12-24-2017, 09:25 PM
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...
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...
![[Image: Hijiri_Name_Sig.png]](https://image.ibb.co/k1H7Hd/Hijiri_Name_Sig.png)