaign just before the NSW's attack on the barracks, it was likely that Imperial Command would use this event to make it clear that they were distancing themselves from this project by refusing to send down any more support for them.

In fact, that seemed the most likely explanation to the Rabbit as to why the patients here were being treated by regular people, rather than proper medical droids, which would surely be much more efficient. They must have been hired by Kroll (most likely with Hijiri's Omnilium) to do what they could for everyone here, as the ex-nobleman would have realised that appealing to their superiors for help would get them nowhere fast...

If they wanted to operate outside the system... or, at least, outside the system's generally accepted boundaries... they just might actually be allowed to get away with it, since this was Tier Five, after all, where the Empire lacked much of the power they held in the higher tiers... but that would only be the case if they could prove they could live up to all their wild claims... they weren't off to a good start.

And frankly, that last combat had been a shitshow of gargantuan proportions. They had lost a few soldiers fighting just one Prime and more to the rest of his goons, and even those who had lived had done so only because he had shown more interest in facing off against the Battle Rabbit than killing them...

Not to mention, their opponent had even given them the time to rest and recuperate mid-battle, since he'd thought it would be too boring for him otherwise. Worst of all, though, none of them had even thought to bring along a Banishment Circle – an item used to seal away unwanted individuals in an alternate plane called 'the Underverse' – which meant that in as little as a week, Shotgun Steve might be right back in action and terrorising Northside once more...

And the next time he faced them, the Claw – surely humiliated by this loss – would by no means ever consider going easy on them a second time. They would have to continue their training in the meantime, recruit more backup, and likely come up with some other surprises as well, if they hoped to fend off their nemesis the next time he reared his head...

That said, Hijiri had other things on his mind right now. He felt sickened by what he had seen. First a squad of imperial stormtroopers opening fire on a helpless, unarmed woman... then Brandon Windvale callously tossing some sort of custom-built incendiary grenade at two more women.

Watching those two burn, standing right there, yet helpless to do anything to save them, had been one of the hardest experiences of his life... the worst thing wasn't their horrific deaths in and of themselves; had such an atrocity been committed by ordinary criminals – as they presumably were, probably rather frequently given the amount of crime there generally was around here – that would only have strengthened his resolve...

No, it was seeing his friends and allies performing the deed that left him suddenly questioning whether he had even been right to join the Empire at all... as well as whether he should ever have agreed to Kroll's plan... by willingly handing off his authority to the false sergeant – all for the sake of this great end goal of his; a safer, more secure Northside – the Battle Rabbit had weakened his own influence.

Had he instead simply stuck to the EPD's usual rigid command structure, then the others never would have thought they could simply ignore his orders in the middle of a battle like that.

He wasn't sure how exactly, but Hijiri was sure that if Shotgun Steve had been telling the truth about having created those girls from scratch, their personalities included, then there must have been some way he could have used his own Omnilium to free them from whatever hold the old man had over them... yet that would no longer be possible. Steve's playthings had died with him, but unlike their master, they would not be returning.

He lay there in silence for some time, not even letting on that he was awake as he struggled to come up with an answer for this moral dilemma. Eventually, he succeeded, more or less, realising that there was only one thing he could possibly feel was the right thing to do at the moment.

He needed to leave.

It may not be permanent, but at least until he had cleared his head of this guilt, he could no longer pretend to be a part of these peoples' world. Stormtroopers were taught to kill without hesitation, in the name of their Emperor, yet in his reality, the only ones the Battle Rabbits had actually killed were Ogres... the very embodiment of darkness and negativity.

He had originally told himself that these gangsters – the NSW in particular – were just as bad as those fiends... and had forced himself to overlook any details which conflicted with his adopted worldview... such as the emotions of that man he had killed in the corridor earlier, when they were ambushed; the goon had accidentally shot and killed one of his comrades whilst aiming for the Rabbit, and rather than pity the distraught man, Hijiri had attacked him from behind, splitting his skull like a ripe melon.

In retrospect, that may not have been the most morally defensible of actions...

Yes, he had to clear his head. He needed to go and find out for himself if these criminals and thugs were truly the irredeemable filth that the government on Tier One liked to paint them as... and further, he needed to think over how many of his 'friends' here he could truly trust.

The elf had disobeyed him without the slightest hesitation and shown absolutely no remorse over killing those three, despite them being essentially victims in all this. On the other hand, Frank loved to keep the company of those rough, rebellious types. Could someone like that really be happy working for an organisation such as the Empire? Was it all just an act, or was there more to his story?

Thoughts for another time, perhaps. If he chose to simply wander off and leave the Empire – or even Coruscant entirely – to its troubles and find a more benevolent group to serve, then none of that would matter. The first step was to decide whether he could justify remaining within the Empire Peace Division. Everything else could be worked out after he had made that call.

He sat up, about to push himself out of bed and head off right then and there.

Immediately, he gasped as sharp pains shot through his chest, emanating from his many gunshot wounds, the painkillers from before... however many hours ago their battle had actually been... having clearly worn off.

That was just the beginning, though; the moment he let out that gasp, his jaw felt as though a sledgehammer had been swung into it at full force. He immediately collapsed back onto the bed, curling up almost into a foetal position as his hands went up to gingerly touch his ruined jaw. He found the entire lower half of his face wrapped tightly in bandages, holding the bones in place as he healed.

As a Prime, Hijiri would be able to recover from even such a serious injury as this, eventually; faster if he were to spend time healing the wound with Omnilium. Yet that didn't stop him from feeling the pain of it whilst it lasted.

The instant the numerous medics scattered throughout the room had seen him try to rise, three of them had rushed across to his bedside, two grabbing his arms and holding him down whilst a third prepared a worryingly long syringe filled with a translucent violet liquid.

Normally, he could have likely overpowered them; they were hardly trained combatants, after all, but as weak and wounded as he currently was, the Rabbit was unable to resist as the needle was slid into one arm and the tranquilliser injected...

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

When he next awoke, it was to the sound of raised voices. They came from the corridor just outside the medical bay, and although muffled by the walls and closed door, he was soon able to work out whose voices they were. One was Kroll, and the other... Davion Calrime, their lieutenant.

Davion had been taking some well-earned time off these past couple days and had been visiting friends on Tier Two... his vacation wasn't supposed to have been over so soon, but given the severity of this attack by the NSW, it came as no surprise that he'd returned early.

Though it was unlikely that that was what Kroll was being yelled at for, as it wasn't really his fault. Yes, the barracks had admittedly been left unguarded... but it was hardly the first time that had happened, and no gang had ever broken in and tried to take over the structure before... and even if it had been defended, given the power of the Wolfpack's Claw and the large number of thugs who had accompanied him, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference.

Therefore, even though he couldn't make out any of the words actually being said, Hijiri could predict their subject matter easily enough; Kroll and Brandon hadn't bothered to inform the lieutenant before putting their little recruitment drive into effect, and as that plan seemed to be displeasing their superiors up the chain of command, it was no surprise that Davion was angry. After all, it was as a direct result of this scheme – which some Imperial Officers were likely viewing as an attempt at a power grab by these lowly stormtroopers – that the squad was being more or less abandoned by Command...

Of course, if the lieutenant were to come bowing and grovelling back to them, with proof of this attempt at freedom of thought having been stamped out and the natural order restored, all would surely be forgiven... the Empire may have believed in harshly punishing those who acted out of order, but they wouldn't want to waste people or resources for no reason... in the worst case scenario, they could always just wait until the squad's attempts at heroism backfired seriously enough that they all ended up dead, as had almost happened today, then move another, more obedient, group down to take their place stationed in the barracks.

Of course, it was also possible that they could be massively successful, with enough people down here fed up of the gangs to actually rally behind the Empire's flag and drive them out of Northside... or even all of Tier Five... for good. In which case the higher-ups would be able to claim that this had been their idea all along and reap the rewards of their success. Not being able to take credit for their own idea wasn't ideal, obviously, but it beat getting court-martialed, so the fact that they were being more-or-less allowed to continue without interference was a good thing, really...

Or it should have been, at least. After seeing what a Prime had been able to do to their 'elite' stormtroopers, as well as the regular sort, Hijiri was much less confident about the chances of this plan; any new recruits they hired really would be just recruits... without any sort of training... and if even the properly-trained and extensively-trained groups they had here were so easily outmatched, what were un-trained noobs supposed to do if they ended up in battle? Would they just be throwing civilians to their deaths here?

Yet another detail to muse over...

Eventually, as the sounds beyond the doorway faded – the speakers moving off down the corridor for whatever reason – the Battle Rabbit sat up; more carefully this time than during his earlier attempt, however long ago it had been, prior to his sedation.

He felt faint aches, but either Prime-healing really must be fast or they'd actually bothered to give him some painkillers this time around. A nurse hurried over as he swung his feet off the bed and stood shakily.

She tried to convince him to get back down and rest, but the corporal waved her off, telling the young woman that he had been lying still for too long and needed a walk to stretch his muscles. She continued to object as he snatched up his katana from where it had been set – leaning against a chair by his bedside – and strode out of the room. Despite her pestering, she made no attempt to subdue him this time, so that was something, at least. Presumably they had done that before simply because he was in so much pain, rather than to prevent him from leaving.

He walked through the cold, grey hallways until he reached the exit, with the metal door still warped and torn out of shape. He gingerly stepped through, not wanting to upset his wounds. As before, though, the gunshots pained him little.

Outside now, night had well and truly fallen. He shivered as a chilly gust of wind cut through the air. His bandages had been changed at some point since he fought Steve, and though these ones still had the occasional blood stains, they were hardly soaked-though completely, as the others had been. He was still shirtless, though, and this was a cold night.

He walked out into the streets, away from the barracks, before finding a narrow alleyway and stopping there to stand hidden in the shadows as he initiated the process of summoning something via Omnilium; a large, rainbow-coloured bubble forming all around him. After approximately ten minutes spent waiting like this, the light faded to reveal his new outfit: a simple pair of black, knee-length, leather boots; tight black trousers; and a coat the bottom of which fell to about knee-height and which had a hood that completely hid his eyes in shadow, leaving the only visible part of his face being the area which was covered by bandages. The coat had white stripes around the hood and wrists, but was black for the most part... oh, and it had bunny ears.

The garment had been something worn by many of the Battle Rabbits in the EDF (Earth Defence Force) back home, and as they had been able to freely switch to their True Forms back there, it only made sense that their clothing should take their ears into account...

He could have changed that when summoning it, of course; if Shotgun Steve could make sentient beings from nothing more than Omnilium and the power of his imagination, then there was certainly no reason why Hijiri ought not to be able to make some minor clothing alterations...

He chose not to, though. This wasn't like back on Earth, after all; with all the different races and species of people, monsters and aliens that resided within the city of Coruscant, it was highly unlikely that simply having an eared hood would draw any attention. It wasn't all that hard to hide, no matter what one looked like, in a place as filled with oddities as this.

Concealing his identity was hardly all that major a concern, since it wasn't like he would expect any random citizens to recognise him in passing, but at least this way if he were to come across some members of the squad while they were on their patrol at some point, he wouldn't need to worry about being lectured for leaving so abruptly and without saying anything, or being dragged back to the barracks... until he'd made up his mind as to how he would move forward from this point, he would stay away from them all, the Rabbit had decided.

And in order to go about working out just how terrible these gangsters really were, he would need to observe them up close, if at all possible... to see if he could really justify what he had been doing on behalf of the Empire... he couldn't be sure exactly were he should begin, though, so a good first step might be to simply start walking, whilst keeping to the shadows as much as possible... this was Tier Five, after all; it couldn't be that hard to come across some criminals...

New outfit:
[spoiler]

- Art by Werewolf9595 -

[/spoiler]

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

He had had little luck so far.

It wasn't like finding the criminal underworld was particularly difficult in Northside; for all that he'd heard about the area being supposedly more secure than some other parts of the tier (to such an extent that the local EPD apparently had an average response speed five times faster that of their comrades in Westside) the truth was that though things here may not have been quite so bad as elsewhere, it was still a pretty shit place to live.

No, finding crime wasn't his issue... the problem was that he couldn't simply start walking up to these thugs and questioning them about their private lives. In order to complete this little mission of his – investigating whether or not these criminal types could actually be decent people under all the drug-smuggling, arms-dealing, theft & murder, or if Brandon was right to simply gun them all down without a care in the world – it seemed he would have no choice but to temporarily join a gang himself.

Of course, this presented its own problems; in most other parts of Tier Five, the various territories were held by numerous lesser groups which frequently fought amongst one another; in fact, even the renowned Westside Coalition was a union comprised of several ordinary gangs working in tandem, rather than being a single vast entity. Northside was different, though, with the overwhelming majority of its area being held by one of only two syndicates; the Wolfpack or the Pyros.

Unfortunately, this meant that actually finding a gang to join could potentially prove to be a major problem. The NSW were out of the question entirely, of course. With all that had been going on lately, there was a high chance that they could end up trying to force him to fight against Imperial stormtroopers if he were to join their ranks. He would be willing to go along with their lesser crimes in the name of this research of his – running protection rackets, dealing drugs and the like – but murdering innocents was obviously not something he would take part in, and killing EPD troops would be even worse, especially since the particular group of EPD troops who had been opposing them the most fiercely were his own (former) squad.

So that ruled out the Wolves... and the Pyros weren't a possibility either, though for an entirely different reason; they were all teenagers. Literally all of them. As Hijiri wasn't a teen himself, he had no way of ingratiating himself into their ranks. It was really just that simple.

What this meant, effectively, was that his only options were: a) to find one of the smaller and weaker gangs that survived simply by falling through the cracks, by being too unimpressive to ever attract the attention of the two big players; or b) to leave Northside entirely and head out into the tier's even more lawless areas...

For the time being, he would continue his search here... he had been scouring these dark alleys and dingy side-streets for not even a full day yet, after all, so it wasn't like he had covered the whole of Tier Five's northern quarter... not by a long shot.

His best shot, as he saw it, would be to find a gang powerless and desperate enough to accept him into their ranks with no questions asked... this would be made slightly easier by the fact that he was a Prime; they had a reputation for being quite a strange bunch, in general, so some eccentricities (like hiding his face at all times) would likely be overlooked in exchange for all the advantages Primes could offer... and Primes as rich as himself, in particular; during his weeks serving the Empire, Hijiri had managed to amass quite the stockpile of Omnilium within his body, especially after Kroll had had him absorb the Omnilium from all the valuables they had stolen confiscated during that raid on Shotgun Steve's casino.

This vast store had originally been intended to be used to summon and later upgrade the gear used by the new stormtroopers they were going to be recruiting, but if need be then he could always use it to arm gangsters instead... which, admittedly, may not be the most intelligent of plans from a long-term perspective; it didn't exactly take a genius to work out that arming criminals could result in a rise in crime, after all... but if he judged that it was something that had to be done in order to ingratiate himself with a particular group then it was an option to consider, at least...

***

“What an idiot.” rumbled the heavyset Oni, whose name was Morris, shaking his head at the retreating form of the man in the bunny-eared black coat, whilst straightening his ruffled jacket and glancing down at his partner, Squeaks.

“Yeah, I know. Thick as a brick wall. To think, he actually thought he could threaten us and get away with it? Heehee, we'll see who has the last laugh soon.” Squeaks squeaked back, massaging his tail, as though to make sure it was all still attached. Squeaks had acted tough only until the hooded man had loosed his katana upon him, pressing the cold steel edge up against that fleshy, pink appendage and threatening to amputate it unless his questions were answered...

Only to promptly back away when Squeaks had instantly wet himself.

Not much later, the pair of low-level drug dealers had given him everything he'd been after... if they could possibly help it, they never wanted to fight anyone at all, much less a Prime. Back in their homeworld, the red-skinned Oni and his Ratfolk companion had both been warriors of great renown, yet after being summoned here by a weak-ass Prime, fresh from her own summoning by Omni, they had found themselves hardly any stronger than the average kittens... despite Morris' bulging muscles and Squeaks' raptor-like talons, they had both been soundly beaten in every fight they'd partaken in since arriving here.

So now, unable to work as even the cheapest of hired muscle, they found themselves instead struggling to sell cheap drugs in back-alleys rarely visited by any but the most wasted of drunkards, just in order to scrape by.

Usually, their fearsome appearances were enough to keep them from being harassed as they went about their business... not so with this man, though. He had that unconcerned, fearless attitude that practically screamed 'Prime' from a mile away. They both knew it well. Their summoner had been the same way; she would resurrect within a week of being killed, so what did it matter what anyone thought of her? That foolishness had lasted right up until her first-hand education in the function of Banishment Circles...

And this guy was likely headed the same way. Yeah, they'd given him exactly what he wanted... they'd told him the names and general locations of every small gang they could think of... but how much could they get in exchange for the information he had inadvertently left them...? He was clearly too familiar with the area to be taken for some newcomer fresh from the Nexus... which meant that he must have been here a while... some Prime who knew what was up in the area was trying to find a gang to join up with, and he was specifically looking for one that wasn't already established...

Oh yeah, this was undoubtedly the sort of intel that both the Pyros and Wolves would be willing to pay for...

***

No sooner had he left the alleyway than the Battle Rabbit warped his personal gravity, lessening his weight drastically, and kicked off from the ground, bounding from wall to wall between two buildings on opposite sides of the narrow street he had stepped into. He made it up onto the rooftop in just seconds, then strode across to the edge and peered down.

As expected, the two low-lives he'd interrogated had already begun moving off in the opposite direction from the way he had headed... leaning in towards one another, they spoke in low, conspiratorial whispers that he couldn't make out from this distance. It seemed pretty obvious to him what their intentions were... and regrettable though it was, he couldn't afford to let anyone go telling tales about what he was after... even if he did find a gang to join, it would do him no good if they were immediately wiped out by one of the local big shots, intent on quashing any potential competition before it became a problem... a big part of the reason why these smaller gangs were considered unthreatening in the first place was their lack of Primes... if one was to be recruited by any of them, that group would immediately become a target.

He silently drew his katana, then began heading in the same direction his not-so-willing informants were going. He could at least be generous enough to wait until he could be sure what they planned before he struck... it would be rather unfortunate if it turned out his suspicions were incorrect and he went and killed the pair when they actually had been planning on forgetting all about him and getting on with their lives...

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

In retrospect, he was lucky that the area they had been in was closer to Wolfpack territory than to the Pyros, and lucky that these two had decided to simply head for the nearest big gang. He wasn't sure he had it in him to murder children, after all, no matter how criminal.

The Oni, the Ratfolk and the two human NSW goons lay sprawled across the ground. As was common of these sorts of people, they had chosen to meet in a back street, away from the prying eyes of the general public, out of sight of what little law there was in this tier.

That had been a mistake, of course, and not one that they would have the opportunity to learn from. After all, attacking them in a busier street would have drawn the local EPD to him like moths to a flame... yes, even in Tier Five, committing four counts of murder in front of dozens of witnesses was generally a bad idea.

It felt strange to him now, the necessity of this surreptitiousness, after having had the freedom to dispense justice wherever it was needed when working for the Empire. It was just something he would have to get used to, though. Up until he rejoined them, at least.

The Battle Rabbit finished cleaning the blood from his blade, having used as a cloth the coat of one of the Wolfpack goons he'd slain, then stood, flipping the katana around and casually sliding it back into its sheathe.

Without another glance at his victims, he turned and left, assured that he would have plenty of time to make his escape before anyone stumbled across them in this intentionally out-of-the-way area.

***

The three buildings loomed massive above him, their crumbling facades intimidating and ugly. This was, technically, the largest gang the two drug-dealers had known of – aside from the two Superpowers of Northside, of course – though in actuality it barely deserved to be called a gang at all.

Many of their members saw him coming, sitting or standing as they were in the shabby courtyard that stretched out between and in front of the slum tenements they called their home. To a man, they were a scrawny lot, clearly not the most well-fed of criminals... though if what he had been told was true, they barely even qualified as such. Though they did at least dress the part of common street thugs in their varied amalgamation of t-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, jeans and tracksuits, little different from the casual clothing he had seen most of the NSW goons wearing. The major distinctions were that this lot had no specific colours they tried to keep to, and that their clothes were clearly of lower quality, with some of them being so threadbare as to be practically falling apart.

As he closed in and many of them saw that he was headed for their turf, they began arming themselves... pathetically. Switchblades, kitchen knives, a couple had baseball bats... others had no weapons at all, only their fists, and the worst of it was, being the ones told to stand guard out here, this sorry lot were likely the best that this pitiful crew had to offer.

“Oi, what d'you want!?” a man with a crudely shaved head barked loudly the moment Hijiri stepped from the pavement of the street onto the cracked flagstones of their little curtilage. He was one of the only two carrying a bat, which presumably meant their either he was some sort of higher rank – explaining why he had been given a more effective weapon than one of those titchy knives – or perhaps just a guy who owned his own bat and thought that made him a big shot somehow...

Hell, for all Hijiri knew, maybe it did. Perhaps their gang's command structure was really so primitive that they simply obeyed whoever had the biggest weapon.

It was truly pitiful. Not a one of them had even pulled a gun on him.

Hijiri sighed, shaking his head, then tossed down his sheathed sword by the shouting man's feet, before reaching into his coat to withdraw his newly summoned weapon (created for the purpose fighting ranged opponents without having to exhaust himself dashing around all over the place); a gold-coloured Mark Nineteen fifty-calibre action express Desert Eagle pistol, which he also cast aside as though it were nothing.

He could have easily killed that guy instead... in fact, he likely could have murdered every single one of them, had he felt like it. Over the course of his time in the Omniverse, he had been gradually growing more and more accustomed to using his reduced powers in combat, though he wasn't yet quite to the point where he could feel as confident as he had back in his plane of origin... but that only applied when facing opponents armed with actual guns, rather than these little bats and knives. He was a skilled enough swordsman that against untrained, unfit sorts such as these, he would barely have needed to bother manipulating gravity, even if he hadn't had his nice new gun to help him out.

He wasn't surrendering to them because he needed to; he was doing it simply because he wanted to make a good first impression. Besides, even if they did decide to kill him, there was no way these losers had enough Omnilium – or Imperial Credits, or any other sort of currency – to afford a Banishment Circle. He had nothing to fear here. In the worst case scenario, he'd be forced to take a seven-day nap, before coming back here to punish them for their impudence.

Of course, he'd rather not have to resort to such methods; fear might be a good tool for controlling those beneath you whilst you held all the advantages, but if you wanted subordinates who wouldn't happily betray you in your time of need, it was far preferable to act in a way which would inspire true loyalty... not to mention, his business of investigating their humanity (or the lack thereof) would be made much easier if he could get on good terms with at least some of them.

“I want to join this gang.” he told them simply, not bothering making small talk. He spoke in a hoarse, rasping tone, figuring that they might accept this as being his actual voice. After all, given how much bloodied bandage he wore wrapped around his face and neck, it wouldn't exactly be a stretch to assume that he had acquired some sort of vocal chord injury. In actuality, the tone was simply another measure he was taking to reduce his odds of being recognised.

Yes, it was highly unlikely that anyone would have recognised him even if he hadn't gone to such lengths to hide his identity, but he figured he couldn't exactly be too careful; being uncovered as a member of the EPD whilst living and working amidst Coruscant's thriving criminal underworld would likely be a recipe for disaster. This lot might not have been able to afford to banish him, but some of the others out there sure could.

The man snorted dismissively in response to his statement. Whether because he was cynical enough to refuse to believe that a random stranger would suddenly show up to help them for no reason, or possibly because he was deluded enough to think that their pitiful excuse for a gang didn't actually need Hijiri's help.

It was unlikely to be the second, though, the Battle Rabbit had to admit. From what those drug dealers had told him about this bunch, he knew that most of their self-proclaimed 'gangsters' actually worked in sweatshops somewhere in the area, being paid barely enough to get by. Those that didn't either begged on the streets or sold their bodies as whores... the closest they came to running any proper criminal operations was occasionally mugging the odd lone individual in the streets.

Their lives were utter shit.

Which was exactly why he had chosen them, of course. He figured that people so low that even being at the bottom of the barrel would look like a step up to them would likely be pretty damn easy to impress, even if he didn't have as flashy Powers as some Primes.

“You don't seriously think we'd buy that, right? What is it you're really after?” a mumbled chorus of assenting statements echoed the bat-man's questions, as the gang members closed in.

“I'm a Prime. Newly summoned.” He kept his statements terse and to the point; it was all part of the act he was going for, the personality he was trying to project. Regardless of the brevity of his speech, those words had an effect on them. For a moment, something like unease or trepidation rippled through the crowd, as more than a few eyes were drawn back towards the weapons he had so casually tossed to the ground. Being a Prime would certainly be one explanation for him having access to high-quality gear, as well as for him being so willing to give it up; Primes could always just recreate anything they discarded, after all.

Of course, that alone was by no means proof of his statement. As the lead thug (if such a weedy guy could even be called such) clearly realised, “A Prime, are ya? Prove it then. Go on, summon something.”

Nodding once, Hijiri held out a hand, palm up, and watched as surprised flashed across the faces of these would-be criminals when the orb of Omnilium floated up from it, then began to expand...

It occurred to him that with the number of Secondaries in the Omniverse being so massively disproportionate to the amount of Primes, it was possible that many of these assembled had never even seen a Prime in passing... much less have had one actually stop to offer them help. It was no surprise that such a downtrodden group would be impressed by his Omni-given powers of creation.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

The guy with the bat grinned, slapping Hijiri on the back jovially, as though they were old friends who had known each other for years, “Yeah, I'm telling you, King, this guy showing up is the best thing that's ever happened to the gang. We can really make it big with a Prime on our side!”

The fat man snorted contemptuously, shaking his head from side-to-side. This was Bernie King, AKA 'the Slum King', as he called himself. His kingdom consisted of these three ramshackle tenement blocks, the courtyard that stretched between them, and absolutely nothing else. Bernie had short, balding brown hair, thick stubble all across his chins, and bags under his eyes. He wore a pair of old, torn tracksuit bottoms the colour of mustard, a sweat-stained, off-white vest, and a pair of light brown slippers that looked about to fall apart... and finally, on the top of his head, sat a massive, golden crown... made entirely of plastic.

Despite clearly not being what anyone in their right mind would call 'well-off', Bernie had somehow managed to get all the way to 'morbidly obese', whilst everyone around him was struggling not to starve to death. The Battle Rabbit had no idea how the Slum King could have convinced his gang members to skip meals themselves whilst providing for him – given his vast bulk, there was no way he could possibly be working himself, that was for sure – but it made him wary of this seemingly pathetic man, thinking at first that he must be a particularly cunning, devious sort...

Then again, Hijiri's new best friend here had been won over completely the instant the Rabbit had given him that item after having finished summoning it from Omnilium... though it had been nothing more than a single bacon sandwich. Apparently it must have been a pretty good one, since the malnourished thug had literally wept in joy whilst eating it.

“Don't be ridiculous.” the Slum King looked at the newcomer as though he were something a dog had just shat out on his floor, “Plenty of gangs have a Prime member... the really big ones even have multiple Primes. There's absolutely no way we'd ever gain power just by accepting a Prime... even if we could trust one, which we sure as hell can't!”

He turned suddenly, his eyes snapping from his subordinate to the Battle Rabbit, “And you! Just who the hell are you supposed to be? You think just 'cause you got enough Omnilium to summon one measly sandwich, that's gonna be enough to buy your way into our gang? We might be poor, but we're not that desperate!”

Spittle flew from the middle-aged man's mouth as he snarled and growled at Hijiri from where he sat on his moth-eaten, ragged, old armchair; the only piece of furniture in this entire ten-foot-by-ten-foot room... the King's personal abode was no larger or smaller than any other 'apartment' in this block, though he did at least have the advantage of not having to share it with his entire extended family, unlike some of the residents the Rabbit had witnessed on his way up here, to the very last room on the highest floor of the central building.

“More than that.” he stated simply, and though he kept to more-or-less the same hoarse tone he had been using thus far whilst disguised, he also injected a touch of smugness into his voice as well... the way he imagined a new Prime might feel upon discovering these astounding powers of creation which Omni was willing to bestow upon their kind. “I can do much more.”

Bernie simply grunted, though, and waved one hand dismissively. Disbelieving... or perhaps hoping that Hijiri was exaggerating his powers... his reserves of Omnilium. It was obvious that a Prime would be a threat to his control of the gang. Still, it wasn't exactly a struggle to determine the Slum King's vice.

Holding a hand out palm-down this time, the two Secondaries watched as an orb of rainbow light descended lazily from the hand, stretching out to the sides as it fell. Even having landed, it continued to swell outwards, until it eventually stretched from one side of the room to the other; a vaguely rectangular bubble ten-foot-wide and a few feet long.

It took several minutes of focus to complete the summoning, during which time Bernie glared venomously at the Battle Rabbit, but said nothing. Despite his complaints and unwilling attitude, he was still no more impressive a figure in the eyes of anyone outside these tenements than any of the rest of these starving masses... in all likelihood, their leader had no more experience interacting with Primes than any of his minions, and so would be curious to see .

When the light faded at last, Hijiri was pleased to notice the look of surprise – almost shock – that crossed the obese man's face for a moment, before he twisted his visage back into a scowl.

“What kinda dumbass d'you think I am? It's obviously poisoned!” at Bernie's words, Hijiri exchanged disbelieving glances with his supporter... though the trade was rather one-sided, given that the Rabbit's eyes remained hidden in shadow by his hood and his lower face was coated in gauze.

“No poison.” he shook his head... trying to think of a way to phrase his offer in a way that somehow sounded terse and brief, whilst still getting across his point. Acting like an antisocial loner wasn't hard... but acting like an antisocial loner whilst trying to ingratiate yourself into a group of complete strangers... was a bit more of a challenge.

In retrospect, he perhaps ought to have chosen to act less like some sort of 'edgy' teenager and more... well... intelligent. He had been aiming for something both distinctly different from his actual personality and which would fit with the image his new outfit projected. Really, it would have made more sense to just have created himself a less gloomy outfit and went with another personality-type... even if acting all bubbly and cheerful sounded like a serious pain in the ass, it would have been the much better behavioural pattern for making 'friends'.

“I can feed you all, King.” he didn't explicitly state that he wouldn't have any need of poison if he wanted to kill the gang leader... an unfit secondary against even a comparatively weak Prime was simply no contest. Bernie's narrowed eyes darted from one side of his room to the other, roaming across the banquet Hijiri had set out before him, the dozens of dishes spread across a wide, white tablecloth.

“Oh? You can feed everyone here as much as this, can you?” his tone was sceptical, but beneath that was something else, another note that Hijiri had come across before, back when he lived on Earth. In that life he had been both a military commander and a businessman. Even if this latter role had been mostly just a cover for the first, he had still had to interact with others in similar positions, and thus had come across men and women like Bernie aplenty. They were the sorts who took pleasure in thinking themselves above their employees, as if being wealthier somehow gave them more rights than other people.

Bernie didn't want him to be able to succeed in making infinite amounts of food, partly as that would leave him with little idea as to Hijiri's limitations – having not met any new Primes himself, all he would have to go by was hearsay and rumour, especially since none of them in this place seemed even close to well-off enough to be able to spare the Omnilium for a Dataverse Device, so the King wouldn't even have that resource to make use of – but also because he wanted to be better off than the others. If they weren't going to be starving any longer under Hijiri's watch, he might accept that, but only if it was clear to everyone that he was still being treated better than them.

“Ah... no. I can give you this much, Slum King. The others must get less.” the Rabbit tried to put a hint of awkwardness into his hoarse voice, as though he was embarrassed to admit this... though in actuality Bernie King's selfishness made not the slightest iota of difference to his intentions; these people were starving. Even the bacon sandwich he had given his new ally here might have been pushing it, never mind a whole buffet for every meal. They'd just make themselves seriously ill if they tried to scarf down that much food whilst suffering the effects of malnourishment.

This seemed to please the Slum King, though, as his face suddenly took on a smug expression, “Oh? Well... that's so unfortunate, but I suppose it'll just have to do. In return for serving as our chef, we'll give you a place to stay and the protection of our gang... how does that sound, Prime?”

“No.” Hijiri rasped in reply, shaking his head, “I can make more than food. Weapons... with enough Omnilium, even buildings.”

Bernie hesitated, no doubt realising what the Battle Rabbit was suggesting. Weapons could be hidden, yes, but buildings? Of course not... and he had intentionally said 'with enough Omnilium', to give the obese ganglord the impression that he didn't currently have the ability to summon one already. It really was amazing how quickly Primes acquired more Omnilium... he had only been here a scant few weeks, yet already he had acquired enough to purchase multiple houses if he so desired. It was no wonder people said that Primes had a much easier time increasing their strength in the Omniverse than Secondaries... Omnilium was truly an astounding resource, and the rate at which Primes amassed it (even when they weren't robbing casinos of everything that wasn't nailed down) was prodigious.

“You want us to fight the other gangs? Don't be absurd. You've clearly got no idea what you're on about. That's madness, we'd be slaughtered.” it hadn't taken long for the Slum King to get back to glaring at Hijiri... but the Rabbit wasn't feeling like putting this off, and he certainly didn't intend to go to work as a simple chef. The whole point of this exercise was to determine whether or not Coruscant's gangs had to be eliminated... not Coruscant's poor people.

He shrugged nonchalantly, “I'll make food and arms. If you don't want more territory, that's up to you.”

He turned to leave, not entirely sure whether or not the gang leader would stop him. His ally cast one last nervous look across at their leader, before following. Bernie made no argument... he didn't seem particularly happy, but at the same time, he wasn't actually objecting to the idea of weapons production. Hopefully, his greed would get the better of him and by the time Hijiri had finished summoning weapons for everyone worth arming in the three buildings, the King would have come around to the idea of expanding his power base.

"Wait."

Hijiri glanced back over his shoulder. Was he about to be ordered not to create any weapons at all? If so then he might need to consider going behind the gang leader's back to do it anyway, or else potentially even leaving this one altogether in favour of another which would be more open to his aims.

"What's your name, Prime?" oh yes, of course. That was rather an important detail, he supposed.

"'Hoarse'." he said, hoarsely. "Where I'm from, they called me 'Hoarse'."

Bernie just stared at him in silence for a few seconds after this announcement, then sighed, before saying drily, "I can't imagine why."

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

The rainbow light faded, at last. He heard gasps from the assembled mass of men, women and children. From almost every family in these slums, at least one person had shown up. He could tell easily enough from their expressions and from the way they kept their distance from him and his follower that they were not yet willing to trust him, being suspicious of his offer of help with no strings attached. It did make sense, he supposed. After all, as the saying went, 'there's no such thing as a free lunch'... and he was offering considerably more than just lunch.

Despite their wariness, though, it wasn't long after the Omnilium bubble had faded away that the first of the crowd began coming forwards, making their way over to the massive pile of foodstuffs and grabbing anything from a single item to entire armfuls of packages. He didn't stop anyone. Many had their families to feed as well, after all... and if any of them were thinking of being greedy and hogging a lot just for themselves, then they'd only have themselves to blame when they felt sick later and puked it all back up.

Obviously he would have to come up with some system for sharing everyone's meals out properly at some point, but for the time being, this would do; simply summoning a huge pile of packaged fast foods of all sorts – some simply wrapped in brown paper, whilst other meals were stored in bags or flimsy, plastic tubs – and letting them all take what they needed. This stuff may not have been anything worth bragging about, but it was food... and better than they were used to, most likely... not that that was saying a whole lot.

Before long, the rest of them had realised that they might miss out if they continued to hesitate, and soon there was a mad scramble as people rushed to grab whatever they needed, wanted, or simply anything they could get their hands on. His ally looked to him in panic, his attempts at calming the mob having no effect. Hijiri had expected as much, though. As fortune would have it, as well as being a fair distance from any notable bases of the Wolfpack or Pyros, this place was also outside the normal area one would expect to see routinely patrolled by the Empire Peace Division... which was part of the reason he'd chosen these people, of course; he certainly had no intention of opposing the Empire.

So, knowing he was free to do pretty much as he liked without much chance of anyone too threatening noticing what was up, he pulled his pistol out of his coat and fired directly up in the air three times. That got their attention.

It was a crime-ridden neighbourhood, like pretty much all of Tier Five, so it wasn't all that likely that any random bystanders would be shocked by the sound of gunshots. All in all, he was expecting this to go completely unnoticed by everyone except the mob he had just shocked into silence. As poor as they were, this lot had no access to firearms, even in an area so saturated with them as this tier was. It came as no surprise that they were unused to – and unnerved by – having one fired repeatedly in close proximity to themselves.

He'd really need to find excuses to fire this thing a whole lot more...

If he wanted these people to turn into a proper gang, they'd need to get more comfortable around deadly weapons. For the time being, though, their fear would do just fine. There wasn't much point in feeding them if they were just going to stampede and trample one another to death in their haste to get at it.

“Don't rush.” he said simply, dropping his hand to his side... but allowing his forefinger to tremble slightly as it rested against the trigger. The movements were tiny, but with all of them focused intently on the gun, he doubted there was anyone in the foremost ranks of the crowd who didn't notice. A guy with an itchy trigger finger and a crowd who refused to take orders was not a good combination, and they were thankfully bright enough to realise that. In fact, not only did they slow down, the mob even backed off and sorted themselves into an orderly queue.

Behind the bandages that obscured his face, Hijiri smirked. It wasn't like he would actually have shot anyone here, of course, but it seemed that for the time being, intimidation would work quite well as a method of keeping them from doing anything stupid. At least, until he could earn their loyalty properly, and maybe even teach them a little restraint.

That wouldn't take too long, hopefully. With as much Omnilium as he currently held within him, he could afford to keep feeding these people for a while, even when taking into account the detail that he was also going to be summoning weapons for them. Before too long, though, they would really need to start earning for themselves...

Sliding the gun back into his coat, the Battle Rabbit stood with one hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed sword, which he leant on the ground as though it were a cane or walking stick, whilst his follower waited by his side, that bat of his leaning against one shoulder, as he nodded at and occasionally spoke to the occupants of the tenements when they came forward to take their meals. Hijiri couldn't help but notice that fewer people seemed to be picking up large amounts of food, now that they were doing so one by one... with the eyes of all their neighbours on them as they made their selections.

***

Mealtimes had passed, night had fallen, and beneath the courtyard, training was underway.

Yes, beneath the yard. No, there had not originally been any basement facilities under any of these facilities, this was a recent addition, courtesy of the gang's new Prime. An addition which he was feeling pretty smug about, actually; he had wanted a hidden place where they could train without the risk of being overheard, and so he had known that he'd need to use up some Omnilium building something... he had then remembered, however, that these buildings had no plumbing. No electricity. No nothing. Which meant that all the normal sorts of pipes and cables and suchlike that one might expect to find beneath a housing estate were absent in this case.

All he had needed to do was absorb Omnilium from the surrounding ground in a huge, rectangular-cuboid lump. With that done and staircases down here added to the ground floors of each of the three slum buildings, their hidden training area was complete, albeit sparse. The best thing was, though, because this 'construction' had consisted almost entirely of removing mass, rather than adding it, reshaping it, or anything else costly, he had actually increased his wealth (a little) by absorbing all the Omnilium that had made up that stone and earth.

It had taken him over an hour of work to prepare this place – which was still absurdly fast, of course, given how much time such an endeavour would have demanded using normal methods – and then a while longer to produce the two piles of weapons which had been handed out to those volunteers who had chosen to attend this first training session. More would come later, he knew, as they became more accustomed to his presence, but for now there were just a dozen of them in this cavernous space beneath the plaza.

He had taken their names at the start of this session, though he knew that unless no one else showed any interest, or this lot proved to be the best of what these slums had to offer, there was little chance of him remembering them all. He did now know the name of his first supporter, though, so that was a plus. The bat-wielding man's had turned out to be called Alejandro Torres... though calling him 'bat-wielding' may no longer have been all that appropriate, given that he now... well... wasn't.

The weapons Hijiri had prepared for them all were simple enough. He had stuck to what he knew; they were simply replicas of his own katana and pistol, albeit with some minor differences in colouration. Whilst his sword's pommel and guard were the colour of gold, his scabbard had several gold bands across the top, and his gun also had a gold finish to it, their slightly lower quality equipment was marked as being different by its plain, black appearance.

Still, though not as flashy as his own, the weapons were by no means the same trash as these people had been using previously. They were all fully functional and would serve their purposes well... assuming that this lot ever actually learned to wield them. His training sessions with the stormtrooper squad had been essentially all about practising for situations which might arise in an actual combat scenario... for this bunch, however, it was quickly becoming apparent that he was going to have to start right from the beginning; teaching them things like basic sword forms and how to hold a pistol whilst aiming.

This could take some time.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

Three days had passed since their training had begun and already some of the would-be gangsters were showing promise. Not many of them, admittedly, but 'some' would do for now. By this point they were almost all on board with accepting his help and taking the arms he provided. The only people he wasn't teaching were the very young, the elderly and the infirm.

Oh, and the Slum King himself, of course. He had provided his 'King' with weapons, yes, but as Bernie had not wanted to be shown up by anyone, he had opted not to attend any practice sessions... which was by no means something that Hijiri was upset about; he was sure that the King would have just gotten real upset and insecure once he realised how much influence the Battle Rabbit now held over his gang's members. Part of this was due to intimidation; aside from not resorting to breaking limbs to get his point across, he was being almost as strict with this lot as he had been with his stormtroopers previously. Beyond that, though, they seemed to look up to him a lot... perhaps adore him, even... it seemed like saving a person and their entire family from a life of malnourishment and misery inspired gratitude, or something. Who'd have guessed?

And if all went as planned today, they would likely be even more loyal. It shouldn't be much of a challenge, in theory. Nothing more than a few security guards ought to stand in their way, and with all the firepower his gang had now, they would more than likely surrender immediately.

“You all ready?” he rasped, casting his gaze across the assembled mob. They may have been more competent individually than they had been before, but thus far he had not been able to spare the time to focus at all on discipline or group tactics, which meant that in equal numbers, this lot would still be decimated by any half-decent stormtrooper squad. Luckily, they weren't intending on picking any fights with the Empire.

An assenting chorus of responses answered his question enthusiastically and he nodded back at them, unfolding his arms, which had been crossed over his chest, then gesturing with his left hand, in which he held his sheathed sword, towards the enormous, steel-plated monstrosity of a truck behind him.

It had cost a small fortune in OM, but alas, even with a beast like this, there still wasn't enough room to fit the whole gang inside; although it was only being used to transport a few dozen of them today, he had originally wanted the armoured vehicle in case the whole lot of them ever needed to make a quick getaway, such as if the Wolfpack or Pyros attacked them en masse, as unlikely as that was. Gang wars generally consisted of numerous smaller brawls and gunfights – according to his research on the Dataverse – rather than single, massive assaults.

Of course, the fact that it couldn't even fit half of them would pose quite the problem, should such an event actually occur. At some point, he'd really have to summon more trucks. In the mean time, though, this one would be plenty to fit the forty-odd goons he had gathered here. As near as he could determine, this bunch seemed like they were the best of the sorry lot he had found himself with.

“Come on.” he said, before turning to hop lightly up to the vehicle's driver-side door. A few moments after he had gotten in, Alejandro slipped into the passenger side. The rest of them heading round and into the semi-trailer on the back. Hopefully they'd have a pretty gentle ride, as there were no seats in the cargo area; if he had to swerve around a lot, or worse, if some idiot crashed into them, then they'd all be flung around like leaves in a storm.

He turned the key in the ignition and in moments they were off, their progress surprisingly swift through these almost barren streets; unlike most of Tier Five (including the area he had been stationed before going AWOL), this section of the tier was poor enough that there were very few people with even the cheapest of cars... so the enormous eighteen-wheeler with its silvery, stainless-steel armour plating sure stuck out like a sore thumb. He noticed many pedestrians looking across at them as they drove past. Good.

Aside from being a decent means of getting a bunch of them away in a hurry if the situation called for it, the vehicle also attracted a lot of attention... which would hopefully help get their gang recognised, especially in a rundown area like this. That, along with the steps they planned to take in securing the territory they would be claiming over the course of the next few days, would be big points in their favour, hopefully. There were points against them too, though; the fact that they all lived in slums certainly wasn't much of a testament to their power, and the name Bernie had chosen for them – the Northside Small Fries – didn't exactly inspire fear either.

Still, hopefully after a few profitable 'escapades' in and around the area they were already pre-emptively calling their own, he would have gathered enough Omnilium to feel justified in telling the gang that he could afford to summon a proper Base for them, without giving away just how absurdly wealthy he was right now... unlike most Primes, he had been for the most part purposefully saving his Omnilium thus far, rather than trying to reawaken as many of the abilities that Omni had taken from him as he possibly could. It made him weaker than many people would expect of a Prime, but it left him with plenty of 'cash' to spare if he ever needed a vehicle such as this, a massive pile of guns and swords for his followers, a whole banquet's worth of food... or even a new house. Not that he was boasting about that. He was still pretending to be a fairly new Prime, after all, so he had to pretend to have at least semi-realistic limits to how much he could spend at any given time.

***

It wasn't all that long before they reached their destination. The traffic had been low, no one had started shooting at them as they passed, and now here they were, pulling up in the street just outside a large yet squat, ugly building, as the three-man security team outside glared their way suspiciously.

They were right to be concerned, of course. No sooner had the eight-wheeler drawn to a standstill than the rear doors leading into the semi-trailer on the back burst open, followed a second later by the front doors in the cab as well.

Hijiri and Alejandro were down in moments, the olive-skinned man clutching his pistol tightly in one hand whilst grasping the hilt of his scabbarded katana with the other, whereas the Battle Rabbit was much more casual about the situation; not yet having pulled out his gun and holding his blade by its sheathe, making no attempt at preparing himself to fight.

The guards looked terrified as they advanced, hurriedly drawing and aiming their own pistols. His foremost supporter glanced worriedly at Hijiri out of the corners of his eyes, clearly not at all comfortable with walking directly towards the barrels of three loaded guns. When the Rabbit showed no sign of fear, though, he kept walking. Hijiri was actually pretty impressed by him. The gangster wasn't a Prime, like he was, and so had much more to fear from death, whilst also being a far less effective fighter. There wouldn't be a whole lot he could do if they opened fire.

“Drop your weapons.” Hijiri told them, hoarsely, he and his companion coming to a halt just a few metres from their position by the building's front entrance.

“Wh-who are you?” the man standing between the other two guards asked fearfully, as he and his comrades swung their weapons about, trying to cover everyone as the unruly mob came up behind the first pair and spread out to the sides a bit, so that they could all get a better view of their foes.

The Rabbit nodded to Alejandro, who licked his lips nervously before speaking, “This is Hoarse, Head Chef and Training Instructor of the Northside Small Fries. He's a Prime, and he's helping us put our gang on the map. After hearing his advice, our boss, the Slum King, agreed that the first places we target when claiming territory should be the sweatshops that many of us worked in before Hoarse came along to save us from that shit... so we're tearing this place down and stealing everything inside. Fight back and you'll die. Run and you'll live.”

The security team looked at each other, at the dozens of armed men and women standing before them, and down at the pistols they held.

It wasn't entirely clear which of them made the decision first, but after a single moment of hesitation all three dropped their guns and had sprinted off within a second of one another.

They'd had no cover in their position and they'd been facing odds greater than ten to one. They never would have stood a chance even if their opponents hadn't had a Prime leading their horde. It was no surprise that they valued their own lives more than the no-doubt poor pay of whomever owned this cheap-ass factory.

If the rest of the security personnel – those ones on the inside of the building – proved just as compliant then this should all go quickly and smoothly, without a single casualty.

Without a hint of fear (respawning a week after death sure was convenient), Hijiri approached the narrow door, turned the knob and swung it open. The corridor beyond was empty; the workers were doubtless all busy in the main hall, the guards watching them closely.

“Let's go.” he told his assembled force, and they surged forwards, many with grins on their faces. As far as confidence boosters went, he imagined that seeing three buff, gun-toting security men turn and run from you like scared children must be a pretty good one... at least, to these people... for those who had never faced the same sorts of supernatural enemies he had known back in his original world, tough guys like that must seem like actual, credible threats, he assumed.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

Hijiri was the first through the double doors into the main factory workspace. He dived through them, in fact, warping gravity just after throwing them open and leaping far higher than his human body would have been expected to be capable of, flipping over in mid-air before landing gracefully atop an unoccupied desk, one foot on the wooden surface itself and the other using a cheap sewing machine as a pedestal.

This one was a traditional sweatshop; meaning that their business involved a whole bunch of poor people sitting at tables all day and sewing clothes for practically no pay... though currently many of the desks were vacant. This was one of the places that many of the Slum King's 'gangsters' had actually worked for their living (if such an existence could even really be called that), but ever since Hijiri had arrived and begun supplying them with food, none of them had actually bothered turning up for their shifts.

The several guards spread out across the large room had already all drawn their guns and aimed them his way, but just to draw their attention further, he grabbed the hilt of his sword and very slowly – making sure to scrape the blade against the sheath as loudly as possible – drew the katana from its scabbard.

The loud scraping of metal on metal had their attention locked on him... though thus far none had opened fire. Whilst they stared, his allies casually sidled into the room. Had the gangsters attempted to charge in, the guards likely would have opened fire, not realising how badly outnumbered they were... how hopeless their situation.

Instead, surprised by the arrival of one oddly-dressed acrobat who seemed fond of needlessly dramatic entrances and incapable of drawing a sword quickly or quietly, they were more confused than frightened. At least, up until he spoke.

“Surrender.” was the only word he bothered to say, jerking his head back to indicate the heavily armed mob who had just finished making their way into the hall.

After noticing the gangsters, the guards probably were more afraid than confused... though it was a close call to make. Especially when they recognised some of their foes as the same poverty-stricken unfortunates who had until recently been employed here. A few of them even called out the names of some of those they recognised... in anger, in fear, in mild bemusement... the responses were varied and many.

When Hijiri made no attempt at responding to their comments, Alejandro took it upon himself to do so in the Battle Rabbit's stead. That guy was becoming quite the spokesman, actually. It was pretty helpful; it would have been much harder to pull off this terse loner routine without someone around to explain everything in detail so he didn't have to.

“We're a real gang now, with proper guns and stuff, so just drop your weapons and we'll let you go. Fight us and you'll only get yourselves killed.”

“Oh really?” asked one of the security team, a man with an eyepatch, a short beard and the general appearance of some sort of generic, grizzled army veteran, “And who's this hooded guy supposed to be? Your cheerleader?”

Hijiri turned to face him, but didn't yet speak up. This man showed no sign of fear at all, despite being vastly outnumbered. He was either very skilled – which was unlikely given his job guarding this shithole – or just an idiot.

“That's Hoarse. He's a Prime.” Alejandro pronounced the word 'Prime' with something like awe... or reverence. It was almost funny how out-of-touch these slum-dwellers were. Whilst not even close to being as common as Secondaries, Primes were hardly unheard of, not even in such a dismal place to live as Tier Five.

Still, in combat they were easily stronger than all but the most powerful of Secondaries, so unless these guards really were utter fools, they should be worried by that comment.

The eyepatch guy snorted, “Primes are no big deal. You really think you can scare us off just 'cause you've got a Prime with you? You're nothing. It doesn't matter how many of you there are, or even if you get multiple Primes on your side... you'll never beat us. If anyone should be dropping any weapons around here, it should be you lot. Right guys?”

Oh yeah, he was an idiot alright.

“Y-yeah,” stammered a pimple-faced man who looked barely out of his teens. He was muscular, but clearly not the bravest, if the way his knees shook was any indication. He had likely only joined this security team because he was too cowardly to risk getting involved in any gang warfare, “I-I've totally k-killed loads of P-P-Primes. Y-you don't scare m-me.”

Hijiri looked at him. Then back at the man who appeared to be the leader.

“Shut up, Carl.”

“Aw...” the spotty guy hung his head.

“Alright, listen. Here's how this is going to go; you're all going to drop all your weapons, kick them over to us, and then get down on your knees and put your hands behind your heads.” the security boss guy growled at the mob, completely ignoring Hijiri; apparently feeling pretty safe with his six subordinates all aiming their pistols the Rabbit's way, “If you don't comply, we'll gun down this little Prime friend of yours, and you'll all be slaughtered without him around. If not by us then by another gang... a real gang. So what do you say?”

He asked it like it was actually a serious question... and judging by the fact that none of his associates were rushing to surrender, it was possible that they also were dumb enough to believe that this absurd demand had some chance of being met. Perhaps they had just gotten so used to thinking of the sweatshop's employees as nothing more than their victims that they didn't genuinely believe that they could ever really turn on them.

The rest of the workers, though – those who lived in other blocks of slums outside the Slum King's three tenements – clearly weren't so confident, and had all abandoned their work to cower under their desks instead. Good.

“Open fire.” he commanded hoarsely, then leapt into the air, his weight dropping off to practically nothing. He backflipped to land feet-first on the ceiling just as the first gunshots rang out, and almost immediately kicked off again, with as much force as he could muster.

If he held still for too long then one of the guards was likely to get off a shot... he had no idea how accurate they were, but he didn't fancy finding out the hard way that he'd underestimated anyone, so it would be best not to stay still.

He landed behind them, near the far wall, then bounced up into a corner, then across to a point near the top of one of the side walls, and by then the shooting had stopped. His last jump took him back to the doorway, to land light as a feather in front of his little mob, facing them. Almost immediately afterwards, he released the energy he'd built up over the course of the preceding few seconds, whilst he jumped around; returning himself to his normal weight.

He turned back around to observe the carnage. They'd done pretty well for themselves. Workstations and equipment had been riddled with bullets, and the security team's corpses lay sprawled around the room. The fools had actually tried to keep their promise about shooting him if anyone fired, even after it must have become obvious to them how quickly he could move. Not one of them had so much as turned to face the gangsters.

To compare this to shooting fish in a barrel would have been an insult to fish... still, none of his guys seemed to have accidentally gunned down any of the innocents cowering beneath their desks, so that was a plus.

“Get everyone out.” he rasped to Alejandro after he had done surveying the mess, knowing without having to look that the man had moved forwards to stand a little behind and to one side of him, as had become his habit. Whether he was just eager to please or was hungry for power, the Battle Rabbit wasn't yet sure, but having him around certainly made things easier.

The man didn't question his command, and it didn't take him long at all to get it done. Within moments the terrified employees were all outside and being given 'the spiel'... a statement Alejandro had come up with, which had then been improved upon via a few terse hints by Hijiri, that the gang's members could rattle off to any others of the downtrodden masses they came across whom they thought might be interested in signing up. The Rabbit had already promised that they'd soon have a much larger building to call their home, so they weren't too worried about the threat of overcrowding their already overcrowded buildings even more.

With the building emptied of living people, Hijiri faced it once again, “Keep watch. For an hour.”

“Sure thing, boss-man.” his #1 henchman replied, before ordering the others to spread out around the building's perimeter and settle down to wait.

The Battle Rabbit cracked his knuckles, staring at the ugly building, then held his arms out before him and began to focus. At first, nothing appeared to happen... and then, slowly, a shimmering curtain of rainbow light crept outwards from the building itself, growing and shifting until every part of it had been covered.

This place had far, far less expensive goods, equipment, furniture and fittings than had the NSW's casino, and so would be much less productive to rob (or 'confiscate from' as Kroll would put it). So he was improvising a little, and just taking the entire building. Not only would this provide him with much more Omnilium than just stealing a few random objects, but leaving not a single hint that this place had ever existed after they were done with it would likely make a pretty powerful statement about what would happen to anyone who got in their way.

[Takanomiya Hijiri]

On that first day, he had levelled a building… albeit, tediously slowly, and in a manner in which any Prime in the Omniverse could have duplicated, no matter how weak they may have been.

So it might not have been the most impressive display of raw might, but it was nevertheless sure to catch someone’s notice.

Or so he had thought.

The mood was cautiously celebratory when they returned to the three tenement blocks that currently served as their base of operations. Still, there was a tinge of nervousness in the air. The two main gangs in the area were both far more powerful than they. If either the Pyros or the Wolfpack marshalled all their forces, Bernie King’s so-called ‘Northside Small Fries’ would without doubt be crushed underfoot, even with all the nice new weapons ‘Hoarse’ had given them.

No one voiced these fears to Hijiri, though. In fact, no one even considered them when he was in the vicinity. His apparent complete lack of concern for the threat put them all at ease.

Of course, the Battle Rabbit knew full well that they couldn’t win against an entire rival gang. The reason for his relaxed attitude was simply that it took a lot to motivate a whole gang to mobilise at speed. One little, barely profitable sweatshop wasn’t going to do it. Someone might send a pack of goons around to investigate, but no one they couldn’t deal with or chase off.

For the time being, they still had some leeway. He trained his gangsters a little more that afternoon – taking the building hadn’t required the whole day, after all – and then in the evening, spent a while summoning another huge, armoured eighteen-wheeler, which he left parked beside the first.

That night, especially after Hijiri had fallen asleep, many eyes watched warily for strangers in the dark. If anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary, though, they must have managed to reason it away as being a coincidence or just their imagination, for no one raised an alarm and roused their fellows from their slumber.

That was day one of their little four-step plan. There was no official name for it, as the Rabbit was too busy pretending he hated to speak to spare any words for witty monikers. That said, ‘Operation: Fuck Up Those Sweatshop Pricks’ had become pretty popular.

On the second day, after a hearty breakfast courtesy of Hijiri and his seemingly limitless supply of Omnilium, they went out and did the same thing they had the day before. It seemed these guys had heard about the previous attack, though, and chose to hire some extra grunts to watch their building. They knew what to expect, and they fought back.

Or they thought they knew what to expect, rather. They weren't able to do a thing when Hijiri unleashed his True Form against them, though, and they couldn't comprehend how his crew could remain so steadfast when their friends and family were gunned down all around them.

An impressive showing or not, though, they still lost several people in that fight, and over a dozen more were injured. They didn't let the guards run off this time. They were slain, to a man. This would send a message, the Battle Rabbit told his people. If any security personnel fought back when caught up in one of their assaults from now on, they would know to expect no mercy. It should hopefully convince other guards not to oppose them in future.

Hijiri deconstructed and absorbed the entire building, just as he had done to the last one, and they headed back once again, much more sombre now than the previous day. Once home those who felt up to it did some training… without the Rabbit to help them. Hijiri spent the entire rest of the day using Omnilium accelerate the healing of their injured as best he could.

On their third outing, things went better. The guards dropped their weapons and calmly filed out of the building as soon as they showed up. Their leader spoke briefly to Hijiri and Alejandro, for just long enough to tell them that they weren't being paid enough to throw their lives away. They'd heard the rumours, the man said, and knew that the hooded guy was without doubt a Prime.

When they returned from taking that building, those new recruits who’d agreed to join the burgeoning gang in tow, they were back to feeling pleased with themselves. They trained some more, then the Rabbit created another truck. By this point, though, he was beginning to feel a little concerned.

No one from any other gang had shown up to investigate the situation with the vanishing buildings. Even if it had only been three days now, the frequency of their attacks ought to really have merited some response.

The Northside Pyros he might be able to write off as having thrown some massive party, as was their habit, according to the word on the street... so perhaps they were all still nursing hangovers… or, hell, maybe their schools were just in an exam season, or something, so they were taking a break from the thug life for a bit. They were still just a bunch of teens, after all.

But the NSW? Two of the sweatshops they’d hit were in the Wolfpack’s domain, and that lot ought to be efficient enough to take notice when others started going after their turf. It concerned him that he hadn’t heard anything about them, recently. Could it be that they actually were mobilising their entire force, but doing it slowly and quietly, so as to give nothing away? If so, they could show up at any moment, taking them all completely by surprise. They wouldn’t stand a sliver of a chance in such a situation.

Well, there was nothing he could do about it at the moment, one way or another, so he saw no reason to brood over it. If they did show up then everyone here would die, himself included… but being a Prime, he would simply return to life, after which he could either choose to start this experiment over, or rejoin the squad.

It would be unfortunate, of course, as he was beginning to grow a little attached to this bunch, despite his best attempts at maintaining his distance… but he could take it, if the worst happened and he lost them.

On the fourth day of their miniature campaign, the guards were waiting outside for them when they arrived. Their leader gave him a nod and they all climbed into a couple small vans by the roadside and drove off. Alejandro gave his spiel once again, whilst the Rabbit slowly deconstructed the final building.

Upon returning to the tenements, the Slum King ordered a massive party thrown for their ‘conquering heroes’, complete with banquet tables out in the courtyard and barrel upon barrel upon barrel of alcohol. Which was ever so generous of him, given that Hijiri’s Omnilium was what he was relying on to fund all of this extravagance.

Still, everyone seemed keen on the idea, so the Prime went along with it. It wasn’t like he had any shortage of the stuff, not after weeks of collecting it whilst working for the Empire, followed by these latest acquisitions.

The rest of them enjoyed themselves, whilst he stood apart… or sought to, at least, trying his best to act like the sort of edgy loner he had intended to make this persona out to be. Alejandro wouldn’t hear of it, though. He – along with a close-knit group of his friends, who had become the most ardent supporters of ‘Hoarse’ amongst the gang’s members – insisted on hanging around him as much as possible.

Hijiri didn’t get the impression that they were ass-kissing, though. They seemed perfectly content to act all stoic and serious, mimicking his own attitude, not even partaking of any alcohol. It seemed as though they were taking their self-imposed duties with the utmost seriousness. It was quite a change from when he had met the Spaniard and his lot outside the slums, when he had first shown up here. Rather than a bat-wielding imbecile, that man seemed now more like some sort of professional killer. His gaze was predatory as he glanced around at the raucous crowd, on the watch for... assassins, presumably, though why any gang would feel the need to bother with such tactics when faced with foes as feeble as these 'Small Fries', the Rabbit wasn't sure.

The Prime was impressed by their progress, he had to admit. They were still a shoddily-dressed bunch, of course, but that was something that could be worked on in future, if they so desired. For the time being, essentials were more important than fancy clothes… well, essentials and huge banquets, apparently.

Much later in the evening than he had in previous days, Hijiri got to work on summoning another eighteen-wheeled truck for their collection, identical in every way to the previous three. This should be the last, for the time being. With these four, they ought to have enough space to more-or-less comfortably fit the entire crew, if need be, all those who’d been brought on board from the sweatshops included. He could always make more at a later date, he supposed. Even after buying all of this, he still had plenty of Omnilium left, and as long as they continued to… deconstruct, the properties of anyone under the dubious ‘protection’ of Northside’s other gangs, that wasn’t about to change.

Not until someone finally got pissed off enough to show up and slaughter them all, at least.

Minor potential problems such as that aside, though, Hijiri was actually feeling pretty good about how things were going, right then. They’d taken out all four of the businesses in which their buildings’ residents had slaved away, so with that symbolic victory out of the way, they could now move on to bigger, more lucrative targets.

Even if he was to keep up the act of still being a newly summoned Prime, it wouldn’t be long now until the Rabbit could conceivably get away with summoning his people a new base. Something a lot sturdier than these three wrecks. When that happened, they’d at least have some small chance at resisting if not an entire rival gang then at least a goodly portion of one.

It was with pleasant thoughts such as this in his mind that the Battle Rabbit fell asleep that night, fully intent on taking a lazy day tomorrow and sleeping until at least the early afternoon.

It was 5:37am when he was woken by Alejandro.

“You should see this, boss.” the man didn’t seem worried, so it likely wasn’t an imminent threat, which was good… still, he wouldn’t have barged in here if it wasn’t important, so Hijiri – who had swapped out his usual coat and trousers for a hoodie and a pair of tracksuit bottoms whilst he slept (gotta keep that identity concealed, after all) – was up in a moment. He didn’t even take the time to correct his supporter’s use of the word ‘boss’; for the time being, it still suited him just fine to have the ‘Slum King’ thinking he ruled the roost here, so he had been trying to get that guy and his little band to quit with that. This likely wasn’t the best time for it, though.

“Yes?” he kept his voice hoarse and his response brief, staying in character. Alejandro held out a phone with a video playing on its screen, and hit a button to turn the sound back on.

The first thing he noticed about it was the time of day. Despite being well and truly familiar with the temporal oddities of Omniphyisics by now, he still found it jarring to see what was supposedly a live broadcast which looked to be taking place in mid-afternoon, despite it still being the early hours of the morning where he was, just several miles or so away from the location of the feed.

They were outside a store of some sort. Talking about slaughtering stormtroopers. He calmly watched the video to the end of the interview, then told the Spaniard to skip back to the start, which he did. Hijiri watched it a second time. It was no more pleasant than it had been in the first instance.

“Are you okay, boss?” his ally placed a hand on his shoulder, and it was only then that the Battle Rabbit realised he was shaking. With grief? With anger? With fear?

No. Not the latter, in any case. Of that he could be certain. The weight of this loss settled in his gut like a burning coal. After the fight with Shotgun Steve, he had barely given thought to the others’ safety when he left. It wasn’t until later, a couple days later, in fact, that he had finally checked up on them on the Dataverse. They seemed to be doing fine. Recruiting had been going well. He had thought the threat was passed, that the Wolfpack would learn their lesson from having failed the first time, that the presence of Sarah Watt would be enough.

Instead, the lesson they had learned seemed to be ‘if hitting them doesn’t work the first time, just hit harder the second’. That had done the job. Which meant it was all over. Kroll’s fancy little plan for securing Northside had fallen flat. They were all dead, and the message that other stormtrooper squads in the area would take from this would be that by doing as they had and showing any form of independence – and thereby incurring the displeasure of their superiors – they would be signing their own death warrants.

Given how unpopular their unsanctioned recruitment scheme had been on the upper tiers, the Battle Rabbit was sure that there would be no shortage of officials who were privately pleased to have one less headache to deal with… even if the cost of that headache’s removal had been the lives of dozens of loyal soldiers. He had no doubt that no Imperial response would be incoming. They had made it clear enough already that they didn’t give one single, solitary shit about Tier Five, after all.

He should have stayed with the squad, in spite of any personal disagreements, at least until that lot had been taken care of. It was too late now, though…

“Uh, boss? Hello?”

“... Ah, fuck it.” he couldn’t be bothered. Not any more. Knowing that it was probably a terrible idea but not being able to summon up the willpower to force himself to continue with this act, Hijiri yanked down the hood he wore and tore the old bandages from his face. His voice was perfectly clear when he spoke, a far cry from the whispery, rasping tones they had only ever heard up to now from him, “Alejandro, listen to me. I am not a new Prime, and my name certainly isn't ‘Hoarse’. Up until I joined your crew, I was a member of theirs.”

He nodded towards the phone, which his supporter was still holding in plain sight. Alejandro glanced down at it, and an instant later, something akin to sudden understanding flashed across his features, “The Wolfpack. You got in an argument with the other leaders so you stole as much Omnilium as you could, then left to go start your own rival gang? Is that how you were able to so easily supply us with all that stuff? The weapons and food and things?”

“Good guess, but no. Not the Northside Wolfpack. I was in with the people they just murdered. I am, in fact, a corporal of the EPD.”

The Spaniard took a couple steps back, his expression horror-stricken, his tone hurt, “You’re with them?”

“Well, I was, I suppose I should say. It’s not like I’ve got any reason to go back now.” if Alejandro noticed the bitterness in his voice – which he surely must have done, as the Rabbit made no effort whatsoever to conceal it – he gave no sign of it. In fact, his mood swung faster than the Prime would have thought possible.

“So you’re staying here, then? With m- us?”

Hijiri eyed him suspiciously. That hopeful expression seemed entirely out of place considering the Battle Rabbit had just admitted to having been lying to him ever since they met… but fine. He wasn’t about to question it now. He had more important concerns.

“Yes. Not just staying, though. I’m going to make those bastards pay for what they’ve done, and everyone in this gang is going to help me, whether they like it or not.” his hands were clenched into fists at his sides and he glared straight ahead, barely seeing Alejandro before him. He’d need to calm himself soon. He wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything if he couldn’t even tame his own emotions. For the time being, though, he allowed himself the luxury of feeling.

Despite the dark look on Hijiri’s face and the coldness of his tone, the other man seemed positively excited by these words, “Great! Well, I'm with you all the way! What do we do first, boss?”

“Boss, huh?” the Rabbit mused softly, “Yes, I suppose that should be the thing to come first. Go round up anyone you think you can convince to side with me despite my… prior allegiance. Meet me back here in ten minutes or so. Then we’ll go pay our ‘King’ a little visit to discuss a slight change in leadership.”

“Yes, sir!” the skinhead’s exuberance was not contagious. Hijiri glowered after him as he sped out of the shabby little excuse for a room. It was pretty damn apparent that Alejandro – and probably the rest of his little band of supporters as well – had been hoping for him to take the reins of this gang sooner or later, and was all too pleased to see that happening now… even if it was likely a little earlier than expected… and if the reason was because every other person he had befriended since coming to Coruscant had just been brutally murdered.

Sighing, he shook his head, disregarding those thoughts. He’d need the gang with him for this… well, he could do with them, at least… this would be easier, with their help. A little… probably. They were no longer complete amateurs, at least. So he would be best not to pick fights with anyone who seemed too happy right now. Hell, he should probably be pleased by it.

Before Alejandro returned, the Rabbit summoned himself some new clothes and put those on. It felt good to be dressed more professionally, once again. He’d been getting tired of walking around with a hood up at all times, not to mention having to keep his face hidden. He now wore a ‘simple’ black suit with a white shirt. ‘Simple’ in quotes, because despite what a first glance might reveal, it was actually anything but. Everything he wore now was about as expensive as clothing could be. Just like the good old days, back home, before the Omniverse had swallowed him up.

It was a waste, he knew. There was no need to spend so much on mere fashion… but what the hell. If all went as intended, he’d be broadcasting his image all over Tier Five before the day was done, so he might as well look his best.

When the others showed up – and he saw that his supporter had indeed brought along the entire group who had been so keen on hanging around him the previous night – they seemed duly impressed by his fine clothes… or perhaps that was just the shock of seeing his face for once.

Either way, they were on board with the plan, and that was what mattered. The Slum King’s apartment was just down a short hallway from Hijiri’s, so it was hardly a lengthy journey. Once there, they burst in with no warning and hauled him out of bed, whilst he was dressed in nothing more than a vest and boxers, which left entirely too little to the imagination. Shockingly, he wasn’t so pleased by that.

He also wasn’t too satisfied with their reason for interrupting his rest… or of Hijiri’s sudden desire to take over his crew. Still, he was a fat, unfit, balding slob, surrounded by a small group of armed men and women, one of whom was a Prime.

“Alright, King, that’s the story,” the Battle Rabbit said, after finishing bringing the former gang leader up to speed, “now, you’ve got two choices: a) you can step down with no fuss, encourage everyone else to roll over without complaint, and accept a privileged position in our new… organisation, or; b) you can refuse, force us to drag you out in front of everyone, and beg them to side with you rather than me. It might pan out. It’s not likely, but it’s certainly possible, especially once they all know that I've been lying about my past, and that up until a week ago, I was actively working for the Empire.”

He paused for a moment, to let the impact of his words sink in. Bernie’s eyes narrowed, “So what happens if the gang does choose me?”

The words were probably supposed to come out as a gruff snarl. Instead, they seemed more akin to a whimper… or perhaps a whine, at best.

“If that were to happen, I’d force you all to leave. I’m planning some… abrupt renovations, and I don’t have the time or inclination to go prancing around looking for better spots. I’m taking this building, one way or another, and you know you can’t hope to stop me.”

“Damn it. Damn you!” Bernie actually had tears in his eyes. He was shaking now, just as Hijiri had been not so long before, fists clenched. A couple people snickered, but the Prime silenced them with a glare. For all that this guy might be a useless lump of a man, he had somehow managed to earn the loyalty of these people at one time or another, and many of them could well remain loyal to him… he would be a useful asset in making their change in leadership as smooth as possible. That was important. One thing they could most certainly do without right now were any additional complications.

They waited in silence for a several seconds longer, and then the ‘King’ finally wilted, his shoulders hunching over dejectedly, “Fine. You win. It’s no choice at all, is it?”

“Of course it’s a choice. Just an obvious one, that’s all. I’m glad you made it correctly. Now, before we head out to speak to everyone, I have some things I need to summon, so if you could all just wait a few minutes.” Hijiri held out his arms and a widening, stretching bubble of Omnilium left his body and drifted to the floor. They were clearly somewhat perplexed, but after muttering variations of ‘uh, sure’, they all did as he asked and stood around patiently for the time it took him, which was just shy of ten minutes.

“So… uh, what is all this, then, boss?” one of his assembled allies asked afterwards, staring down at what the Rabbit had just crafted.

“These are for you all, and for everyone else who’s willing to stick around and take orders from me. Our gang currently doesn’t have any identifying symbols or colours. That’s going to change. I’m not about to start forcing people to wear only clothes of the appropriate shade, like the Wolfpack do, but whenever anyone is out and about on gang business, I want them wearing one of these armbands.”

A woman picked one up. They were dark green in colour, with a thin white stripe a centimetre or so inwards from the upper and lower edges. Between those lines, on one side, were the letters ‘TTG’, also in white, “Okay, sure… and what does this mean?”

“It’s an acronym. Back in my original world, I was the head of a corporate empire with numerous unrelated businesses all under my management. Collectively, those companies were referred to as ‘The Takanomiya Group’. Which will now also serve as our gang’s new name.”

“Really?” the woman asked sceptically, though the Rabbit didn’t fail to notice that she still slid the armband on quickly enough, despite her apparent reservations, “You don’t think it seems a bit too… professional for us? Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an improvement over ‘Northside Small Fries’, but, well, look at us. We're not exactly the suit and tie kinda bunch, y'know?”

“It’s supposed to be professional. We’re going to be masquerading as a legitimate company. Trust me, after tonight, a lot of people are going to be taking notice of us, and it would be better for all our sakes if the Empire didn’t have an excuse to send a squad of Space Marines down here to slaughter us.” he might ordinarily have said these words wryly, but in his current mood, he couldn’t manage anything more than a listless monotone.

“Heh. Well, that certainly sounds promising.” she replied, apparently having no more inclination to keep her own good cheer subtle than had Alejandro.

“And the rest of it?” the aforementioned Spaniard asked. There were still two other small piles on the ground, aside from the large mound of armbands.

“This one is for our former Slum King,” he pointed at a horribly clashing heap of silk and fur, “Congratulations, Bernie, you’re now our Treasurer. Get dressed.”

At first hesitant, then with much more enthusiasm once he realised the high quality (and value) of the garish garments given to him, the slob slipped into his perfectly fitting new outfit. A thick, violet, silk robe, with a neon yellow sash of the same fabric tied beneath his prodigious gut like a belt. His shoes were moccasins of red velvet, lined with white ermine fur. In addition, he now wore a cloak of scarlet wool, with a wide collar of the same fur as adorned his shoes. Finally, atop his head, there rested a true crown of gold, rather than just the feeble imitation he had been fond of wearing before.

“Well, how do I look?” Bernie demanded, posing with hands on hips.

“Absurd.” Alejandro answered immediately, “like a clown with far more money than common sense. Was this really necessary?”

This last sentence was directed towards the Battle Rabbit, “This exact getup? No. I could have just had us all wear suits, and it would all have seemed perfectly respectable. Totally acceptable for a business’ directors… but I’d rather we all stand out when we make our debut, and I’m tired of being the one in costume, so you two are getting that questionable honour today. If you want to toss these dumb clothes as soon as we’re done here, I won’t blame either of you.”

“Uh… me too? Then, you mean… this stuff here is for me?” his first ally gestured towards the last and least-interesting looking pile. It was mostly brown.

“Of course. You’re my right-hand man, after all. You didn’t think I’d include King and leave you out, right?” though Hijiri’s tone was still utterly lacking in any sort of emotion, Alejandro never even seemed to take notice. To be fair, compared to the terse snippets of a response that the Rabbit had been prone to giving when using the ‘Hoarse’ alias, this was positively friendly.

“Your right-hand man? Really?” the skinhead’s expression was positively giddy. Someone behind him chuckled softly, and he immediately snapped to attention, suddenly serious, “I mean, of course, I’ll just get changed, sir.”

Showing not the slightest hint of embarrassment, he slipped out of the tracksuit and trainers he had been wearing and donned his new getup in their place. He now wore a boiled leather vest, boiled leather knee-high boots, and regular, unhardened leather trousers, tucked into the boots, with a leather belt. There was a lot of leather, all of it dark brown. Atop that, he wore what looked like an overcoat of chainmail, reaching almost to his ankles, though he left it hanging open. And atop that he put on another overcoat, this one made of more brown leather, and also left hanging open. The bottom of the second coat, along with the ends of the sleeves, didn't quite reach as far as those of the chainmail, leaving it partially visible; making it obvious that this guy was armoured.

He also pulled on a pair of leather gloves and an extra-wide-brimmed hat of a matching colour… though not made from leather, this time. Unlike Bernie’s outfit, and despite being newly summoned, these items all bore the hallmarks of long use. Hijiri was aiming to make his supporter out to be some sort of combat veteran… making his outfit all shiny and new would have ruined that impression entirely. Alejandro either understood this or was just too polite to comment on the fact that his stuff looked second-hand.

“Alright. If you’re all ready now,” Hijiri continued once they had all finished slipping on armbands, “gather up the rest of those things and hand them out to everyone while you explain the situation. Once that’s done, get these slums emptied. I want everyone outside.”

They did as he asked. It went smoothly for the most part, with Bernie doing a surprisingly good job of earning his keep. Heaping him with gifts had certainly been the correct approach. Now, rather than focusing on what he had lost, the slob was instead revelling in his newfound prosperity. Bernie told them all that he had willingly stepped aside, that he had been only too happy to allow Hijiri to take over, in spite of his lies… because of them, even. He told them that the Battle Rabbit had been so desperate to help them, to use his secret hoard of Omnilium to keep them safe – lest he lose them, as he had just lost his friends in the EPD – that he had been unable to will himself to hide his identity any longer, despite the risk that they might all end up judging and hating him for his past associations with the government which couldn’t have cared less about their wellbeing.

It was, the Prime had to admit – if only in the privacy of his own thoughts – a pretty impressive line of bullshit. And they fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Once they were all outside, wearing armbands, and armed with their handguns and swords, he ordered those of them who weren’t too young, elderly or infirm, to spread out through their little neighbourhood, finding any other slum dwellers or squatters in the vicinity and clear them out. He didn’t explain why exactly, and although there was some confusion, they did get to it. Eventually, he was notified that it had been taken care of. Everyone within a 150 metre radius or so of the three tenements had been run out of their homes. They weren’t particularly happy about it, but when confronted with a band of armed men and women wielding katanas and pistols, they had had little choice but to obey.

That done, he held his arms outstretched once again and focused on his next creation. Something far bigger and more ambitious than he had ever attempted before. Excruciatingly slowly, tediously and monotonously, a brightly coloured mass of Omnilium stretched up and outwards. The time taken to summon things in the Omniverse was not simply multiplicative; twice the mass did not equal twice the time, and thank Omni for that. If it had, he couldn’t even have attempted to do this in a single day, never mind just a few hours.

A normal, average-sized house seemed to take about an hour for a Prime to conjure, based on what he’d heard on the ever-reliable Dataverse. Given the great size of the superstructure he was aiming to erect here, he’d have never stood a chance of completing it had the summoning scale been so linear. As it was, he had no idea how long this was going to require. Buildings of this magnitude were rarely summoned, so finding even an approximate timescale had proven beyond his ability. At least, in the time he’d cared to devote to doing so.

The minutes ticked past, then the first hour had come and gone. As the rainbow-coloured blob spread upwards into the sky, now more-or-less 300 metres wide and almost 400 tall – and still growing – he knew that it must be visible from all over Northside… hell, maybe even some of those further down south might have been able to spot it. He was sure that at any moment, the Northside Wolfpack would show up and tear through his followers so quickly that they’d make the old idiom about a hot knife and butter seem slow as the crawl of a glacier by comparison.

They never did, though. There was some attention drawn, of course, and that may well have been what kept them away; they might have been willing to believe that Coruscant’s leadership would overlook the slaughter of a single squad of stormtroopers, who had already proven themselves entirely too willful for their masters’ tastes, but that didn’t mean they would be allowed to massacre innocent civilians en masse and expect to get away with it.

The crowd grew larger by the hour… and hours did pass. Eventually, the Battle Rabbit allowed his arms to fall by his sides… he didn’t have much choice; they were screaming in pain. The effort of simply holding them up for an extended period might well have been his undoing… or so he thought, right up until it happened. When the bubble of Omnilium didn't completely collapse in upon itself the moment he moved, though, Hijiri realised that he may well be allowed some further leeway… so long as he kept his focus, that was.

From that point on, he sat on the ground as he worked, cross-legged, as if meditating. At long, long last, after… five? Maybe six hours of work, it was done. Folding in upon itself and tearing apart, the shifting light of the Omnilium briefly fluttered in the air like vast, tattered sails, before dissolving and fading away. In the space in which the bubble had occupied now sat a tower.

It reached far up into the heavens, all the way to the roof of the tier, a skyscraper in the shape of a column, five hundred metres high and one hundred metres wide, the column’s base being a circular, veined, white granite staircase that stretched as far out as fifty metres from the building’s walls, and rose up forty metres at its highest point. The cylinder itself was lined with mirrored windows that filled an entire wall of each room within the building, a grid-like network of steel struts holding the panes in place, all the way up to the very top of the tower, where an immense slab of intricately carved stone – the same granite that made up the steps at the foot of the building – pressed against the ceiling, appearing as though it were touching the sky itself.

His new skyscraper stood in a wide, open, square, concrete plaza, which ended at the pavement on which the Rabbit stood. The plaza was about three hundred metres across from East to West (the same angle as the road they were currently crowding) though probably only about two hundred and sixty metres from North to South. On every side bar the one nearest the road, the distance between the foot of the steps and the edge of their courtyard was about fifty metres, whilst for that one (the southern side) there was only ten metres or so between them.

“Bring everyone inside, the reporters too, along with anyone we forced out of their homes.” Hijiri told Alejandro after he had gotten to his feet and the leather-clad man had moved forward to stand by his side.

“Of course.” there was not the slightest hesitation in his voice, he didn’t stop to consider the order, simply taking it for granted that the Prime knew best.

Hijiri strolled forwards and up the stairs, hearing the first of the group begin following him. When he reached the apex of the steps, there was a plateau ten metres wide from the top step to the wall. Once he was within a couple metres of it, the section closest to him sunk down into the stone platform with a light hiss as the massive glass plate descended on thin steel rails built into the struts that held it – and each of the other panels – in place. All of the sections along the ground floor worked in the same way, meaning that when the building was not on lockdown, no matter which direction it was approached from, a ‘door’ would open to allow the visitor ingress.

Passing through the entrance, he saw that the glass blocks which made up his walls were no less than two feet thick, exactly as he had intended, as were the metal segments that held them; far less frail-seeming from this vantage point that when looked upon from without. Finally, the walls were really only one-way mirrors; from within the building he could see out in every direction with perfect clarity. This, combined with all the steps they must ascend and the wide open plaza around it, would make taking the building’s security personnel unawares a challenge to all but the fastest of foes.

The interior of the ground floor was all a single vast foyer, with both the ceiling and floor tiled with square, half-metre-wide plates of the same veined, white granite that made up the steps and the column’s crest. The ones on the floor were plain stone, though those in the ceiling each had a flat, white light built into its centre. Unbeknownst to anyone but Hijiri, those lights also contained high-definition CCTV cameras… he had summoned the most expensive possible defences he could possibly come up with for this place, so they would provide his people with all sorts of advantages. They’d need to if they were to be used to fend off gangs like the NSW.

In the dead centre of the vast room there sat a ring-shaped counter of obsidian, with a dozen computers sitting atop it, their monitors faced inwards. An equal number of chairs sat behind the desk; for whomever he cared to station down here, either receptionists or guards.

Finally, there were four cuboid pillars of that white granite that reached up into the ceiling. Each was about two metres wide, and all four faces held a stone slab which was two metres high and a foot thinner on either side than the full column, which could withdraw into the floor in a manner identical to that of the building’s main entrances. These pillars were actually elevator shafts, which continued all the way up the building’s length, as far as Hijiri’s private rooms right at the very top, within the superstructure’s stone cap.

Once everyone was inside, he spoke. Starting by introducing himself and his new ‘private security firm’, then moving on to welcome them all to his new Base, which he christened ‘The Pillar That Holds Up The Sky’... it was a needlessly grandiose name, of course, but that was the whole point. It was supposed to be attention-grabbing. He was trying to make his company memorable, after all. After that, he offered to give any of those who had been forced from their homes a place to stay – rent free – in his tower, along with a generous wage, should they agree to come and work for him. It would be a good way to expand his forces, he figured, whilst also hopefully appeasing the people he had kicked from their slums by giving them a place to stay that was objectively better in every way.

He then spoke to the TV crews… or rather, to their audiences. His first public announcement was that he was officially leaving the EPD. The deaths of the squad he had been a part of had left him with no reason to go back. Next, in a less-than-subtle attempt at patching over any bad feelings that might be had by his former superiors on Tier One, he acknowledged that a business as large as The Takanomiya Group, and with such a sprawling headquarters, must surely have a lot of taxes to pay, and invited the Council to send a representative down to discuss the matter, so that they could begin paying their dues as promptly as possible, as any law-abiding company would be more than happy to.

Those things out of the way, he ended up his speech by taunting the people who had already publicly declared that they were seeking to kill him… because how could that possibly not be a good idea?

“-And to the Northside Wolfpack, I say this; here I am. I won’t be running, and this building is quite hard to miss, I’m sure even the least intelligent of those drooling brutes you call gangsters could manage to locate it eventually. You say you’ll kill me like you did those stormtroopers… and I say that my Takanomiya Group could use some proof of our superiority. If we are to convince the citizens of Northside that it would be in their best interests to hire us to keep their homes and places of business safe, having a gang to make target practise out of would come in really handy… so what do you say? Will you be marching into our Base like lambs to the slaughter, or would you rather simply hide away in the shadows like the cowards you are...? Or, perhaps you would care to give us the location of one of your own hideouts? If it’s too much trouble to come to us, we would be perfectly willing to pay you a visit instead.”

He smirked at the cameras, willing his facial muscles to express a smug satisfaction that he most certainly did not feel. There was no way the NSW would publicly announce the location of one of their hidden bases, which left only two options; they could opt to look weak, or they could attack and… well… hopefully these fortifications of his would prove adequate.