Greg Veder vs The World (Worm x The Gamer)
- Thread starter ZFighter18
- Start date
- Crossover
-
- Tags
- worm greg veder gamer (litrpg)
Jaune Pendragon
King Of Servants
- Location
- Avalon
Did he SERIOUSLY just Naruto run--of course he did.
Last edited:
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
Once again thank you so much for the great content ZF
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
Huh, I was honestly expecting some brief reference to Sophia. I totally could of seen him claim Shadow Stalker is somehow better than them, but that's more likely to get him viewed as a bigger problem.
Oh well, but a manner of time until he notices. One does not do something unless it means something. I'm more interested in what Greg's probable new abilities do and which identity gets to use them.
Oh well, but a manner of time until he notices. One does not do something unless it means something. I'm more interested in what Greg's probable new abilities do and which identity gets to use them.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
The fucking naruto run at the end got me.
- Location
- Missouri
There's a youtube meme/song thing from years ago that perfectly sums up this entire installment in a nutshell:
Oh, no, that's all absolutely accurate, it's just not explicitly stating that the "unsavory deals" she made were to get a power-in-a-bottle formula.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
Always a pleasure to see Greg act like a mad lad in the face of the Gov
ZFighter18
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
- Location
- Maryland
There was a reference last chapter. SS is explicitly mentioned.
- Location
- colombia
kek
this is the beggining of a beatifull friendship between our lovable idiot and the hero couple
Cutscene: Power Struggle
ZFighter18
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
- Location
- Maryland
Guess who's back? Back again.
Greg is back. Tell a friend.
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back?
I've created a monster...
Anyway, yeah. Onto the story!
Cutscene: Power Struggle
May 10, 2011
1:07 AM
Asada Seo was considered by some to be a big man, at least in the physical definition of the word. Standing straight, he measured up at just a little more than an inch or so over six feet without shoes.
Tall for a Japanese man.
Tall for most Asian men, he knew that much.
A few years of being in the ABB had done it's part to disabuse him of the notion that he was anywhere near the average when it came to something that obvious. It wasn't quite as easy to see at the moment, what with him sitting side saddle on his motorcycle the same as the few men he had brought along with him, but he knew if he were to stand, he would tower above every single one of them.
Lung liked shit like that.
Shit that showed strength.
Five years of running protection for the man in his own neighborhood has taught Seo that much.
Whether it was just looks or actual strength, the dragon wasn't really picky, a simple fact Seo had picked up on pretty quickly. After all, why else would you lift up some random nineteen-year old wannabe above older, more experienced, and definitely more hardened criminals?
Didn't make much sense otherwise. The young man raised a hand to his face and rubbed the scruff that dotted his chin as he continued to wait. The cold night air didn't bother him much as he rolled his thoughts around in his head, the conversation of his boys around him nothing more than background noise.
The only other option Seo had ever given much thought to was that Lung was looking to instill loyalty when he chose his underlings. Again, something Seo really doubted when it came to Lung. After years of working for the dragon, he learned that the man assumed they were all loyal anyway, at least in the face of his strength.
Not like the choice was ever really in their hands, from the way Seo saw it. You only ever had two choices when it came to the dragon boss, anyway.
One, never ever let Lung think you were anything but loyal.
Two, burn.
No one ever went with number two.
At least, not by choice, anyway.
Plenty of people ended up going the second route no matter what they wanted, their choices not really mattering to Lung when the dragon got his blood up.
The cape leading the ABB had a bad habit of offing the people that pissed him off the most. Far too often, that was those that worked directly under him. It had started way back in the day with the old collection of oyabun that ran the gangs when he arrived in the bay and it continued with Lung's lieutenants every now and again.
Sometimes, the big man didn't even feel bothered to do the deed himself. You simply entered the restaurant for a nice meal and just never left the kitchens.
The funny thing was that sort of thing never seemed to happen to the guys running the shadier shit. Even Lung needed to get his dick wet on the regular, scaly as it might have fucking been, and those scummy fucks had it good for almost a whole decade untouched…
Well, at least they had until some kid fucked their shit up in a permanent way.
Somehow, the cops and PRT suddenly had lists and names of every place and person of importance when it came to that side of the ABB, even the ones outside the bay strictly. Most would have blamed one Big Ken, but word going around was that he died the same day his restaurant did, done in by the Empire.
Purity, Hookwolf and Stormtiger had made themselves real fucking visible that whole week, all throughout ABB territory. It would have been the smart bet to figure one of them had gutted the rich fuck for all his secrets and, well… his guts.
Seo knew better, though.
He knew way better than most.
The twenty-something removed a hand from his jacket pocket and raised it to his mouth to place a single loose cigarette in his mouth. He scrambled through the pocket of his jeans for a few seconds more with a slight frown on his face, only for his expression to turn up slightly as his hand came free once more, this time with a silver lighter in his grip. As he hummed the theme to some show he vaguely remembered, the Japanese man cupped the butane lighter to the cigarette he held between his lips, only to pause.
His lips shifted around the cigarette in his mouth as his men began to go silent. Seo glanced up, frowning slightly as he spotted one of the first few cars pull into the mostly empty parking lot, the sound of hard rubber on gravel and an idling engine drowning out most other noise as over a dozen cars of similar make and model began to enter the lot.
I told these idiots to split up and stagger… A sigh escaped him a moment later, the taste of nicotine already filling his mouth and nose. The first car came to a stop just meters from him and his boy's motorbikes, several more following behind in a constant stream that went on for at least a minute.
What part of 'low fuckin' profile' is hard to understand? He felt his eye twitch at the familiar noise of loud Korean rap blasting from several colorful vehicles entering last. Fuckers never listen to common sense.
Seo let his eyes drop as he muttered curses under his breath, the man taking a moment to calm himself as he breathed in the stick of nicotine in his mouth. Seconds passed and Seo took another drag, mutterings turning to curses as he heard car door after car door open and shut.
The former ABB lieutenant opened one eye to a cry of "Seo!" as a much shorter and much wider man dressed in a bright red tracksuit slammed shut the passenger door of the sedan nearest to Seo and his group of bikers. Seo, in comparison, had on a white dress shirt under a black-and-white motorcycle jacket, the first few buttons of his shirt left to display his tattooed bare chest and golden chain. A pair of black jeans and matching motorcycle boots completed the ensemble as he remained seated on the side of his custom bike.
Making his way over with the three men who had ridden with him, the Chinese gangster gave him a smile as wide as it was mocking as he threw his ring-laden hands out and let out another shout of "Seo!"
"Wei...," Seo raised a hand in a lazy wave as he returned the greeting with a much calmer and quieter response.
Much like Seo, Zhu Wei was considered by some to be a big man in the ABB on his own merits. Unlike Seo, though, Wei was somewhat lacking in height, even for the average man. Still, despite being somewhat short, the Chinese man far made up for it in sheer bulk, the once muscle-obsessed man having let himself go a good bit over the years. Both him and Seo had also served directly under Lung, and then for a very short while under his replacement, the two of them being minor players that Lung had chosen to raise higher above others. Wei had been friendly with a few of Lung's trusted people - the late Big Ken among them - and used that to weasel his way into a lieutenant position years before Seo ever even joined. Past that, the only similarity they shared was the hate they had for each other's guts and their mutual awareness of that.
"I see you… You..." Seo's eyes flicked down and back up again as he gave the other former ABB leader a once-over and then over to the group gathering behind him. It was through great effort that he restrained himself from frowning again, despite how much he wanted to. "Wow. You… brought..."
Asada Seo nodded his head in Wei's direction, barely able to spit out the rest of the sentence, growing irritation close to turning his vision as red as the other man's tracksuit.
Zhū Wei glanced over his shoulder as a sizable mob of Chinese men and more than a few women formed up in the parking lot behind him, most of them young enough to barely be out of college at best. Even to the eye of an unaware bystander, they would clearly stand out as ABB, tattoos and fucking weapons visible on at least a few of them. The fact that they all wore red prominently somewhere on their bodies - caps, shirts, bandanas - only furthered that image…
Granted, that didn't mean much anymore as the ABB colors of red and green had been left in the past. Over the last two weeks, what was left of the ABB had begun to splinter without any of their former cape leadership to keep them united through fear. Chinese gangsters had taken to wearing red, Koreans to blue, and the Japanese - especially those who still followed his lead - stuck to white.
It didn't take a genius to see that all the splintering has formed along racial lines, not unlike what the situation had been before Lung. The main difference was that, instead of following the lead of old and experienced bosses, they were being led by new, young faces.
Well… Seo raised an eyebrow as he slowly took in the older man's girth again. Mostly, I guess.
Already pushing that pointless thought aside, Seo also did his best to ignore the fact that he and his own boys were outnumbered by at least five to one, but that was much harder to push down when he knew exactly the kind of person he was dealing with. Huh.
His eyes scanned the crowd again, slower this time, visibly taking the time to inspect almost every single person in front of him.
Apart from almost a dozen near the front, most everyone else the former lieutenant had brought along with him was fresh-faced and barely blooded, ABB in name only. Oh, you fat fuck. Wei seemed to have brought along nothing but gofers, dumb muscle and whoever else was awake this early in the morning. It would be a miracle if anyone in the crowd did anything as important as picking up protection money.
So, he didn't bring anyone he couldn't afford to lose, Seo concluded, fighting the expression that threatened to take over his face. Don't give yourself away. You figured this would happen.
"Ah, yeah, all this." Wei turned back to Seo, a smile spreading across his face as he let out a small chuckle, "I know you said only a few, but a couple more of my boys wanted to hear this deal of yours. You know how it is, big man."
"A couple," Seo repeated, tone betraying nothing.
"A little more than a couple, but you get it." Wei's smile shifted into a smirk as greasy as his forehead, the overweight gangster picking at the heavy gold chains he wore over the tracksuit top that strained a bit too tight against his prominent gut. "That gonna be a problem?"
For a few moments, there was relative silence in the parking lot, Seo's own men tensing quietly behind him as he stared down Wei with an incomprehensible look.
"Nah, nah," the much bigger man waved his hand with far more energy than he felt, laughing off the growing attention. A second later, Wei joined in, his laugh more raspy than Seo's but just as sincere. It's not like you basically screamed from the fucking roof that some ABB shit is going on right fucking here. "Nah, it's no problem. Least you made it."
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure." Wei let out another chuckle as Seo rolled his eyes, the sound trailing off until both men were staring at each other again, their gathered lackeys doing much the same.
"So, Seo," Wei broke the silence again, his volume somewhat raised. "What's this deal about? You know, the one you couldn't tell me about over the phone?"
"Couldn't t-?" Seo muttered to himself for a moment, cigarette in hand, before pausing as his eyes flicked over to the crowd in front of him, his eyes meeting those of several of Wei's men before dropping back down again to the former weightlifter. Oh… so, that's how we're playing it.
Unable to help himself, the taller man let out a short bark of laughter, to the visible surprise of Wei and several others. "Man, I can't believe it," Seo let out another snort before returning the cigarette to his mouth. "I can't fuckin' believe it."
He shook his head disbelievingly, and shrugged his shoulders as casually as he could. "Wei, I don't know how but it must have slipped my mind. I honestly swear…" He paused mid-sentence, eyes hard and mouth a thin line before he spoke again, this time with a deeper edge to his voice. "... but what I don't get is how the fuck I forgot to tell you the biggest fucking news I've heard in a while."
"...Yeah," Wei coughed, looking off to the side. "No fucking idea either."
"You showed up anyway, though," Seo continued, not even trying to hide the sneer on his face anymore as he blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. "Brought a whole squad with you, too. 'Cause why, man? Just cause you were curious?"
"Seo, c'mon… c'mon, man," Zhū Wei spoke up again, still wearing a smile as he raised his hands as if to calm the larger man. "Don't be like that. It's not that serious."
Seo let out a scoff behind closed teeth, the noise coming off as more of a hiss as he shook his head. "If you say so, bro."
"...'sides," Wei continued. "It ain't just me. The boys wanted to hear you out too. Why don't you tell them the big news? See what they think about it?"
The confused looks he was getting from Wei's "boys" didn't make the man's lies sound anymore convincing, not that Seo wasn't aware he was full of shit already. Frankly, he was pretty sure almost all of Wei's "boys" knew how full of shit the older man was, even the ones that hadn't followed the man to this meet-up. The Japanese gangster felt his left eye twitch, the taste of ash in his mouth as he bit down on his cigarette. Fat fucking bastard. Can't even lie for shit. Biting his tongue before those words could escape him, Seo nodded his head slowly as he leaned back on his bike. "... Alright."
Raising his voice to make sure he was heard, Seo began as bluntly as possible. "If you ain't a complete retard, you know the ABB is more than in the fucking ground. To this city, to this people, we're all dead men fucking walking. Even our own… our own neighborhoods look at us like shit now. You've seen it. You lived it." His mouth turned down into a furious scowl as he saw several of Wei's people shaking their heads. "Don't you play fucking stupid with me! You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about so don't act like I'm spitting bullshit!"
Seo took in a hissed breath from between gritted teeth, clicking his tongue as he turned his head to the side for a moment. "They look at us like shit, you know it. They don't say it but you see it in their eyes. You get the same looks. And, you know what?" His nose crinkled slightly as he breathed in again, cigarette smoke filling his nostrils. "I don't blame 'em. They're our people, on our territory. And we fucked them over."
The general mutters from both in front of him and behind him seemed to agree, encouraging Seo to press forward. Rather than say anything else, he opened up his biker's jacket, exposing the lining and went for the inner pocket. Ignoring the tensing of Wei and several of his men, Seo pulled out a green-colored packet of cigarettes, a smiling green worm with a cigarette in it's mouth on the cover as it poked its body out of a bright red apple. "I buy this shit every week at the same convenience store since my ass was eighteen. Wu's Market, if you know it, you know it."
More nods and mutters of agreement met his statement, albeit with some clear confusion as to where he was going. "Uncle Wu was family to me, you know," the smoking gangster continued. "He was family to a bunch of us. I've known that old man my whole fucking life and I didn't say a goddamn word when Bakuda put her shit in his skull. I pussied out cause I didn't…"
Seo paused to blow out another gray plume of smoke, digits tense around the cigarette in his hand. Any tenser, and the man knew he would be holding nothing but ashes and paper. "Look, I pussied out. Didn't say shit cause I wasn't looking for that bitch to put one in mine either. We all shut up and followed orders, let some random cape who just joined up do whatever the fuck she wanted and we got fuck-shit for all of it. What we got was a shit-ton of our people getting free brain surgery and every fucking person looking at us like monsters. Be a hell of a lot better if they were wrong, shit."
His other hand tightened around the pack of cigarettes as he shook his head again. "Fuck, I couldn't even look Wu's fucking daughter in the eye when I bought this shit today. Y'know what? Any fucking one of us could have put a bullet in that fucking cape's head. She ain't bulletproof. She can't heal. We coulda capped her twice and we'd be good right now."
Seo returned the green packet to his pocket and, in the same motion, took the lit cigarette out of his mouth. "Fuck this shit. Look..." A large gray cloud of smoke escaped his lips, the gangster releasing a sigh as he felt his nerves ease slightly with the action. "I'm fucking tired of all this. I know you are too. Bakuda fucked us, yeah?"
He raised an eyebrow a moment later at the sudden "Yeah!" he received in return from Wei's crew and some of his own as well. Judging by the slight jump Wei was trying to play off as nothing, the fat man wasn't expecting it either. Wasnt looking for an answer, but whatever.
"Yeah, Bakuda fucked us…" Seo paused to take a smoke-free breath, "but Lung ain't do us any favors either. That bastard never cared about a single fucking thing but his own rep."
The voices of agreement began to peter out with the quickness Seo had expected before he finished the sentence.
Before anyone could interject, the Japanese gang leader quickly continued his statement, an added edge to his tone as he raised voice. "Don't start that fake fuckin' loyalty bullshit. The dragon's caged up and he ain't getting out so there's no getting fried for speakin' up. Now, listen, yeah? Look, Bakuda was AIDS but Lung was fuckin' cancer. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."
"Ey, Seo," Wei drawled, shaking his head slowly as he kept eye contact with the taller man. "You're talking some crazy shit right now. Lung made us, made the ABB. Man kept our people safe."
"Did he, really?" Seo scoffed out loud, exhaling another lungful of smoke. Even still, he had to admit that Wei had something of a point. He ain't wrong with the first part, though. At best, half of one.
"Yeah, yeah, he did," Wei continued, edges of his mouth tilting up into a smirk. "I don't appreciate the shit coming out of your mouth about the boss. You know no one fucked with us or our territory with him around."
"Yeah?" Seo bit back. "'cause I think you're fuckin' confused right now. We got fucked with all the goddamn time. Lung made it worse cause that motherfucker had to scale up every few weeks and swing his dick into Empire territory."
"That's not li-"
"How many times we get the fucking Nazis wrecking our shit, leaving random bodies as a message to teach the ABB a lesson, especially after Lung picked a fight and got his ass chased out?" Seo spat out, annoyance coloring his tone. "Man didn't give a shit about us, 'bout people he said he was about. He got free and didn't say shit to Bakuda about this suicide bomb brain surgery shit." Seo took another pull from the nicotine stick between his fingers, keeping eye contact with Wei as he did so, as if daring the shorter man to contradict his words. "Cape just ran to another fuckin' fight and got his ass beat for the second time."
"Oi, Seo!" Wei barked at him. "You going too fucking far."
"Yeah?" The Japanese gangster snorted at Wei's words. "Still ain't wrong, though. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."
As Wei bit back whatever he was going to say next with a constipated look, Seo took another pull from his cancer stick. Lung… Lung had operated like a fuckin' idiot. Years of working for the man had taught him that much. The cape was strong, sure, but he felt that his strength was all that mattered. He didn't know shit about much else apart from his pride and how best to kill whoever pissed him off the most.
And look where that got him.
The dragon they had been forced to serve had basically pressed everyone between the ages of fifteen to fifty within his organization. If you were some type of Asian, you were ABB and that was the way Lung wanted it… the fucking idiot.
It didn't help thing much that most of the city was now suspicious of anyone of Asian descent, thanks to Lung's retarded fucking recruitment style. The ones that ain't some kind of suspicious, he breathed out another lungful of smoke, are just better at fuckin' hiding it.
"The dragon…" Seo raised an eyebrow, pulled from his thoughts as Wei spoke up again, "he killed the old men. Every oyabun… of every Asian gang in this city."
"Your point?"
"He kept us, chose us, let us live, the kobun…" From the way Wei seemed to be looking past him instead of at him as he continued, the other gangster was sure the discussion, as it was, was no longer much of one. "As long as we didn't fail him. As long as we stayed loyal. He'd protect us, our homes, our part of the city…"
"And how's that working out for us, Wei?"
"You would know better than me, Seo," Wei barked back, "considering you're the one kneeling down to kiss the boots of some fuckin' guǐlǎo brat."
The silence between the two of them would have been deafening, if the murmurs breaking out from the men behind and in front of Seo weren't loud enough to be overheard.
Seo froze for a moment, cigarette held just inches from his lips, and turned his gaze back down to Wei. He felt a twinge of rage run through him as he shuddered, and judging by the sudden silence from several of his own boys, even they noticed. After a moment, the gangster slowly and carefully placed the cigarette back in his mouth.
"Ain't no one kissin' any fucking boots, you hear me?" Seo replied as calmly as he could manage.
"Yeah, I bet. Ain't this boss the same little shit that wrecked half your old crew?"
Seo let out a grunt despite himself. After a moment, he caught himself. "It was war. We shot at him. You know how it is."
"Yeah, yeah, I bet," Wei's smirk returned. "By the way, what happened to that shit fucking sword you used to wave around, Seo? Didn't that same brat pick it off you?"
"... We made a deal for it."
"I bet you fuckin' did," Wei's smirk widened, the man patting his stomach. "Did you make a deal to suck his little white dick too or you just do it for free?"
"Listen up, you fat fuck! I made a fuckin' deal to save our asses!" The calm left as quickly as it arrived. "Hell of a lot more than you're doing stirring up trouble!"
"Oh yeah, big man?" Wei replied, a laugh on his lips as he flashed a big yellow grin in Seo's face. "What's this big fuckin' deal?"
"The fucking deal is you're a greedy pig who thinks he's hot shit," Seo hissed back at the other liutenant. "You know exactly what the fuckin' deal is. You just wanna act tough in front of your people and make me look like some kind of bitch."
"I don't gotta make you look like anything, big man," Wei openly laughed in the taller man's face, gut actually shaking. "You know people talk, right? I got Joon on the line the other day and he was tellin' me some big fuckin' secrets about the kiddy cape you makin' all this big 'deals' with."
"Big fucki-" Seo paused as thoughts suddenly took in the other part of that sentence. Anger fell away into confusion as he spoke again. "You workin' with Joon now?"
"Working with?" Wei took a few steps more towards Seo, until the two of them were literally spitting distance from each other. "Strong words. Let's just say that the interests of Zhu Wei and Joon Lee find themselves mutually aligned for the foreseeable future," he replied, clearly repeating words someone else had spoken to him.
Seo kept his mouth in a firm line, fingers tensed around his cigarette.
Joon Lee.
One of the few remaining ABB higher-ups that the cops or PRT hadn't snatched up. There was fucking good reason for that, too. College-educated and sly as hell, the Korean man was the trickiest bastard Seo had ever met in his whole life, and he always made sure never to get caught with his pants around his ankles. If Wei was a selfish, gluttonous, weasel of a man, then Joon was a slimy fucking snake. A good drinking buddy, but still.
"Real question is," the Chinese man laughed out loud again, "who exactly are you working for?"
"Don't play me," Seo bit back, fighting back the anger in his voice as Wei smirked. "I'm not fuckin' here for that shit. You know damn well who I'm working for."
"Course I do. People talk, Seo. Joon got boys in jail. I got boys and girls in jail. They spread secrets," Wei's smirk dipped slightly as he spoke, expression darkening. "Secrets about that new boss of yours that Bakuda figured out."
Okay, then. "Secrets, huh?" Seo turned his head slightly, staring off into the Brockton night. The warm aroma of cigarette smoke clung to him like a security blanket, the man taking a deep sniff before he responded again. "Like what?"
Wei grunted in confusion, frowning slightly before he recovered his expression. "Like you're making deals with the same cape that took out Oni Lee and Lung!" The Chinese gangster raised his voice, clearly speaking to Seo's men and his own more than he was actually talking to Seo at this point. "What about that, Seo? What about that?"
So, that's what we're on now? Seo raised an eyebrow and scoffed. "Ain't much of a secret, Wei. For all I know, the boss likes playing dress-up. I don't question it. He's out there right now keeping the Empire out of our space and paying us to help him out with that. Got no complaints with that."
"And you want us to work for the kid that fucked the whole ABB into the ground?" Now, it was Wei's turn to scoff, the other man raising his hands in disbelief. "Are you fuckin' serious?"
Fuckin' retard, I swear. The Japanese gangster let out a loud sigh. "I want a lot of things, Wei. A couple million in the bank, half a dozen girls on my dick, a private island somewhere in the Pacific so I can fuck 'em all day and night and pass out on a bed bigger than my mom's old apartment." Seo took another pull from his cigarette, his thoughts moving a mile a minute until he let out another gray exhale. "What I need is someone on our side so the Empire don't kill our families whenever they get the itch. The kid came to me for info on the Empire and I made a deal to save our fuckin' skins."
"This is bigger than you, Seo," Wei raised his voice as he glared daggers at his Japanese counterpart. "You can't make deals for the rest of us!"
Seo scoffed one more time, cigarette just brushing his lips. "At least the deals I make stick."
Wei blinked. "Wha-"
"The Koreans were never on your side, idiot. They're in on my deal, if you couldn't figure it out. Joon and Park, all the Blues, since day one. Even the other Reds, the ones that went with Chu. Matter of fact, Chu's probably giving your boy Charlie the same message right now. Either that or Charlie's dead," Seo added with a smile. "Long story short, we're all tired of being shit on in this city. Only way to go from here is up."
The other man seemed frozen, mouth half open as confusion and shock expressed themselves clearly across his face. "You… you…y…" Wei bared his teeth, face going red as he devolved into cursing in Mandarin, pointing an angry finger at Seo as the Japanese man stood there, not understanding a single word.
The Japanese man dropped his cigarette, grinding it under one boot as he stepped away from his bike. "From where I'm standing, you're the only boss that wants to bring back what the ABB was, trying to bring us down. The rest of us… we're letting it die with Lung. If you fuck with this, you…" Seo Asada folded his arms, "well, you're just gonna die."
"I'm gonna die?!" Anger and hate twisted Wei's face into something even uglier. "You fuckin' first!" The man's hand jabbed toward his back, reaching for an object tucked into his tight waistband. Before his fingers could close around it, the gangster froze in place again.
A smile spread across Seo's face as he witnessed Zhu Wei pale with a wiry arm wrapped around his neck, barely letting him breathe, the other arm leading to a hand firmly attached to the gun currently placed against his temple.
"...whatthefuck."
Seo raised his gaze to watch as just behind Wei, almost a dozen of his men found themselves in the same or similar positions as the rest of the crew Wei had brought along to this meeting as simple muscle for intimidation quickly subdued them.
"...whatthefuck."
"I guess I didn't make it clear," Seo continued, stepping closer to the trembling Wei. "Most of your crew knew about the deal, fatass. You didn't have to tell them shit. All I had to make sure they didn't tell you or your right hands. Simple."
"They… th-thi… what the fuck...whatthefuck?" Wei's breath shallowed as he gasped for air, doing his best to scream and struggle even as one of his former boys pushed the gun harder against his head. "Fucking traitors! You're all fucking traito-"
"They're not traitors, Wei. They're loyal to this city, to their neighborhoods, to their families. Not to pig-shit like you. This was how it was always gonna go down."
The Chinese man continued to struggle, face reddening from the effort even as the wiry young man continued to tighten his hold. After a few seconds more, he let out a long gasp for air, his gut expanding as the man let himself sag in defeat. "...why?"
"Why? You really gotta ask that? We want our people safe. We want money in our pockets. We want less trouble, not more."
"... fine. Fine, I give in, alright." Wei grunted as he spat on the ground, eyes darting from side to side angrily as sweat dripped down his reddening face. "Just… just call your boys off."
Seo shook his head. "They ain't my boys."
Wei opened his mouth to ask a simple one-word question, only for it to die in his throat as a dark figure dropped into the parking lot from seemingly nowhere, gravel displaced under his feet from the sudden impact.
"He's right."
Beneath a dark skull mask and a shock of thick blond hair, a mouth full of sharp white teeth grinned at him.
"They're mine."
Greg is back. Tell a friend.
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back, guess who's back?
Guess who's back?
I've created a monster...
Anyway, yeah. Onto the story!
Cutscene: Power Struggle
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
May 10, 2011
1:07 AM
Asada Seo was considered by some to be a big man, at least in the physical definition of the word. Standing straight, he measured up at just a little more than an inch or so over six feet without shoes.
Tall for a Japanese man.
Tall for most Asian men, he knew that much.
A few years of being in the ABB had done it's part to disabuse him of the notion that he was anywhere near the average when it came to something that obvious. It wasn't quite as easy to see at the moment, what with him sitting side saddle on his motorcycle the same as the few men he had brought along with him, but he knew if he were to stand, he would tower above every single one of them.
Lung liked shit like that.
Shit that showed strength.
Five years of running protection for the man in his own neighborhood has taught Seo that much.
Whether it was just looks or actual strength, the dragon wasn't really picky, a simple fact Seo had picked up on pretty quickly. After all, why else would you lift up some random nineteen-year old wannabe above older, more experienced, and definitely more hardened criminals?
Didn't make much sense otherwise. The young man raised a hand to his face and rubbed the scruff that dotted his chin as he continued to wait. The cold night air didn't bother him much as he rolled his thoughts around in his head, the conversation of his boys around him nothing more than background noise.
The only other option Seo had ever given much thought to was that Lung was looking to instill loyalty when he chose his underlings. Again, something Seo really doubted when it came to Lung. After years of working for the dragon, he learned that the man assumed they were all loyal anyway, at least in the face of his strength.
Not like the choice was ever really in their hands, from the way Seo saw it. You only ever had two choices when it came to the dragon boss, anyway.
One, never ever let Lung think you were anything but loyal.
Two, burn.
No one ever went with number two.
At least, not by choice, anyway.
Plenty of people ended up going the second route no matter what they wanted, their choices not really mattering to Lung when the dragon got his blood up.
The cape leading the ABB had a bad habit of offing the people that pissed him off the most. Far too often, that was those that worked directly under him. It had started way back in the day with the old collection of oyabun that ran the gangs when he arrived in the bay and it continued with Lung's lieutenants every now and again.
Sometimes, the big man didn't even feel bothered to do the deed himself. You simply entered the restaurant for a nice meal and just never left the kitchens.
The funny thing was that sort of thing never seemed to happen to the guys running the shadier shit. Even Lung needed to get his dick wet on the regular, scaly as it might have fucking been, and those scummy fucks had it good for almost a whole decade untouched…
Well, at least they had until some kid fucked their shit up in a permanent way.
Somehow, the cops and PRT suddenly had lists and names of every place and person of importance when it came to that side of the ABB, even the ones outside the bay strictly. Most would have blamed one Big Ken, but word going around was that he died the same day his restaurant did, done in by the Empire.
Purity, Hookwolf and Stormtiger had made themselves real fucking visible that whole week, all throughout ABB territory. It would have been the smart bet to figure one of them had gutted the rich fuck for all his secrets and, well… his guts.
Seo knew better, though.
He knew way better than most.
The twenty-something removed a hand from his jacket pocket and raised it to his mouth to place a single loose cigarette in his mouth. He scrambled through the pocket of his jeans for a few seconds more with a slight frown on his face, only for his expression to turn up slightly as his hand came free once more, this time with a silver lighter in his grip. As he hummed the theme to some show he vaguely remembered, the Japanese man cupped the butane lighter to the cigarette he held between his lips, only to pause.
His lips shifted around the cigarette in his mouth as his men began to go silent. Seo glanced up, frowning slightly as he spotted one of the first few cars pull into the mostly empty parking lot, the sound of hard rubber on gravel and an idling engine drowning out most other noise as over a dozen cars of similar make and model began to enter the lot.
I told these idiots to split up and stagger… A sigh escaped him a moment later, the taste of nicotine already filling his mouth and nose. The first car came to a stop just meters from him and his boy's motorbikes, several more following behind in a constant stream that went on for at least a minute.
What part of 'low fuckin' profile' is hard to understand? He felt his eye twitch at the familiar noise of loud Korean rap blasting from several colorful vehicles entering last. Fuckers never listen to common sense.
Seo let his eyes drop as he muttered curses under his breath, the man taking a moment to calm himself as he breathed in the stick of nicotine in his mouth. Seconds passed and Seo took another drag, mutterings turning to curses as he heard car door after car door open and shut.
The former ABB lieutenant opened one eye to a cry of "Seo!" as a much shorter and much wider man dressed in a bright red tracksuit slammed shut the passenger door of the sedan nearest to Seo and his group of bikers. Seo, in comparison, had on a white dress shirt under a black-and-white motorcycle jacket, the first few buttons of his shirt left to display his tattooed bare chest and golden chain. A pair of black jeans and matching motorcycle boots completed the ensemble as he remained seated on the side of his custom bike.
Making his way over with the three men who had ridden with him, the Chinese gangster gave him a smile as wide as it was mocking as he threw his ring-laden hands out and let out another shout of "Seo!"
"Wei...," Seo raised a hand in a lazy wave as he returned the greeting with a much calmer and quieter response.
Much like Seo, Zhu Wei was considered by some to be a big man in the ABB on his own merits. Unlike Seo, though, Wei was somewhat lacking in height, even for the average man. Still, despite being somewhat short, the Chinese man far made up for it in sheer bulk, the once muscle-obsessed man having let himself go a good bit over the years. Both him and Seo had also served directly under Lung, and then for a very short while under his replacement, the two of them being minor players that Lung had chosen to raise higher above others. Wei had been friendly with a few of Lung's trusted people - the late Big Ken among them - and used that to weasel his way into a lieutenant position years before Seo ever even joined. Past that, the only similarity they shared was the hate they had for each other's guts and their mutual awareness of that.
"I see you… You..." Seo's eyes flicked down and back up again as he gave the other former ABB leader a once-over and then over to the group gathering behind him. It was through great effort that he restrained himself from frowning again, despite how much he wanted to. "Wow. You… brought..."
Asada Seo nodded his head in Wei's direction, barely able to spit out the rest of the sentence, growing irritation close to turning his vision as red as the other man's tracksuit.
Zhū Wei glanced over his shoulder as a sizable mob of Chinese men and more than a few women formed up in the parking lot behind him, most of them young enough to barely be out of college at best. Even to the eye of an unaware bystander, they would clearly stand out as ABB, tattoos and fucking weapons visible on at least a few of them. The fact that they all wore red prominently somewhere on their bodies - caps, shirts, bandanas - only furthered that image…
Granted, that didn't mean much anymore as the ABB colors of red and green had been left in the past. Over the last two weeks, what was left of the ABB had begun to splinter without any of their former cape leadership to keep them united through fear. Chinese gangsters had taken to wearing red, Koreans to blue, and the Japanese - especially those who still followed his lead - stuck to white.
It didn't take a genius to see that all the splintering has formed along racial lines, not unlike what the situation had been before Lung. The main difference was that, instead of following the lead of old and experienced bosses, they were being led by new, young faces.
Well… Seo raised an eyebrow as he slowly took in the older man's girth again. Mostly, I guess.
Already pushing that pointless thought aside, Seo also did his best to ignore the fact that he and his own boys were outnumbered by at least five to one, but that was much harder to push down when he knew exactly the kind of person he was dealing with. Huh.
His eyes scanned the crowd again, slower this time, visibly taking the time to inspect almost every single person in front of him.
Apart from almost a dozen near the front, most everyone else the former lieutenant had brought along with him was fresh-faced and barely blooded, ABB in name only. Oh, you fat fuck. Wei seemed to have brought along nothing but gofers, dumb muscle and whoever else was awake this early in the morning. It would be a miracle if anyone in the crowd did anything as important as picking up protection money.
So, he didn't bring anyone he couldn't afford to lose, Seo concluded, fighting the expression that threatened to take over his face. Don't give yourself away. You figured this would happen.
"Ah, yeah, all this." Wei turned back to Seo, a smile spreading across his face as he let out a small chuckle, "I know you said only a few, but a couple more of my boys wanted to hear this deal of yours. You know how it is, big man."
"A couple," Seo repeated, tone betraying nothing.
"A little more than a couple, but you get it." Wei's smile shifted into a smirk as greasy as his forehead, the overweight gangster picking at the heavy gold chains he wore over the tracksuit top that strained a bit too tight against his prominent gut. "That gonna be a problem?"
For a few moments, there was relative silence in the parking lot, Seo's own men tensing quietly behind him as he stared down Wei with an incomprehensible look.
"Nah, nah," the much bigger man waved his hand with far more energy than he felt, laughing off the growing attention. A second later, Wei joined in, his laugh more raspy than Seo's but just as sincere. It's not like you basically screamed from the fucking roof that some ABB shit is going on right fucking here. "Nah, it's no problem. Least you made it."
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure." Wei let out another chuckle as Seo rolled his eyes, the sound trailing off until both men were staring at each other again, their gathered lackeys doing much the same.
"So, Seo," Wei broke the silence again, his volume somewhat raised. "What's this deal about? You know, the one you couldn't tell me about over the phone?"
"Couldn't t-?" Seo muttered to himself for a moment, cigarette in hand, before pausing as his eyes flicked over to the crowd in front of him, his eyes meeting those of several of Wei's men before dropping back down again to the former weightlifter. Oh… so, that's how we're playing it.
Unable to help himself, the taller man let out a short bark of laughter, to the visible surprise of Wei and several others. "Man, I can't believe it," Seo let out another snort before returning the cigarette to his mouth. "I can't fuckin' believe it."
He shook his head disbelievingly, and shrugged his shoulders as casually as he could. "Wei, I don't know how but it must have slipped my mind. I honestly swear…" He paused mid-sentence, eyes hard and mouth a thin line before he spoke again, this time with a deeper edge to his voice. "... but what I don't get is how the fuck I forgot to tell you the biggest fucking news I've heard in a while."
"...Yeah," Wei coughed, looking off to the side. "No fucking idea either."
"You showed up anyway, though," Seo continued, not even trying to hide the sneer on his face anymore as he blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. "Brought a whole squad with you, too. 'Cause why, man? Just cause you were curious?"
"Seo, c'mon… c'mon, man," Zhū Wei spoke up again, still wearing a smile as he raised his hands as if to calm the larger man. "Don't be like that. It's not that serious."
Seo let out a scoff behind closed teeth, the noise coming off as more of a hiss as he shook his head. "If you say so, bro."
"...'sides," Wei continued. "It ain't just me. The boys wanted to hear you out too. Why don't you tell them the big news? See what they think about it?"
The confused looks he was getting from Wei's "boys" didn't make the man's lies sound anymore convincing, not that Seo wasn't aware he was full of shit already. Frankly, he was pretty sure almost all of Wei's "boys" knew how full of shit the older man was, even the ones that hadn't followed the man to this meet-up. The Japanese gangster felt his left eye twitch, the taste of ash in his mouth as he bit down on his cigarette. Fat fucking bastard. Can't even lie for shit. Biting his tongue before those words could escape him, Seo nodded his head slowly as he leaned back on his bike. "... Alright."
Raising his voice to make sure he was heard, Seo began as bluntly as possible. "If you ain't a complete retard, you know the ABB is more than in the fucking ground. To this city, to this people, we're all dead men fucking walking. Even our own… our own neighborhoods look at us like shit now. You've seen it. You lived it." His mouth turned down into a furious scowl as he saw several of Wei's people shaking their heads. "Don't you play fucking stupid with me! You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about so don't act like I'm spitting bullshit!"
Seo took in a hissed breath from between gritted teeth, clicking his tongue as he turned his head to the side for a moment. "They look at us like shit, you know it. They don't say it but you see it in their eyes. You get the same looks. And, you know what?" His nose crinkled slightly as he breathed in again, cigarette smoke filling his nostrils. "I don't blame 'em. They're our people, on our territory. And we fucked them over."
The general mutters from both in front of him and behind him seemed to agree, encouraging Seo to press forward. Rather than say anything else, he opened up his biker's jacket, exposing the lining and went for the inner pocket. Ignoring the tensing of Wei and several of his men, Seo pulled out a green-colored packet of cigarettes, a smiling green worm with a cigarette in it's mouth on the cover as it poked its body out of a bright red apple. "I buy this shit every week at the same convenience store since my ass was eighteen. Wu's Market, if you know it, you know it."
More nods and mutters of agreement met his statement, albeit with some clear confusion as to where he was going. "Uncle Wu was family to me, you know," the smoking gangster continued. "He was family to a bunch of us. I've known that old man my whole fucking life and I didn't say a goddamn word when Bakuda put her shit in his skull. I pussied out cause I didn't…"
Seo paused to blow out another gray plume of smoke, digits tense around the cigarette in his hand. Any tenser, and the man knew he would be holding nothing but ashes and paper. "Look, I pussied out. Didn't say shit cause I wasn't looking for that bitch to put one in mine either. We all shut up and followed orders, let some random cape who just joined up do whatever the fuck she wanted and we got fuck-shit for all of it. What we got was a shit-ton of our people getting free brain surgery and every fucking person looking at us like monsters. Be a hell of a lot better if they were wrong, shit."
His other hand tightened around the pack of cigarettes as he shook his head again. "Fuck, I couldn't even look Wu's fucking daughter in the eye when I bought this shit today. Y'know what? Any fucking one of us could have put a bullet in that fucking cape's head. She ain't bulletproof. She can't heal. We coulda capped her twice and we'd be good right now."
Seo returned the green packet to his pocket and, in the same motion, took the lit cigarette out of his mouth. "Fuck this shit. Look..." A large gray cloud of smoke escaped his lips, the gangster releasing a sigh as he felt his nerves ease slightly with the action. "I'm fucking tired of all this. I know you are too. Bakuda fucked us, yeah?"
He raised an eyebrow a moment later at the sudden "Yeah!" he received in return from Wei's crew and some of his own as well. Judging by the slight jump Wei was trying to play off as nothing, the fat man wasn't expecting it either. Wasnt looking for an answer, but whatever.
"Yeah, Bakuda fucked us…" Seo paused to take a smoke-free breath, "but Lung ain't do us any favors either. That bastard never cared about a single fucking thing but his own rep."
The voices of agreement began to peter out with the quickness Seo had expected before he finished the sentence.
Before anyone could interject, the Japanese gang leader quickly continued his statement, an added edge to his tone as he raised voice. "Don't start that fake fuckin' loyalty bullshit. The dragon's caged up and he ain't getting out so there's no getting fried for speakin' up. Now, listen, yeah? Look, Bakuda was AIDS but Lung was fuckin' cancer. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."
"Ey, Seo," Wei drawled, shaking his head slowly as he kept eye contact with the taller man. "You're talking some crazy shit right now. Lung made us, made the ABB. Man kept our people safe."
"Did he, really?" Seo scoffed out loud, exhaling another lungful of smoke. Even still, he had to admit that Wei had something of a point. He ain't wrong with the first part, though. At best, half of one.
"Yeah, yeah, he did," Wei continued, edges of his mouth tilting up into a smirk. "I don't appreciate the shit coming out of your mouth about the boss. You know no one fucked with us or our territory with him around."
"Yeah?" Seo bit back. "'cause I think you're fuckin' confused right now. We got fucked with all the goddamn time. Lung made it worse cause that motherfucker had to scale up every few weeks and swing his dick into Empire territory."
"That's not li-"
"How many times we get the fucking Nazis wrecking our shit, leaving random bodies as a message to teach the ABB a lesson, especially after Lung picked a fight and got his ass chased out?" Seo spat out, annoyance coloring his tone. "Man didn't give a shit about us, 'bout people he said he was about. He got free and didn't say shit to Bakuda about this suicide bomb brain surgery shit." Seo took another pull from the nicotine stick between his fingers, keeping eye contact with Wei as he did so, as if daring the shorter man to contradict his words. "Cape just ran to another fuckin' fight and got his ass beat for the second time."
"Oi, Seo!" Wei barked at him. "You going too fucking far."
"Yeah?" The Japanese gangster snorted at Wei's words. "Still ain't wrong, though. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."
As Wei bit back whatever he was going to say next with a constipated look, Seo took another pull from his cancer stick. Lung… Lung had operated like a fuckin' idiot. Years of working for the man had taught him that much. The cape was strong, sure, but he felt that his strength was all that mattered. He didn't know shit about much else apart from his pride and how best to kill whoever pissed him off the most.
And look where that got him.
The dragon they had been forced to serve had basically pressed everyone between the ages of fifteen to fifty within his organization. If you were some type of Asian, you were ABB and that was the way Lung wanted it… the fucking idiot.
It didn't help thing much that most of the city was now suspicious of anyone of Asian descent, thanks to Lung's retarded fucking recruitment style. The ones that ain't some kind of suspicious, he breathed out another lungful of smoke, are just better at fuckin' hiding it.
"The dragon…" Seo raised an eyebrow, pulled from his thoughts as Wei spoke up again, "he killed the old men. Every oyabun… of every Asian gang in this city."
"Your point?"
"He kept us, chose us, let us live, the kobun…" From the way Wei seemed to be looking past him instead of at him as he continued, the other gangster was sure the discussion, as it was, was no longer much of one. "As long as we didn't fail him. As long as we stayed loyal. He'd protect us, our homes, our part of the city…"
"And how's that working out for us, Wei?"
"You would know better than me, Seo," Wei barked back, "considering you're the one kneeling down to kiss the boots of some fuckin' guǐlǎo brat."
The silence between the two of them would have been deafening, if the murmurs breaking out from the men behind and in front of Seo weren't loud enough to be overheard.
Seo froze for a moment, cigarette held just inches from his lips, and turned his gaze back down to Wei. He felt a twinge of rage run through him as he shuddered, and judging by the sudden silence from several of his own boys, even they noticed. After a moment, the gangster slowly and carefully placed the cigarette back in his mouth.
"Ain't no one kissin' any fucking boots, you hear me?" Seo replied as calmly as he could manage.
"Yeah, I bet. Ain't this boss the same little shit that wrecked half your old crew?"
Seo let out a grunt despite himself. After a moment, he caught himself. "It was war. We shot at him. You know how it is."
"Yeah, yeah, I bet," Wei's smirk returned. "By the way, what happened to that shit fucking sword you used to wave around, Seo? Didn't that same brat pick it off you?"
"... We made a deal for it."
"I bet you fuckin' did," Wei's smirk widened, the man patting his stomach. "Did you make a deal to suck his little white dick too or you just do it for free?"
"Listen up, you fat fuck! I made a fuckin' deal to save our asses!" The calm left as quickly as it arrived. "Hell of a lot more than you're doing stirring up trouble!"
"Oh yeah, big man?" Wei replied, a laugh on his lips as he flashed a big yellow grin in Seo's face. "What's this big fuckin' deal?"
"The fucking deal is you're a greedy pig who thinks he's hot shit," Seo hissed back at the other liutenant. "You know exactly what the fuckin' deal is. You just wanna act tough in front of your people and make me look like some kind of bitch."
"I don't gotta make you look like anything, big man," Wei openly laughed in the taller man's face, gut actually shaking. "You know people talk, right? I got Joon on the line the other day and he was tellin' me some big fuckin' secrets about the kiddy cape you makin' all this big 'deals' with."
"Big fucki-" Seo paused as thoughts suddenly took in the other part of that sentence. Anger fell away into confusion as he spoke again. "You workin' with Joon now?"
"Working with?" Wei took a few steps more towards Seo, until the two of them were literally spitting distance from each other. "Strong words. Let's just say that the interests of Zhu Wei and Joon Lee find themselves mutually aligned for the foreseeable future," he replied, clearly repeating words someone else had spoken to him.
Seo kept his mouth in a firm line, fingers tensed around his cigarette.
Joon Lee.
One of the few remaining ABB higher-ups that the cops or PRT hadn't snatched up. There was fucking good reason for that, too. College-educated and sly as hell, the Korean man was the trickiest bastard Seo had ever met in his whole life, and he always made sure never to get caught with his pants around his ankles. If Wei was a selfish, gluttonous, weasel of a man, then Joon was a slimy fucking snake. A good drinking buddy, but still.
"Real question is," the Chinese man laughed out loud again, "who exactly are you working for?"
"Don't play me," Seo bit back, fighting back the anger in his voice as Wei smirked. "I'm not fuckin' here for that shit. You know damn well who I'm working for."
"Course I do. People talk, Seo. Joon got boys in jail. I got boys and girls in jail. They spread secrets," Wei's smirk dipped slightly as he spoke, expression darkening. "Secrets about that new boss of yours that Bakuda figured out."
Okay, then. "Secrets, huh?" Seo turned his head slightly, staring off into the Brockton night. The warm aroma of cigarette smoke clung to him like a security blanket, the man taking a deep sniff before he responded again. "Like what?"
Wei grunted in confusion, frowning slightly before he recovered his expression. "Like you're making deals with the same cape that took out Oni Lee and Lung!" The Chinese gangster raised his voice, clearly speaking to Seo's men and his own more than he was actually talking to Seo at this point. "What about that, Seo? What about that?"
So, that's what we're on now? Seo raised an eyebrow and scoffed. "Ain't much of a secret, Wei. For all I know, the boss likes playing dress-up. I don't question it. He's out there right now keeping the Empire out of our space and paying us to help him out with that. Got no complaints with that."
"And you want us to work for the kid that fucked the whole ABB into the ground?" Now, it was Wei's turn to scoff, the other man raising his hands in disbelief. "Are you fuckin' serious?"
Fuckin' retard, I swear. The Japanese gangster let out a loud sigh. "I want a lot of things, Wei. A couple million in the bank, half a dozen girls on my dick, a private island somewhere in the Pacific so I can fuck 'em all day and night and pass out on a bed bigger than my mom's old apartment." Seo took another pull from his cigarette, his thoughts moving a mile a minute until he let out another gray exhale. "What I need is someone on our side so the Empire don't kill our families whenever they get the itch. The kid came to me for info on the Empire and I made a deal to save our fuckin' skins."
"This is bigger than you, Seo," Wei raised his voice as he glared daggers at his Japanese counterpart. "You can't make deals for the rest of us!"
Seo scoffed one more time, cigarette just brushing his lips. "At least the deals I make stick."
Wei blinked. "Wha-"
"The Koreans were never on your side, idiot. They're in on my deal, if you couldn't figure it out. Joon and Park, all the Blues, since day one. Even the other Reds, the ones that went with Chu. Matter of fact, Chu's probably giving your boy Charlie the same message right now. Either that or Charlie's dead," Seo added with a smile. "Long story short, we're all tired of being shit on in this city. Only way to go from here is up."
The other man seemed frozen, mouth half open as confusion and shock expressed themselves clearly across his face. "You… you…y…" Wei bared his teeth, face going red as he devolved into cursing in Mandarin, pointing an angry finger at Seo as the Japanese man stood there, not understanding a single word.
The Japanese man dropped his cigarette, grinding it under one boot as he stepped away from his bike. "From where I'm standing, you're the only boss that wants to bring back what the ABB was, trying to bring us down. The rest of us… we're letting it die with Lung. If you fuck with this, you…" Seo Asada folded his arms, "well, you're just gonna die."
"I'm gonna die?!" Anger and hate twisted Wei's face into something even uglier. "You fuckin' first!" The man's hand jabbed toward his back, reaching for an object tucked into his tight waistband. Before his fingers could close around it, the gangster froze in place again.
A smile spread across Seo's face as he witnessed Zhu Wei pale with a wiry arm wrapped around his neck, barely letting him breathe, the other arm leading to a hand firmly attached to the gun currently placed against his temple.
"...whatthefuck."
Seo raised his gaze to watch as just behind Wei, almost a dozen of his men found themselves in the same or similar positions as the rest of the crew Wei had brought along to this meeting as simple muscle for intimidation quickly subdued them.
"...whatthefuck."
"I guess I didn't make it clear," Seo continued, stepping closer to the trembling Wei. "Most of your crew knew about the deal, fatass. You didn't have to tell them shit. All I had to make sure they didn't tell you or your right hands. Simple."
"They… th-thi… what the fuck...whatthefuck?" Wei's breath shallowed as he gasped for air, doing his best to scream and struggle even as one of his former boys pushed the gun harder against his head. "Fucking traitors! You're all fucking traito-"
"They're not traitors, Wei. They're loyal to this city, to their neighborhoods, to their families. Not to pig-shit like you. This was how it was always gonna go down."
The Chinese man continued to struggle, face reddening from the effort even as the wiry young man continued to tighten his hold. After a few seconds more, he let out a long gasp for air, his gut expanding as the man let himself sag in defeat. "...why?"
"Why? You really gotta ask that? We want our people safe. We want money in our pockets. We want less trouble, not more."
"... fine. Fine, I give in, alright." Wei grunted as he spat on the ground, eyes darting from side to side angrily as sweat dripped down his reddening face. "Just… just call your boys off."
Seo shook his head. "They ain't my boys."
Wei opened his mouth to ask a simple one-word question, only for it to die in his throat as a dark figure dropped into the parking lot from seemingly nowhere, gravel displaced under his feet from the sudden impact.
"He's right."
Beneath a dark skull mask and a shock of thick blond hair, a mouth full of sharp white teeth grinned at him.
"They're mine."
- STATUS
- TRAITS
- PERKS
- TITLES
- SKILLS
- ABILITIES
Lagoon12002
How far have I fell down into this deep deep sea
Man it's been a while. Good to see you and your story again, and I hope to see more.
Greg is beginning to consolidate his gang. Lots of potential obsticales, from rival gangs from in and out of the city, the 'heroes', and every vigilante, powered or not, wanting their pound of flesh from the ex-ABB.
Am interested on how you will take this story.
Greg is beginning to consolidate his gang. Lots of potential obsticales, from rival gangs from in and out of the city, the 'heroes', and every vigilante, powered or not, wanting their pound of flesh from the ex-ABB.
Am interested on how you will take this story.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
Greg should really use those 22 points on INT, since that's like only 6 for Wis and only 2 for Cha. Sounds like Greg is gonna have to prevent from going "He Who Fights Monsters". He's kind of OP already, him going Villain would be super bad.
Lag 6.5
ZFighter18
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
- Location
- Maryland
Lag 6.5
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
"There comes several times in a young person's life when they have to make a decision. These decisions are important. These decisions are life-affirming. These decisions can and will make or break the adult you become later in life. These moments of choice are few, fleeting, and far too often, they go by unnoticed. However, I want you to trust me on this one; they are, without a doubt, sig-ni-fi-caaynt. Throughout the misadventures of your youth, you wi-Ramon!"
A bored-sounding voice replied back with a "Yessir?"
"Ramon, what on god's green earth is your hand doing up. in. the. ayer?"
The Ramon being addressed - first name Axel - shrugged his shoulders as he leaned forward. "Uhh…" He leaned forward further, allowing his raised hand to fall as he shifted positions slightly from where he sat cross-legged on the cold gym floor among a small crowd of roughly sixty other students. "Uhhh… cause I have a question?"
"Fine. Speak now or forever hold your peace."
"...Okay?" Sparky let out a slight hum before continuing with his actual question, "Senor Wilkers, You've been talking for almost ten minutes now. What does any part of this speech have to do with dodgeball?"
Gordon Wilkers let out a loud huff, a pair of meaty hands coming to rest on his proportionally sized hips. "Five things, young man. Uno," he slapped his chest, the thick chest and belly under his white 'Winslow Warriors' T-Shirt jiggling slightly, "that is Coach Wilkers to you. I may have been the Spanish teacher, but with Coach Barker deciding to retire, I can now live my dream."
"... of being a gym coach?"
"Dos," he slapped his chest twice more, ignoring Sparky's follow-up, "If you can't see what my words have to do with it, you haven't been paying attention. Tres," three more quick slaps to his chest, "I am required to spend at least ten - count 'em - ten! Minutes of every physical education class providing some sort of non-physical based education. Thank your school board for that one."
"That's dumb", spoke the student sitting right next to the aforementioned Ramon. "That's really dumb."
"Thank you, Veder, for saying the obvious and in-terr-up-ting me," Coach Willikers barked back at the amused face of the blond boy. "You never fail to be a credit to your hair color," the coach said with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, cuatro," four guesses as to what repetitive action the large man did here, "I like imparting life lessons into impressionable young minds. Ain't that right, Gerold?"
"Yes, sir," A squat, beefy redhead sitting near the front replied back, looking for all the world like a miniature version of the coach. "Yes, it is."
Coach Wilkers nodded proudly and continued on with a grunt, as he held up a moderately-sized blue rubber ball for the whole class to see. "That's why we're here to play ball."
"Follow-up question," Greg chirped, leaning forward.
"De-nied."
Greg simply shrugged, an amused look still on his face as he leaned back on the cold gym floor. Shooting his friend a glance, Sparky simply rolled his eyes at his friend and raised his hand again.'
"Ramon?"
"Follow-up question. Isn't dodgeball banned?"
"Very good question. You can blame your school board for that too. That is exactly why," the coach began slowly as if to build up tension, "We will be playing hitball. Entirely different ball, entirely different rules… which I will now explain to you."
Wilkers cleared his throat a moment later, before launching into an explanation of the rules that made up what he referred to as his "all-new, all-different" game which was not at all dodgeball, in no way at all.
"So, what's up with Wilkins?"
Greg let out the audible equivalent of a shrug, a single eyebrow raised as he glanced over at the coach and back again. "Honestly, I don't know. If you ask me, those shorts are a bit high and tight but what do I know about P.E. teacher fashion?"
"What?" Sparky froze, mouth open for a moment before his expression shifted from puzzlement to one of disgust. "No, brah… I mean, what's his attitude about? Man's been giving you the stinkeye since I walked in."
"-e makeup of this ball, specifically the rubber compounds…"
"Oh, oh yeah, that." Greg clicked his teeth, mouth scrunched up in a way that made his expression hard to decipher. "Welllll, he might have asked me what I was 'on' and kinda got pissy when I said this was pure natty."
"Ohhhh," Sparky vocalized, tone making clear his realization. "He got mad 'cause he thought you were lying to him."
"I mean…" the blond in blue shorts pulled a face as he gave his friend a shrug. "I guess that might be technically it, but I'm pretty sure it's 'cause I wouldn't share what I was using."
"-p to five percent softer than the average dodgeball but with a greater tensile..."
"How do you figure?"
"Well, I did hear him call me a selfish little prick under his breath," Greg answered back with a smile, "so, using my expert powers of deduction, I came to a conclusion."
"Huh."
"Yeah," the blond agreed. "Two other dudes asked me the same thing this morning and I just don't get why everybody thinks I'm doing 'roids. I like my nuts the way they are, y'know?"
"Yeah, brah, I'm sure," Sparky rolled his eyes again, "but if I had to guess, I'd prolly go with the fact that Mal's been spreading that rumor for a while now."
"What?" Greg hissed, albeit with no actual anger in his voice. "Wait, which Mal?"
His friend shot him a pointed look. "I dunno, Sherlock Bonehead, try the one who usually picks on you? The one we have a bunch of classes with? The one whose head you used to dent a locker?"
"Huh."
"Yeah," Sparky agreed.
After a moment of quiet thought, Greg made a simple announcement, low enough that even if anyone was listening, only he and Sparky would hear. "Imma kick his ass."
"..." After letting out a tired sigh, Sparky raised his head and pushed aside his bangs to ask a simple question. "Fine, I'll bite. Why?"
"To teach him a lesson." After a moment, Greg hummed. "Also, just 'cause."
"Please don't."
"What?" Greg whined under his breath. "I'm just saying that Winslow would be a ton more fun if it was a shonen battle high school."
"Yes," Sparky replied in a monotone. "Wannabe Nazis, wannabe drug lords and wannabe Yakuza running around a shonen-level fighting school would be a great idea."
"Exactly."
At this, the blond craned his head, glancing back at the far corner of the gym where Mal sat with some of his friends. Sparky could only watch as the taller boy locked eyes with Greg, and in response, his friend slowly raised a middle finger toward his former bully as a greeting. Sparky wasn't sure it was possible for a vein to be visible from so far away and yet...
Greg Veder let his mouth open wide into a grin, one that Sparky had been growing too familiar with for comfort over the last month and a half. "Well, now it's up to him."
"You know I really don't get why you bother." Sparky shook his head, a slight noise of disgust leaving his throat. "He can't touch you but you still fuck with him anyway for shits and giggles."
The other teen looked puzzled for a moment, grin returning almost an instant later. "...Well, you kinda do get it, then."
A pair of amber eyes narrowed. "And you don't think that's bad?"
Greg met Sparky's gaze, unwavering blue meeting slitted amber. "Well, I'm not the bad guy. I'm the hero," he dropped his volume even lower, leaning forward as he whispered the two syllables. "I mean, I could do whatever I want to him and that still wouldn't change."
"... I don't think that's how that works, brah."
Rather than answer, the blond just relaxed his grin into an amused smile, and after a moment or two, simply shrugged.
"Eh."
A few long seconds of silence passed between the friends as they stared each other down, the quiet broken up only by the background muttering of their classmates and Coach Wilkin's voice booming throughout the gym as he explained exactly how the new balls were much less likely to give them brain damage.
"You know, all things considered," Greg jabbed a thumb in the coach's direction, his mouth concealed by the back of his left hand, "I'm kinda getting a vibe for why Senor Wilkers got denied the P.E. job before. I mean..." The blond let himself trail off, tongue out and eyes crossed as he jabbed his index finger toward his temple and drew lazy circles in the air with it. "You get me?"
Sparky stifled a snort, his mild annoyance fighting to make itself known over the urge he was feeling to just let himself laugh and relax. "I've been saying that since last year, brah."
"-nd that's how hitball works."
"Wait, that sounds exactly like dodgeball, though!" Both Greg and Sparky snapped their attention back to the coach as another student yelled out his opposition to the large man's proposed game.
"And to-may-to sounds like to-mah-to," Wilkers barked back. "What's your point, young man?"
"That they're the s-"
"Aaaand, that's ten minutes exactly. Grab your balls and let's get going!"
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
It didn't take long for Axel to remember exactly why he didn't miss playing dodgeball. Hitball, he sarcastically reminded himself in his head. Entirely different games, he says.
Granted, it was a little more different than he expected. Considering they were divided into thirty teams of two and each person had to get hit three times to be considered out, the game had a bit more to it than a simple game of dodgeball.
"Jesus!"
Thing about it, though, was the fact it was pretty hard to remember that little tidbit about the naming structure of whatever the coach wanted to call the fucking game when he was stuck doing more fucking dodging than any actual hitting with said balls. Who actually enjoys this shit?
"Booo-frickin-ya!"
Sparky groaned as his partner began gloating again, the yellow ball he had just caught in one hand raised high like a trophy. "You're out, sucka! Hit the bleaches like the rest of the losers! My ball now!"
Before Sparky could even open his mouth to tell him to cut it out, Greg let out a grunt worthy of a tennis player - his way of faking effort in a throw - and tossed the banana-colored ball at one of the few teams nearest them.
"Aren't you gonna brain anyone with a ball?" Sparky asked his friend. "Might make the class end quicker."
"Wha-" Greg let out a bark of laughter, the blond tilting his head as a blue rubber ball sped past where his cranium just was, only to laugh again as he glanced back at Sparky. "Jesus, I almost thought you were for real."
"Honestly," Sparky continued, voice edged with irritation, "I'm debating it ."
"Well, if you were being a Serious Sparky, first, I'd say that murder is bad, mmmkay?"
The other boy raised an eyebrow. "Hasn't stopped you before."
"Y segundo, mi compadre," Greg continued in badly accented Spanish, completely ignoring Sparky's statement, "why would I wanna share the spotlight with anyone but my best bud? Look at us, we're killing it out here!"
"You mean, you," Sparky corrected with a roll of his eyes, doing his best to ignore the sweat dripping down his brow. "You're killing it."
"Splitting hairs."
"Fuck your hair," Sparky hissed as he held back a yelp from a ball that whizzed a bit too close to his head for comfort. He really couldn't help but get annoyed looking at the blond next to him, his hair especially serving as a source of irritation.
The fucking thing isn't even damp! Sparky groused. It was true, there was no denying that much just from looking at his partner. Greg's face was as dry as the moment he had changed for gym, and not a single drop of sweat could be seen on him. Fuckin' disgusting is what it is.
Oh, sure, he knew it wasn't fair or even fucking logical to actually be annoyed at Greg for his powers, but considering the fact that he was already annoyed at his friend for much more than that, Sparky didn't really see the point in letting this one go. Fuck! The boy in yellow shorts yanked himself out of his thoughts as he batted away a purple ball launched towards his chest using his own hitball, and threw himself to the side a moment later to avoid another one aimed at center mass.
Jesu- He couldn't even get the thought out before he was forced to duck backwards again to avoid another ball, but even as he stepped forward to right himself, his eyes widened. One foot in front of the other was simple enough. Not so much when your legs were all twisted up trying to dodge a series of hard rubber balls.
Shit! He bit back a grunt as he slammed onto the floor, palms out as he landed in a general approximation of a pushup position. Even as his palms stung and his arms strained from the impact, he only let out a quiet, disgruntled "...o-kay, then."
"You good, Ax?"
Sparky glanced up at Greg's slightly worried-looking face staring back down at him and once again bit something back, this time the urge to reply sarcastically. It took even more willpower not to reply the same way a half-second later as Greg simply tilted his head out of the way of a ball aimed at the back of his skull - without even looking - just to catch it with the palm of one hand and toss it back without missing a beat.
All in one single motion that looked almost too fucking smooth to be possible.
To add insult to injury, he tossed a middle finger over his shoulder at the thrower, the person letting out a pained scream as the ball hit home.
Real subtle there. Sparky's eye twitched. "Yeah, fine."
"Good." His mouth quirked up into a smirk. "Now, get up. We're still in the game."
"We're still in the game," Sparky mocked under his breath. Almost thirty minutes into gym class and this asshole hasn't even worked up a sweat. As Sparky rose to his feet, the teenager raised an arm to wipe the moisture from his own face. Whatever, least I didn't break my fucking nose or something. The thought came and left an instant before his eyes widened again, his hand coming away from his eyes just in time for him to catch sight of another red rubber ball.
This one rocketing right at his face. And of fucking course.
The hard sound of rubber and skin sounded off a scant moment later.
"The f-" Sparky could only blink in complete surprise as he stared at the back of the pale palm just inches from his face. Before he could even jump back in surprise, he watched as Greg Veder launched the ball back where it came from with more force than anything else he had let fly the entire class.
The red streak blurred across the gym on a seeking path toward it's target, the one person who had thrown it. All Sparky could do was let out a surprised bark of a laugh as the projectile hit home with full force, smashing into Mal Duncan's shocked face the way only a properly thrown dodgeball could.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
The bottle blond stumbled back, hands clutching the front of his face, as a stream of blood made its way through his tightly clasped fingers. "FUCKKK!" A stream of less-intelligible profanities followed that one as he leaned back into the wall his group of fellow wannabe Nazis had formed behind him.
"Ouchie ouch, my hand." Greg Veder shook his fingers as he took a few steps closer to the bleeding Empire junior, the shorter teen letting out a slight groan of pain that rang false to anyone paying close attention. "Man, I bet that's gonna cramp up later."
He glanced up at Mal, head tilted to the side, and let his hand fall to his side as he grinned at the furiously bleeding teenager trying to bite down his very real pain. "But your nose, though… What is that now? Twice in four hours that I smashed it?"
"I swear to God, Veder!" is what Mal tried to say but with his hands clutching his nose, it could really have been anyone's guess, honestly.
Fortunately, Greg guessed correctly.
"I have to wonder if God would ever answer Nazi prayers, y'know considering you all share some very differing ideas on the Jews." His grin grew, Greg shooting the larger boy a look that screamed 'I'm not taking this seriously', because of course he wasn't.
Even now, the super-powered sophomore was doing his best to pull back on every hit, making his very best attempt at not punching a hole through the older boy trying to pound his face in. At the same time, Greg was also trying even harder to make every swing look like it actually took effort. It's way more of a struggle, he groused in his head. All this acting like I'm normal.
Granted, he had the 'roids excuse to fall back on, at least for why he was doing so well. Who knows how long that one's gonna last, though? Without even pausing to glance at him, Greg caught a swing aimed for his cheek, smirking at Mal as he held the larger boy's fist away. Before the junior could pull away, he struck back with a quick jab, fist landing dead center on his opponent's torso.
"Although, I'm pretty sure the Big Guy killed a ton of Jews one way or another, so maybe he would." He shook his head, faking a disappointed look. "It'd be a sick world if God was a Nazi but y'know, kinda funny, right?" The last syllable was punctuated with the sound of an unyielding fist on flesh, Mal not being quick enough to avoid a purposely slow punch.
"What? Too much for you?"
"Fuck. You." The junior growled, teeth bared as he rushed the other teenager.
Deftly avoiding Malcolm's blind swing, Greg grinned. "Think fast, chucklenuts!" With a quick step forward, the blond retaliated with one more quick jab to his former bully's stomach.
It wasn't much, really, but it did the job.
Mal's back slammed into the chain link fence to the accompanying noise of rattling metal and his own groans, the bully grunting loudly as he made impact with his friends not there in time to keep him upright. The bottle blond hunched over with a hand on his chest as he tried his best to rise to his feet, making noises that made him sound more like a rather pissed-off zombie than anything else.
"Jeez, Mal, you gotta be in a lot of pain right now. If I was you, I'd quit while I was… behind? Conscious? Breathing?"
Greg let out another laugh before pausing after a second or so. Eyebrow raised, he glanced around the gathered mob of students crowding the alley, all of them here to watch the fight. Not a single one of them were even so much as snickering at his attempt at a joke. Well, I thought it was funny, at least.
He fought the urge to frown, mood picking up again as he glanced down at Mal. "Whatever, anyway, just give up, man. You gotta be feeling this ass-kicking in your bones by now."
Malcolm raised his head from his position on the ground to shoot the shorter boy a look filled with equal parts pain and rage, Greg smiling at Mal as if daring him to try something. "I don't feel shit!"
"Ooh, Zen Bullyism. Nice."
"Kick her in the balls!"
Greg grinned. "You hear that? That's my boyfriend hyping me up. It's the sound of sweet, sweet bromance uninhibited by racial boundaries."
"Gaaaaaay!"
"Love you too, Sparkplug."
Both the bully's hands dropped to his sides, fingers tightening into fists as knuckles cracked menacingly and for a few seconds of hateful glaring, the Empire wannabe appeared to be on the verge of action. "H-how?"
"How am I kicking your ass?" Greg shrugged. "Practice? Luck? Expensive Tinker steroids?" He said the last part in a low voice and a playful wink in Mal's direction. "Yeah, I know you've been spreading my business everywhere. I pay attention. I know these things."
"I swear…" Mal bit out through gritted teeth as he stood back up straight, shaking his head as if to push away the pain through that physical action.
"What was that?" Greg mocked, surveying his bloodied hand as if he just received a fresh manicure. "Seriously, it all sounds like trombone noises to me every time you open your mouth."
"I'm… I… You..."
"I-I-I-Ay-yi-yi, spit it out," Greg interrupted with a snort. "I don't got all day. What is it?"
After a few moments of struggling to get the words out, Mal stilled. "You're gonna pay."
He blinked. "No, seriously… what?"
"I said…"
"No…" Greg rolled his eyes, letting out a laughing scoff as he did so. "I heard you but I can't believe you're saying that again." He shook his head, one hand rubbing his nose as he stared back at the bottle blond with quickly dimming interest. "Like... Mal, you keep telling me I'm gonna pay but I'm still the one kicking your ass for free."
With a roll of his eyes, he turned his back on the junior and with a nod to Sparky, the two friends began walking away, the crowd of students, Empire and not, parted to give way
Before the two fully left the semi-circle of students crowding them, Mal shakily got to his feet, shoulders trembling even in their hunched position. "I'll kill you, shithead! Don't… don't you turn your fucking back on me, Veder!"
Greg let out a loud sigh and paused in place to glance over his shoulder. He stared at the other teenager with a look of literal boredom for a few seconds, his smile vacant. "Oh my god, I kinda already did, dude. If you're gonna say something, say it already. This literally isn't even fun anymore."
"I said," Mal bit out with renewed anger as he reared up again, almost snarling his words like some animal, "you're gonna fucking pay for this, Veder."
His shout echoed throughout the alley, the gathered students suddenly quieting as they took in the threat along with the almost insane look that Malcolm fixed Greg with.
As if unable to read the sudden change in mood, Greg laughed again at the top of his lungs, almost bending over to match Mal's position from before until he just… stopped. Without reason or justification, the near hysterical laughter ceased and Greg's expression blanked.
To the further confusion of everyone around him, the natural blond suddenly took a few steps back and glanced upwards, a knowing look crossing his face before he closed his eyes a moment later and let out a low whistle.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
When Greg opened his eyes again, something felt undeniably different. Whether it was the air or the ground under his feet, Axel Ramon didn't know. As an odd feeling of nervousness crept down his back, all he knew was that he didn't like whatever it was. From Mal's expression, the older boy definitely didn't.
"What? You're gonna kill me?" Greg Veder glanced at the Empire junior with narrowed eyes and a smile that looked more than a little eager, his gaze so focused on his target that Sparky could have sworn that his friend didn't even notice the crowd's sudden burst of whispers at his threat. "You're gonna put me in the hospital?"
Regardless of that, Sparky was sure that Greg had to notice their reaction as the next four words left his mouth and the back alley exploded with noise, the audience finally getting over their surprise at the upset to actually cheer for the first time.
"You and what army?"
As if taking Greg's words as cue, several more Empire wannabes and newbies stepped forward to square up around Malcolm, looking ready and determined to make the cocky sophomore eat his words.
Greg spared Mal a grin, his body language shifting in a way that left Sparky wondering who he was looking at. The slope of his shoulders, the graceful stance, the curl to his fingers…
It all contrasted rather shockingly with the too-wide smile on Greg's face, an expression that looked more like a kid at a birthday party than anything else.
Sparky somehow felt that made it worse.
"Bring it."
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EllenTenshima
Tengu Mask
I feel like I'm reading a completely different story.
Neepa
Always pondering story possibilities
- Location
- Germany
We kinda are because we're seeing the "new" side of Greg's character.
The one that moved on from an awkward teenager through beating 90% of the ABB thugs and the Dragon of Kyushu twice.
And as it stands it's not a particularly pretty sight.
Sparky is gonna pay for all this instead of Greg, isn't he?
ZFighter18
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
- Location
- Maryland
Yeah, it's been pretty dark for a while but all school based chapters are going to be much lighter, especially now that everything that was weighing on him before - his mom, Emma, the city - is mostly resolved.
He's having fun with his powers again, basically.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
He's getting cocky and Sparky's gonna pay for it ain't he. Greg is letting the power get his head (TBF he did shit on the guy that fights Endbringers twice). This is gonna be painful
- Location
- Missouri
We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Greg Vedder's last pretense of being normal, slain in its prime by the realization that normal life sucks and the joy of beating up Nazis.
- Location
- Salt Lake City, UT, USA
To be fair, it could be a cunning plot to normalize degrading and abusing Nazis.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I fail to see how your hypothesis in any way conflicts with the other hypothesis.
- Location
- Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Well if he successfully normalizing beating and degrading Nazis, then his behavior will seem entirely normal and he'll be "able" to "pass".
- Location
- Missouri
Except the problem isn't the beating and humiliation. It's the fact that he's not only capable of beating a motherfucker with another motherfucker, he's capable of dual-wielding motherfuckers nunchuck style while beating all the motherfuckers that think they're hard enough to step up.
Lag 6.6
ZFighter18
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
- Location
- Maryland
The next chapter will be up on Patreon on Thursday and published next week Tuesday. By next week, I should be uploading two chapters on Patreon within the week. By the end of next month, I should have a backlog of 4 chapters, at minimum 3.
Lag 6.6
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Multiple muffled screams of "my nose" didn't seem to make the situation any more serious to Greg Veder, at least from what Sparky could tell. Judging by his belly laughs and the way he pointed at Mal and his friends groaning in pain on the floor, it managed to accomplish quite literally the opposite.
Granted, it was hard not to laugh at all of them on the verge of tears, not that Sparky held himself back much either. I mean, everyone else is laughing. Might as well join in. Truthfully, a large chunk of the crowd were in stitches themselves, the sight of Mal and his friends so quickly beaten by Greg Veder of all people hilarious to see, even more so when the air was still filled with cries of "by thode!" as the Empire kids clutched their bleeding and likely-broken noses.
Despite having been knocked around the most, Mal still somehow found it in himself to rise to his feet, shaky as they were. Forcing himself to tear his hands away from where he had cradled his bruised face, the Kaiser Youth spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm to the alley floor, the action eliciting several loud "Eewwws" from the crowd that he willfully ignored.
"Listen..." Greg began again, laughter fading away as he spoke, "listen, we're not so different you and me. Like, our hair colors are very similar, for one."
Mal let out another hacking cough, stumbling back just a bit as he tried to stay upright. Even still, he pushed past it, body tense as his meaty hands clenched back again into tight fists.
"Ew. Point is, Malcom, we live in a world of similar things. Lots of stuff is the same as other stuff." Greg's lips turned down in a slight grimace, head tilted to the side. "I forget where I was going with this but the takeaway is that your parents don't love each other or you."
Malcolm bristled, uttering a mountain of swears under his breath and, without a doubt, in his own head. "I swear," he spat the words out, almost hissing them even. "Veder… I fuckin'..."
"You fucking what?" Greg asked with a smile, Sparky's frown reappearing again as he watched his friend take a step forward, hands out in front of himself as if daring the junior to try something.
Okay, fight's over. Sparky thought to himself, about to yell out to Greg to quit it. Too much of a good thing or whatever.
"I h-h… Fuck you." Mal managed a bloody triumphant smile through the pain as he sneered back at Greg. "You and your fucking buttfag can go suck each other off."
...on the other hand, Sparky folded his arms, leaning back up against the alley wall as his eyes returned to their apathetic, half-lidded state. A couple more hits might teach him to shut the fuck up, I guess.
"Now, that's just mean," Greg outright laughed, clearly enjoying how Mal seemed to flinch every time he did so, hits to his pride almost as damaging as those to his body. "You don't mean that. Like, I actually have a girl though."
Mal grit his teeth and rose to his feet fully, fists clenched tight as he shouted out, "Fuck you and her! I hope that g-ginger bitch dies in the hospital!"
Greg Veder froze in place.
He wasn't the only one.
Amber eyes widened as realisation crept into his thoughts slowly. A second or two later, it hit him all at once in a sudden wave of awareness.
Sparky took a step forward.
"... Greg."
Both Sparky and Mal paled as they witnessed the playful and slightly vacant smile disappear from Greg's expression. "What did you just say?"
Heart pounding in his chest, Sparky made to get in front of the blond, but he wasn't anywhere fast enough. By the time he had taken just one more, his friend was already right in front of his opponent, staring the taller boy in the face. The faint hostility on Greg's face ratcheted up without him even twitching as he leaned closer, eyes like ice.
"I said, What did you just say?"
Mal opened his mouth again, expression defiant if unwary, but he didn't get a chance to answer back. Five fingers wrapped themselves deftly around the junior's throat almost faster than anyone could see, keeping him from letting out a breath, let alone a sentence.
"Greg!"
The pressure around the bully's neck grew tighter despite the fingers around it not so much as twitching an inch, the bully's back pressed up against the chain link fence dividing the alley. Heavy, meaty hands beat at Greg Veder's face and body, yet he barely even blinked. His eyes remained focused, intently so on Mal's increasingly panicked expression, a growing fear visible in his eyes.
"Brah, stop it." Sparky dropped his hand on Greg's outstretched arm and locked eyes with his friend. It took him all he had not to flinch as that anger was directed his way, grim seriousness more than unsettling on a face that just wasn't built for it. After a moment, though, the blond's expression quickly cooled as he met Sparky's eyes. "You don't gotta do this," he added, as he tightened his grip on Greg's arm in a reassuring squeeze.
It didn't take long for Greg to nod, expression lightening as the tension faded from his face. Sparky felt his own mood rise slightly but not by much. Just a slight flicker of his eyes to the side let him know that someone's hand was still tight around someone else's neck, the second someone beginning to go blue in the face as he thrashed helplessly against Greg's grip.
As if fighting against himself, the sophomore's hand trembled for a few seconds before he finally extricated his fingers from Mal's thick neck, the bully falling to the ground in a gasping heap of sweaty, bruised limbs.
Letting go of a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding, Sparky spoke up again, "He's not worth it, okay? Trust me on this. You're better than him. You and me. Ain't that right, brah?"
The entire alleyway was almost completely silent, apart from the hushed and quiet mutters of the crowd of high-schoolers that showed up expecting a murder and the fading groans of Malcolm's crew. With that, it was all too easy for Sparky to catch his friend's whispered reply.
"...Yeah."
"Can't hear ya." He threw an arm around Greg's shoulder and turned both of them around as he forced a smile onto his face. Before he spoke again, he began stepping towards the alley exit as naturally as he could, Greg following along. "What was that?"
Greg smiled back, shaking his head. "I said, yeah. You heard me."
"There we go," Sparky continued smiling, the expression starting to waver back to something more his usual expression, the teenager feeling more relaxed with every he took away from what was almost an attempted murder. he punctuated the last sentence with a lazy gesture to Mal and his friends on the ground. As the gathered mob of students parted to make way for both of them, Sparky let out another breath. "I thought I went deaf for a sec."
"Holy shit."
"I know."
"Did you see Veder's guns? Fucker's shredded like cheese."
"Right, like bro, where can I get those fucking 'roids?"
"Yeah, Mal got fucked all the way up."
"Like, is he gonna be okay?"
"No idea, but did you know Veder was a fucking monster?"
"Fuckin' hell, did he even get hit once?"
"I heard he was on 'roids."
"I heard he joined the Empire."
"I heard Veder was gonna die."
"Me too. I bet on Mal."
"Fuck me, I'm out twenty bucks."
"Why's he fighting Mal anyway?"
"Dude, I don't know. I showed up to see a murder, not a massacre."
"You think you can find what he's juicing with for cheap?"
"Fuck, we gotta pay Veder lunch money now?"
"Something happened to Barnes? Why's she in the hospital?"
Holy shit. Sparky felt his eye twitch at the comments growing in volume around them as he tried to walk Greg out of the alley as quickly as possible. Could you retards shut the fuck up? They didn't understand the seriousness of what he was dealing with, Sparky very well knew that, but they just fucking saw the same thing he did. Pissing off the guy who did that just wasn't smart, in any fucking sense of the word.
"Veder!"
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck me. The olive-skinned boy closed his eyes and sighed, head hanging down the instant he heard the angry, guttural scream.
"Vederrrrrr!"
A half-second later, he forced himself to bite back an audible curse as Greg stood up straighter at the voice calling his name a second time, unconsciously shrugging off Sparky's arm from his shoulder. His face hardened again, mouth once again a single flat line, as he turned around in the opposite direction.
Sparky opened his eyes to sigh again and turned around, entirely aware of what he would see.
And to his complete lack of surprise, he was right.
Sparky, and everyone else within the confines of the alley, stared right at a beaten, bloody and bruised Malcolm Duncan. The junior was struggling to stay upright from the looks of him, breaths leaving him in hard, heavy gulps. His neck was already darkening from where Greg's fingers had tried to deprive him of air and the Empire member seemed to cradle his right arm on reflex, probably having hurt it somehow - maybe from falling on it wrong, Sparky mused.
Smeared and half-dried blood marred the seventeen year-old's face, that along with the dampness of sweat did it's job in making him look even more of a deranged mess.
Pulling himself up to full height, Mal shouted Greg's name one more time, clearly too angry to care about the fact that he was in no shape to fight.
And yet, he charged forward anyway.
Amber eyes flicked to his side to take in how his friend simply waited in place as Mal rushed forward. Greg seemed utterly unbothered by it, body language seemingly loose and unprepared, but Sparky knew better than to believe what his eyes told him. It's not like he needs to be ready. He wasn't sure exactly how strong the blond was right now, but judging from what he'd seen - what the entire internet had seen - Sparky was sure that letting him use that strength in anger was a bad idea.
"I'll kill you!" Mal screamed out another pointless threat as he finally neared the smaller boy, swinging his fist like a hammer. Greg Veder ducked the first blow without a word, ducking to the right as Mal was sent scrambling to an unsteady stop from his own reckless momentum.
The rampaging steroid user turned around, unhinged rage in his eyes, and made to rush forward again. "Fucking die alr-"
Hard knuckles met a harder jaw.
"FUCK! God fucking damnit! Shit!" Axel Ramon let the curses fly as he stepped forward and shook his aching hand, regretting that last decision even as Mal lay dazed on the ground in front of him. "Why the fu- whydididothat? Fuckmechristalmighty."
"Wow. Nice job. I had that, though."
Sparky slowly turned his head around to face the speaker, one hand cradling the other as his eyes watered from the pain, and did his best to flip his friend the bird. "What you had would have landed you in juvie. You're welcome."
Greg's lip twitched and he began to snicker, his attempt to hold back a laugh failing almost immediately. "Thank you, bro. I'll buy you some lunch or whatever. My treat." He slapped his palm on his friend's back, eliciting a yelp of pain and a dirty look, but the blond just laughed even harder. "And some ice for that hand too."
Asshole. He narrowed his eyes at his friend as Greg broke into another bout of laughter at that last comment. Fucking idiot. I half-broke my knuckles for this dumbass.
Utterly tired of today already, Sparky shook his head, only to let out a slight hiss at the new source of pain that was his entire back. Gritting his teeth, he glanced down at Mal's face and stared him in the eye, the other boy clearly conscious but too beaten to move. "Know your fucking place, dipshit," He spat down next to his face, the bully not even flinching as the wad of spit barely missed his cheek. "That was me being nice."
"Ooh, I got chills from that. Scary Sparky."
The olive-skinned teenager rolled his eyes at that remark from Greg, simply shooting him a dirty look. "You're an idiot."
Greg shrugged. "High-five?"
Sparky shot him another glare, raising the single hand he was cradling.
"Oh, shit, yeah, let's get you some ice on that." He threw a hand around Sparky's shoulders and began rambling in his own special way as he guided him towards the alley exit. "Ice first. Food stop later. I'm feeling… chinese?"
With that, the duo casually made their way out of the alley with their business complete, leaving Malcolm Duncan to stare at their backs as they left, his face blank and expressionless.
"Holy shit, that just happened."
"I knoooooow."
"Who knew Veder was a psycho?"
"I knoooow."
"What do we do with these guys? Are they knocked out or what?"
"... I don't know."
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
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