Zoanthropy [8-Bit Dystopia] [Video Game Multicross SI]

weredrago2 · Nov 27, 2023

The night was the worst time to be alone in the City. Neon and fluorescent lamps of every imaginable color streaked across the walls of buildings, denying you the peace of darkness unless you clung to the sanctuary of the gutters. Staying in the bright lights, as inviting as they looked, was as much a danger as the dark. Around these parts, being seen as being in need was an invitation to be kicked while you were down. No matter where you went, the cold wore at your bones, seeping in through the weathered holes in your clothes and shoes. The hunger gnawed at you like a starving beast, and it was a small miracle that one of them hadn't given me rabies yet.

Then again, this wasn't exactly a charmed life I was living. I'd only been out on the streets of the City for a few weeks, tops. I had stopped putting out a cup and begging for change, simply enough to get back on my feet, as I hadn't fully recovered from the last time that the wrong person saw my vulnerability. With the way my ankle still sent spikes of pain up and down my leg with every step, I couldn't tell if it was ever going to improve. I had to be a bit choosier about how I got my food and picked my battles. Skulking in the dark, leaning on a sturdy plank that I'd been using as a crutch about as much as I did to persuade strangers to keep their distance. I hadn't used it for anything else, save the giant insects and rats that tried to get a drop on me while I was sleeping.

Where the fuck was I? It was the million dollar question. I didn't know where I was, or even when I was. All I knew, from what little I got out of anyone who'd deign to answer when I screamed the question at them, was that I was in the City. There was no Florida. No America. No Earth. The only place anyone knew about was a refuse-ridden, industrial hellscape called the City. My money and ID weren't any good here, wherever I was. I had to sell my wallet to a pawn shop, as even "genuine" leather was something of a rarity here. It let me buy food for a couple of days, until I had to go back to the dark.

When I did have the money to clean myself off and look presentable enough to enter a building, none of the products were recognizable. It was all in English. The names were close to or rhymed with the familiar brands, and the taste was never too far off as to be truly alien, but nothing looked the way that it should be. Nothing was the same.

Every day I lived like this, hanging on by a thread, I felt another lightyear away from home.

It was on my lowest night when the strangers approached. A man and a woman, with gentle eyes that were a rarity in the City. The two wore bright colors that were easy on the eyes.

"Are you well?" one of them asked me. The man.

"Stay back!" I said, in a nervous panic. I didn't know who these people were, and every experience I'd had so far had been negative.

"Are you sick?" the woman asked. "Hungry?"

"I'm fine," I said unconvincingly.

"We don't mean you any harm, sir. We're only asking because we have food to share. If you don't mind me saying, you look like you could use some kindness."

My guard was lowered by the burning pit in my stomach, but I wasn't born yesterday. These people were too clean-cut to be genuine. The only question was what they wanted out of me that meant I could get the food, because that was the only thing that mattered.

"I… What do I have to do?"

"Nothing much," the woman said nonchalantly. Like this wouldn't mean life or death to me. "Come with us."

The woman gestured to a black van on idle at the other end of the road. I hadn't noticed it before. On the side of the vehicle was a corporate logo, of a red circle with a red and black line sticking out of it. Over that was a name: Tyron Cybertec Corporation.

Why did that sound familiar?

"You won't be gone for long. We only want to conduct a survey. Understand the opinion of the man on the street."

"You need me to go with you, in a black van, to conduct a survey."

"That's correct."

I shouldn't have gone with them.

"I can leave if I'm not comfortable, right?"

I knew it had to be a trap. I didn't know how, or why, outside of human trafficking. Did they want my organs?

"Of course."

I should've known better. The woman sounded like she'd answered that a thousand times.

"Then… okay. I'll go with you."

I should've recognized the signs and ran, but I didn't. At that moment, I was so desperate, I thought I would've done anything to survive. I was expecting for this "survey" to end in a cage match with another homeless man corralled into an underground arena, fighting each other for the camera. If that's where this led, then it couldn't be worse than where I was.

I couldn't begin to comprehend how wrong I was until the paralytic gas started pouring out from the air conditioner the second I closed the door.

Compared to what came next, that was the easy part.

The rest were the invasive scans, the needles, the electroconvulsive therapy, the transfusions, the metamorphosis--

I opened my eyes and awoke from my old nightmare in a cold sweat. Unnerved, but not terribly surprised. It was only a dream. Once I realized that, I told myself that I was more annoyed than afraid, and that it shouldn't be such a big deal anymore.

That wasn't the same as not being afraid. My mind was abuzz with flashes of things I could've done better, and things I never had a choice in. I took deep, deep breaths, until my heart rate got back to a less elevated level. Approaching a normal heart rate.

It's nothing new. Nothing I haven't dealt with before. Can't redo the past.

If I could, I'd tear those fuckers apart.

Turning over in bed, I could see that my wood-paneled digital clock read 5 in the morning. I had another hour before I had to get ready for work, but I could also see the date I had circled on the calendar. Today was the big day of the meeting with the boss and the department heads, so I guess I could use the extra time to look my best. Besides, I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep with my head like this if I tried. So I opted to crawl out of bed, turn off my alarm, and start my day early.

It was no great feat to get from one side of my apartment to the other and fire up the burner, as the square footage of this place compared favorably only to the parking space that came with it. There were much better places that I could stay in with the cash I'd saved up over the past two years, but this flat was far away from the bright lights and noise of downtown, to the extent that I could get peace and quiet whenever I needed them. Having a landlady that didn't ask inconvenient questions also helped streamline my experience as a tenant. The accommodations were such that I had a basic kitchen, a bathroom, and a save to stow my savings. After getting a taste of abject poverty, Spartan living arrangements were good enough for me. I couldn't complain.

When my quick shower was done, I wiped away the steam in the mirror. My face was less gaunt and haggard than when I'd been on the streets, but a brief stint on a starvation diet and a lot of physical exercise since had caused me to shed excess weight and pick up an amount of lean muscle. Not that I'd recommend my crash course from a sedentary lifestyle to my current one to anyone, any time soon. My curly, brown hair had thinned out some from stress, and I'd had it cut short to look neat and professional to go with the appearance I wanted to match around me. The beard I'd been growing out had to go, too, and I did a quick shave to make myself look more professional. More corporate. The blue blazer, red tie, white slacks, brown loafers, and my custom, ceratanium-framed glasses completed the thin veneer of me belonging to this fucked up world.

Once I was done getting dressed, I took a sip of the freshly-brewed coffee from my moka pot. The candy-colored beans were an EggDyne import, cloned and cultivated on West Side Island. After that, I whipped up a bowl of chicken, eggs, and yellow rice with algae pellets. The fresh ingredients were sourced from the local night market for flavor, while the algal drek was a distasteful necessity to ensure I got the rest of the vitamins and amino acids. The dish was off the beaten path from a donburi bowl, but remained well within the vague definitions of a protein bowl. When I was more strapped for time, I would've bought instant noodles and a cup of coffee from the ZEED konbini on the way to work. If I'm in a real rush, I pour the coffee into the noodles and consume them as a singular entity. Maximum efficiency, maximum punishment for running late.

As much as I was loath to admit it, there were benefits to waking up early. Like a breakfast that didn't taste like coffee and ramen at the same time.

The sun was only beginning to poke out of the smoggy skyline when I locked the door to my flat and started walking down the steps, waving to Mrs. Kumabachi as I reached the car.

"Good morning, Mrs. Kumabachi!"

My landlady was watering the plants outside of the apartment complex, getting a decent vegetable garden going in spite of the pollution. We frequently traded recipes, produce, and gardening tips, as cooperation meant we didn't have to eat the algae filler that was adjacent to dog food as often.

Mrs. Kumabachi beat her translucent wings and ascended to get more water coverage on her garden. She then set down the metal watering can, swiveled around midair, and arranged her mandibles into what by this point I was pretty sure was a smile.

"Ohayo, Hudson! Is that a new suit?"

Incidentally, my landlady was a red and black bee in a dress who stood about a meter tall. I pegged her as being a first-generation uplift, given that she looked much more insect than human, which scared off some potential tenants even in an uplift-friendly zone like Ridgeside. I didn't know what kind of bee she was, and I figured it'd be rude to ask for her particular taxonomy. Thankfully, by the time I became a tenant here, I had already learned all of the accidental faux pas you could stumble into when taking to uplifts through trial and error. By this point, I could pass sensitivity training with flying colors.

"It is! I'm gunning for a promotion today, and I wanted to look my best!"

"Such a diligent young man!" she said praisingly. "I don't suppose you could get Kyuko a job at NYAMCO, could you? Put in a good word for Goro, perhaps?"

Mrs. Kumabachi wriggled her right antenna in a wink-like fashion, a gesture that was followed by a reminder that her daughter was twenty five and single. I was able to get away with saying I'd see what I could do. I hadn't been able to set up a proper meeting in person with Kyuko because she had an active nightlife in Monsteropolis that kept her busy. I doubted we hung out in the same circles after dark, but if I happened to see another giant bee woman that looked like Mrs. Kumabachi out and about, I'd be sure to introduce myself.

Extricating myself from my landlady's matchmaking efforts, I said my goodbyes and got into my car to take off for the NYAMCO HQ. My vehicle of choice was a light blue Age Erriso. It was a dead ringer for a Fiat 500, fulfilling the same niche of being a small and cheap city car for a daily commute. I was leaving the apartment and hitting the Ridgeside roads at the ideal time. Early enough to avoid getting caught in traffic, while not being so early that you're at risk of being t-boned by the restless street racers.

I accounted for everything, save that, with the radio broken, I was stuck with my own thoughts. I thought about the other places I'd been to since I got stuck here, before I settled in the zone of Ridgeside. How well of a job I've been doing to shed off the pieces of my old life, and putting this new one back together.

The City had about a hundred of these cloistered districts, or zones. Each zone had their own quirks, rules, and idiosyncrasies, many of which banded together to operate as quasi-nations or city-states onto themselves. The lion's share of the habitable zones were split between the "Big Three", a triune compact composed of the largest megacorporations in the City: WilyCorp, EggDyne, and Metpharm. Those were the closest to what I might recognize as "real" countries, with their own deranged twists and turns that made me want to steer clear of them when I could help it.

Maybe I was upset because I was the only one who thought a world run by Doctor Wily, Eggman, and Mother Brain was fucking insane. Instead of people listening to me when I tried to warn them that the City was in need of a top-down reset, I was the crazy one for remembering a world that the megacorps didn't control. A world where they weren't real. Just harmless video games, which were an entire medium of entertainment that fell to the wayside after the damn Space Invaders blew up the Earth and smothered it in the crib. The survivors of the Invader Wars, which was what they had been calling that conflict ever since, came to the City as a second chance. A second chance that they only took a couple of years to completely squander.

WilyCorp controlled their territory with an iron fist and his hordes of robots. Or bioroids, as the brand was dubbed. I spent enough time in the overcrowded megaregion of Monsteropolis to know that I was all too close to picking a fight with a Robot Master over how thoroughly ruthless the Sniper Joe enforcers got with their version of law and order. EggDyne was expanding rapidly into the inhospitable wilds around the City, bleeding them dry of resources to fuel his mad ambitions. I couldn't help myself from jumping into the fray and trashing a few badniks that were harassing the uplifts in the favela-esque slums of the Hill Zones, only to throw up after witnessing the wriggling wads of biomass that powered them. Then there was Mother Brain, who must've taken over Metpharm from the shadows, because no one was pointing and screaming at the alien supercomputer puppeteering the genetics and bioengineering firm that makes most of our medicine.

The firm whose subsidiary took the fall while they went unpunished!

TYRON. They deserved everything that they got and more, but that isn't enough.

I took a deep breath, raised my foot off the gas, and shook my head. It was a dumb idea to lose my temper behind the wheel, and it wasn't like you could get good auto insurance with all of the car thefts. The only defense I had was having a car no one else wanted.

There were other zones outside of those controlled by the Big Three, like Ridgeside. They were controlled by the lesser corps, the major gangs, and those groups that fell somewhere in between. Once I figured out what was going on with the Big Three, it didn't take long to figure out what everyone else was up to. ZEED's ninja cabal was running all of those gas stations and retail chains. GD Tech were arms dealers with a red Triforce logo, whose owner was enthusiastic about integrating Outlands tribes into his company and paying handsomely for any relics of the extinct aliens that lived on this world before us. The X-Syndicate were a high-octane mafia with a hand in every gangland zone from Tokyo-to to Virtua City. Even the seafood at the supermarket were up to something, because the prawn fished out of the Lunar Bay looked like xenomorphs ready to eat us if we took our eyes off of them.

It was maddening, but no one listened when I tried to tell them the truth. When I couldn't take it anymore, I'd shout to the heavens everything that was wrong with this miserable planet. That was when the wrong person eventually overheard what I said. Bioroids, badniks, biomonsters, ninjas, and all sorts of miscellaneous freaks that wanted to silence me. They only stopped chasing when their heads were involuntarily separated from their shoulders, and I ran to the next zone where their masters lost track.

With exceptions. For those rare ones that had extra cyberware or bio-mods that kept them moving without a head, I'd keep cutting until the whole body fit into the trash can.

The City was treacherous, in its own way. When Earth was destroyed, mankind needed a new home, on a new world that they could call their own. They called it Princepts Dominaire, or "Hyrule". To construct so many habitation blocks for all of the arriving humans, they used robots. There was supposed to be an artificial intelligence guiding them called the S.I.M., but it broke years ago. The unattended robots kept building, and building, and building without them. By the time human oversight caught up to the machines, the robots had created the City. Destitute, thoughtless, industrial sprawl in every direction, until the City covered forty percent of the planet's surface.

No one's stopped them, so they must still be building.

I was trying to look for a sanctuary in the City, which was a lot like searching for a strand of hay in a stack of used needles. I wasn't the only vagrant in the City, of course. I'd only been at this for a couple of months after escaping Tyron, and many of these homeless have been at it for much longer than me. A lot of people slipped between the cracks, with no one to fish them out but each other. When they weren't dragging each other down.

One of them had let slip over a trash can fire that this zone had a place for people in our positions to rest our heads, if only for a night. A place where we wouldn't be chased out, beaten, or arrested. Maybe even fed, which would save me the trouble of hunting. It was Messian church, and I thought it was well worth the risk of scoping out where the rumors said it was hiding.

It wasn't. I don't even know why I kept getting my hopes up.

By the time I got there, it turned out that the Church of Messiah outpost was a burnt-out husk, its corpse desecrated with mounted skulls and the grotesque iconography of the Mutant League. These walking horrors had been rejected by society, and rejected society in turn. Depending on which member gang of the League you were dealing with, any "normal" person who entered their side of town was a dead man walking.

In hindsight, I should've taken the zone's letter designation of EA as a bad omen.

A big-boned, skeleton mutant in spiked leather armor broke away from the damned procession of hovercycles driving around a dumpster bonfire and approached me. The smoke reeked of burning flesh, and it wasn't pork that was cooking in the fire.

When you had a strong nose like mine, you could learn to tell the difference. I stopped eating pork and never accepted any food offered to me on the street, just to be safe.

"Lookie what we got here," the flensed abomination said with an odd sweetness to his voice. He took off his black shades, revealing no eyes under them. It was dark out, so I think he only did that for dramatic effect. Jackass. "Fresh meat for the barbeque!"

I rolled up my sleeves. I didn't want to ruin this outfit any more than I had to.

"You don't want this fight," I said flatly. "All of you. Walk. Away."

I didn't think it would be convincing, but I didn't care. They were officially warned.

"You on shrooms, man cub? We ain't exactly spooked by a shrimp like you."

Not recognizing a lifeline when they were tossed one, the mutant boss laughed off my threat. The rest of the mutants joined in on mocking me.

Sticks and stones. I shrugged.

"Suit yourself."

I stomped a foot down while the mutant boss prepared to cut me down with a machete. That was the psychological trigger I used to activate the change at-will.

Then came the pain, as my whole body ignited with rapid cell growth. My skeletal structure stretched and grew in some places while compacting and thickening in others. New flesh and thick, brown hair formed over my entire body to supplement my altered frame, which was now hunched-over with thick muscles along my enlarged arms and torso. Sharpened claws that were thicker than railroad spikes ripped out of my hands and feet, the former of which were now massive, five-fingered paws. The only parts left of my outfit were the ripped pants, a frayed shirt, and the black glasses sitting on my snout. They were chemically treated to darken from the heat emitted by my transformation.

The bike began to lose speed as the paling rider approached. If he was now having second thoughts, then tough shit. He made this bed, and now he could die in it. With a surge of wild strength, I lanced a clawed hand over the handlebars gored through his chest. The late mutant's machete flew out of his hands and the aircycle kept going until it hit a wall, exploding on impact into a sprinkling of metal shrapnel.

I flung the dead gang leader's corpse off my paw and I did the same thing to the next mutant to run up and attack me, a leprous reptile man with a face that only a brood queen could love. The rack of blades that was my hand made a clean, horizontal cut. Past the arms. Past the ribs. Past the spine. Everything in between was a non-factor. My hand came out the other side in a warm spray of crimson blood.

After the first and second casualty, the rest of the mutant gang had varied reactions. The dumbest percentile lunged at me, likely out of a misplaced loyalty for their dead leader. Coming at me as a mob of bodies must've helped them feel better. It certainly bought time for the smart ones to get on their bikes and drive away, leaving the slow ones behind. I didn't look like much, but I was shockingly agile on the ground and inside it. The slow ones ran as fast as they could until I caught up to them, and they were more than happy to lead me to where the smart ones were hiding if it'd save their own skins.

By that point, I had already inspected the Misfit Demons' camp around the church. My nose was very, very keen, and I was able to confirm what they were doing with the bodies sent in this direction by their inside man in the vagrant community that lured unsuspecting victims into their territory.

They were celebrating a victory over a rival gang with a feast.

A feast.

I tried not to get involved in local affairs. I really, really did. In times like this, I couldn't help myself. I just couldn't.

I stuck around long enough to execute any Mutant Leaguers wearing the colors of the Misfit Demons that I saw on the street, poured hi-grade biodiesel all over the old arena the rest of the survivors had been squatting in until "the heat died down", and tossed a torch to set it ablaze.

After the agonized screams abated, I left. Unsurprisingly, I hadn't heard so much as a peep from the man-eating community in the EA Zone ever since.

I stopped the car at the traffic light. All red.

I felt warm, and my heart racing again, breathing techniques be damned. Looking down at my hands on the steering wheel, I could see they were shaking again.

Again.

I didn't feel bad about taking out those cannibal mutants. Not even close. It weighed on me whenever I had to take a life. Any life. Just because they turned me into something that was pretty damn good at it, it didn't mean I liked it. It was at times like these where being a zoanthrope was especially emotionally draining.

I sighed, and took another swig from the cup of coffee I took to go. This time, I took it with a singular white pill from the bottle I kept in the glove compartment. When the light turned green, the tremors were gone. Almost like magic.

That wasn't the same thing as being a cure-all, or lacking in side effects. I had to moderate my use to one a day, because a smart gal like Mother Brain could've patched out the addictive qualities if she wanted to. If she was sufficiently motivated to do anything besides perpetuate the drug crisis to fund her Space Pirates terrorizing human ships in the rest of the star system surrounding the City.

Thanks, Mother Brain. Thanks a lot. I can't wait for Samus to get off her ass and rearrange your brainstem with Super Missiles.

One of the most critical things I learned about the City, once I had a better grasp of the bigger picture, was that there weren't any heroes. Not yet, at least. We had the Big Three, but no Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Samus Aran to put them in check. Nor any other heroes that should be around to fix this shithole of a planet, and anyone else who tried got stomped down. Hard. The closest thing to hide or hare of a hero was the Mario Bros' plumbing business in Monsteropolis and a maverick terrorist who called himself Bomberman. There were slim pickings for good guys, and at this point, I was dreading what would happen if I ever met one of my "heroes" in person.

Going against the grain and trying to be a hero in a world that only had contempt for the concept was going to get me killed. If I wanted to do some measure of good in the City, then I needed to dismiss any silly ideas I had of "fixing" the world with a few good acts and calling it a day. That didn't mean I had to be a scumbag and make the problems worse. I just needed to find a way to make being a hero less punishing an endeavor.

As it would turn out, I had already meandered into a workable solution. More than a few of the people chasing me, either because I knew too much or as one of Metpharm's extant lab experiments that slipped the leash, had committed a few crimes themselves. Murder, grand theft, homicide, espionage, assassination, and other charges that made them outlaws in the classic sense. If they stepped foot in the wrong corporate territory, as they often did in the service of their mutually-deniable backers, then the only value their life had was listed in the bounty value. The rest was a matter of taking their heads or other remains to the nearest collections office for a DNA scan, accepting whatever corporate scrip they were dishing out as the new currency, and moving on to the next zone. Since I technically lost height when transformed into a nocturnal creature with bad posture, I was able to pass myself off as a freakishly strong uplift, rather than a zoanthrope who could change between a mundane human and a killing machine that could fool most genetic scanners. Having had to make a name up on the spot, I left one that would plague me to this day.

Monty Mole. I could've put anything, and I put Monty Mole!

I couldn't pretend it was remotely ethical for me to tear people apart for money, but I'll gladly claim the high ground over cannibals, child killers, and literal fucking demons that escape from the pipes sticking out of the City to wreak havoc. Though, to be honest with myself, if I had the zenny saved up to spend on a full-sized Metal Gear, a nuclear missile, and an army of mooks to protect my hide from the City like some people, then I would. As much as I'd like to live in that world where I didn't have any problems, I didn't.

I didn't even live on Earth anymore. I lived in the City, where transforming into a mole mutant in defiance of nature was the only real form of protection I had.

It took years for me to distance myself from my time trapped in the hell that was being under Tyron's thumb. The company was torn apart by pissed off zoanthropes braver than I, and the public relations fallout of the revelation they'd been kidnapping people for their experiments. Not even the Big Three could get away with that, assuming they'd ever get caught in the act. The time after I'd made my escape was spent as a gray hat murderer, until I had enough cash to reconstruct a new life for myself here.

I tried not to get wistful about who I was, or where I came from, because I was never going back. Too much had changed, even if I could. I kept those things close to my heart, but I needed a fresh start. The finer details of my new ID were doctored, with the birth certificate and other essentials taken from a native of Port Edwards who died in a bus crash between zones. Ripe for forgery. His name was close to my old name, but different enough to draw a line between the past and present.

I am John Hudson. I am a normal man from Earth in extraordinary circumstances.

I am Monty Mole. I am a zoanthrope with claws that give Wolverine a run for his money.

I had to live for the present, and I liked living in Ridgeside. The hilly roads and vibrant shopping areas reminded me of pictures of Osaka and Yokohama. The sky and waters surrounding the zone were closer to blue than brown. The fields had grass that was green. You could regularly see the sun rising through the haze of smog. All of these little things that were the bare minimum on Earth were so vanishingly rare in the City.

The infrequent sirens in the distance were a comfort; someone was paying the ambulances and firemen. Ridgeside wasn't quite a democracy, as those were considered outdated. My boss, a red cat uplift named Goro, was more a semi-benevolent oyabun than an elected mayor. He did a decent job at separating his legal business from his more questionable ones, but I could only hope his dealings with the less reputable gangs out there were covered enough to pass an inspection. South Town provided a good buffer zone in case that psycho-powered nutjob M. Bison tried to expand into our far-flung corner of the City.

The City was a big, nasty place. I could only hope the heroes were on their way sooner, rather than later. Meanwhile, I'd get on with protecting the one zone I actually cared about. The money I made with NYAMCO was enough that I hadn't had to do "moonlighting" in quite a while, letting me avoid the emotional burnout that came with it.

NYAMCO, for its part, was a humble megacorp that produced pachinko games, slot machines, and other mechanical amusements for the rest of the City. Gambling money was so much cleaner than the blood money I collected from my side hustle. Once I was in a position with the company where people listened to what I had to say, I used the scraps of my incomplete business major and downright stolen ideas from home to keep ahead of the curve. The atrophied telecommunication infrastructure of the City made making the right calls to the right people a pain in the ass, but Goro practically rushed me through the process of exchanging sake once the revenue from fantasy sports betting flowed in.

At the moment, NYAMCO was running sportsbooks for fantasy counterparts to all of the major pastimes: Cyberball, Virtual Boxing, and Formula Zero Racing. Getting the last one off the ground when we did was a stroke of sheer luck, as a horrific nineteen car pileup caused the F-ZERO Grand Prix to be put on hold until they could figure out how to make the events less of a supersonic bloodbath. The people ran to NYAMCO to get their fix for race betting, and imagined the rest in their heads. Even when we had to split the profits with ZEED to use their phone lines, there was more than enough scrip to go around.

More than enough money to start taking steps to protect his zone from every other one.

I like this zone, and now I can make sure no one fucks it over.

I drove into the NYAMCO parking lot and turned off the car. No time to dwell on the past. Today was the day I switched out the bad hand that life dealt me for a new one.

When the meeting began, Goro remained an understated presence that silently exuded an air of authority from the end of the table. The other seats were occupied by my fellow underbosses. The first one on his right was a heavyset man in a kimono with a giant cannon sticking out of his head like a pompadour. How he was able to aim and shoot it without snapping his neck was beyond me. The first on Goro's left was a lithe woman with dirty blonde hair and red, spherical earrings in an orange jumpsuit. She was orbited by one of those yellow, one-eyed flying critters she adopted from one of her countless excursions into the Pipeworks.

They were Kenju and Tobi, the company's chief shinobi and plumber, respectively. While I was trusted as a member of the NYAMCO group by Goro, I was still the new guy. Most of the underbosses knew me as the "normal" human involved with our new gambling rackets, making me seem unqualified for the responsibility I was asking to take on. Goro's word meant that they had to hear me out, but earning their respect meant the difference between this plan of mine going smoothly or becoming nigh-impossible.

Behind the table, I could make out the silhouette of Goro's ever-present bodyguard, Taira. The man was a red-haired, pale-skinned ghoul of a mutant, whose samurai armor invoked the image of a restless spirit. He never spoke during the meetings, but I had to impress him the most; after everyone else left, Taira had the ears of the boss all to himself.

The meeting lasted several hours, during which I explained my goals, how to achieve them, and what kind of money I needed to get this started. When Goro gave the signal, I revealed my nature as a zoanthrope to all of the underbosses who weren't already aware of it. I was not only showing my strength, but the strength of my commitment.

Goro gave me a chance when no one else would, and he kept quiet about "Monty" until now. I earned his trust, and he earned mine.

A secret vote was held. When the votes were counted, the results were in favor. I, John Hudson, was promoted to be director of NYAMCO's new defense wing.

In other words, after much anticipation, Monty Mole was now officially on the payroll.

Howdy! For those of you who aren't quite sure what you read, this is a fic I've been working on for my 2023 NaNoWriMo called Zoanthropy. It takes place in a setting called 8-Bit Dystopia, which was made and abandoned by /tg/ way back when. Think of it as a gritty crossover that reimagines of a lot of older video game franchises and characters, which are forced to coexist on an alien world ruled by megacorps, super gangs, and the odd horror beyond mortal ken after the Space Invaders destroyed the Earth. I'm taking an almost League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-style approach to the material, in that I'm including as many video games references as I can before a loose 2000s cutoff line, but they might be different from how you recognize them after they're put through the wringer of the City.

For the past couple of years, I've been dusting off this old setting, writing new material for it, and giving tweaks to it, until it's taken on its current shape showcased in this fic! I do most of the writing and handle final drafts for what gets into the "DELUXE" document, but it's a collaborative process! You're welcome to give what we have a read here if you want to find out more about the City and the myriad aspects of it, though I do not consider it required reading material for understanding what's going on in the setting. Ideally, I'd be able to trickle in a bit of this worldbuilding at a time with every chapter.

I have a couple of chapters in the bank, and my current plan to drop one every couple of days/once a week until all of my progress from my NaNoWriMo is up for public viewing. Then if folks want to see more, then I'll go back and forth between writing this and my Archie Sonic SI, Ruby Haze.

Comments and reader feedback are always appreciated!

weredrago2 · Nov 28, 2023

Unless the two locations were controlled by the same corp, or at least operating under the same general sphere of influence, getting a truck's worth of goods moved from one zone to another was easier said than done. A zone close to a megacorp's heart, like Palm or Termina, had checkpoints at the roads to control what came in or out. Electronic IDs and keycards streamlined interzone transit, though they were a privilege of the groups who made that corp's good books. Seeing that I was hitching a ride on a commercial transport not carrying anything illegal or dangerous, and that NYAMCO had already established a working relationship with WilyCorp, we were given authorization to use their highway system to make our delivery into EggDyne's territory. Once we were on Robotnik's side of the City, a bit of graft would take us the rest of the way to Casino Night Zone.

The lines got a bit blurrier, the rules looser, as the legal boundaries between zones deteriorated. In those places, physical barriers still worked as well as they did for humans thousands of years ago. River City was surrounded by cement walls, as much to protect the zone from external threats as it was to keep the zone's infamously rowdy populace in one place. Passing through zones on the outskirts, or the ones that had taken a sharp decline, ran the risk of driving over mines and other traps set up on the fast line. They disabled unwary freight trucks and took their drivers on a one-way ticket to an early retirement.

When the driver hit the brakes less than an hour into our trip, I had a feeling that we'd run into trouble. The driver was a gray Robotic Operating Buddy, a venerable bioroid model that was modular enough to be refitted for driving an old semi truck. Having fairly rigid positronic brain architecture made R.O.B.s diligent workers. They wouldn't need to stop for food or sleep, decreasing the amount of breaks or stops they'd need to zero.

While the WilyCorp official policy was that customers should get the positronic brains of their bioroids switched out for new ones before their expiration dates expired, the fact of the matter was that it was cheaper to buy a used R.O.B. on the second-hand-market when the old one broke. NYAMCO's cost-cutting measures meant we had several R.O.B.s with the road experience to know that there were other times when you should stop, besides when their batteries needed an emergency recharge.

For example, is a gang putting up a roadblock and demanding compensation to pass through their turf? That's a pretty good time to stop the car unless you want to get shot at. What was a simple cause-and-effect chain to an organic brain might be perceived as an unusual leap of logic for bioroids not specifically programmed to resolve these kinds of hostile negotiations. It was also more evidence to me that these R.O.B.s only got better with age.

My suspicion was confirmed after I caught the second half of a threat being delivered by a man with a coarse accent. They spoke with the eloquence of a piss-smeared New York subway station.

"...if anything were to happen to yer cargo, my mechanical man. So why not pay the Mad Gear's insurance package for the peace of mind? Gets you in and out of Metro City without any kind of hassle. If you're catchin' my drift."

As a zone on the edge of Dr. Wily's jurisdiction that he wasn't too fond of, Metro City was a crime-ridden cesspit with one foot in the grave. Either he was too busy to worry about a fringe zone that was otherwise self-sufficient, or he didn't care. It was a place where protective gangs like the Mad Gear flourished. They'd taken it upon themselves to set up barricades outside their home zone of Metro City and shake down any vehicles seeking passage. They weren't like the bandits that would chase down road trains like wolves. These wise guys were content to set up their racketeering booth outside of an abandoned gas station on the edge of town and loot anyone who couldn't pay the toll.

They were one of the many reasons as to why I was in charge of NYAMCO Defense.

"The hell are you even carrying in there?" another voice asked. "Drugs? Guns?"

What we were transporting were a new model of NYAMCO's pachislot machines. They were slot machines by any other name, with the ball bearings you earn standing in for coins or tokens. Like in Japan, the loophole with being able to take a receipt for how many pachinkos you won to a secondary store where you could trade them in for your winnings, helped us sneak the games into zones where gambling laws were a bit tighter. Not so tight that they weren't willing to look the other way for a slice of the pie. They were becoming a hit in the gambling parlors of the Mobius Archipelago, and we were getting backorders from as far as Neo Kanto. While the individual machines only cost so much on their lonesome, the quantity of pachislots as a whole represented a large sum in assets. Whatever the bioroid driver said to the Mad Gear lieutenant at the front of the checkpoint, it wasn't enough to convince them that the goods weren't being inspected.

"Why don't you two go and check it out?" the captain said to a pair of his subordinates.

"Yeah, let's find out!" shouted a third.

I was hanging out in the back of the truck with the slot machines when one of the Mad Gear goons thwacked the latch on the back door of the semi-trailer and lifted it up.

They saw me. I wasn't incredibly tall as a weremole, but I was tall enough to meet them eye-to-eye, and very stout. Two big, red eyes stared back at them from past darkened shades that hung over my snout, hot breath forming a faint mist around my face. I donned an oversized blue and white shell suit. They were miraculously still in style in the year 20XX. The reason I wore the garish athletic wear was that it was comfortable in human form, while it clung tightly to my zoanthrope form's chest and threatened to rip where my massive, clawed arms came out in beast mode. It made for a threatening look. A tiny nametag clung to my tracksuit declaring my name as Monty Mole.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Cold," I intoned to the pair of punks, my voice laced with a guttural presage. It was how I always sounded while transformed, due to physiological differences in how my voice came out and a practiced affectation to sound as different from my normal self as possible.

"What the fuck?!" the one with the shades and orange mohawk exclaimed, his grip on the steel pipe he was slugging around growing tighter.

"I said, you're cold. Care to guess again?"

I put one paw on the wall to steady myself as I stepped off the semi-trailer to greet the new company.

These two looked oddly familiar, and I got that sense of deja vu rattling around in the back of my head that I got every time I encountered a video game character I knew from my old life. If these two were with the Mad Gear Gang, then I might've recognized from the endless cavalcade of goons you had to punch and stab your way through in one of the Final Fight games.

"What the fuck are you?" the other one with goggles and a wicked gold widow's peak asked.

If they were gonna throw in the towel on guessing my name so early, so easily, then it was my turn to guess theirs.

"Take a step back, Two P and J," I uttered when the names that went with these faces finally came back to me.

The two gangsters both scrambled away, dropping their weapons in terror. I was glad that I still had a sharp mind about this sort of thing, now that I was in a universe where all of these trivial bits of information actually mattered.

I'll take what victories I can get.

My words, when delivered with the baritone of a mutant mole monster, held weight. Especially when I've got giant blades a step removed from guillotines attached to my hands and know your name. In spite of appearances, that was a form of deescalation. An act that was intended to take the fight out of all but the most insane people that came at me.

"Boss! Boss!"

I walked towards the front of the truck, where I could see the pair of mooks had to run to their yellow-dreadlocked leader for protection from the Big Bad Me. He was about seven feet tall, because I was half-convinced there was something in the leaded tap water around here that made people grow really huge and really stupid. That, or this guy was an embittered basketball player that turned to a life of crime. I could tell he had the physique to back him up in a fight, as his white vest was open to show off a broad chest full of knife scars. His leather pants and furred boots seemed like the real deal, as did the man's gold rings and chains. This was a person who had money to burn, and I don't think he earned that money he was spending the old-fashioned way.

He had the look of a boss, alright. The one you took out in the first stage, before moving on to the rest of the arcade game.

Metro City slums, stage one?

"Is this the monster that's got you two freaking out?" the man said teasingly, a wide grin spread ear to ear. "I bet you a thousand zenny that Hugo could fit him under his boot!"

The man's smell betrayed that he was taken aback by my sudden appearance. Both nostrils of the mole could work independently and share information with each other, like a computer with parallel processors. I suspected that half of the magic to this transformation was, well, magic, so I accepted that I could smell fear as much as I did the rest of the City. Considering all of the disgusting odors that surrounded the City, it was more often a curse than a blessing. At the moment, it helped me judge that to this guy, I was an x-factor jamming a stick of rebar into the metaphorical Mad Gears of his grift.

"Why have you stopped our truck?" I asked brusquely.

The man's smile got a bit tighter, which only made him look more familiar. We were both wearing sunglasses at night, so I couldn't comment on his pair without sounding like a hypocrite. He spread his arms wide, casually showing off the knife he had in his off hand.

"It's like I was tellin' the driver! This is a dangerous zone! Lots of sick nasty types might see an honest fella like you and start trouble. You want to go through Metro City without any trouble, right? Then you really ought to…"

I took a step closer to him, closing the distance between us in an instant. He must've misjudged my size, because getting up in his face caused him to falter. He was a foot taller than me, yes, but I was much broader in beast mode, and his knife was smaller than the claw on my pinky finger.

"Pay… the… fee," he finished.

"You're Damnd, aren't you?"

The Mad Gear boss' boastful implications died in his throat.

"I'm, ah, not sure who told you that--"

"Or is it Thrasher? Thrasher Damnd?" He didn't answer right away, the man's composure having been shaken. "Clear the road."

I felt a bit sympathetic for Damnd, given his unfortunate surname. I was sure that it served as a benefit when he was the one doing the intimidating.

Sodom, though I felt less sympathy for. That giant weirdo dressed up like a samurai and brought foreign objects into bare-fisted cage matches. He was practically asking for Cody or Hagar to ram a bo staff where the sun doesn't shine.

Damnd let out a nervous chuckle, regaining a shade of his swagger.

"I don't think you know how this works, my man! We can't just step aside and let you go toll-free! Think of the example we'd be setting if we just--" I walked away from him, towards the front of the truck. "HEY! Where are you going?!"

If you're good at something, don't do it for free. I wasn't here to rip the Mad Gear Gang apart, unless their bounties rose to meet the amount of time it'd take to root them out, or they were to declare war with NYAMCO first. There's no way they had anyone that could stand up to me if I was sufficiently motivated to slice all the heads off hydra until it stopped growing new ones. Not unless Belger surrendered his gang's autonomy to Shadaloo and begged Bison to send someone who could.

I've heard the stories about the Four Emperors of Shadaloo. I didn't want to test those tales unless it was absolutely necessary. For the time being, I was going to see how far I needed to twist Damnd's arm before he got with the program.

At the front, the road was blocked by a blue sedan in the Terrazi family. I could've mistaken it for a Honda. The Mad Gears that had come out here for the gang's prop-up extortion racket were armed with all manner of melee weapons, but no firearms. It's not as though they forgoed firearms out of the goodness of their hearts. Rather, the blades were to intimidate civilian transports into compliance. Anything more than that would risk provoking a pre-emptive strike from the megacorp convoys, who would kill them all to a man and carry on their merry way.

"What the fuck are you--?" began the driver, who looked to be wearing leather overalls.

Is this another fashion thing? I'm not a fashion guy, but the City's taste was bizarre.

As going along with this truck was a part of a trial run by the NYAMCO chiefs to see if I could deliver a level of performance comparable to the other big shot security companies on my lonesome, I dug my claws into the front door on the driver's side.

"Holy shit!"

The gangster tried rolling up the window for protection, to little avail when I tore the door off the hinges. Two P and J drew their weapons, but I yanked the driver out of his seat and tossed him at them.

"This is a no parking zone."

Then it was just me and the car. I pounced onto the luxury sedan like it owed me zenny. Like I was taking revenge for all my poor, burrowing brethren mowed down by late-night commuters. Like I was a one-man chop shop.

Rip one side. Hop across the car's roof. Tear the other.

In less than half a minute, the car was no more, a pile of spare parts taking its place. The Mad Gear goons could do little more than watch.

"Oh! My car!!" shouted the driver in sheer, unrestrained horror. Sounded like the poor bastard was still making payments.

I turned back to the awestruck Thrasher Damnd. The rest of his subordinates were already running in the direction of Metro City. Seeing that he had stuck around too long to do the same, Damnd took a step back, both hands raised in surrender.

"L-Look, man! It was a joke! Me and the boys were messing around!"

"We're leaving," I said darkly. "Free of charge."

"Yeah, yeah! You can pass for free!"

I got closer, and presented Damnd with a business card from my tracksuit pocket. I was glad I had experience manipulating small objects with my claws, in places where I couldn't safely change back to human. Otherwise, this would've gotten embarrassing.

"This is my employer's logo. If Mad Gear gives any vehicles with this logo a hard time in the future, I will hold you responsible. Got it?"

After that last sentence, I shoved the card into his hand with force. He'll be feeling that one in the morning, and the morning after.

"G-Got it!"

"Oh, and one more thing." I let out an animalistic snarl, causing the unsteady Damnd to fall onto his back. I took a wad of bills out of my pocket and dropped them on his body. "Keep the change."

Once the shipment reached its destination and we returned back to Ridgeside, I filed an extensive report as to how my monstrous persona made it so all of the gangs who tried to stop us with similar tactics found themselves out of luck and down an easy mark to exploit.

That is, when they weren't paying us for protection instead. This was how you networked in the City's gang society. You established yourself, beat down all oncomers, and then asked if anyone wanted seconds. When someone did, you provided that service with a smile.

The trial run was deemed a dramatic success.

"Dad made you the boss of what?"

Mewta barged into my office not long after the first job was settled. It was a little over a week later, right before noon, the same time I always take my lunch. I hadn't had the chance to step away from my PC when I was ambushed by her.

"Our new private security wing," I explained laconically.

Mewta was one of Goro's kids, a pink-furred cat uplift with orange stripes. She looked very similar to her siblings, with them being triplets, but Mewta made herself stand out from her sister and brother by wearing a blue neckerchief with her blouse.

She tapped her foot impatiently while I finished logging off. Her impatience suddenly changed to a gasp when she got a better look at me.

"John! What happened to your face?"

I paused, before gesturing to my fading black eye.

"Oh, this?"

"Yeah, that! Did you get into a fight?"

No way I was gonna be answering that truthfully to her. I came up with something more amusing to downplay it, since my healing factor would make it vanish quicker anyway.

"Nah. Slipped and hit my face on the doorknob because I was a bit tipsy after karaoke night." I changed the subject. "Didn't Goro tell you about NYAMCO Defense?"

Mewta forgot about my black eye and was back to being irritated at my forgetful antics. Mission accomplished.

"Yeah, he did! And when were you gonna tell us?"

I shrugged.

"I couldn't announce it to the rest of the company yet, so I sent an email out to you and your siblings three days ago. Didn't you read it?"

She blinked, and got flustered. She hadn't read her mail all week!

"You--! No one ever reads those and you know it! You weren't gonna tell us in person?"

Honestly, I was so busy with going over potential hires, I forgot to make absolutely sure the triplets were in the loop about it. I felt bad, but not so bad that I didn't stick to my principle that people should read their emails. Specifically the ones sent by me.

God, I miss cell phones. It didn't make people read my messages more, but I could just text people whenever I needed to.

The best part is that they aren't fucking fax machines. Ugh. Hate those noises they make.

"I'm sorry. It slipped my mind."

"How?! It's kind of a big deal!"

Looking past Mewta, I could see that Mewchi and Mew-Mew weren't far behind. Then my secretary R.O.B., Gunpei, rolled into view of the door in front of them.

"Mister Hudson, you have three guests," Gunpei said in a slow, synthesized voice.

Gunpei was supposed to screen my calls and make sure people didn't walk in whenever they felt like, but his physical speed and reaction time for anything more time-sensitive than following a snail as it went from one end of the room to the other was painfully inadequate.

"Thanks, Gunpei," I replied dryly. His head turned to identify them, one at a time. "Could you be so kind as to--"

"Your three guests are Mewta Nyamco, Mewchi Nyamco, and Mew-Mew Nyamco."

On the plus side, he had acting chops that would give HAL 9000 a run for his money.

"Thank you, Gunpei. That will be all."

In the City, the line between private security, a private military, and the irregular mercenary bands that were a regular sight in the more "hot" zones was thin enough to sit comfortably on the pointy bit of a monomolecular knife. It was a fair question to ask which one of those I was starting, and that's what they were really trying to weed out of me.

"Alright, you three. Come in."

Mewchi and Mew-Mew poured in after Mewta, once Gunpei slowly reversed out of the way.

"Why didn't dad tell us we were gonna have a security force sooner?" Mewchi asked next, both curious and excited about what I was planning. "We could be the next Orange Star, or Regular Army!"

Mewchi was the only male triplet. He had a stocky build, a blue tuft of fur on his chest, and big eyebrows. Being the eldest (and only) son, Mewchi had the highest odds of inheriting when Goro stepped down. The only reason Mewchi didn't sign up for the Tekken Force out of high school after impressing the talent scouts during his time as an amateur sumo wrestler was that Goro wanted him to stick around and learn the family business.

"I don't know about that. I was thinking of NYAMCO Defense as being smaller, and more precise. Going for quality over quantity."

The unspoken part was, as always, cheaper. The test I did to prove NYAMCO Defense could cover our assets meant that the cynics on the board were taking my claims seriously, but it wasn't like we magically squeeze fleets of tanks and jets into our tight budget. The budget that went up with our gambling profits, which went up with successfully protecting our transports of machines and revenue. Right now, the only way I was going to hire the agents I needed was by leveraging my outside-context knowledge to guestimate who would be the safest bets. Reducing the risks that this whole thing blew up in my face.

"But why?" Mew-Mew asked innocently. She was a bit of an enigma to me. Her big, blue eyes read as being oblivious to her father's illicit dealings, but I wasn't convinced. You always had to watch the quiet ones. "Don't we pay the Mishimas for protection?"

Mew-Mew did have a point. Kinda. Goro and the automotive oligarchs who set up camp in Ridgeside paid tithes to the Mishima Zaibatsu in exchange for falling under the defensive umbrella of the Tekken Force. It was an ideal arrangement, as Heihachi Mishima liked things neat and orderly. Annual tribute and favorable trade relations suited him fine.

However, that alliance was dependent on Heihachi remaining in power. There was the rub. Things in the City were only occasionally one-to-one with the games, but I had a hunch that Heihachi was one fighting tournament away from being chucked off a cliff by his demonic pissant of a son. Kazuya was the wrong mixture of ruthless and ambitious for me to ever trust him. Considering his track record in the TEKKEN series and adding in the grunge of the City, I had no doubt he'd annex Ridgeside or sell us out as it suited his whims.

I'd rather dig into the plumbing of their fancy tower by hand and plant bombs under the executive toilets than let that happen, but I hesitated to explain the practical reality that our zone's safety was dependent on who won a karate match to three Mishima Polytechnical graduates. They all had a fairly good opinion of the arms-manufacturing corp, and I didn't have any strong evidence that could disprove their confidence that Heihachi was a reliable patron to stand behind.

Wait, was Kuma and uplift here, too, or an actual bear trained in martial arts?

Eh, I'll figure it out later.

"The Tekken Force doesn't do bodyguarding or armed escorts outside of the Mishima Autonomous Zone, Mew-Mew. They aren't available for hire, either. We've been having a lot of trouble with gangs attacking our shipments, and I figured having an in-house team to deal with them would help discourage it. I mean, you'd be surprised how much of the annual budget goes into paying them off. Reallocate some of that to NYAMCO Defense, and--"

"You're making having our own mercenary squad sound boring," Mewchi groused.

I made a so-so gesture.

"Ehh, I'm certain they'll see some action."

"Can I join?" Mewta asked, her tail sticking upright at the suggestion of anything more exciting than the sales department. Looking back at her unamused siblings, she corrected herself. "I mean, can we join?"

We'd be down a great sales agent if Mewta went into the frontlines. Mewchi and Mew-Mew were also doing fine jobs at handling the above-board side of the organization, but I could understand why they didn't want to be trapped behind a desk by an overprotective yakuza parent for the rest of their lives. Alas, Goro wouldn't stop at cutting off three fingers if I got one of his precious kids hurt.

No, he'd spare the three fingers and no one would ever see the rest of me again. Goro would make sure that Mrs. K was reimbursed for any unpaid rent and had someone stop by to donate my belongings to charity, because he's a nice guy like that.

"You can ask your father, but I don't think he'd approve of anything close to field work."

They were all crestfallen at having the facts broken to them. Should they keep pushing for a taste of what I was putting together, I did commission Rodney Recloose to refurbish an old combat vehicle for NYAMCO. Goro might let them pilot it for missions, if the three of them worked their charm enough to convince him that it was safe. Rodney said it wouldn't be ready for pickup until the end of the month at the earliest. I didn't mention it now because I didn't want to get their hopes up if the project fell through.

But if it did fall through, I was getting a refund.

"Can you tell us who's gonna be in it?" Mewchi questioned.

"I have a few people lined up," I said vaguely. I then stood up and left my office.

"Where are you going?" Mew-Mew asked. "Meeting our new soldiers?"

"Actually, I'm headed to lunch. I didn't bring anything, so I was thinking of stopping by BurgerTime."

Though I foolishly assumed that BurgerTime was the City's equivalent to McDonald's or Burger King when I entered one for the first time, it was actually closer to Waffle House. Only the service was nonexistent, the meat tasted like it was sourced from biomonster nests, and the number of fights that had to be broken up with an armed response meant that BurgerTime was banned from operating in Ridgeside. I'd have to take a bus to Monsteropolis with a zapper in my pocket if I really wanted to order from the menu, and they never got my order right on carryout!

"BurgerTime?" Mewta made a face as she and her siblings caught up with me. "No way! We're taking you somewhere nice!"

"Somewhere like… Scarfman's, perhaps?"

Scarfman's was the City's version of White Castle. The megacorps went and fucked up everything else on the planet, but at least they got that right.

"Do they even have Scarfman's where you're from?" Mewchi asked.

"Not really."

Mew-Mew tilted her ears forward, curious. Mewta saw the bait she could use and took it.

"Spill the beans, and it's a deal!" she said.

"Deal."

I began spilling the beans once the first Scarfman sliders arrived at our table.

"Okay, so the first guy I was able to get to sign on, besides Monty Mole, was--"

Mewchi spat out his drink.

"We got Monty Mole?"

I dabbed a napkin on my face.

"Yeah? First guy I got, but there isn't much to say with him."

"Not much to say? Bullshit! Monty is one of the grimiest, goriest gene freaks to ever crawl out of the Pipeworks! How the fuck did we land him?"

That sounded pretty harsh. What the hell were people saying about me?

"I… met him at Tapper's and gave him the pitch. He was in. Pretty boring story."

Right now, I was feeling that I really should've come up with a better cover. Goro didn't say I couldn't tell his children about the whole "I'm a mutant that can blend into unmodified human populations as the ultimate stealth assassin" thing, per say. I didn't have a strong grasp on how most uplifts felt about zoanthropes, but Goro's muted reaction made it sound like he didn't think I was doing the uplift version of a minstrel show. So I could have told them, and probably should have after being their friends for this long.

The real reason I had to keep that close to the chest was because I held some lingering fears that their opinion of me would change for the worse if they found out about my other, more violent face.

They'd probably be scared shitless of me.

"Can I get his autograph?" Mew-Mew asked softly.

I frowned.

"Beg pardon?"

"His autograph. I wanted it since he caught the Scissorman. He avenged Hiromi."

"Caught" felt like the wrong word to describe what I did to Robert Barrows. The maniac was a maestro with a pair of mono-edged garden shears, and he used them to cut cut cut his way through dozens of unsuspecting women. Another blatant downside of the decentralized zone system that helped me evade detection was that it meant serial killers could travel from one town to another without anyone catching wise to their activities. By the time anyone could connect the dots, the Scissorman was long, long gone.

The only thing Barrows didn't account for was that I could track him by the scent in the trail of bodies he left behind, and that I wouldn't rest until it got my hands on that demon in human skin.

"Caught" was a better descriptor of the shears, after the coroners gave up any hopes of dislodging the twisted implements from Barrows' spinal column.

"John? You okay?" Mewta asked, concern evident in her voice.

I massaged my temples.

"Just a migraine. I'll see what I can do about that autograph, Mew-Mew. And… sorry about your friend."

I should've gotten to the man sooner.

Mew-Mew nodded, finding the answer satisfactory.

"What about the second mercenary?" Mewta asked, so we could move on from the topic of Scissorman. "It couldn't be the one mutant, right?"

"The second guy I signed on was a boxer. For privacy reasons, we'll be calling him Mask X."

"Was Mask X the guy who gave you that black eye?" Mewchi interjected.

"Yes," I said quickly, trying to get back into the story as soon as possible.

Mewta flicked a fry at my face. I flawlessly parried it, only to realize that I could've caught it instead. A pity that we were down one fry.

"You lying jerk! You said you tripped!"

I ignored her. This was story time, and even an abridged story time in which I neglected to mention I was actually two of the central characters was sacrosanct.

"Anyways, his name is Mask X, and he wasn't exactly an easy guy to get a hold of…"

Another day, another chapter of Zoanthropy. This one introduces more of the characters surrounding the "normal" life of Mr. Hudson, and a regular work shift for Monty Mole. The next will showcase a few of the individuals that our intrepid SI hires for his new security force, NYAMCO Defense.

Who do you think will make the cut? Or pick up the calls of a no-name corpo from a third-rate company? Stay tuned and find out!

weredrago2 · Nov 30, 2023

"You think you're tougher than me?"

It was late evening when I arrived at the Ring King Gym. Almost all of the attendees had left for the night, save for a muscular, mustachioed bruiser who kept beating at the punching bag long after the sun had set. It was a twenty four hour gym, and this hard-headed ringster wanted to get every second of his money's worth.

"HA! I'll believe it when I see it!"

The Ring King was one of the higher-end, more respectable gyms in the City. It had a variety of equipment for anyone from the casual exercisers to professional athletes, but it catered to one specific clientele above all. The squared circle at the center of the gym was testament enough to that. It was a premium gym with a short member list, but not so highbrow that it'd scare off the video boxers. An evolution (or mutation) of the original sport, video boxing was a mainstay in the more legal types of combat sports entertainment available to the denizens of the City. At some point during the process of the pugilistic pastime reaching the City, boxing picked up the eccentric personalities of professional wrestling. Everyone in the Minor League and up had a name and fans who got passionate about their prizefighters. As though every boxer was their own team to root for.

What few rules the sport of video boxing retained from its Earth counterpart were loose, to put it lightly. Weight classes were abolished. Uniforms were lax. Rounds were lightning-fast, three-round slugfests. Knocking down your opponent three times was a T.K.O. There were no illegal moves, and some fighters exploited this fact to their fullest.

Great Tiger, for example, fucking teleported. With real magic! I saw it for myself when Mewchi and I got tickets to see Great Tiger's bout against Afro Thunder for his birthday. I suppose Tiger read the rules long enough to confirm that using magic to hop around the ring and deliver a sucker punch wasn't explicitly banned by the World Video Boxing Association. The association still hadn't amended their rules to ban flagrant use of powers, so it must be kosher as long as it puts butts in seats.

Professional video boxing attracted all sorts of sportsmen, but "highbrow" wasn't a word applicable to any of them. On the contrary, everyone who got to the point where they were popular headliners in pay-per-view W.V.B.A. matches was a goddamn lunatic.

"Dalyarak!" the depilated boxer swore as he tore the punching bag open with a brutal uppercut, spilling cotton fluff all over the floor.

The former Major Circuit champ Balrog caused something of a stir when he, after maiming one contestant and accidentally killing another in the ring, retaliated to his lifetime ban from the W.V.B.A. by taking a job offer from Shadaloo to become one of M. Bison's chief enforcers. As the Big Three had a vested interest in warding people away from Bison's anti-corporate drug cartel, the video boxing stars were swift to condemn their former colleague for joining a terrorist group.

Then a fascinating trend started cropping up. Minor Circuit champ King Hippo was caught punching out people on Metpharm's bounty boards as a side hustle, in spite of the fact he cunningly coated his skin in blue paint as a disguise. Pete "Pizza Pasta" Zapata, a man already mired in allegations of being in the mob's pocket, started appearing in pictures at the side of the notorious alleged crime lord Dominic King. I heard Glass Joe had been doing guest appearances as a security guard at a minimall, and he let me sign him a check in exchange for telling me where the guy I was actually trying to hire did his training.

"Where are the fresh bags?" Bald Bull roared at any gym staff that were still on site.

Which led me to the current Major Circuit champion, The Reckless Bald Bull! Standing six-foot-two and weighing in at two hundred and ninety-eight pounds, Bald Bull took the news of Balrog's heel turn especially poorly. Not because they were friends, but because he thought Balrog stole his famous Bull Charge technique and took it with him to Shadaloo. Changing the name to "Crazy Buffalo" and claiming it as his own was not sufficient to abate Bald Bull's rage. As such, he had been raring for a rematch, and been taking it out on everyone else in the circuit. It was only a matter of time until he used his signature move on a referee and earned himself a temporary suspension from the video boxing season.

Seeing that he wasn't able to legally box with the only game in town until his suspension ended, Bald Bull seemed like the perfect man to offer a job at NYAMCO Defense… with a catch. I thought it was weird that no one else tried to approach him, until the reason why became all too clear. Once he figured out what I was there for, Bald Bull dragged me into the ring to see if I was man enough to be the boss of him.

"Is anyone here?! I said I need another punching bag!"

As a mostly normal human, I didn't last sixty seconds against a guy who was as strong as an ox. He must've been in a good mood when I found him, because he only gave me a black eye and left the rest of me recognizable. Following that pitiful display, he threw my ass out the door with a warning not to show my face again unless I could give him a half-decent workout.

Okay. Fine. We'll do this his way.

"Bald Bull."

I was now prepared to get more hands-on with the interviewing process.

Bald Bull turned around to see a beefy mutant uplift enter the gym. He showed no fear. Which, given that he was a video boxer who regularly crashed his head into solid objects to hype up the crowd, wasn't all that shocking. The man took blunt force head trauma and made it work for him.

"Eh? Who's asking now?"

Sliding on the biggest gloves available, which only raised questions as to who the hell regularly boxed here that their gloves could fit over my claws, I stepped into the ring as Monty Mole.

"I have a job offer for you, but I want to know for sure if you're worth my time. Get up here and show me what you've got."

Bald Bull climbed over the rope with gusto.

"Now we're talking!"

He smashed his head against the trip gong mounted to the side of the ring, triggering the gym's automatic referee to play the opening jingle for a video boxing match and start the timer for the first round.

Once the timer began, Bald Bull came at me like a bullet train. No mercy. In beast mode, I could finally apply the bare-knuckles boxing techniques I learned from the streets, where I was never more than a stone's throw away from hitting someone who wanted to use that stone as an excuse to fight. Damnd wasn't wrong, in that just walking around some zones was seen as an invitation. I also had to burn through a lot of my savings on mentorships from some of the most hard-to-find, fickle fuckers who could harness their chi and were willing to teach what they knew for money. Out of them, I got a crash course in kenpo. There were several recognized branches of kenpo; I paid for the kind that let me keep up with mobs of enemies and use supernatural moves that actually worked. The only downside was that my human self was too fragile to use them. I wasn't a nimble dodger like Little Mac, so I put up my dukes and blocked until an opening presented itself.

All of that being said, my enhanced strength and healing factor didn't automatically guarantee me the win. Bald Bull's reputation as dumb muscle was overstated, as I could intimately feel how skilled he was with his hands. With my face. The man hit really hard. Soda Popinski's detractors floated around the idea that he had performance-enhancing cocktails in his ginger ale, but Bull was nominally augment-free. A normal human.

A normal human with jabs and crosses leaving me more winded than when I got tackled by a chain chomp. Those things were organic metal all the way down, and yet I imagined I could fend off two of them with more ease than I would guard a Bull Charge.

Damn! Was he harnessing his chi?

Even when it looked like I was going to be overwhelmed, going all-out wasn't an option here. The loose rules of video boxing or not, I couldn't bring my full power to the forefront without running the risk of taking it too far. My extra stamina was all I needed to keep me vertical long enough to outlast Bald Bull and put him on the ropes. By the time the bell rang to mark the end of Round 1, he had done the hard part of wearing himself down for me.

I was taking back everything I thought about Great Tiger. If I wasn't a weremole, I'd sure as shit take teleportation over getting my nose torn off.

When the bell rang again, I went on the offensive. Round 2 started when I swung my mitts like hammers and a resolve to wrap this up before Bald Bull pulled off his signature move. I saw that he was about to pull away and rev up for a charge, so I surged forward and beat him to the punch with a headbutt.

It wasn't how you were "supposed" to beat him in the game. Putting aside all other factors, my head was now much bigger, and designed to shrug off a tunnel collapse. When our skulls collided, Bald Bull fell. He got up a few seconds later, holding a hand to his bleeding forehead.

"You're not half bad," Bald Bull conceded. He turned off the auto-ref by slugging it in the face. Talk about intuitive design. "What's the job?"

I walked him through the basics and the benefits, none of which were disagreeable. He was to be an intimidator, first and foremost, but he was welcome to wail on any gangers who tried to test if we were bluffing. Anyone who he was bodyguarding would know they were in safe, boxing-gloved hands. I knew he wouldn't kill anyone by accident, because the difference between Bald Bull and Balrog was that Bald Bull had restraint.

When he had it in his mind to kill someone -- such as Balrog -- it was gonna be on purpose.

"Are you in or out?"

"I'm in. But if we're doing this without the paparazzi getting up in my face, I'll need something from my car."

A few minutes later, he returned to the gym wearing a luchador mask that exposed his nose and mouth to the open air. The mask was mostly red, with a yellow "X" over his pate where I scarred him.

That headbutt I pulled off did inflict a scar, which I only found out after the fact. As Bull would put it later, he didn't hold a grudge because it made him look tougher.

Video boxers. Insane.

He flexed his muscles.

"So? How do I look?"

It looked really stupid, but if that was how we got "Mask X" to sign on for NYAMCO Defense, then so be it.

Later in the week, once the swelling around my black eye had abated enough to fit behind a pair of darkened lenses, I moved on to the next prospective agent I could get in touch with. This man was much, much easier to convince to meet me in person than Bald Bull. They were cordial, and a lot less likely to punch me in the face.

Bald Bull got that one for free, because that's what I was paying him to do to other people. From a certain point of view, I was getting a live demo.

My initial plan was to go for Pico. While the Pico I knew was an alien soldier from the planet of Death Wind in his game of origin, the Pico Tortiz of the City was an uplift veteran descended from a common snapping turtle. To my surprise, Mr. Tortiz retained his military experience as a Venomian spec-ops commando during the Lylat Wars.

The Lylat Wars were a conflict I thought I knew. For many uplifts, Lylat was more formative than the conflict they were invented to take part in. The first-gen uplifts were made as an emergency batch of soldiers during the tail end of the Invader Wars. When it became clear that the humans were fighting a losing battle, they sent a mission of uplifts to do the hard work of colonizing Princepts Dominae, the planet that would become the City. A glitch in their hyperdrives took the uplifts to the far-flung Lylat System, where they lived in peace until the exiled scientist Andross started a bid for galactic conquest.

It should all sound familiar, if you'd played half of the Star Fox library. Corneria's space force and their mercenary dogfighters won the conflict, of course, pushing the enemy all the way back to their capital in Venom. Emperor Andross was found by Cornerian soldiers, after he'd already repainted his chambers with the brains he was going to use to rule Lylat. Even in death, he still got the last laugh: The bioplagues, ecocide weapons, and flat-out atomic missiles that the Venomians utilized during the war rendered the Lylat System incapable of sustaining life for no longer than another, final generation.

Believe it or not, people continued to print history books after the Earth exploded. They were cheaper when bought second-hand, after the corporate-run colleges printed new editions with minimal changes and tried to choke out the secondary market.

The more things change, huh?

At any rate, my plan to hire Pico flew out the window at terminal velocity after the former Venomian pilot went and caused a supersonic fender-bender. Pico's murderously aggressive driving was one of those things that everyone knew was going to result in a disaster, which was what one tended to call it when one driver caused fourteen other drivers to crash and burn to death inside their cockpits. Pico was acquitted of any wrongdoing caused by his freewheeling antics, but the hideous wails of the victims on live TV were so bone chilling that even the legendarily bloodthirsty audience of F-ZERO had to admit the carnage had gone a step too far. There were protests, both for and against the continued ultraviolence inherent in the sport, until the organizers of the event came to a summary decision.

In one fateful Big One, the F-ZERO Grand Prix was put on indefinite hiatus, until the brand-new regulatory board figured out a way to make steering a rocket going a zillion miles an hour "socially responsible". Much like a vulture double-dipping on roadkill because the scavenged, decaying meat was really that good, I was once again taking advantage of the same catastrophe that resulted in Fantasy F-ZERO taking off as well as it did. Notable stars like John Dekka were able to negotiate for better contracts with the competition, but for many fans and racers, it was F-ZERO or nothing. I lost access to Pico, as he was using his sharpened espionage skills to avoid the public eye like the plague. I'm sure he'd get by somehow during the hiatus, but he currently was beyond my reach. That left a lot of other racers out of a primary source of income that I subsequently tried and failed to hire, as getting a hold of one who'd give NYAMCO the time of day was challenging.

Going over the public racer listings one last time before throwing in the towel, I realized there was another uplift with an F-ZERO machine who used to fly in the same circles as Pico. He lived in the Little Lylat section of Mute City, which was one of the largest concentrations of uplifts outside of the Hill Zones.

"Slow down!" Mewta cried as I was trying to fast-walk to our destination through throngs of people. Mute City had a seaport, an airport, and a spaceport, so the sidewalks were always a little over capacity with people coming or going. "Your legs are too long!"

I turned around, realizing Mewta was falling behind. She insisted on coming with me to meet this potential hire after hearing the Mask X story. Being slightly below six feet tall meant I was significantly taller than most of the humanoid animals that made up the crowd.

"Sorry, Mewta. Do you see the place?"

"I see it!"

Mewta pointed to one of the several ginormous, brutalist towers that took up space in the Mute City skyline. They resembled so many black and red obelisks to an unnamed god that I wouldn't want to meet in person. What everyone called "Little Lylat" was contained in these closely-packed, Plymouth-style arcologies, which housed a staggering fifty-five thousand residents per building. Having been inside one of these cities-within-cities-within-the-City a few times before on Monty Mole business, I received the impression that it was common practice to shove far more occupants than the stated occupancy limits in them.

It was a great place for claustrophobes, assuming you were down for exposure therapy. For a variety of reasons, I wasn't as claustrophobic as I used to be.

Looking more closely, I could see that one of the arcologies had a holographic name and green leaf emblem that scrolled across the center of it.

"Nook Village?" I said as a question.

Let's hope I don't have to pay for anything in there with bells.

"That's the one!" Mewchi replied.

We stepped up to the megastructure. The ground floor of Nook Village was much better than some other Plymouths I'd seen, containing an open shopping plaza with indoor trees and greenery. It was a pleasant change of pace from the usual dull concrete.

We navigated ourselves to one the nearest elevator and walked in. I pressed the button that had an "128" on it.

After a minute of silence, Mewta spoke up on what's been bothering her all day.

"Why do you want this guy of all people to work for us?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, though I had an inkling of why she was upset.

"For starters, Octoman isn't exactly a racing champ," Mewta said bluntly, her eyes narrowed.

I wasn't going to argue with that. The red cephalopod man drove a used F-ZERO machine with minimal tuning, and as such his rankings in the last race season were middling at best. We could use that to lowball him for the contract, but that wouldn't sit well with me.

Besides, a happy employee is one that won't be searching for the ideal angle to stab me in the back.

"I'm aware that his racing stats aren't the best, but Mr. Takora was a military pilot. He should know how to handle himself in hostile situations, and that's the skills I'm looking for. The fact that he comes with his own ride is an added benefit."

"He was a pilot for Venom," she emphasized, all but spitting the word out.

Years later, the amnesty extended to the bulk of Venom's army remained a sore subject. The Cornerians won the war, but Andross and his weapons of mass destruction ensured that the victory was nothing short of pyrrhic. The only way Corneria could get their refugees out of the Lylat System was by the controversial decision to let members of the Venomian army take amnesties in exchange for helping the survivors of both sides flee to the City. Former enemies taking shots at each other in the confines of these Little Lylats was hardly an uncommon occurrence. Tortiz was one of several would-be war criminals who took the pardon and ran with it, but there weren't any egregious crimes in Octoman's service record that would disqualify him from NYAMCO Defense.

"He flew a Triangle during the Battle of Sector Y and spent the rest of the war stationed on Zoness. Octoman fought military targets only. No civilians."

Mewta was almost mollified by my answer. I wasn't going to tell her she was wrong for having a bone to pick with the Venomians. The Nyamcos were among those families displaced by the Lylat Wars. The triplets were born on Corneria, and lost it when they were young. They weren't ever going to see their homeworld again.

One day, I'd like to tell them how much I could relate.

"I still don't like it," she said finally. "But I said I wanted to come, and this needs to be done. I'll just let you do most of the talking."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

The elevator came to a complete stop when we reached the 128th floor. We stepped out.

"Octoman was the only one to pick up the phone, wasn't he?"

"Not true!" I replied in mock defensiveness. "Captain Falcon politely declined the offer when he got back to me. Said he preferred to fly solo."

"When he got back to you," she reiterated.

"He's a bounty hunter! He could've been out of the office and it went to voicemail."

"Uh-huh."

"He could've been in space!"

I didn't call everyone, but I sure called a lot of them. Samurai Goroh tried to mug me when he was done pretending to be interested in the job, so he was currently nursing a pair of broken legs behind bars. I figured that was for the best, as having a "Goro" and "Goroh" would've gotten confusing. Jody Summer had her hands full being a spokeswoman for Strike Force, the Big Three's mutual defense fleet. Clinton Gazelle was still on the slab after they dragged his remains from what the news outlets were calling the Horrific Grand Finale. Could always check in with him later. Bio Rex was in some kind of an anti-human hate group, which H.R. flagged as a no-go for obvious reasons.

Back on Earth, attempting to hire athletes from the events you were already profiting from via fantasy sportsbooks might be construed as a conflict of interest. In the City, the word for it was vertical integration. I didn't plan to leverage any newfound influence for the purposes of match-fixing, as I didn't want to wake up one morning to Black Shadow holding me in a Full Nelson while Mr. Sandman beat me senseless.

We traversed the lower-middle level of the arcology. While the greenery remained a consistent feature, the unkempt vegetation was nourished only by artificial light and leaking pipes. Crumbling cement clumped up in the less-frequented parts of the walkways. The view from the windows was blocked by the now-disused magnetic tracks dangling above Mute City. I didn't even want to think about the ungodly amount of noise those things made when the races were on. Uplifts out in the open were scarce, making their movements quickly and quietly to avoid notice. I may have been the only human for quite a while in any direction. There were market stalls run by residents trying to make a living, but they had to compete with the higher-quality stores on the bottom and the penthouse restaurants up top. As such, these shops were hanging by a thread or totally derelict.

No wonder the guy's looking for extra work.

If an arcology was meant to contain all of the essential parts of a town without having to go outside, then this was looking like the arcology's skid row.

"Are you sure this is the right floor?" Mewta asked cautiously.

Her eyes lingered on a large graffiti mural of an angular head with crossed swords beneath it. The artists got the outline of the head done, and colored in the blood-red pupils with spray paint, but the details of the face were left incomplete.

The art was amateur. It was the message beneath the image that disturbed her.

Three words.

HE WILL RETURN.

I checked my paper to confirm Octoman's apartment number, comparing it to the numbers of the apartments lining the pathways.

"He should be close."

There were two types of former citizens of the Venomian Empire that relocated to the City: The Venomians who became disillusioned with the mad ambitions of Andross, and the Androssians who saw the City as a great place to go to ground until their master came back from the dead. Androssian terror cells mixed and mingled with the dispossessed Lylatian youths who had adopted Andross as a countercultural symbol of hatred for humans and uplifts they saw as "subservient" to human masters. Stenciling an image of his face on a wall was about as neighborly as a black pinwheel on white and red.

If there's anyone around here who picks a fight, I won't let my secret stop me from protecting my friend.

We headed towards Octoman's flat, deliberately not commenting further on the Androssian tag. When we reached the door, I walked up and gave it a trio of knocks. A few seconds later, one of the occupants answered.

"Who is it?" an oddly squelching voice gasped through the door.

"John Hudson."

"And Mewta Nyamco," Mewta added.

I heard the sound of several locks being unlocked. Not one at a time, but all of them being manipulated simultaneously. The door opened, and Octoman was there.

Octoman Takora was, as his name implied, an octopus uplift. He had a large, red head, fishlike yellow eyes, and a tube for a mouth that was lined on the inside with triangular teeth. Eight thick tentacles ran through the round ports lining the cybernetic harness supporting his squat, mollusc body. This meant that Octoman used six of his tentacles as arms and two as legs on a regular day, though they were all interchangeable in a pinch.

"Come in, come in!" Octoman said genially.

His apartment was, frankly speaking, a mess. Furniture was toppled over. Sucker marks dotted the floor, walls, and ceiling from his consortium of rambunctious octopi children. There had to be eight of them, and they all had cyberware in the vein of Octoman's own.

Those couldn't have been cheap. Did he have to pay for the operations out of pocket?

"Sorry for the clutter!" Octoman said apologetically. "The sitter canceled at the last minute, and I thought I was a goner until you offered to come all this way!"

I could tell Octoman had his appendages full. One to get the door, two to mix an algal baby formula for one of his hungry tykes, two more to change a diaper, a sixth hanging on a hook so he could get around without wasting two tentacles using them as legs, and a final pair to hold the Telstar Marksman behind his back. The Marksman was a popular model of blaster for home defense. It gave Octoman a measure of insurance in case this whole thing turned out to be too good to be true. Considering the Venomian army started as a prisoner revolt, I suppose his time before, during, and after his tour of duty him prepared for anything.

While they both took the pardons, Octoman didn't have the resources or connections to ride out F-ZERO being grounded like Pico. The guy who caused it to happen! Most strikingly, I couldn't help but notice there were no other adults here besides us.

Fuck me, was he caring for eight kids and a professional racer? As a single parent? With no sponsor?

"That's… alright, Mr. Takora," Mewta said, disarmed by this unexpectedly domestic scene. I don't think she noticed the light gun at all.

Octoman swiftly wrapped up the rest of the tasks, stowed his zapper, and cleared a table so we could sit. He used a free tentacle to grasp the television remote from its perch and set it to a rerun of Wonder Momo.

Once the little ones were distracted by the flashing lights and colors of the superheroine fighting the alien menace, we started the interview in earnest. As with Bald Bull, I already knew I wanted to hire him for the organization. This check-in was to make sure I had dotted my "i"s and crossed my "t"s. To guarantee I left no stone unturned in regards to judging Octoman's character before I let him get too close to the organization. Kenju wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I let a corporate spy into our doors with open arms.

I outlined the duties Octoman would be performing with NYAMCO Defense, explaining that his experience on and off the track made him applicable for the hiring process. I did most of the talking, but it was hard to ignore that Mewta's surname was on the stationery. Octoman was a bit twitchy during the conversation, partially for that reason, and because the zenny on the table would be life changing for his family if he accepted the job. I set the aluminum briefcase I'd been carrying on his dinner table to demonstrate how much I was willing to offer if he signed on.

Octoman let out a whistling gasp, or something along those lines, with his tube mouth.

"That's… This has to be a prank. It has to be."

"I assure you, Mr. Takora, it is not."

These suitcases were a pain in the ass to lug around. Especially when the pot was sweetened with Samurai Goroh's bounty. You never saw anyone complain about the weight of carrying a case full of money in the movies. It was hardly glamorous. Bald Bull got one too, and he didn't say a word as he tossed it in his trunk next to his wrestling mask.

"You don't need to decide now," Mewta started. I closed and began to re-lock the briefcase. "But we will need an answer by--"

"I'll do it!" Octoman exclaimed.

"Huh?"

"I'll take the job! Whatever you need me to do, I'll do it."

"Good show," I said, before sliding Octoman the briefcase. It wasn't in the script, but now he could hire a babysitter. "Can you start tomorrow?"

"Yes!" He wrapped his tentacles around both our arms. "Thank you so much for this opportunity! I won't let you down!"

I knew he wouldn't. Mewta and I departed. From the door, I overheard him excitedly telling the kids the good news. Mewta seemed a bit shell shocked from the cognitive dissonance of how she expected this to go versus whatever she had built up in her head.

Overall, it felt like we did a good deed. Octoman had the money he needed to support his family, and he was exceptionally motivated to perform well during his first slew of jobs as a private security guard. His tri-pronged racing machine, the Deep Claw, cut an impressive figure as the escort to our delivery trucks. Since it wasn't as though he was going to be competing in F-ZERO for a while anyway, I paid to have him mount an autocannon onto the Deep Claw. The kind that were a common sight in the Antigravity Racing League. Should Octoman tire of private security and F-ZERO's new Grand Prix has yet to take off, then I'd be happy to petition that NYAMCO sponsor him in the A.G.R.L.

Octoman was a solid employee and, by all appearances, a diligent parent. Now to make sure I didn't get him killed in action during our assignment to River City.

The first set of NYAMCO Defense hirelings have been revealed! Good showing for those who figured out where I was going with Bald Bull, though I imagine Octoman was a less expected inclusion. Since the Deep Claw is a good beginner vehicle in F-ZERO X, then why not have him be an early acquisition? These aren't the only characters I want to use with NYAMCO Defense, of course, but they are where I want to start with it. Keeping things simple with a group of combatants that can handle one crime-ridden urban zone where bringing down the heavy ordinance is frowned-upon.

Next up: Prepare to beat 'em up in River City! The Black Warriors, Sanwa Gang, and Ground Zeroes want to take over the zone for themselves, while Mr. Hudson just wants to keep the pachinko parlors standing. The Earth died, but disco lives on forever in the City!

weredrago2 · Dec 16, 2023

River City was one of those standout hives of scum and villainy that encapsulated what the City might look like if the Big Three and their ilk weren't here to hold the center. As much as I had a distaste for them, the major megacorporations provided a necessary amount of stability to the zones they held claim over. If they were to vanish overnight, that would leave the gangs to squabble over the free zones and lord over them like petty dictators. At least until we all descended to neo barbarism like the feudal dominions of the Outlands. The only things that would get them to cooperate with each other would be the mutant hordes and chaos cults of the Pipeworks. Say what you will about Wily and Robotnik, but they're more preferable to the Koopa Kingdom or Black Moon Tribe rising up to butcher all of the surface-dwellers.

That vision of an even darker tomorrow than the one we already have is River City in a nutshell. The corps steered clear of it, writing the zone off as a total free-for-all where all the good protection rackets and hangout spots were in fierce contention between scores of local gangs with varying amounts of theming to them. It was as though they sat everyone down, made them watch The Warriors, and then had them take exams after it to make sure everyone was on the same page. The only way these colorful reprobates knew how to settle disputes was with their fists, bats, knives, chains, or anything else short of a gun. Firearms were frowned upon as a cowardly way to fight. You were taught the hard way what the gangsters of this war zone thought about them once they got their hands on you.

While most of these gangsters were youth in revolt that jumped into chaotic street brawls after a long day of school and/or dealing drugs, the more serious organized crime groups that set up shop in River City had greater ambitions than controlling one particular corner or the other. These mature gangs drew their recruits from the countless tough guys who graduated out of the teen gangs, but maintained a measure of power over the more numerous teeny boppers because they had more experience in playing the game.

As an example of the kids being one step behind, the Sanwakai tossed a pittance to the alliance of gangs under Simon "Slick" Yamada, who didn't know they were being bilked, to stay off their backs for a couple of weeks while they set up new NYAMCO-brand amusements in their pachinko parlors. Their leader Sabu then hired us out as condottieri to fend off their real competitors: The Black Warriors and Ground Zeroes. Both gangs had muscle that were reinforced by mutagenic drugs and cyberware, which was a convenient loophole to the "no firepower" rule. They had spent the last couple of weeks attacking Sabu's entertainment venues, and the new pachinko machines would have made for tantalizing targets. The Sanwakai had a duty to enforce their claim to River City, and any affronts to their legitimacy had to be dealt with.

Goro and Sabu were both leaders of '"chivalrous organizations" descended from the yakuza. The two of them had corporate interests and ninjas in their ranks, but the "neo-yakuzas" under ZEED Limited and the Rokakku Group were being wagged by the very big dogs on the other end of their short leashes. Seeking to maintain a relatively low profile and keep their heads down to avoid forced integration into either faction, NYAMCO settled in Ridgeside, and the Sanwakai bunkered down in River City. The first thing Goro did when he found out that his old friend was having issues keeping a pachinko parlor open on his own turf was offer the services of NYAMCO Defense. After all, attacks on a place using NYAMCO machines was tantamount to an attack on NYAMCO itself.

It was a shaky reason to send us all of the way here, but I suspected that Goro was playing the long game. He was paying off an old favor and trying to maintain good relations in case Sabu came out on top of this gang feud. The Sanwakai were a stabilizing factor in the zone, and a River City under Sabu's thumb might be perceived as worth the risk for the corps to come back. Reinvest in the area. Spread the wealth. A grateful Sabu might remember it was Goro who helped him become the leading force in River City.

Right now, the only thing this zone exported to the rest of the City were premium asskickers, so there was a chance for me to get something out of the trouble as well. River City was one of the less affluent zones, in terms of how much the individual could expect to make if they weren't fighting fit. The ones that could fight were still making less than minimum wage, in a corporate hellscape where the minimum wage was already through the floor. The rare exceptions were the cream of the crop, who could demand their own terms on lucrative mercenary contracts that I was all too willing to pay. Would it be wishful thinking to hope I might be able to poach talent out of this trash fire of a zone?

Hiring from the gangs was a catch-22; most of the people whose loyalty I could gain by beating the shit out of them tended to perform poorly in a system where the most violent option didn't always match the most effective one. Nevertheless, I kept my eyes open for any beat 'em up characters I could recognize while Bald Bull, Octoman, and Monty Mole were assigned to reinforce Sabu's grip on River City.

We all wore dark blue jackets made of a dense polymer weave that was deceptively light, breathable, and bullet-resistant, with the company name on the back in yellow. They were made by an armorer I've been trying to court away from the EggDyne zone of Armstone City, though I'd need to sling a good deal of compensation Mayor Mauler's way before he'd consider letting her out of the Serpent's Cage Island Maximum Penitentiary to work for me full time. Octoman's jacket was more akin to a vest, and my own was an open coat with the sleeves pinned back to make room for my arms.

It was the sort of assignment that I would have wanted more time, agents, and resources to handle. There were several mercenaries that I knew as Monty Mole who stated an interest in joining NYAMCO Defense, but I was only able to do so much to convince these freelance troubleshooters to give up their independence and stake their vaunted reputations on a P.M.C. that hasn't had a single successful mission under their belt. Should this job go well and news of our work spread, then I might be able to lure the Kuniang Martial Arts Team away from the sphere of the Chi You Men, or afford another visit to the woman who was one of the best fortune tellers in the City.

With the little time I had remaining before NYAMCO Defense shipped out to River City, I chartered a flight to Mahdad. The sweltering border zone couldn't be any older than a decade or two, but tweaks to the programming of the L-Series Manufacturing (or "Lemmings") bioroids to suit the tastes of the early settlers and weathering from the sandy winds of the Gerudo Desert meant that the area looked the part of having been there much for longer.

The fact that the Lemmings tended to integrate preexisting ancient ruins from the Hylian Age into urban planning when their coding went awry did wonders to infuse Mahdad with an extra dash of mystique. Who knew when you were entering the extremely historical quarter? The access to the Outlands meant it was one of a handful of places where you might see the natives of Hyrule, like Gorons or Moblins, intermingling with mankind. Talking, trading, and the like in the bazaar.

Intellectually, I knew that the Islamic architecture of the zone was only slightly more authentic than the Moorish revival buildings in Opa-locka. The robots repeated the blueprints they had been given without a care given for the big picture, which made the zone difficult to explore without a map due to the occasional repeats. Even so, Opa-locka was my only other point of reference for the style besides adventure films.

Mahdad also had some of the best coffee in the City, besides the Pao Pao Cafe in South Town. Ricardo Maia's cafe con leche was the best I'd had since I got here. Next to the coffee shop where I got a quick caffeine fix stood a less trafficked business, with a blazing red hamsa hanging above the door.

There was no sign. I had to pay a third party just to get her address. Trying the handle, I stepped into the darkened chamber, twitching when I triggered the loud shopkeeper's bell. The interior was well-decorated with a variety of exotic trinkets and sigils to ward off evil. Or make a decent secondary revenue at the crafts fair.

"As-salaam 'alykum!" a sweet voice greeted from the next room over. "I had foreseen your arrival in advance. Come in, come in!"

I paused, then remembered that I had yet to confirm that this version of Rouge had actual powers yet. She wouldn't be the first charlatan I'd run into with the habit of overhyping their supernatural talents. Trusting people at face value that they "foresaw me" would make me more gullible than her usual clients.

I needed a spellcaster, an esper, a user of PSI, someone with the Edge, or a scanner. Whatever they call themselves, they were the will workers. Cold readers need not apply.

Magic was real. Obviously. Using chi was only one flavor of magic. Having a couple of people that could do that was great, but if NYAMCO Defense was going to last, then only having people who could do that wasn't enough. I needed to diversify the company's palette.

The next room was a secluded, candlelit chamber, where Rouge Ganna sat at a rounded table with a variety of divination tools. The dark-skinned, curvaceous woman had brown eyes, one of which was covered by her hair. In the back, Rouge's hair was tied into a large, singular braid. Her genie blue bra and purple harem pants from the game were replaced with a crop top and skinny jeans that left about the same amount to the imagination.

At her energetic insistence and gesturing, I sat on the other side of the table.

"There we are! Now, how can Madam Rouge help you this enchanting evening?"

One could consider that having to ask gave her one point on the "faking it" scale, but I wasn't going to be rude. She was being really friendly. Even if she was mundane, going full Doubting Thomas and trying to debunk her wasn't going to do me any favors. You attracted more flies with honey than vinegar. A psychic who could forecast the future, even if the details were fuzzy, was worth her weight in gold.

"I was looking for some direction," I said half-honestly.

"Then you've come to the right place!"

"Great. I'll uh, take the deluxe package."

"Excellent choice, sir!"

The room was dark, but not so dark that I couldn't analyze the room for any hidden traps or mechanisms that would let Rouge activate the usual smoke and mirrors these places used. These days, anyone with a decent special effects budget could afford a hologram projector. The hologram wouldn't work at long ranges, it'd always be intangible, and the cheaper ones could be a bit see-through, but that was the step-by-step process for "summoning" and exorcizing a hostile spirit. Toss in a mechanism to shake the room or toss items around like a poltergeist for flavor. That was all more than convincing enough if you were trying to hoodwink people who already believed.

As near as I could tell, none of those bells and whistles were here. I was getting my hopes back up. Rouge took my hand and walked me through the process of reading my palm.

"Are left-handed?" I nodded. It was the first hand I thought to offer. "I can tell that you are an earth palm. Practical, realistic, and more comfortable with what can be proven than that which cannot. Is that correct?"

I wasn't expecting her to be that blunt about it. Was she used to confronting skeptics?

"That's not too far off, but I'm open to being proven wrong."

She let out a good-natured laugh.

"Humble, too! That's good. I'll start the reading with your left. Each of the lines on your hand reveals details about yourself that are inherent, and those that have been learned."

"I'm following so far."

"Let's start with the heart line," Rouge said as she glided her finger over one of the lines near the top of my palm. "Your heart line states that you are caring and understanding."

Not buying it.

She moved on from the heart line to one of the lines in the middle of my hand.

"The head line says that you have an interest in reading. A mind that is no stranger to creative flights of fancy. Would you happen to be a writer?"

That was a lucky guess. I'm wearing glasses.

"Only as a hobby."

She accepted the answer with a smile.

"For the life line…" Rouge hesitated for a moment, and then continued. "You are cautious in those you let close to your heart. I see manipulation in your past. As well as those in your present. The latter were of your own choice, while the former were out of your control."

Manipulations of my own choice?

I didn't say a thing.

After that, she raised my palm and more deeply scrutinized a handful of lines going up and down the middle of my palm with a frown.

"Your fate line. Lines."

Her jovial expression had melted away, replaced by a more contemplative one.

This was not how I was expecting this to go.

"Yes? What about them?"

Rouge struggled to get the words out. Whatever she saw on my hand had caused her a great deal of distress.

I tried to look at what she found so interesting with my hand, but it looked more or less the same as it had been since I'd become a zoanthrope. Whenever I changed or regenerated from an injury, it left minute changes that were beneath my notice.

"Your fate line was not a singular line, but one that stops and starts anew. I thought they belonged to a man of an uneventful life. Perhaps even a charmed one. But your fortunes changed unexpectedly, and irrevocably. Tragically. As if an occult hand had taken your destiny off its original course and left you astray in a whirlwind of… Chaos."

I drew my hand away, stunned. I could explain away the rest as the fruits of a fantastic cold read, but not something like that.

"That's the long and short of it," I admitted. "Are palms all you can do?"

"No. There are many ways to see the future. Palms are personal. The cards, universal."

Rouge Ganna, otherwise known as the Scorching Enchantress, was the genuine oracle. She stood up from her chair and picked up a crystal ball arranged on an ornate shelf, idly gazing upon the image in the faint light that shone from it.

"My crystal ball is the most clear, but the most demanding. Mere days ago, it foresaw the arrival of a stranger whose fate line I could not see. He would make me an offer of power, of fortune, of glory. And a temptation of a prize that I would find difficult to resist."

Her previously lighthearted mood fell away. I stood up to reassure her that this wasn't some demonic pact.

"Miss Rouge, I think you might be catastrophizing this."

"I have prepared myself the best I could for what you have to say. Say it."

Rather than explain myself, I laid a small, red gemstone onto the table. The stone was only slightly larger than a marble, and completely natural. That was to say, it was polished like a pearl when it was dug out of the ground. I couldn't speak of the magnetic effect it had light a spark in Rouge's eye, because she was the only one that could feel it. Whatever supernatural qualities the stone was looking for in its beholder, I didn't have them. Being a zoanthrope was enough for me, and I wasn't gonna go rummaging around for six more of these hard-to-get trinkets to try out a pet theory if I didn't think it would work.

"What is it?"

"Crystalized magic. They call it materia."

What better way to bribe a character from Power Stone than with another magic rock? Materia were the cousins of chaos emeralds, found beneath the planet's surface and in meteors in orbit of the Hylia System. Sufficiently large ore could produce the same output as WilyCorp's fabled "energy elements". Maybe they were all one and the same. The stones were a strategic resource to several major corps, each trying to make the next big superweapon with which to wipe each other out. These small ones were below their concern, and fighting over them became the domain of the bit players.

When my contacts with their foot in the door with Shinra Electric came up dry, I had to pull in a favor with Tobi to help me locate an unclaimed materia in the Pipeworks. After a few weeks of keeping an ear to the underground and digging where she said to dig, she found one that I could "liberate" from the Brotherhood of Nod. The Nod chapter that claimed the red materia was hard at work trying to turn it into a dirty bomb, and I wanted to step in before they either pulled it off or ruined the thing trying.

I hated going down into the Pipes, but the subterranean depths were a region of the City to which I was the most adapted. I could dig my hands straight down and travel directly there, without using the Drillers' service elevators or the old plumber routes. I could identify safe routes in and around the pipes by listening to the hum of the planet.

Besides, that Nod base was one accident away from a total collapse before I got there. They had that cave-in coming. A couple of hours digging through the remains with a geiger counter later, and I was one materia richer.

Rouge took the materia in her hand, studying it closely. Her dark hair spontaneously rose upwards and glowed in the candlelight, as though it had its own light source. Then the ends began to spark up. Only now could I see the fire that burned within it the tiny confines of the stone, waiting to explode.

"What would you have me do?" she asked warily. "This stone… it's power calls to me."

I left my card on the table, and some documents from my case that she could look at, before taking the materia back into my possession.

"This is a significant decision, but not a binding one. Or one with strings attached. Give it a week to consider, and call me with your answer."

"I can accept those terms," Rouge said cautiously.

Satisfied that I'd finally found someone who could cast magic, and a pyromancer at that, I paid for the palm reading and left. When I was gone, the candles in the chamber went dark. Rouge was able to extinguish them all with a wave of her hand.

I don't know what she'll say, but I do know the answer I'm hoping for.

I didn't have everyone I wanted, so I worked with everyone I had. The plan was for NYAMCO Defense to perform the security detail on the Sanwakai's gambling parlors and disco clubs during the nights, when most of the action happened, while their usual men handled the day shift. We'd be in town for a week at the minimum, and anything past that would begin to put Sabu in Goro's debt instead.

Some timeline. Democracy died, and disco survived.

We spent the first night outside the perimeter of the Disco Almanic, one of the Sanwakai's most popular nightclubs. It was at the Grotto Mall, which was lined with a variety of stores and restaurants with a view to the River City waterfront. There was decent visibility in case anyone came at us, but we hadn't seen anyone yet.

"Where's the action?" Mask X complained. "The poindexter said this zone was full of punks I could hit."

"Give it time," I said to the thinly-guised Bald Bull.

Octoman eyed me curiously. He and Bald Bull didn't have a snowball's chance in connecting my masked and unmasked identities on their own, so they both treated Monty Mole differently from John Hudson. Bald Bull with begrudging respect, and Octoman with trepidation. I was an unknown variable.

"Are you sure?" Octoman asked, pressing for more information. "I'd hope people have the sense not to start a fight with the three of us standing outside the door."

I'd spent more than enough time here enough to know that people in River City didn't think that way. While Sabu hired us to protect his properties, it doubtlessly crossed his mind that our presence here would serve to lure out the more reckless lieutenants of his enemies into fights where we can deal with them for him.

We weren't his people. Thus, we were slightly more expendable if the worst were to occur. Goro could be reimbursed in case we needed to be sent back to Ridgeside in a deku pine box. The calculations were cold-blooded, but the math added up all the same.

"That's not how it works around here."

Octoman shrugged, causing the rack of combat knives on his bandoliers to rustle. The uplift soldier was more proficient with firearms than he was a knife, but when you swung or threw several of them at once, accuracy stopped being such a big deal.

Naturally, the trouble with the locals started not too long after I said that. As though on cue, several bikers approached from the alleyways between the buildings and approached the adult arcade on their cycles. The gangsters wore purple boilersuits, face masks, and headbands with kanji or the Rising Sun. They rode in on customized, Japanese-style bikes. They were in stark contrast to the leatherbound road hogs of the Black Warriors gang, who had a notable preference towards American choppers and muscle cars.

Mask X let out a wordless chuckle as they got closer. Octoman tensed up, tentacles subtly drawing towards his sheathed blades.

When they got closer, I was able to more clearly see their leader. I eyeballed the hoodlum as being in his early twenties at the oldest. He sported a blue jacket and an orange rockabilly pompadour, a hairstyle that was a constant feature in these biker groups. He stuck out by the virtue of the rank and file of his gang being rather nondescript.

"You three look new," the leader of the motorcade said as he stepped off his bike. On his back was a wooden training sword, or bokken, with nails sticking out of it. "In town for business or pleasure?"

"Business," I answered, my body blocking the entrance.

"State your reason for being here," Octoman said.

"I've got reason with Sabu. Step aside."

Kids these days. No sense of self-preservation.

"He isn't here."

The man Sabu had operating the inside was a middle-aged pit fighter with a bad leg and bleached hair named Kinji. I didn't know where Sabu was at the moment, but I found it unlikely that he'd want some punk to barge in and risk ruining the night for all of the patrons. The reason the clients were in there was that the gangs were out here. They were also there for the bar and the topless dancers, but the point stood. If Sabu wanted to talk with this guy, he wouldn't do it at a place that made its bones from setting up an atmosphere that pretended the rest of River City didn't exist.

The biker didn't like my answer. His face contorted in rage.

"Bullshit! Go in there and tell him Shinji of the Blue Emperors needs to talk, you ugly rat."

Ahh. Looks like he's the biker from the first Kunio-Kun game. That series was the coelacanth of side-scrolling beat 'em ups. Years pass, but the sprites and mechanics stayed the same for long enough to loop back around into being retro.

Been called worse by people I thought would be more tolerant of mutants and uplifts. They're the ones I'd leap across the table and beat bloody, only when I knew that they could take it. I could tie Shinji into a pretzel, but he's hardly worth the effort. He might actually be stupid enough to think I'm a rat, so I didn't acknowledge the insult.

"We can pass along a message," Octoman offered diplomatically. I knew he wouldn't hesitate to slit this guy's throat if it came to it, but the olive branch was amicable.

"Fuck off, tako! Sabu said he'd support us if we moved into Sticksville, and now Nishimura's threatening to sic the Dragon Twins on us! Clear out the damn disco if you have to!"

The Dragon Twins?

Those two had to be Yamada's top enforcers. If they were being used as big sticks for the gangbeat diplomacy going on in Sticksville, that meant the Blue Emperors weren't in Slick's confederation. That was interesting. Did he not want to bend the knee to a junior, even if it meant having to ally with the Sanwakai?

On further reflection, this wasn't any of my concern. The last thing I wanted was to get tangled up in River City politics when I had other zones to worry about.

Then again, who the fuck trained the Dragon Twins? If they were rumored to fight like the Lee Brothers, then who taught them Sou-Setsu-Ken? Sousetuken was like J.K.D. and kenpo, only kicked up to eleven. You couldn't just go to anyone to learn the moves.

I needed to look into this.

"You got cotton in your ears, ya dumb freak? I'm talkin' to you!"

The arrogant punk wasn't budging under the weight of my glare. He gained points for bravery, and lost those points for foolishness.

"Go home, Shinji."

Mask X smiled, cracking his knuckles in anticipation. I could hear them through the gloves.

"Boy, you have no idea how much you'd make my night if you keep pushing your luck."

"You wanna test me, old man?" Shinji threatened.

Bald Bull let out an angry snort.

"Make it quick," I ordered Mask X. "The client might need him in one piece."

He rolled his eyes.

"What about the rest? Do I need to switch to the kiddie gloves for them, too?"

Shinji swung his bokken around.

"HEY! You don't get to talk about the Blue Emperors like we ain't even here!"

"Doubtful," I replied to Mask X. "Shut him up."

"With pleasure," he said with a savage grin.

Shinji swung his weapon a bit too close to the heavyweight video boxer for his own good.

"I'm right here, you fucking--!!"

Having finally had enough of us at the same time Bald Bull heard enough out of him, Shinji received a swift right hook to the side of his head. The expertly-thrown punch to the temple knocked the gang leader with delusions of grandeur out cold in a single hit.

The rest of the Blue Emperors drew their weapons and charged us on their bikes, revving up their engines and jousting at us from up and down the roads of the rough and tumble strip mall. None of us were particularly intimidated by their gaudy shock and awe approach. Bald Bull tore the punks off their bikes and beat them down with brute force. Octoman disarmed the gangsters with more precise cuts and slashed their tires. I did a bit of both, opening my paws to rapidly batter the bikers with less-lethal palm strikes.

It was hardly a workout.

"You have nothing to gain by fighting," Octoman said to a goon that was armed with a knife. He was five knives short of the amount that Octoman was pointing at him. "Walk away."

Before the young man could take Octoman's words to heart, Mask X rushed in with a swift jab to the head and took them down.

"This town is great! No referees or cops getting in my way!"

Octoman said nothing, sliding his knives back into place after the fight reached its inevitable conclusion.

We had sent the Blue Emperors packing in short order, with the goons still able to walk dragging their boss away and limping home to pick their wounds. Whatever beef they had with Nishimura's outfit, it appeared that the Blue Emperors wouldn't be able to continue their push into Sticksville until they recovered. Then when they return, I imagine Shinji will be a bit more respectful in how he approaches the Sanwakai for help.

Skidmarks and wrecked bikes strewn across the ground aside. After the fight ended, the Grotto Mall went back to normal. The people were so desensitized to random acts of violence that this relatively self-contained affair was hardly a drop in the bucket.

I laid down the final bike in a pile by the road.

"Anyone harmed?" I asked the NYAMCO team.

"What do you take me for? A lightweight?"

"I see that your warnings weren't exaggerated," Octoman said. "Is every night going to be like this?"

"Most likely."

"That was too easy!" boasted Bald Bull. "Bring on the rest!"

I had a feeling this was going to be a long week.

After the incident with the Blue Emperors, we'd determined that the three of us acting as a singular unit were overkill when it came to dealing with gangs like Shinji's brigade of rodeo clowns. Slick's gangs were currently appeased by the Sabu's dealings, so we didn't need to worry too much about them pulling anything unless they're gearing up for all-out war. In which case? We're out. The NYAMCO Defense squad needed to conserve our energy for the more serious gangs that threatened to clear out the showrooms by force and set them on fire, which was not seen as a declaration of war. It was common practice.

I had a bad feeling about who the Black Warriors were sending to deal with us. Considering how big the Black Warriors were in the adjacent sections of River City, it'd be weird if one of their heavy hitters didn't show up at some point.

We switched to groups of two, with a fresh person relieving the person who'd been there the longest. There were also days where we had to switch to new venues, as Sabu tried to predict which of his businesses were at the most risk of being attacked that night. A bit of unpredictability to our schedule prevented the Black Warriors or Ground Zeroes from charting a plan of attack that was more detailed than hitting us when they saw us.

Bald Bull spent his free time in the bars and pubs, if only so that he could get buzzed as a pretense to jump headfirst into more fights. Octoman used the chance to check in with the babysitter and wave to the kids at the hotel's vidphone terminal. The other reason I went with Sabu's idea of changing up the shifts, besides the pragmatic ones I provided, was that I'd noticed Bald Bull's brutishness and Octoman's air of stuffiness while on the job were starting to rub each other the wrong way. More time away where they didn't have to work together would do us all good. Once NYAMCO Defense has more agents at its disposal, they won't need to be paired up often.

There had to be someone around here that I could turn to NYAMCO. Even if it's, I don't know, that Williams guy with the baseball bat. Or Linda the part-time dominatrix. As long as they weren't working for the bad guys anymore, it's not like I was too picky.

The next group of note to try their hand at testing my patience was a gaggle of thugs led by a wild-eyed man in studded leather with a shock of spiky pink hair. He was tall and wiry, with a deceptive amount of muscle if he could heft around that sledgehammer of his.

"Who are you supposed to be?" I asked the approaching tough guy.

"I'm Trash!" the hammer-swinging weirdo proclaimed. "You're a big rat! Fight me!"

Trash ran at me with the sledgehammer before I could answer. Expecting that he'd just rush me the second he was done dropping his name, I caught the hammer by the neck before Trash's hammer could reach my head.

"Whuh?"

I laughed. It was a sinister sound to hear flow out of my inhuman jaws, and Trash was briefly roused out of his drug-induced mania enough to realize what he was asking for.

"Yeah. Okay."

My tolerance for people running up to me with the intent to kill had atrophied since I got off the street and redeveloped a taste for a semi-functioning society. Now I don't put up with it from people who aren't going to meet me halfway and make it worth my time.

I slugged Trash in the chest, taking him out in one hit. The rest of his entourage rushed me as a mob, falling not too long after him.

I tapped on the door of the club with a claw.

"Call them an ambulance," I said to the yakuza man who answered the door.

He nervously nodded, and dialed the number.

The Sanwakai ran the emergency services, so response time was swift when we called for cars to pick up the bodies. I couldn't guarantee it if the survivors ever made it to the hospital, considering that these were members of Ground Zero being delivered to their enemy. I was confident that most of them ended their night at the morgue. Unless they went turncoat against Martha Splatterhead, the only part of them guaranteed to get an extended lease on life are their harvestable organs.

Trash's sledgehammer felt rather small in my paws as a weremole, but it had a good weight to it. I felt it was to my liking after a couple of practice swings on the cavalcade of wannabe gang-bangers walking into the meat grinder that was me standing out in public, and held onto it until it broke from overuse.

By the time the sledgehammer became useless, my shift had come to an end. Bald Bull returned from another evening of tasting River City's cuisine and brawls. The zone might have a chance of dragging itself out of its economic rut if the tourism board considered re-angling River City as the food and mutual fighting capital of the world.

"This place is great!" Bald Bull exclaimed. "I can't wait to go on vacation here!"

I don't think I've ever seen him this happy before. Bald Bull was so excited, he forgot to put his luchador mask back on before resuming his post. Not that it made much of a difference in practice.

He gave me a pat on the back.

"Mole! Do yourself a favor and try out the pubs!"

"It's midnight," I reminded him.

"I know! This city is incredible!"

"Do you still have your commlink?" I asked, gesturing to the WilyCorp Kitamura clipped to my belt.

The devices were a reliable brand of multi-way, full duplex "codec" radios, with guaranteed service as long as we were all in the same zone. The codecs were a lifesaver in a world where communication was otherwise restricted to landline, overpriced satellite phones, and pagers. With the three transceivers on the same encrypted frequency to keep out eavesdroppers and hackers, we were only ever a call away.

"Yes yes, I have the baby monitor. The worst I've seen so far was a fat man named Fats. He came at me like he thought he was King Hippo! The rest should be easy pickings."

We did a changing of the guard, and I was free for a while to explore River City for myself. As myself. Seeing that Monty Mole was currently affiliated with Sabu and the Sanwakai, this was one of those circumstances where it might be better to walk around without it until I was back on duty.

If it could be helped.

I went behind an alley so I could change back to my normal size and shape, conservation of mass be damned. I flipped my jacket to the green side, zipped it up, and extended the sleeves. With a yellow clip-on tie from one of my pockets, the disguise was complete. I'd be able to roll them back up again if there were any surprises on the way to the Flatirons.

The first thing I wanted to get out of the way was a fairly early breakfast. The Rise & Shine cafe seemed like a safe bet the last time I was in town, so I'd go there for coffee and some food to hold me over for the time being.

After that?

The Dragon Twins. Ryuchi and Ryuji. Or Randy and Andy. Whatever. They needed someone who was taught with the ancient scrolls to teach them Sou-Setsu-Ken, or they somehow got their hands on the scrolls themselves. I haven't heard a peep about Billy and Jimmy since the Black Warriors blew up their dojo last year, and I paid good money to info brokers to make sure I was one of the first people that found out when people like them were back on the grid. So who was it?

It only took me a few seconds to come to the unfortunate conclusion.

God dammit, Sonny.

To find the man who trained the Dragon Twins how to fight, I had to look for the man who taught me how to fight first.

That's the fourth chapter down! I have a total of 8 chapters saved from my NaNoWriMo, but the slump has been from me trying not to drop them all at once, wanting to do additional revisions, and getting swamped in other projects. I tend to lose track of time around this year.

With that being said, I intend to drop the rest of the chapters of this fic before the end of the year. After that? I might make a 9th chapter to give this story a sense of closure, because I can't say how much time I'd be able to devote to this as a full-time project.

Thanks for reading!

weredrago2 · Dec 18, 2023

"Punch harder!"

The Scorpions Dojo on the east side of River City, past the Capitol Ave bridge, was not for the faint of heart. The training regimens were brutal, the costs were astronomical, and the grandmaster who ran the place was a jaded alcoholic who treated his students like redheaded stepchildren he never asked for. Nevermind that you were the one paying him for the opportunity of learning martial arts from one of the famous Lee Brothers.

"I'm trying!" I said between gritted teeth.

Not the famous Lee Brothers who tore up the streets of River City and made the zone respect them by force. Not the cool-tempered Billy Lee, nor the hotblooded Jimmy Lee.

No, I was stuck with the one that redefined the meaning of "Drunken Master".

"That's not good enough! HARDER!"

I struck the hard stack of stone again, giving it all I had. The only cracks on impact that I could feel were from my end. As it turned out, stone is really fucking hard to punch!

"FUCK!" I cried out as my knuckles bled. "How is this helping me learn how to fight!?"

"It fortifies your bones and your spirit," the master explained, irritated that I even asked. "You're halfway decent with the kicks, but you aren't gonna be able to punch worth shit if you aren't willing to make your spirit harder than the stone you're hitting."

The master of the Scorpions Dojo was a man who ought to be in his prime. He wore a yellow wifebeater and jeans that were as disheveled as his greasy mullet. The master still had the hard muscles that came with a hard life of combat and decades of training your body towards the peak of physical excellence, but that rigid lifestyle had fallen to the wayside as his dedication wavered. There were dark circles under his eyes, an unshaven beard on his face, and a great deal of abdominal weight from excess drinking on his gut.

He was Sonny Lee. The sibling that Billy and Jimmy left behind on their way to the top.

"But how?"

"Do you ask a fish how they fuckin' swim? Or the bird how they fly? No, because it comes natural to them. If you want to be a better fighter, you need to make punching through that rock as natural as it is for animals to live, breathe, fuck, and kill. Got it?"

That was insane!

"But--"

"No back talk!" my master barked. He tossed me a wad of bandages and the rest of the first aid kit. "Patch yourself up, grasshopper. You're done for the night."

I could smell the defeatism on his breath. He didn't bother to hide the bottles around me, as he knew I was his only student who wasn't going to whine to my parents and get shuffled out to a "safer" dojo outside of River City. Like Dan's dojo in Monsteropolis. Dan Hibiki's rates at his Saikyo-ryu school were dirt cheap, the abilities his father instilled in him were genuine, and he wasn't gonna hurl insults at children. He worked fine for most people.

I couldn't risk training under that dumbass, because all evidence pointed to him being such a poor sensei that he'd leave me worse off than when I started.

With something having happened to the main characters of Double Dragon before I got to River City, that left Player 3 here to ride on their coattails. You too could learn the famous Sou-Setsu-Ken techniques if you were willing to put up with the teacher. Not even the power-hungry boss of the Black Warriors wanted to bother with this guy, and he was supposed to be obsessed with this kind of thing.

After going a few rounds with him in spars, Sonny struck me (in addition to with his fists) as the kind of guy who was great at what he did, but not perfect. Not like Billy and Jimmy, two Sou-Setsu-Ken masters who were godlike, while poor Sonny was only excellent. That kind of thinking was a Sysphian climb that could drive a person insane if they didn't know when to stop comparing themselves to those unfeasibly talented people who did things that felt impossible to them with breathless ease. If they could do it, then why couldn't I?

What was wrong with me? Why wasn't I good enough? Why aren't I perfect?

The vicious cycle of envy and failure to meet unmeetable expectations, if not treated with a healthy dose of reality and social contact from people willing to bring you back to reason, could eat you alive. Consume your soul, like it did Sonny's.

It didn't have to be that way. I considered talking to him about what I knew, to try and get him on the right path towards doing some good around River City. Or at least get him resources for his addiction. Whenever I tried to help him, he'd just ground me harder into the dirt and force me to get back on track with my training. Sonny Lee was ready and willing to deliver a hurricane kick to anyone who threatened to pull him out of the bottle, so I went back to using him for his expertise. What I paid him for in the first place.

I wasn't here to master Sou-Setsu-Ken, an art I doubted Sonny Lee could fully mentor me in with his current state. Let alone do so in a matter of months. I'd need a hell of a lot more than that to be a master of any combat style, with Sou-Setsu-Ken taking at least half a decade. Sonny was my physical trainer and combat instructor, with the goal of helping me reach a point where I wouldn't be completely defenseless without transforming. The training would also sand off the rough edges I'd picked up in street fights when I did change into a weremole, as I couldn't always rely on brute force to win the day.

Instead, Sonny made me hit the brakes and relearn the fundamentals. He said my form was so bad that I'd need more time in town to become anything more than another easy mark, "enhancing drugs" I used or not. He dangled the chance to learn some Sou-Setsu-Ken moves over my head as bait to keep me hooked on another session.

I kept telling myself that I wasn't here to learn Sou-Setsu-Ken, but the bait worked. Every fucking time. Maybe I was an easy mark after all.

I washed my bleeding hands off in the bathroom sink, sparing a slightly baleful glance at my master. I could take more punishment during my training because I knew I'd heal quicker than most, but it was at times like this that I felt I was being taken for a ride. That Sonny didn't know jack or shit about martial arts, and he was just tricking me to drain out my cash reserves. Same for all of the brats who came in expecting to be pampered, and instead got their teeth scattered across the floor like a pearl necklace.

Then, now and again, Sonny would give me advice or show me a trick that made all of the wasted cash and aggravation worth it.

As I was leaving, and Sonny Lee had already retreated to his private bar on the second floor -- otherwise known as his apartment -- I glanced back at the stone. Past the bloodstains, there was a small, but visible crack where my final punch landed.

"Did I do that?"

I got up the next morning prepared to see how much more of that I had in me.

While I wasn't expecting things to be exactly the same as I left them upon my return to River City, I was shocked to see Sonny Lee's dojo was out of business. More than out of business, it was completely renovated. The first floor was converted into a Merv's Burger joint, while the second was presumably used by tenants who paid their rent on time.

I made some inquiries, asking the people in the nearby buildings that were still open after dark if anyone knew where the prior owner of the property went. The building was still standing, so it's not as though the Black Warriors or a band of dojo stormers wrecked the place to find him. It wouldn't have been completely out of character for Sonny to up and leave when the money dried up, so where did he go?

I reached the end of my questions at the start of a tombstone.

HERE LIES SONNY LEE
THE THIRD DRAGON

These days, the only thing Sonny had to his name was a plot at the River City cemetery. The man was said to have died of a heart attack, but his body was laid in a section of the grounds reserved for the street warriors who died with their boots on. The expenses had to have been handled by one of his brothers in hiding, wherever they were now. They obviously had a strained relationship with the third son of the family, but there was no way Billy and Jimmy would've been so callous as to let Sonny rot in an unmarked grave.

You could be a master of Sou-Setsu-Ken, but there wasn't a fighting technique out there that could save a man so dedicated towards drinking himself to death.

As coarse as it sounded, I doubted things would've been different if I stuck around. By the time I was starting to feel that I was making improvements, Sonny Lee rushed me through learning two of the special moves from his family scrolls and threw me out. The alternative was risking I'd get strong enough to drag him out of his death spiral by force.

Sonny or not, I wasn't done learning how to fight. My second master was an unrepentant sybarite named Chinnen, who dressed like a zen monk while drinking, eating, and fornicating as much as he pleased. He was a viceful kenpo master who only became a monk for access to their powers, and he wasn't going to let their advised lifestyle for adherents hold him back. I needed someone to finish my training, and I approached the corrupt sage with a small fortune to take me the rest of the way. He took it as a challenge to see how much punishment my altered body could take before it broke.

By the end of the year, I was able to defend myself in human or weremole forms with a fusion of Sou-Setsu-Ken, Chinnen's vicious strain of kenpo, and my own take on street boxing. The interspersed cycles of meditation and furious action meant I could maintain my weremole state for extended periods of time, though I always had to return to my human form if I wanted to properly heal the "right" way. The mole was given shovels for hands, and I had gone to Chinnen so I could beat those plowshares into swords. It was an irony that fascinated the master, and he perceived the digging beast so closely nestled in the riches of the material world to be an adequate expression of my "inner self".

Chinnen also ended up betraying me when he thought I'd be of more use to him as a gift to EggDyne in exchange for stock options, so I didn't put too much stock in his ramblings. After overhearing his plans through the thin walls of his profane temple, I spiked the kenpo master's wine with malboro extract and disemboweled him before he could put the decades of experience he had on me into practice. For all of his faults, I preferred Sonny.

I didn't know if I could call Sonny Lee a friend, and I didn't have anything to say to the grave that wouldn't make me sound like a tremendous asshole for saying it about a dead man who couldn't defend himself. So I kept what it was thinking to myself.

What a waste.

The only thing I did know was that pouring one out for the guy would've been insanely disrespectful. A good way to get my ass haunted, if nothing else.

I was walking away from the tombstone when I faintly detected a set of footsteps approaching from behind. Someone was trying very hard to sneak up on me, but these days my senses leaned closer to the abnormal range than not. They were being quiet, but the fact that they were touching the ground at all gave them away.

I casually slipped my hand past my codec and into my pocket, taking out a yellow, circular tablet that was about the size and shape of a communion wafer. There was an indent in the middle of the tablet that I could taste after I slid the tablet inside my mouth.

"Did you know the master?" the young man called out to me from behind.

My rudimentary tremorsense as a human was prone to missing the details. When I turned around, there was not one person there, but two identical men that looked eighteen or nineteen years old. They both wore matching muscle shirts. One red, and one blue. The men had their brown and blond fauxhawks done up into gnarly spikes, with bright highlights on the upright ridges that matched colors of their shirts.

Aw, hell.

"I trained under Sonny Lee for a few months," I said to them, and it was the honest truth.

"Master Lee said there was another student," said the man in red. "You would be him?"

"I don't know. Maybe? Did you need something?"

"After you left, we came along and exceeded his highest expectations," finished the second in blue. He let out a dismissive sniff. "You don't look like much."

I kept my posture relaxed, but internally? I knew these two were the Dragon Twins on sight, making them one of the most formidable fighting duos in River City since Billy & Jimmy made themselves scarce. Being the runner-ups to a title like that was no laughing matter. They weren't the final bosses of their own games; the Twins both hit harder than the so-called '"final" challenge, and you had to deal with the two of them at the same time!

"Looks can be deceiving."

I don't have a clue what set them off yet, but my sense of oncoming violence was going off something fierce. I knew they were going to try and fight me. Right here, right now, and they didn't look like fans of taking turns.

The one in red started talking again.

"Once we heard that you had been sniffing around the Flatirons to uncover our master's fate, we wanted to see if what he said about you was true."

They both took a step forward in flawless sync.

Shit!

I looked around the cemetery for any avenues of escape. The damn place was surrounded by walls! How far ahead did they plan this?

"What'd he say about me?"

"He said that you possess a special power that, combined with the Sou-Setsu-Ken, would make you a worthy successor to his style!"

He knew I was a zoanthrope!?

"And we want to test your claim to ultimate power!"

Sonny, you prick! This is the worst time to find out you secretly liked me!

"But I never--!!"

The teen in blue crouched down, and his brother jumped on top of him to come at me with a flying kick! My tongue pressed down on the tablet in my mouth, causing me to experience a burst of adrenaline as the fluid stored in the ring-shaped drug delivery system rushed through my tissues and entered my bloodstream.

Ring was a high-octane performance enhancer that, on paper, was no more dangerous than drinking a couple of energy drinks to get through the day. It increased your reaction time, upped your brain activity, and gave your nervous system a kickstart. You felt refreshed and focused after one or two, even if your doctor wouldn't advise taking that much caffeine and sugar in such a short period of time. You brushed the concerns off, because there were always much worse things you could be doing to yourself.

Ring was one of those worse things. The best and scariest thing about taking it was that Ring was like drinking all of those energy drinks at once. It had a shocking amount of B vitamins and was advertised as sugar-free, while understating the fact that it used proprietary amphetamines to force anyone that took it into a trance-like flow state. At least until you received a pain response strong enough to kick you back to normal.

I was able to buy a dose of Ring at the drugstore. It was in a locked case behind the counter due to the sheer cost, no prescription needed. That was more an indictment of what passed for drug control in the City than any guarantee that the drug was safe to consume if you could afford it. Being a zoanthrope helped me recover quicker from black eyes and the side effects of drugs, but the not-so-low chance that taking Ring might give me a heart attack and a seizure was the reason why I saved it for rainy days like this.

Time began moving again. The kid was moving a lot slower now that the Ring kicked in.

Now.

Back to the action.

I sidestepped away from the oncoming jump kick from Red. Blue came at me with an extended fist. I had to dodge that, too. They were definitely trained in Sou-Setsu-Ken. Their fighting skills were better than mine, and they certainly trained longer than I did, but they had a wilder approach to it. Like Sonny kicked the bucket halfway through the refinement phase. They were filling in the gaps with what they picked up as they ripped through the baddest dudes of River City.

The Dragon Twins weren't to be discouraged. Red and Blue kept trying to hit me while I attempted to run away, with Blue preferring punches and Red going for more kicks. They jumped across the headstones and gravemarkers, using them as stepping stools to keep up. The twins wanted to get a solid blow in so they could trip me up and take me out.

Which wasn't happening. Ring made you feel like you were going a million miles an hour.

With a catch.

No matter who won, I was definitely gonna be pissing blood after this fight was over. The difference between taking popping a Ring and letting the Dragon Twins wail on me was whether I'd be pissing blood in my hotel room or the intensive care unit.

"Did you kill him?" I said quickly as I dodged a pair of simultaneous strikes.

"Hardly!" Red said as he jumped high and spun around midair, trying to knock me down with a hurricane kick. I rolled under and nearly nicked his nuts with a sucker punch on the way past him.

"He was on his last legs when we started our training!" continued Blue, who tried to catch me in an uppercut. "We think he knew his time was short!"

I twirled around the rising uppercut and whipped Blue with a spinning backfist. I was too wired to be touched, but I knew it wouldn't last forever. I was only keeping my head above the water against them, when what I really needed was to make my escape.

I remembered to blink, and then blinked. My heart was going too fast. The enhanced metabolism had a downside: I had a very short window of time before the Ring wore off. Assuming one of them didn't knock it out of me first.

It was time to switch tracks. I slowed down when I reached the ideal position to bait them into an attack, spreading my arms out wide.

"Hey Bimmy and Jammy! If you two are so good, then why are you playing second and third fiddle to Yamada?"

The Dragon Twins visibly bristled at both sentences.

"My name is Ryuchi!" the red one said confidently, as he jumped high for another kick!

"And I'm Ryuji!" shouted the ticked blue one, who rammed both fists my way!

Together, they shouted their next rehearsed line.

"AND WE'RE THE STRONGEST FIGHTERS IN RIVER--!!"

I ducked away at the last second, as the Dragon Twins launched themselves into the brick wall surrounding the cemetery. Sonny Lee must've gone soft in his twilight years, because the teens screamed in pain when they hit the bricks.

Now's my chance!

I lowered my defensive stance and prepared to sprint out of there while they were distracted, but I faltered. The jolt of adrenaline from the Ring felt like it was being sucked out of me with a vacuum cleaner. The crash hit sooner and harder than I was expecting. Instead of taking off to safety, I was knocked forward by a hyper knee to the back from Ryuchi and given a hard elbow to the stomach by Ryuji. They recovered like lightning, and now I was the one on the ground instead.

I dug my hands into the dirt as Ryuchi and Ryuji stood over me, the former getting a good look at my face. His eyes widened.

"Are… Are you on Ring!?" Ryuchi accused. "I can see it in your eyes, you bastard!"

"You dare mock the Dragon Twins by cheating us out of a fair fight?" Ryuji hissed.

My hands dug deeper, the makings of claws appearing on the tips.

"Fair fight!? You're fighting me AT THE SAME TIME!"

The Dragon Twins circled around me. I swiveled my head around, trying to keep both of them in my line of sight and failing. I didn't think I could stand like this.

"Now I see what the master saw in you! A fellow addict, spiraling down the drain!"

"Haven't you heard? Winners don't use drugs!"

Okay, that was the last straw. No more Mister Nice Zoanthrope. I rose up with a terrible roar and pushed them both away from me, fully transformed into my weremole state!

"What the hell?" Ryuji gasped.

"It's his power!" Ryuchi said. "This is what we've been waiting--"

I wasn't waiting. I rushed forward with a terrible ferocity to engage them both at once, using my massive paws to deliver punches harder than they could block. My legs were reserved for maximizing my mobility, with a fierce kick thrown from a handstand when I thought they were focusing too much on my upper body. Unlike many of their foes, I already had the experience of fighting a Sou-Setsu-Ken user beaten into me.

I'd flipped the tables, and the Dragon Twins were the ones on the defense now.

"Such speed!"

"Such power!"

This wasn't a sparring match, I wasn't planning to recruit these chucklefucks, and the only reason I wasn't using my claws was that this graveyard had seen enough desecration for one night. In all other ways, I wasn't holding back. My hands were bigger than their heads, and a hammerfist blow that landed home would crush their skulls. A poke of the eyes would go through their sockets and come out the other end. If they hadn't figured out how to reinforce their soft tissue with chi, then they were dead. Simple as that.

Instead, the only thing I broke when my southpaw impacted Ryuji's face was his nose in triplicate. I shouted a kiai to solidify my spirit and shatter his three times over.

"STONE HANDS!!"

Ryuji screamed as he fell to the ground, and so did his brother Ryuchi. I stomped on Ryuji's hand while he was down until I heard the tiny bones snap.

"BROTHER!"

Ryuchi hesitated, stunned by how quickly I took out his brother after they had talked so much shit they couldn't back up. I zeroed the distance with a midair roll and made the twins a matching pair again with a trio of kicks to his chest. My foot trampled over his rib cage thrice.

"DRAGON FEET!!"

Then I smashed my fist down on his foot, breaking it.

The twins went to the ground, howling in pain and bleeding all over. Inside and out. This fight was over, and they were far too hurt to go another round. Medical science in the City was far above that of Earth. If they got to a back-alley doctor with pilfered Metpharm hardware, and if they were half as good at Sou-Setsu-Ken as they thought they were, then they should be able to walk these otherwise career-ending injuries off with time.

Assuming I let them walk away. For now, I had them at my mercy.

If I kill them now, they'll never bother me again.

I quelled the sudden, intrusive thought. They were out of this fight, and killing a helpless victim wasn't the same as killing in the middle of the action. It was wrong.

Besides, I couldn't kill these little shitheels for political concerns.

What, kill them so Slick can send the whole town after me in revenge? No thanks.

I turned back to normal. Shifting to beast mode granted me a temporary second wind, as always, but my body was sore all over. Stone Fist and Dragon Feet hurt like a motherfucker. Sonny Lee did everything in his power to torture those "special moves" into my muscle memory before he died, and they stuck. The Ring wasn't helping things, either. My wounds were only going to be so quick to heal themselves after exerting myself, but not as slow as their wounds were gonna be to fix.

"What kind of monster are you?" Ryuchi said in horror. I placed a foot on his chest, applying pressure to emphasize my next point. "Ahh!"

It felt like I broke a couple of ribs down there, and the night was still young. I could break a couple more if he forced the issue.

"The kind of monster that doesn't like to be provoked. Don't do it again."

I stepped off Ryuchi and kicked him onto his side.

"You won't get away with this!" Ryuji whinged through his broken nose. "W-We'll train harder than ever before, and kill you to prove our strength!"

I walked away.

"Whuh? Get back here! COWARD!"

"Ryuji, don't!"

I turned around.

"You stake your life on that?"

"I do!"

Ryuchi, while a bit more reluctant, backed up his brother and supported his death with.

"Then so do I!"

"Good. Because if you make me fight you again, I'm taking them."

I walked away, switched back to beast mode when I was out of the cemetery, and then dug my claws into the earth. Being careful not to leave a trace of where I was headed, I dove into the soft ground and burrowed through the soil until I could find a quiet place to pass out in peace. Which ended up being the park.

There was no way that was going to be the last I heard of the Dragon Twins. While I likely left an impression on Ryuchi and Ryuji of being a "formidable warrior" or another lethally foolish notion along those lines, I was just glad it was over.

I hope they try to jump me outside of River City, where the gun ban isn't an issue. Next time I see them, I'll have a guy shoot them in the face with a shotgun. One blast each.

My well-earned, impromptu dirt map lasted until sunrise.

Here's the next chapter! As I said in the prior update, I have three more of these in the bank, and I'd like to get them all out of my system. This has been a fun project for NaNoWriMo, though I feel the siren call of new stories (and updating older ones) on the horizon.

I had a ton of fun writing this fight scene, though. Good practice, since I don't always get the chance to play around with martial arts. Might have to change that in the future.

weredrago2 · May 7, 2024

The first thought I had, once I was out of the ground, was that I hoped I got a bonus for putting Slick's top attack dogs in their place. Hospitalizing Ryuchi and Ryuji would complicate his ambitions for taking over River City, and thus I deserved some extra compensation for the trouble of doing so on my downtime.

Then that whole fight and shaking off the Ring won't be a total loss.

With the combat drug out of my system, I was left feeling tired, grouchy, and covered in topsoil. I ripped up my shoes beyond usability, which I'd only realized after cutting my foot on a broken liquor bottle. Had to buy a cheap pair of sneakers at a ZEED general store, along with a few other amenities. Stooping outside of the store were the temps I hired for the journey back to the hotel.

I walked up to the entrance of the Tradewest Inn in Crosstown, flanked by two battle-hardened delinquents from the River City Girls Alliance. The sukeban had long skirts, surgical masks, and bloodied weapons, all of which were decorated with colorful pins and stickers to match their neon school uniforms. For the low, low price of the mobiums in my emergency money clip, this pair of fighting gals beat down every attacker of opportunity standing between me and a well-deserved rest.

My beast mode needed time to recover from my encounter with the Dragon Twins. If I pushed it too hard, too fast, then I could be locked out of it for hours.

"Here's the hotel," the girl with a blue bob cut and a green blazer said as we approached the large, reinforced doors. "Now pay up."

I handed her the rest of the payment. First half when we started, second half on arrival. The blue-haired sukeban handed the wad of bills to her friend so she could count. The second girl had a blue jacket and a bright orange ponytail.

"Looks like all of it!" the redhead said genially.

Behind them, I could see a man in a trashy coeurl-print vest running at us with a plank. He was muttering something about wanting to see blood.

"Hold please."

I flicked a gas station kunai from my jacket pocket between where the two girls were standing and straight through the offending gangster's eye. A clean kill.

"Holy shit!" the girl in green said when the stream of red spewed out behind her.

A mostly clean kill. The man spasmed until his brain gave the final sign-off that he died. The two girl gangsters looked at the body, then at each other, and then back to me.

"Thank you for your patronage, Mister Hudson-san!" the peppy girl cheered.

"You're welcome."

The two of them had potential. I considered giving them the NYAMCO Defense pitch, but it was a thorny enough task to ask if they were available "for hire" without getting bludgeoned. They walked away, too giddy with the prospect of spending their well-earned payout to bother checking the man's wallet for a tip.

"That was easy money!"

"Let's go get some Merv Burgers!"

I informed the front desk about the corpse outside and headed upstairs. When I got to my room, I ordered some food so my healing factor had proteins to chew on, took a cold shower, and changed into a spare set of clothes with a non-shredded jacket.

Definitely need a custom suit.

Now refreshed and presentable, I went down to the data terminal in the main lobby. The door to the gray box slid open with a hiss of cold air after I inserted my ZEED Shadow Card into the slot. Inside, the terminal had a rounded monitor, a mouse, a caustic odor from second-hand smoke, and a keyboard, across from a short bench. I often found myself using these on business trips, because the alternatives were the cyberdecks slung by hackers and crackers. For everyone who, there were desktops and terminals.

Descending into the booth, I skimmed through what passed for an internet around these parts. The River City network was a bare-bones listing of local shops and a primitive bulletin board system. Should I be inclined, the terminal would let me vidcall anyone in the zone without accruing long-distance charges. Instead, I punched in the code sequence for NYAMCO and waited for the terminal to reach Ridgeside.

"Any second now."

The terminal would work faster if I had a datajack, or so I've been told. I'd never experience the "electronic ecstasy" of plugging into cyberspace, something I wasn't too broken up about. The code monkey I hired to find out what Metpharm still had on zoanthropes was rendered comatose by a nasty strain of Black ICE.

Trying to peek behind the firewall of a corporate mainframe was risky business, and I transmitted some zenny to his buddies in the Bit Busters to keep Chip on life support in case he pulled through. My patronage was the closest thing those script kiddies had to health insurance, so they owed me that much.

The loading bar moved… incrementally.

"Any second now."

I began an impromptu meditation session to pass the time, feeling out the blossoming damage to the chi flow around my spine, chest, and stomach. Those were regulated by a couple chakras I couldn't remember the names of. The bruises from my fight were fading already, but the heart strain from the Ring would take longer to bounce back from. I'd have to avoid that and Berserk packs for a while.

One more night, and I'm out of here.

Eventually, I was connected to the NYAMCO headquarters and set up a vidcall with the boss. However, instead of seeing the face of Goro on the screen, I saw Mewchi at his desk with a suitably feline grin.

"How's River City treating you?"

"Mewchi?"

"Hey John! Dad's with the Volkmires right now, but he said I could take his calls! Pretty sweet, huh?"

The meeting with the people from Ultratech was this week? It must've slipped my mind.

"That's great, Mewchi. I'll keep it to the brass tacks because the rates out here are sky high. We've had a couple of incidents with the local gangs, but nothing we couldn't handle."

Mewchi frowned.

"Come on, is that really all you called for?"

"What else did you want to know?"

"Everything! Who'd they fight? What blew up? Anyone died yet?"

"No one on our side."

I let slip what I considered safe to say over the line. Mostly about the variety and number of weirdos we'd had to fend off. I was choosy with my details, making it sound as though my story was second-hand.

"Hey, how does Monty Mole fight?" Mewchi interjected. "I know Mask X is a boxer, and that Octoman guy is good with his arms, but the mole mutant's a ghost. No footage, no nothing. Only the aftermath."

I was reminded of Mewchi's reaction to the news about Monty Mole being one of ours now.

"Claws, mostly. Seems to know martial arts. Mind if I ask you a question back?"

"Sure?"

"Where did you hear of Monty Mole?"

Mewchi's posture stiffened up.

"Did you not hear what he did to the X-Syndicate mutants muscling into Madfox's turf?"

My memory was a bit hazy on the exact incident he was asking about.

"You mean the Decapz? They were only inducted into the X-Syndicate a year or two ago."

"Yeah, it was right before that when Monty Mole chopped them up into little slices and fed them to the yoshis."

I didn't hold anything against mutants, in spite of many interactions I've had with them ending in death and dismemberment. After all, I was a mutant too. One that could usually pass as human, which meant I could duck out of a lot of anti-mutant legislation. I was empathetic to the mutants I knew were simply trying to get by, and I planned to hire them for NYAMCO when we were stable.

That being said, the propensity for cannibalism among mutant gangs was, for lack of a better word, alarming. The Mutant League only put the kibosh on the practice after I put the screws in their worst offenders. The X-Syndicate implicitly gave Max D. Cap the green light to keep doing it by inviting him into their ranks. As long as it went down behind closed doors, the other members of the largest gang alliance in the City turned a blind eye to one of the most reprehensible outlets for their human trafficking rings.

Instead of pointing out the X-Syndicate was creeping up to the top of my shit list, I said something more palatable.

"As I recall, Madfox made a better offer for Mr. Mole's services. Nothing out of the ordinary for a mercenary."

Mewchi's eyes opened in surprise at my admittedly too clinical answer.

"John, is leaving the heads of your enemies out on pikes standard mercenary practice?"

Not having thought of that mess in some time, I was put on the backfoot.

"Well, not normally, but--"

"The mole gave Geldra the same horror show treatment when they were trying to set up shop in the tunnels under Ridgeside. Dad kept the pictures out of the local papers, but it was all over Space Channel 5."

"You watch Space Channel 5?" I inquired.

It was the top orbital broadcaster. Premium coverage of world events via satellite. There were better stations if you wanted the news without a corporate skew, but Space Channel 5 had the exclusive angles of its scantily-clad host, Ulala.

"Don't change the subject," Mewta said irritably, lightly embarrassed by the implication. He pushed his chibi statue of Ulala on his desk out of frame. "Monty Mole did us a couple favors, and then you started working for us around the same time. I didn't think anything of it back then, and now I do."

"Oh."

Mewchi sighed, betraying no small amount of weariness on his face.

"Look, I'm not gonna shed any tears over those hooded freaks getting what was coming to them, but I'm not dumb. I noticed a lot of really nasty types around Ridgeside disappeared, and the ones they found weren't much better. First, it was Geldra. Then it was the Wild Dogs. And then, people say he took the bounty for Scissorman. I only put it together when dad made this defense wing official that he's been working for us longer than last week."

I winced, not quite able to face the camera. I knew it couldn't be put off any longer, but why did it have to be now, of all times?!

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything before, but you have to understand--"

Mewchi waved me off, but I could tell he was having issues processing the whole thing. I had, in fact, been lying to him and his sisters for as long as I've known them.

"I get it, okay? Top secret shit. Never would've figured you were the type, but I guess that meant he picked the perfect guy to be Monty's handler."

Handler?

Does he not…?

"Y-You're right," I falsely admitted. "I've been the go-between for a couple of lower-end mercenaries. Getting them jobs they wouldn't otherwise. Monty's been my top guy."

"Who else?"

"Aero. The Bobbins Brothers. Bionic Lester. Couple of others you wouldn't know by name. This was from before we met, and it's why I was brought on."

This wasn't a complete lie being spun. I wasn't only a part-time fixer for myself. A lot of my clients were illiterate, being born into poverty or otherwise barred from getting an education, so I ended up helping them between jobs anyway. Earned me a lot of goodwill with them, something I planned to catch in at a later date.

Still felt horrible about lying to my friends now.

"So, guess that your old job running the rackets was some kinda cover?" Mewchi ventured. "For you handling our new hatchetman?"

That's the long and short of what I've been doing for Goro, during the gradual process of coming out of the shadows as John Hudson.

I rubbed my arm nervously.

"Kinda? The fantasy sports line was my idea, but Nakamura's been a lifesaver in preventing the office from catching on fire whenever I've had to step away."

Conjure the image of the most stereotypical Japanese salaryman to mind. Black hair. Dark blue suit. Opaque glasses. Joined NYAMCO out of college. Frequent karaoke fiend after hours. Lives for the company. Will probably work himself to death selling pachinko machines for the company, in spite of my efforts to try and get him to loosen up.

That was Nakamura. He did a good deal of "my" work for me while I was playing catch-up on the cutthroat financial scene of the City. It wasn't an easy job, so I paid him off with a compensatory salary, free drinks at the bar, and a promotion to my old position.

"Mewta hasn't put this together like I did. Not yet. I think Mew-Mew did."

"How can you tell?"

Mewchi shrugged.

"I just get the feeling. We're family, but she's always been kinda hard to read, you know?"

"Yeah."

Another silence.

"If the three of us are gonna be taking more responsibilities in the family business, and you know the kind I'm talking about, then I think we need to know if that kind of violence is what NYAMCO Defense is gonna be about."

He was right.

"You want it straight?" I asked.

"Yeah. Straight, no bullshit."

As a solo operator, living each day in fear that I might be captured, I needed to let people think I was a psycho mutant with an exceptional mean streak to survive. It was a novel approach, as my enemies rarely knew how to react when the tables were turned. The trick worked, even if it meant I had to act like what Tyron tried to mold me into.

Is that what I want to be my legacy?

That I was the bigger monster?

"NYAMCO Defense is going to be above-board," I said clearly, looking Mewchi in the eyes as I spoke. He didn't want me to sugarcoat anything, so I didn't. "As above-board as you can be on this shithole of a planet. We're there to protect Sabu's assets. There's gonna be some guys running out there to get themselves killed, but they won't be any of ours."

"John, Mew-Mew said she isn't worried about this whole thing, but Mewta and I are worried. I mean, you're a baseline in one of the murder capitals of the City!"

I could see where they were coming from. Late-gen uplifts didn't require as many augments as their parents to function, but the triplets all had sharp senses and retractable claws as cats. Beyond that, Mewta had a datajack that popped out of her wrist, Mewchi's bragged about having subdermal armor in the past, and Mew-Mew… maybe a monowire? Compared to all of that, I did look defenseless.

It was understandable and laughable, all at the same time.

"I'll be fine," I said more forcefully. "I appreciate the concern. I really do. But we're only gonna be in town for a little bit longer. Once I'm back in Ridgeside, I can tell you guys what I've been working on. Get you more involved, if that's what you want."

It had to wait. I couldn't tell them the truth over a damn vidcall.

Mewchi's ears tilted downward, and his whiskers flicked back.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"No holding back because you think we're not gonna be ready?"

Mewchi has that backwards, but I needed to rip this bandage off months ago.

"No holding back."

"I'll hold you to it," Mewchi said, looking more at ease. The prior tension, alleviated. "Good luck out there, John. We'll celebrate when you get back."

"Thanks, Mewchi."

I ended the call and hit the hay. I'd need to be at full energy for the last surprise River City would drop on me.

While I wasn't fully recovered by nightfall, my instincts turned out to be right. The Black Warriors were planning one last attack, and I had the "good luck" of being stationed outside of the large pachinko parlor being targeted by their heaviest hitter.

A hulking figure with an unnaturally orange pallor and bulging, veiny muscles. Bald, with a black handlebar mustache. Darker than his facial hair was the sclera of the man's eyes, which saw the world through a pair of eerie white pupils. The enhanced strongman went shirtless, which allowed him to show off the excess protrusions of bone that grew around his arms and up his spine. They jutted outwards, underneath the skin.

Adorned with big, spiked bracelets and a gleaming skull belt buckle, Abobo was perfectly in sync with the image of overwhelming force the Black Warriors gang were all about. He was hitting the mean streets of River City, one dent in the pavement at a time.

He's another Level 1 boss. I can take him in a fight, without going overkill. No sweat.

That's what I told myself as Abobo walked towards the gambling parlor with heavy footfalls and a heavier swagger. When people on the street saw him coming, they turned and ran. When the people inside the building realized he was on his way, they made for the exits in the front and back.

"What're you supposed to be?" Abobo asked me, looking downwards. Almost crouching. "A talking badger?"

Don't attack yet.

"I don't look like a badger."

"Yeah you do!" Abobo insisted.

"Badgers have black and white stripes on their heads," I explained, gesturing to my absence of those markings on my head. "I'm a mole."

"But, moles are small and… Bah, whatever! The Shadow Boss said I gotta wreck this place and knock the Sanwa Gang down a peg. I don't like putting the hurt on dumb animals, so I'm gonna need you to buzz off while I do my thing. You dig me?"

I drew up my claws, which were only so much bigger than Abobo's bone spurs. He looked like he took enough mutagenic steroids from the black market that the side effects stuck.

"I don't dig you. Is there any way I can interest you in switching sides?"

"What, join Sabu?" Abobo laughed at the idea of it. "Shadow Boss would be pretty pissed if I started pulling stunts like that, don't ya think?"

"I'm a mercenary with my own outfit. Currently seeking talent."

Abobo chuckled.

"You've got guts, little man! I can respect that! But after the Black Warriors take out the competition, we're gonna own this zone!" He brought a finger to his head. "People say I'm dumb because they're jealous of my killer bod, but to walk away from a good deal like that for a no-name like you? Now that'd be stupid!"

Abobo drove his right fist towards me!

"Have it your way!" I said, as I jumped backwards to dodge the swing of his haymaker!

I kicked off the old wall of the pachinko parlor, probing Abobo's defenses with a savage series of swipes over his exposed flesh!

"Ha! That tickles!"

The stabs didn't go far, my attacks unable to pierce Abobo's reinforced skeleton. Still, raking his skin caused Abobo to grit his teeth; As long as he had nerve endings, he could feel pain. Abobo continued to swat at me with his giant arms, but I was faster than the orange brute and I wasn't going to make this easy for him.

"Stay still, mole man! You're only dragging this out for yourself!"

He wasn't wrong. At this rate, I'd run out of steam before he did.

I disengaged and watched closely for Abobo to make his next slow, ponderous move. Instead, he brought a large, callused hand to his chin.

"Wait a sec! You uplift fellas are only half animal, right?"

The question was enough to get me to lose focus.

"Are you joking?"

"I'm just askin'!"

"Then let's go with that. Sure!"

I aimed my next swipe upwards when Abobo launched himself forward much faster than I was expecting!

"Then I only gotta feel half as bad about doin'--!" Abobo dropkicked me through the window! "THIS!"

The kick sent me to the other side of the parlor, which was filled with bright lights and loud noises that irritated my senses. I blocked the worst of the blow with my arms and pulled a ukemi to land back on my feet, jabbing my hands into the crumbling tiles so that I'd slow to a skid. There was a small, but dedicated handful of gamblers still testing their luck against the one-armed bandits.

"LEAVE!" I snarled.

The gamblers fled the scene. Abobo tried to step through the broken window, found it too small, and then pulverized the wall so he could go through it instead.

"Still feelin' like you had to warn me, short stuff? Be a sport and stay down."

Abobo began trashing the place. He unrooted pachinko machines, shook them for all they were worth, and then smashed them between his hands like a one-man wrecking crew.

I shook off the glass and picked up the comlink on my belt, fiddling with the buttons until I found the one that let me speak.

"I'm being attacked by Abobo of the Black Warriors," I whispered, using the time I had to relay my situation to the others. "Octoman, Bald Bull? Report in."

"The Black Warriors have hit us as well!" Octoman said briskly over the line. "Over!"

"Why don't you bring those tentacles of yours a bit more close and personal?" a woman on the other end crooned. I heard the crack of a whip. "I promise to go gentle!"

Sounded like Octoman was fighting Linda Lash.

"These weaklings think that outnumbering me will let them stand a chance!" Bald Bull growled, his annoyance reading loud and clear.

"So you won't need backup, then?" I asked. I heard a squelch of static on the Kitamura. "Mask X? Over?"

"You like my radio so much, smart guy? THEN WEAR IT!"

Bald Bull punched the person who stole his comlink… and the comlink he was holding.

"I'll be back with you in a few minutes," I said to Octoman.

"Acknowledged."

I slid the transceiver back onto my belt. It appeared that the Black Warriors were putting in the extra effort to make sure at least one of their attacks tonight stuck.

Looking over my surroundings, I saw rows of pachinko machines lining the walls, bolted-down stools at the machines, an extension cord poking out from behind the counter connected to a wall fan, and scattered balls all over the floor.

Seeing that it was going to be impossible for the building to end the night unscathed anyway, I hacked a stool loose, eyed Abobo's ribs for a gap, and jammed the sharpened steel end into his lower back like a push pin.

"OW!!" Abobo yowled. That one went deep, and he couldn't act like he was invincible anymore. "That's it, you damn runt!"

Abobo raised both his fists in the air, and his upper body began to expand like a balloon. He was rapidly-generating new muscles over his chest, arms, and face until they fit snuggly atop his warped skeleton.

"Funny rat wants Abobo, funny rat GETS ABOBO!" the mutant powerhouse shouted, his voice rendered strange and distorted by the extra strain on his vocal chords.

The overdeveloped musculature was brought down on the building with the force of a bomb, shattering titles and exposing the foundation. I was sent upwards by the shockwave, and Abobo grabbed me so he could slam me back into the ground like a ragdoll.

I felt my arms, chest, and back strain under the pressure and burn with cell division. My head throbbed the same way. He wound up another punch and, healing factor or not, I knew I couldn't afford to take another hit of that magnitude. I sunk a paw into the exposed ground and shoved a clump of dirt into his eyes, driving Abobo away.

"GRRAH!"

With the increased mass on his arms and head, Abobo found it harder to maneuver his limbs towards his face and clear the dirt. Abobo made loud tremors as he stomped around the parlor, trashing blindly to try and find where I'd gone. In the time it took to stop and clean out his eyes, I'd already driven my claws through the dirt and burrowed all the way to the large bubble of air forming beneath the road outside. The ground River City was built on was full of gaps and sinkholes like these I could take advantage of.

"GET BACK HERE! ABOBO NOT DONE WITH YOU YET!"

I grabbed one of the water pipes threading through the pachinko hall and redirected it to the cave under the asphalt, which was a lot less stable after I chipped at its ceiling. Once my trap was set, I popped out of a hole on the other side of the road.

"OUT HERE, ABOZO!" I shouted to the enraged Abobo, one middle claw raised on each paw. "COME AND GET ME!"

His vision recovered, and I could tell because seeing me give him the finger two times over caused Abobo to enter a blind fury. He bulldozed through the wall and went straight at me.

"ABOBO TEACH YOU SOME MANNERS!"

Taking one fateful step onto my trap, the road beneath Abobo's feet collapsed into a D.I.Y. cenote with water that went up to his waist. Not one to be deterred, Abobo grabbed onto the sides of the pit and attempted to climb out. His immense weight was too much for the edges of the pit to hold his weight.

"ABOBO NOT AFRAID OF WATER!"

"Let's try for five seconds," I mused, as I walked back into the pachinko hall.

Abobo stomped his feet even harder, unaware that he was only digging himself deeper.

"FIVE SECONDS NOT ENOUGH FOR RAT TO RUN! YOU WAIT UNTIL ABOBO IS--!"

I came back with the extension cord from the building, without a head, and dropped the exposed wire into the pool. Abobo let out a scream as the volts ran through his biology.

I counted along.

"Five Mississippi, four Mississippi, three Mississippi…"

No matter his size or strength, as long as Abobo was still about seventy percent water, electricity was gonna sting. Skin and bones were awful conductors, but that metal stool and his other accessories were great for sending the charge into the rest of his body.

"Zero."

I pulled the cord out. Abobo's body was smoking, covered in electrical burns all over his body, yet he was still standing. Which was why I still had the cord in my hand, waiting to see what he'd do next.

Once Abobo settled into a series of twitches, he visibly deflated upon figuring out that his life was in my hands.

I wished that it was a figure of speech. Eugh. His fluttering eyes darted to the extension cord, and then to my nametag.

"Hey, hey! Monty, right? I think we got off on the wrong foot!"

"Uh huh." I lowered the cord towards the water. "I get that a lot."

"DON'T do anything hasty! I'll put in a good word with the Shadow Boss! We can get you money, chicks, anything! I bet that nose of yours can put away a lot of blow, eh?"

"What's the name of the Shadow Boss again?" I asked idly. "It slipped my mind."

As I spoke, I let the cord dangle towards the water's edge. The occasional crackle and spark sputtered out when the wire made contact with the waves from Abobo's movements.

I wasn't a huge fan of torture, for a couple of reasons. If Abobo didn't have anything useful, I'd leave him there and move on to another one of the Shadow Boss' lieutenants.

"Willy Mackey!" he shouted after another shock when the cord tapped the water.

"Very good."

In the original arcade game, the Shadow Boss was Willy Mackey. However, in the NES version, Willy was the frontman for Jimmy Lee. I was sure I could take Shadow Boss out with a trick like this if he was Willy, but if Jimmy Lee broke bad, there was no way I was getting any closer to that clusterfuck than I already am.

Abobo's confession confirmed that Mackey existed, and that Abobo thought he was in charge. Only so much to work with there.

"What else do you want?" he said, exhausted.

"Give me the frequency the Black Warriors have been using to coordinate the raid. They do what I say, and you're free to go."

Reluctantly, the scorched gangster gave me the numbers I needed to tune my comlink to. I entered them into the Kitamura.

"This is Monty Mole to the Black Warriors," I announced to the gang.

"Oh?" Linda moaned in surprise.

"Get the fuck off our radio!" a man with a guttural voice howled at me. I had to move it away from my ear with a pained wince. "Or we'll kill you!"

"Stop screaming. This is a turf war, not a goddamn daycare."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Monty. Mole. And stop interrupting. I'm not here for your poor attempt at trash talk."

"Say that to my face, you--"

I rolled my eyes.

"Someone shut up the screaming infant and listen. Closely. I have Abobo in my custody, and if you do not immediately withdraw your forces attacking the Sanwa Gang, I'll test out how many Mississippis it takes to stop his heart. Pass that along to Shadow Boss. Over."

"You are bluffing!" a different man said haughtily. "Abobo would not be so easily beaten."

"Chin, the sick freak stuck me in a death pit!" Abobo shouted, when I tilted the communicator in his direction.

"Did you all catch that?"

I heard another noise that was probably an affirmation from Linda.

"Mmh. Sit tight, Mister Mole. Same to you, Abobo. Don't go anywhere~"

I waited patiently for a follow-up response. Preferably one that didn't sound like Linda's tryouts for a phone sex hotline.

"So that's your plan?" Abobo asked, his breathing heavy. "Try to use me as a hostage?"

It was ironic, considering how this was supposed to go. The Black Warriors take Marian, the Lee Brothers fight through an army of goons to get her back.

"The Black Warriors do kidnappings to extort money and favors out of people all the time. Standing outside for one of the Shadow Boss' favorite leg-breakers to arrive so I could use you as a bargaining chip saved me the trouble of searching."

Abobo let out a frustrated grunt.

"Damn. Guess I underestimated you."

"I'm glad we're on the same page."

The comlink fired up again, and I heard Linda's voice through the line.

"Aww. Tough break, Abobo."

"What?" he said, in genuine surprise. It was as though you told him that his dog didn't go to the farm zone when he got too old to walk. "Tough break? The fuck does that mean?"

"The Shadow Boss doesn't play by anyone else's terms. I'm sure a big, strong man like you can get out of there without any help from little old me. But if you were to ask nicely, I could saunter over? Maybe if you beg, I'll come faster?"

Abobo railed against the sides of the sinkhole.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"Mister Mole?" Linda intoned, ignoring her ailing ally. "Abobo lost, so kill him if you want."

"That's it? No threats of revenge?"

"Black Warriors respect power and success. Abobo was a dead man the second he lost. Only way he could build himself back up now is to take you out. Then all's forgiven."

It was their idea of fairness, and they stuck to it.

"Anything else?"

"Sure. Got one last thing to ask you."

"Yes?" I answered.

Was this going to be a message from the Shadow Boss?

"What're you wearing?"

"Linda, don't quit your night job."

I disconnected from the sputtering Black Warriors line and turned to Abobo.

"Do you still think that Mackey cared about your loyalty?" I asked him. "Basic pachinkos are a hundred zenny a pop, up to a thousand for a specialty one. With a good three hundred machines to a parlor, Mackey sold your ass out so the others could cost Sabu anywhere between thirty to three hundred grand per stop. Whatever you thought he wanted you around for, that's how much he thought your loyalty was worth."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!" he roared. "He respected me for my strength, and I'm still stronger than you! Come down here so I can BREAK YOU IN TWO!"

I threw the extension cord away and drilled back into the ground. When I redirected the water pipe, the sinkhole drained out, and Abobo fell to his knees with a loud thump.

"Wanna test that theory?"

I tossed a pill bottle at Abobo's feet. He picked it up and examined it.

"What is this?"

"Monomate. Fast-acting. Should be enough to get you out of here. Head back to the Black Warriors and tell them you overpowered me, if you really think you can work for a gang that'll dispose of you when it suits them."

I walked away, towards another site the Black Warriors were hitting.

"Do what you will after tonight. It won't be my problem unless I'm hired for you to be my problem again."

I left Abobo to stew on where to take his life next. If he was smart, he'd leave the Black Warriors, and at that point? Didn't care.

All that was left was the cleanup.

After the dust had settled, I did some extra digging and found the guy who was annoying me over the radio. He was an obese wrestler wearing the top half of a welding mask and armor held together by leather straps. The big guy's name was Burnov, and, after our little chat, I figured that the so-called "Human Bomb" would benefit from an etiquette course.

When I ambushed the man from beneath a stash house, beat him senseless, and buried him up to his chest in dirt, I left a couple of books on the subject within arm's reach.

By the end of the week, the damage inflicted to the Sanwakai's venues was significant, but not as significant as the damage we did back. The Black Warriors had lost Abobo, the Ground Zeroes suffered a drain in no-name manpower. Slick couldn't cry foul about what I did to the Dragon Twins, because he'd have to admit they were put in traction first.

Our success was exactly why Sabu wanted to see me at his office in person. He was a tall man with a brown perm, and broad lips in a perpetual frown. The man wore a brown business suit, a gold chain around his neck, and a semi-automatic pistol in his pocket. One of the countless Soviet-style weapons they've been smuggling out of the Kazakh Federation. Sabu didn't give a damn about the "no guns" rule around River City, and only paid lip service to it in order to reduce the amount of them he didn't control.

Honor was a flexible thing like that.

"Your group exceeded my expectations," Sabu complemented, if in a backhanded manner. "The Black Warriors will need time to mount another offensive on this scale. Time that I don't intend to give them before we counterattack."

"It's regrettable that several of the pachinko parlors were damaged in the process of saving the businesses as a whole."

"The losses couldn't be helped." Sabu said coolly. The neo-yakuza boss slid me an envelope across his hinoki cypress desk. "Your squad deserves additional compensation for a job well done. Send Goro my regards."

I wasn't so gauche as to pop it open in front of him. I accepted the envelope with a polite nod. This'll be split between Bald Bull, Octoman, and Monty Mole for a job well done.

With that, our business was over.

"One more thing," Sabu said as I reached the door. "A word of advice."

I stopped.

"Sir?"

"Word will spread of NYAMCO Defense's efficacy, beyond River City. Remember that reputation is a double-edged sword. Your performance will reflect on NYAMCO as a whole."

It was a simple warning. Now that our corp had teeth, our enemies would smell blood in the water if those teeth cracked or broke.

I thanked Sabu for this wisdom and departed from his office. An hour later, I met Octoman and Bald Bull at the boxy, six-wheeled Mule I purchased exclusively for NYAMCO Defense operations. It was a professional military truck for a professional paramilitary outfit. I expected it to come in handy after Goro ironed out the Ultratech deal.

"I was surprised that the Sanwakai were taking the damage to their property so well as to give us a bonus," Octoman commented, tentacles at the 10 and 2.

I reimbursed him for medicines he bought to heal the lacerations he sustained against Linda. Business expenses.

"They were relieved to have their stores in one piece," I explained, as I entered the seat next to him. "More importantly, their rivals are gonna be laying low for a long while."

"We should come here again next week!" Bald Bull said as he got into the back.

Bald Bull was covered in bruises, having turned down the restorative drugs I offered, and was raring to go for another round against the gangs on the house. He had also, by this point, lost track of where he put his mask.

"Where is Monty Mole?" Octoman asked me.

"Performing extra recon duty," I said. "He'll catch up."

Octoman appeared to accept the answer at its face, though I may have said the same thing when we entered the zone. Octoman took us through the checkpoint around River City, and after that, we were Ridgeside bound.

I need to tell him and Bull about me being a zoanthrope, too. Keeping a secret like that when we're going to be working together is gonna be too much trouble. Too dangerous. Stupid. Just wanted to wait until after this so that I knew they wouldn't flake.

This gig, for all of its struggles, was the easy part. The hard part would be sitting down with my friends and explaining everything I'd been keeping from them.

This chapter you've read, in some form or another, was hiding in my drafts for a couple of months. It was done in time for NaNoWriMo, sure, but I wasn't satisfied with the output. Felt like I was rushing and making stuff up by the seat of my pants to hit that 50k word goal. At that point, I knew that I had to put the NaNo and work on other stuff again. Like Ruby Haze.

This wraps up the River City mini-arc. There's more I wrote after that, but I have new ideas and want to express them differently from the next chapter that was "supposed" to come next. So I'll need to take my time and chart a new course.

As I said elsewhere, the goal for this fic is at least 50k words. I still want to hit that original goal. Then we'll see what happens next. Zoanthropy has been a fantastic way for me to workshop new ideas for this mishmash of a setting.

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This chapter has been brought to you by the following patrons and beta readers: C-Moon, Crosswire, Draconic Hermit, Dr.doom360, Justquestin2004, and N'Oni!

Thank you all for the continuing support!

Zoanthropy [8-Bit Dystopia] [Video Game Multicross SI]

8-Bit Dystopia: Zoanthropy [Video Game Multicross SI]

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