07-15-2018, 09:19 AM
“So let's hear it then.” the Rabbit said. They were in his office once again: Bernie, Alejandro & himself. As with the last meeting they had held here, the Director sat in his black, leather armchair, whilst opposite him, past a small table, the other two were seated on a matching couch.
“Yes sir. Their bases are all charred ruins now. I thought it would be best to take decisive action and hit them before they could recover from the fight, to take out their HQs so that they had nowhere to fall back to. Because of our actions, the NSW has effectively been wiped off the map.” the Spaniard’s voice held a hint of doubt. He surely would have been feeling very pleased with himself when he returned from his little crusade, before hearing their Treasurer’s report for himself.
Now, though, the Security Chief was likely worried about being demoted or punished in some way. He had taken off his wide-brimmed hat, and now clutched it tightly with both hands. He looked rather nervous, to put it lightly.
“Yes, excellent job… and yet… it almost didn’t work out so well, did it?”
“No, sir.” Alejandro muttered, looking down, avoiding meeting Hijiri’s eyes.
“Bernie,” the Director said, “was left behind while you took most of our uninjured troops away with you. You tried to be on the lookout for Wolves on the run… but how could you possibly have been expected to catch them all? You only had four trucks, and a whole quarter of the Tier to drive through. It’s no surprise that some eluded you. You expected this, of course.”
“Yes.” mumbled the chastised-looking chief.
“What you didn’t expect, though, was that they would somehow—correctly—guess that you had left our own base of operations with almost no defenders. You also didn’t imagine that they would turn back around once they knew you were nowhere nearby, and attempt to strike the Pillar again. So when they did exactly that, it could've ended very badly for us, wouldn't you say?”
“Yes.”
“And yet...” an edge of amusement now crept into the Rabbit’s voice, “it didn’t. No one noticed them climbing the steps, so when they burst into the first level, the outcome might have been catastrophic.”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t. This may have been a rather severe oversight on your part, but in this instance, no harm was done. They charged in, only to find that floor completely empty, as our nurses had already transported the injured up to the medical level by then. All that remained were corpses. Still, that wasn’t the end of the threat. A couple of them had heavy weapons… rocket launchers. They blew apart the stone doors of our elevators with ease, and their little mob would have begun climbing the maintenance ladders and breaching level after level. That didn’t happen, did it?”
“No, sir. We were lucky that Bernie was there.”
“Indeed we were. Remind us, Bernie, what heroic action did you take to put a stop to these vile invaders once and for all?” Hijiri allowed a hint of his smirk to show on his face.
The Treasurer, all puffed up and pleased with himself at being called heroic, said “I pushed a button.”
“Yes. Truly, a more valourous act has never been seen. And what happened next, Bernie?”
“Well, like I said before, boss, almost everyone who’d been up there in the security room had already left to go help move the injured, y’know. There didn’t seem much point in having lots of us sitting around when the fight was over. So we didn’t have nearly enough people to manually run the security system like we’d planned… so I just hit the button to turn back on the automatic defences. The AI realised that something was wrong, the turrets came out from the ceiling and the floor, and shot them all up.”
“They 'shot them all up', huh?”
“Yeah. There were none of our people on that floor anymore, o’ course, so there wasn’t any need to worry about friendly fire… so I just let them fire at will. There were dozens of enemies down there, but it only took, like, thirty seconds or so to gun them all down. And they were so surprised at seeing all the turrets appearing that they didn’t really fight back properly; only a few of the guns were even damaged.”
“I must admit, I hadn’t expected the automated system to prove nearly so effective… though thembeing completely ignorant of its existence likely had a lot to do with that success. Now, what have we learned from this incident?” Hijiri tilted his head a little to one side regarding the pair.
“AIs are awesome.” Bernie stated. Hijiri gave a brief laugh. He couldn’t exactly deny that the turrets had certainly proven their worth.
“Not to be so reckless.” muttered Alejandro despondently.
“Yes. In this instance, no one was harmed, and I can repair the damage to the Pillar quickly enough, so it’s not really an issue… but it could easily have turned out differently. So just… try to consider all the possibilities before you go racing off into battle.” the Rabbit got to his feet, walked around the table and perched on the armrest of the couch. He put a hand on the Spaniard’s shoulder.
“On the whole, though, you did do a good job, Alejandro, so don’t be so worried. You aren’t being punished. Because of what you two have managed, as well as the small part I played in our victory over them, the NSW have for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. And the Pyros don’t pose nearly as much of a threat. We’re more than capable of taking care of those kids quickly... so well done, gentlemen, Northside is ours.”
***
Thirteen Days Later
Ding-ding-ding.
The little bell rung as the door to the shop was pushed open. The old man behind the counter looked up, a smile on his face. It vanished the instant he saw them.
It was a newsagent’s. Papers, magazines and the like lined the shelves around them. There was also a section for confectionary, and one for alcoholic beverages. Two of them glanced around at their surroundings as they walked through the little store. The girl at the front, though, looked straight at the owner, smiling pleasantly.
“We’re deep in Pyros territory here.” he said without preamble, his tone cold, “They’ll burn down my store if I stop paying them. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll pass. You can leave now.”
She laughed. She was caucasian and tanned, in her late teens or early twenties, with black hair that didn’t quite reach her chin. On the right side of her face, a nude woman was tattooed in violet ink, posing seductively. The girl wore a black bikini top, tan cargo trousers, and a pair of scuffed, white trainers.
To her left was a man in a dull yellow, checkered suit, with the jacket hanging open and the top few buttons of the white shirt beneath undone. His shoes were black leather, and he looked to be in his mid-thirties, with a paler complexion than the girl, short brown hair and a five o’ clock shadow.
To her right was young, hispanic woman with long, brown hair. She looked a little older than the girl, and was certainly more well endowed. She was dressed in a tight, white t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and black trainers.
Each of the three wore one of the green & white armbands of the Takanomiya Group around the bicep of their left arm.
“This isn’t their turf any more. They don’t have any territory. No one does. The gangs are being forced out. Northside is being secured.” the tattooed girl spoke cheerfully.
“Right… sure… ‘forced out’. I seem to recall hearing a rumour that the gangsters in Northside were being forced into early graves if they tried to oppose you lot… and the rest of them—those without the guts to fight back—were just being recruited into that organisation of yours.”
Her face took on a clearly-faked expression of horror, “Oh no, wherever could you have heard such vile lies? I promise you, sir, they’re not true at all. We're very careful with our hiring process. We wouldn't want to risk arming anyone untrustworthy, after all. Only the most respectable citizens of Tier Five are given leave to join the Takanomiya Group.”
“Uh-huh.” he sighed, “You could at least put more effort into pretending ... you aren’t exactly dressed professionally, you know. Most real companies require their employees to wear a shirt & tie.”
The girl smirked, “We have a pretty lax dress code. That doesn’t make us any less of a real company. We’re registered with the Empire, we pay taxes, all that stuff. And that means we’re as proper as a company can be.”
“You’re running a protection racket.” the man said dully. His name was Mervin Smith, he was in his late eighties now, and he wasn’t remotely happy at getting caught in the middle of some stupid gang conflict. He just wanted to be left alone to run his store. It was bad enough with those Pyro brats charging him an arm and a leg just so they’d refrain from burning the place down, without having another group show up now looking for money as well.
“No, no, not at all, psh.” the girl waved a hand dismissively. She was a terrible liar, “We’re just a friendly security company, that's all. For only a small monthly fee, we’ll keep an eye out for criminals in your area and make sure none of them bother you. And in the event that anyone should manage to break in despite our best efforts, we’ll track them down free of charge and get your property back… whilst also dealing with those delinquents in a permanent manner. Of course, we might not always be able to locate them with no leads to follow, so if you’d like an extra layer of protection, we’d strongly recommend purchasing—for a very affordable one-time fee—one of our Takanomiya Brand CCTV systems. Should anything occur, you need only provide us with the footage of the culprit and we’ll have a much easier time locating them.”
The man to her left took over from the girl, seamlessly continuing their spiel in a slightly droning voice, “There’s always the chance that thieves could catch on to that, though, and take the time to destroy any computers or other electronic devices you may have for the purpose of saving CCTV footage on before they leave. So for our Premium Rate clients, we offer a special cloud-based system, which allows you to automatically upload all CCTV footage directly to the servers at our company HQ, meaning that not only will we have records of anyone who comes in here to threaten you, but we'll know immediately if such a thing should occur; you won't even need to report a crime, we'll likely arrive at the scene before they've even finished robbing you.
“If that still isn’t enough for you,” the big-breasted babe announced brightly, “we at the Takanomiya Group also provide a whole range of insurance services, all at extremely competitive prices. Even if some vandal does trash your shop, with the right insurance plan, your losses will be fully covered. Tempting, huh?”
Mervin glowered silently at the trio of salespeople/racketeers for a moment, then snapped, "Are you done yet?”
“Almost!” the girl in the centre beamed at him, “If you’d kindly just take this informational pamphlet detailing our full range of products and services, then we’ll leave you to your business, sir.”
She held out a little, green & white booklet. He made no move to take it from her. In fact, he looked at it as it it was a piece of dog shit she was offering.
After a few moments of tense silence, she dropped it on the counter, still smiling, and turned to leave. Her companions followed her out, though the suited man looked back at Mervin sourly before exiting the store.
He stared at his door for several seconds after they’d left, then looked down at the pamphlet. Snarling, the shopkeeper snatched it up and threw it into the waste bin beside his counter with all the force his old arm could muster.
He glared at it for a little longer, then fished it back out, opened a drawer and tossed it inside, before slamming the drawer closed once more.
He despised these people for intruding on his life… perhaps even more so than the Northside Pyros, who had always been the ones threatening him previously. At least they had the decency to admit to being criminal scum, rather than trying to bribe the Empire into accepting them as a legitimate business organisation by paying taxes.
But he couldn’t afford to risk picking the losing side when his livelihood was on the line, and judging by how easy a time these TTG goons seemed to be having wandering through streets that ought to have belonged to their enemies, it would seem like they were winning this fight. So he'd probably be better off just holding on to that little book for the time being, in case he did actually need to start paying them at some point.
“Yes sir. Their bases are all charred ruins now. I thought it would be best to take decisive action and hit them before they could recover from the fight, to take out their HQs so that they had nowhere to fall back to. Because of our actions, the NSW has effectively been wiped off the map.” the Spaniard’s voice held a hint of doubt. He surely would have been feeling very pleased with himself when he returned from his little crusade, before hearing their Treasurer’s report for himself.
Now, though, the Security Chief was likely worried about being demoted or punished in some way. He had taken off his wide-brimmed hat, and now clutched it tightly with both hands. He looked rather nervous, to put it lightly.
“Yes, excellent job… and yet… it almost didn’t work out so well, did it?”
“No, sir.” Alejandro muttered, looking down, avoiding meeting Hijiri’s eyes.
“Bernie,” the Director said, “was left behind while you took most of our uninjured troops away with you. You tried to be on the lookout for Wolves on the run… but how could you possibly have been expected to catch them all? You only had four trucks, and a whole quarter of the Tier to drive through. It’s no surprise that some eluded you. You expected this, of course.”
“Yes.” mumbled the chastised-looking chief.
“What you didn’t expect, though, was that they would somehow—correctly—guess that you had left our own base of operations with almost no defenders. You also didn’t imagine that they would turn back around once they knew you were nowhere nearby, and attempt to strike the Pillar again. So when they did exactly that, it could've ended very badly for us, wouldn't you say?”
“Yes.”
“And yet...” an edge of amusement now crept into the Rabbit’s voice, “it didn’t. No one noticed them climbing the steps, so when they burst into the first level, the outcome might have been catastrophic.”
“Yes.”
“But it wasn’t. This may have been a rather severe oversight on your part, but in this instance, no harm was done. They charged in, only to find that floor completely empty, as our nurses had already transported the injured up to the medical level by then. All that remained were corpses. Still, that wasn’t the end of the threat. A couple of them had heavy weapons… rocket launchers. They blew apart the stone doors of our elevators with ease, and their little mob would have begun climbing the maintenance ladders and breaching level after level. That didn’t happen, did it?”
“No, sir. We were lucky that Bernie was there.”
“Indeed we were. Remind us, Bernie, what heroic action did you take to put a stop to these vile invaders once and for all?” Hijiri allowed a hint of his smirk to show on his face.
The Treasurer, all puffed up and pleased with himself at being called heroic, said “I pushed a button.”
“Yes. Truly, a more valourous act has never been seen. And what happened next, Bernie?”
“Well, like I said before, boss, almost everyone who’d been up there in the security room had already left to go help move the injured, y’know. There didn’t seem much point in having lots of us sitting around when the fight was over. So we didn’t have nearly enough people to manually run the security system like we’d planned… so I just hit the button to turn back on the automatic defences. The AI realised that something was wrong, the turrets came out from the ceiling and the floor, and shot them all up.”
“They 'shot them all up', huh?”
“Yeah. There were none of our people on that floor anymore, o’ course, so there wasn’t any need to worry about friendly fire… so I just let them fire at will. There were dozens of enemies down there, but it only took, like, thirty seconds or so to gun them all down. And they were so surprised at seeing all the turrets appearing that they didn’t really fight back properly; only a few of the guns were even damaged.”
“I must admit, I hadn’t expected the automated system to prove nearly so effective… though thembeing completely ignorant of its existence likely had a lot to do with that success. Now, what have we learned from this incident?” Hijiri tilted his head a little to one side regarding the pair.
“AIs are awesome.” Bernie stated. Hijiri gave a brief laugh. He couldn’t exactly deny that the turrets had certainly proven their worth.
“Not to be so reckless.” muttered Alejandro despondently.
“Yes. In this instance, no one was harmed, and I can repair the damage to the Pillar quickly enough, so it’s not really an issue… but it could easily have turned out differently. So just… try to consider all the possibilities before you go racing off into battle.” the Rabbit got to his feet, walked around the table and perched on the armrest of the couch. He put a hand on the Spaniard’s shoulder.
“On the whole, though, you did do a good job, Alejandro, so don’t be so worried. You aren’t being punished. Because of what you two have managed, as well as the small part I played in our victory over them, the NSW have for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. And the Pyros don’t pose nearly as much of a threat. We’re more than capable of taking care of those kids quickly... so well done, gentlemen, Northside is ours.”
***
Thirteen Days Later
Ding-ding-ding.
The little bell rung as the door to the shop was pushed open. The old man behind the counter looked up, a smile on his face. It vanished the instant he saw them.
It was a newsagent’s. Papers, magazines and the like lined the shelves around them. There was also a section for confectionary, and one for alcoholic beverages. Two of them glanced around at their surroundings as they walked through the little store. The girl at the front, though, looked straight at the owner, smiling pleasantly.
“We’re deep in Pyros territory here.” he said without preamble, his tone cold, “They’ll burn down my store if I stop paying them. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll pass. You can leave now.”
She laughed. She was caucasian and tanned, in her late teens or early twenties, with black hair that didn’t quite reach her chin. On the right side of her face, a nude woman was tattooed in violet ink, posing seductively. The girl wore a black bikini top, tan cargo trousers, and a pair of scuffed, white trainers.
To her left was a man in a dull yellow, checkered suit, with the jacket hanging open and the top few buttons of the white shirt beneath undone. His shoes were black leather, and he looked to be in his mid-thirties, with a paler complexion than the girl, short brown hair and a five o’ clock shadow.
To her right was young, hispanic woman with long, brown hair. She looked a little older than the girl, and was certainly more well endowed. She was dressed in a tight, white t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and black trainers.
Each of the three wore one of the green & white armbands of the Takanomiya Group around the bicep of their left arm.
“This isn’t their turf any more. They don’t have any territory. No one does. The gangs are being forced out. Northside is being secured.” the tattooed girl spoke cheerfully.
“Right… sure… ‘forced out’. I seem to recall hearing a rumour that the gangsters in Northside were being forced into early graves if they tried to oppose you lot… and the rest of them—those without the guts to fight back—were just being recruited into that organisation of yours.”
Her face took on a clearly-faked expression of horror, “Oh no, wherever could you have heard such vile lies? I promise you, sir, they’re not true at all. We're very careful with our hiring process. We wouldn't want to risk arming anyone untrustworthy, after all. Only the most respectable citizens of Tier Five are given leave to join the Takanomiya Group.”
“Uh-huh.” he sighed, “You could at least put more effort into pretending ... you aren’t exactly dressed professionally, you know. Most real companies require their employees to wear a shirt & tie.”
The girl smirked, “We have a pretty lax dress code. That doesn’t make us any less of a real company. We’re registered with the Empire, we pay taxes, all that stuff. And that means we’re as proper as a company can be.”
“You’re running a protection racket.” the man said dully. His name was Mervin Smith, he was in his late eighties now, and he wasn’t remotely happy at getting caught in the middle of some stupid gang conflict. He just wanted to be left alone to run his store. It was bad enough with those Pyro brats charging him an arm and a leg just so they’d refrain from burning the place down, without having another group show up now looking for money as well.
“No, no, not at all, psh.” the girl waved a hand dismissively. She was a terrible liar, “We’re just a friendly security company, that's all. For only a small monthly fee, we’ll keep an eye out for criminals in your area and make sure none of them bother you. And in the event that anyone should manage to break in despite our best efforts, we’ll track them down free of charge and get your property back… whilst also dealing with those delinquents in a permanent manner. Of course, we might not always be able to locate them with no leads to follow, so if you’d like an extra layer of protection, we’d strongly recommend purchasing—for a very affordable one-time fee—one of our Takanomiya Brand CCTV systems. Should anything occur, you need only provide us with the footage of the culprit and we’ll have a much easier time locating them.”
The man to her left took over from the girl, seamlessly continuing their spiel in a slightly droning voice, “There’s always the chance that thieves could catch on to that, though, and take the time to destroy any computers or other electronic devices you may have for the purpose of saving CCTV footage on before they leave. So for our Premium Rate clients, we offer a special cloud-based system, which allows you to automatically upload all CCTV footage directly to the servers at our company HQ, meaning that not only will we have records of anyone who comes in here to threaten you, but we'll know immediately if such a thing should occur; you won't even need to report a crime, we'll likely arrive at the scene before they've even finished robbing you.
“If that still isn’t enough for you,” the big-breasted babe announced brightly, “we at the Takanomiya Group also provide a whole range of insurance services, all at extremely competitive prices. Even if some vandal does trash your shop, with the right insurance plan, your losses will be fully covered. Tempting, huh?”
Mervin glowered silently at the trio of salespeople/racketeers for a moment, then snapped, "Are you done yet?”
“Almost!” the girl in the centre beamed at him, “If you’d kindly just take this informational pamphlet detailing our full range of products and services, then we’ll leave you to your business, sir.”
She held out a little, green & white booklet. He made no move to take it from her. In fact, he looked at it as it it was a piece of dog shit she was offering.
After a few moments of tense silence, she dropped it on the counter, still smiling, and turned to leave. Her companions followed her out, though the suited man looked back at Mervin sourly before exiting the store.
He stared at his door for several seconds after they’d left, then looked down at the pamphlet. Snarling, the shopkeeper snatched it up and threw it into the waste bin beside his counter with all the force his old arm could muster.
He glared at it for a little longer, then fished it back out, opened a drawer and tossed it inside, before slamming the drawer closed once more.
He despised these people for intruding on his life… perhaps even more so than the Northside Pyros, who had always been the ones threatening him previously. At least they had the decency to admit to being criminal scum, rather than trying to bribe the Empire into accepting them as a legitimate business organisation by paying taxes.
But he couldn’t afford to risk picking the losing side when his livelihood was on the line, and judging by how easy a time these TTG goons seemed to be having wandering through streets that ought to have belonged to their enemies, it would seem like they were winning this fight. So he'd probably be better off just holding on to that little book for the time being, in case he did actually need to start paying them at some point.
![[Image: Hijiri_Name_Sig.png]](https://image.ibb.co/k1H7Hd/Hijiri_Name_Sig.png)