Thieves and Requests
Thieves are as common as roaches in Changye. And one thing about thieves is they can be dumb or clever depending on what they are after. The thieves entering our place are the kind who risks it all for the sake of a score.
Thieves are either hired by someone to get incriminating objects or data or just doing it because they think it’s a rich place where they can pawn some things. My biggest question was how they got in here in the first place. Looking at the thieves barely breathing on the floor. With the interns using them as some live practice on how to tend to the injured people.
Never seen Kei fight that much. She carries around her teleforce cane, but she barely uses it. This time, I saw her tap someone’s chest and their bones were just cracking. They went down hard on the floor and are just groaning pathetically.
“How did these boys get here?”
“Probably the fog.”
“The fog, eh?”
She takes a long drag of her cigarette. And then squats down with eyes leveled on one of the thieves. It must be quite intimidating for the bastard, stared down by Kei, Aidan and his retinue being armed to the teeth with some of the interns having their tools out.
“You boys are new here?”
“Y-yes, Ma’am.”
She makes a small grin.
“Ah, polite, you are all new to this city. Or you’re pretending. Well, it doesn't matter. You want to be thieves in this city, you gotta know the rules of thieving.”
One of them has a face saying ‘there are rules to stealing’ and raises his brow in question. The other one’s legs don't seem to be functioning yet after Kei gave them the beat down.
“Rules in thieving, believe it or not, my amateur friends. There are places here you don’t steal.”
Kei goes on about how there are people here you have to go first. Guilds of thieves who have organized into thieving. There are two-bit thugs here, idiots who steal and try to get away with it. Thieves are very common, but when you try to fuck with offices like this. There’s a chance the gang we paid off to tell the thieves to fuck off are not going to be happy learning. We pay them to fuck off and the other thieves would tell them to fuck off as well. Most owners know they can trust them more than the LCPD. Of course, not all the eggs in Lower Changye’s Police Department are full of rotten eggs, but it’s unlikely for them to act.
“So do you understand, boys?”
“W-we do.”
She turns to Aidan.
“So, can we use these boys?”
Aidan stares them down.
“They managed to sneak in… you got 7S here… but they managed. Either Sato’s men are trash or they are good. Either way, are you sure about them? Thieves are thieves. They can’t change.”
Kei shrugs and smiles at them.
“I’m giving you jobs. You owe us now after this. So are you going to work for us or are we going to hand you over to the can?”
“We’ll work!”
“Great!”
Kei claps and then turns towards Aidan.
“Give them oaths. Make sure they don’t try anything. You can handle these things, you know?”
Aidan shrugs and then turns towards his interns. They took the thieves and dragged them to the bottom. I think they set up a makeshift clinic on the second floor.
After dealing with the thieves. Aidan gave us his report. Most of the interns are doing well. The business is doing well and he and the crew are giving the anomalies a run for their money. You see, Kei and Aidan had set up this tier where they’ll hunt down the enemy. They use this tier to identify which the newbies can take on and what they can’t.
“It looks like there’s a dramatic increase in anomalies.”
Aidan shows us a report. At first it didn’t give me any worry, but after seeing the date in which the anoms started popping higher. I start to wonder if this is caused by the events in Vultan.
“Well, keep it up. As for our side, we didn’t get anything. The monsters were a good lead, but most of them are just variants. They grow an extra heart or a limb.”
“I read that. We got a lot of sales from that. A friend said he discovered that some of the stronger ones have this too.”
Honestly, it’s not that strange. In other places they might think it’s something to behold, but this is Changye, a place where you can easily find someone with a second heart.
“Other than that… we got nothing. It’s not like anomalies are a common sight. Honestly, we just got lucky as of late.”
Kei circles around her desk and sits down. She turns her workstation on and leans back. I made us a cup of coffee and sat on the couch across Aidan. Most of his crew’s outside. The fog has somewhat faded, but there’s still a lot of it.
“The fog is making it miserable.”
“Thanks, Akun.”
Kei takes the coffee and takes a sip of it.
“It’s not that bad if you start wearing thermal wear.”
“Hmm, my eyes aren’t that good anymore.”
“Really? Well, more reason to do it. Ever thought of getting new ones?”
“I might with the pay you’re giving me.”
Kei laughs lightly and reads one of the reports the interns made up. She has gone full Boss as of late and now she takes it in stride. It sounds awful to say this, but without Eta, she seems more motivated to play the role. It fits her. But it also makes my life rather tiresome. A proactive boss means more work. I’m used to the grind of life, but the fog does make my life rather tedious. It brings up bad memories I’d rather not recall.
Aidan left with his crew after checking everything out. They dragged the thieves with them and vanished into the fog. The lightshow on the side of the road is still on. It’s morning and yet you’d think it’s already evening with the visibility.
Kei’s going through her documents. I’m checking our database and making corrections on the articles written by the interns and ones hired by Sato. After checking the articles, I went to the emails and found hundreds of them. I didn’t want to read through them so I let the macro I set up do it for me, automating the process until it stopped and gave me emails worth reading about.
Most of it is spam and phishing links. But the ones worth reading about are mostly inquiries about the articles. And few emails from citizens who are curious about our subscription prizes and if there’s going to be any discount.
I was about to just select all and mark them as read. But one of the emails caught my eye. The email is long and it seems to be about this ‘problem’ no one is taking care about.
“Got an interesting email here.”
“Really?”
Kei looks up. I set up the virtual machine and opened it there. The email’s full of documentation of this ‘problem’ this man is telling us about.
“Sounds like a conspiracy theorist.”
Kei commented, arm leaned on my shoulder.
“You say that while living in a world where we had just faced a god made by man.”
“Touche, but still, sounds like a slop you’d find on the Net, Akun.”
I ignored her and continued browsing through the docs the emailer sent. From what I can understand, he’s a flesh pit miner, and he’s been mining on a flesh pit mine on the outskirts of the city. Alonzo’s District, an okay neighborhood where they had hopes of creating a charming clean place, only for the corpos to find out there’s a flesh pit growing under the place and rolled in.
It’s somewhat remained as it is, but I've heard how tribalistic they’ve become after some immigrants from the 4th Reich started living there. So there’s lot of proud people in there who don't take kindly if you don’t have the kind of color on your skin or at least some purity of blood.
“Oh, Alonzo… great place.”
“Been there?”
“Once all by myself. Had a job that took me there. Even had a crush on one of the waitresses there. Cute girl, around six-foot tall and got great three-sizes. Wonder if she’s still there?”
“What job was that?”
“A gig about these assholes trying to move in on some business and a slayer job for this dire animal that got in. Hard job since lots of Hunters came in. Had to team up with two freelancers to get the job done.”
“So other than the girl, is the place bad?”
“Yeah. Not a good place for mixed races. I didn’t get shit, but it’s bad if you’re the kind they want to harass.”
Back to the email. It’s mostly about his video-style documentation alongside the notes he’d taken in his mobile device. Judging by how it was written, it seems to have been typed with a neuro processor. Most of it is somewhat familiar. The biomass of flesh growing on the walls and ceilings. The miners who are equipped with power saws and cutting tools and jacks to keep the flesh from closing in on them.
Still, the email’s purpose was to reveal the secret of one of the sections of the flesh pit mine. No, to be precise he’s talking about this part of the service tunnels not mapped by their company.
And finally the hastily taken sixty-one seconds clip of what I assume to be citizens of the district gathering in ritual formation, carrying torches and sacks of ingredients.
“This could be just another wannabe warlocks who wants to get some powers.”
“Could be.”
I scroll down and then the picture of this gangrene covered flesh golem was on the screen, walking the unmapped part of this service tunnel.
But what caught our eyes were not the golem itself, but the way it opened up the tunnels. The sender clearly survived the encounter, but also wrote how just twenty seconds of being in the presence of this flesh golem his skin started to become gangrenous. He suspects the more the flesh golem stares down. The more it rots their bodies.
“And they haven’t checked up on the OB or the Priests for this?”
“It says here they did, but it looks like they couldn’t resolve the problem because it’s neither arcane nor demonic in nature.”
“Odd. Even if it isn’t. They should have an idea on how to remove this creature. They should have no problem doing this, so why us?”
I scrolled down at the bottom and it said someone from the OB recommended we take a look and see if we can take care of this problem. The Bureau and The Church Union have somewhat separated the citizens and even caught the ones doing the ritual, and now they want us to take a peek at what this creature is.
“So they got it under control and now want to learn more about it. Hah, I guess they don’t like the idea of the flesh pits having gangrene and pus everywhere.”
“And here I thought they’re doing it out of responsibility.”
“So are we taking this, Boss?”
Kei takes another read of the request to send us to Alonzo. Checks our schedule and then puts a hold on the investigation for the AHC about the recent problems with the outskirt monsters and sends a quick template reply.
“We will. Also, can you send me the macros you are using.”
“Thought you were going to scold me for it.”
“Eh, everyone does it now. As long as you don’t fully automate it, I’m fine with it.”
We didn’t want to go unprepared so we readied up first. Took some equipment with us and placed them in my dimenbag. Kei also went to visit the thieves holding Asobe Street and told them about what happened. How she knew these guys, seeing their familiarity, makes me wonder what Kei’s been doing to meet these kinds of people.
Thieves and Requests
Thieves are as common as roaches in Changye. And one thing about thieves is they can be dumb or clever depending on what they are after. The thieves entering our place are the kind who risks it all for the sake of a score.
Thieves are either hired by someone to get incriminating objects or data or just doing it because they think it’s a rich place where they can pawn some things. My biggest question was how they got in here in the first place. Looking at the thieves barely breathing on the floor. With the interns using them as some live practice on how to tend to the injured people.
Never seen Kei fight that much. She carries around her teleforce cane, but she barely uses it. This time, I saw her tap someone’s chest and their bones were just cracking. They went down hard on the floor and are just groaning pathetically.
“How did these boys get here?”
“Probably the fog.”
“The fog, eh?”
She takes a long drag of her cigarette. And then squats down with eyes leveled on one of the thieves. It must be quite intimidating for the bastard, stared down by Kei, Aidan and his retinue being armed to the teeth with some of the interns having their tools out.
“You boys are new here?”
“Y-yes, Ma’am.”
She makes a small grin.
“Ah, polite, you are all new to this city. Or you’re pretending. Well, it doesn't matter. You want to be thieves in this city, you gotta know the rules of thieving.”
One of them has a face saying ‘there are rules to stealing’ and raises his brow in question. The other one’s legs don't seem to be functioning yet after Kei gave them the beat down.
“Rules in thieving, believe it or not, my amateur friends. There are places here you don’t steal.”
Kei goes on about how there are people here you have to go first. Guilds of thieves who have organized into thieving. There are two-bit thugs here, idiots who steal and try to get away with it. Thieves are very common, but when you try to fuck with offices like this. There’s a chance the gang we paid off to tell the thieves to fuck off are not going to be happy learning. We pay them to fuck off and the other thieves would tell them to fuck off as well. Most owners know they can trust them more than the LCPD. Of course, not all the eggs in Lower Changye’s Police Department are full of rotten eggs, but it’s unlikely for them to act.
“So do you understand, boys?”
“W-we do.”
She turns to Aidan.
“So, can we use these boys?”
Aidan stares them down.
“They managed to sneak in… you got 7S here… but they managed. Either Sato’s men are trash or they are good. Either way, are you sure about them? Thieves are thieves. They can’t change.”
Kei shrugs and smiles at them.
“I’m giving you jobs. You owe us now after this. So are you going to work for us or are we going to hand you over to the can?”
“We’ll work!”
“Great!”
Kei claps and then turns towards Aidan.
“Give them oaths. Make sure they don’t try anything. You can handle these things, you know?”
Aidan shrugs and then turns towards his interns. They took the thieves and dragged them to the bottom. I think they set up a makeshift clinic on the second floor.
After dealing with the thieves. Aidan gave us his report. Most of the interns are doing well. The business is doing well and he and the crew are giving the anomalies a run for their money. You see, Kei and Aidan had set up this tier where they’ll hunt down the enemy. They use this tier to identify which the newbies can take on and what they can’t.
“It looks like there’s a dramatic increase in anomalies.”
Aidan shows us a report. At first it didn’t give me any worry, but after seeing the date in which the anoms started popping higher. I start to wonder if this is caused by the events in Vultan.
“Well, keep it up. As for our side, we didn’t get anything. The monsters were a good lead, but most of them are just variants. They grow an extra heart or a limb.”
“I read that. We got a lot of sales from that. A friend said he discovered that some of the stronger ones have this too.”
Honestly, it’s not that strange. In other places they might think it’s something to behold, but this is Changye, a place where you can easily find someone with a second heart.
“Other than that… we got nothing. It’s not like anomalies are a common sight. Honestly, we just got lucky as of late.”
Kei circles around her desk and sits down. She turns her workstation on and leans back. I made us a cup of coffee and sat on the couch across Aidan. Most of his crew’s outside. The fog has somewhat faded, but there’s still a lot of it.
“The fog is making it miserable.”
“Thanks, Akun.”
Kei takes the coffee and takes a sip of it.
“It’s not that bad if you start wearing thermal wear.”
“Hmm, my eyes aren’t that good anymore.”
“Really? Well, more reason to do it. Ever thought of getting new ones?”
“I might with the pay you’re giving me.”
Kei laughs lightly and reads one of the reports the interns made up. She has gone full Boss as of late and now she takes it in stride. It sounds awful to say this, but without Eta, she seems more motivated to play the role. It fits her. But it also makes my life rather tiresome. A proactive boss means more work. I’m used to the grind of life, but the fog does make my life rather tedious. It brings up bad memories I’d rather not recall.
Aidan left with his crew after checking everything out. They dragged the thieves with them and vanished into the fog. The lightshow on the side of the road is still on. It’s morning and yet you’d think it’s already evening with the visibility.
Kei’s going through her documents. I’m checking our database and making corrections on the articles written by the interns and ones hired by Sato. After checking the articles, I went to the emails and found hundreds of them. I didn’t want to read through them so I let the macro I set up do it for me, automating the process until it stopped and gave me emails worth reading about.
Most of it is spam and phishing links. But the ones worth reading about are mostly inquiries about the articles. And few emails from citizens who are curious about our subscription prizes and if there’s going to be any discount.
I was about to just select all and mark them as read. But one of the emails caught my eye. The email is long and it seems to be about this ‘problem’ no one is taking care about.
“Got an interesting email here.”
“Really?”
Kei looks up. I set up the virtual machine and opened it there. The email’s full of documentation of this ‘problem’ this man is telling us about.
“Sounds like a conspiracy theorist.”
Kei commented, arm leaned on my shoulder.
“You say that while living in a world where we had just faced a god made by man.”
“Touche, but still, sounds like a slop you’d find on the Net, Akun.”
I ignored her and continued browsing through the docs the emailer sent. From what I can understand, he’s a flesh pit miner, and he’s been mining on a flesh pit mine on the outskirts of the city. Alonzo’s District, an okay neighborhood where they had hopes of creating a charming clean place, only for the corpos to find out there’s a flesh pit growing under the place and rolled in.
It’s somewhat remained as it is, but I've heard how tribalistic they’ve become after some immigrants from the 4th Reich started living there. So there’s lot of proud people in there who don't take kindly if you don’t have the kind of color on your skin or at least some purity of blood.
“Oh, Alonzo… great place.”
“Been there?”
“Once all by myself. Had a job that took me there. Even had a crush on one of the waitresses there. Cute girl, around six-foot tall and got great three-sizes. Wonder if she’s still there?”
“What job was that?”
“A gig about these assholes trying to move in on some business and a slayer job for this dire animal that got in. Hard job since lots of Hunters came in. Had to team up with two freelancers to get the job done.”
“So other than the girl, is the place bad?”
“Yeah. Not a good place for mixed races. I didn’t get shit, but it’s bad if you’re the kind they want to harass.”
Back to the email. It’s mostly about his video-style documentation alongside the notes he’d taken in his mobile device. Judging by how it was written, it seems to have been typed with a neuro processor. Most of it is somewhat familiar. The biomass of flesh growing on the walls and ceilings. The miners who are equipped with power saws and cutting tools and jacks to keep the flesh from closing in on them.
Still, the email’s purpose was to reveal the secret of one of the sections of the flesh pit mine. No, to be precise he’s talking about this part of the service tunnels not mapped by their company.
And finally the hastily taken sixty-one seconds clip of what I assume to be citizens of the district gathering in ritual formation, carrying torches and sacks of ingredients.
“This could be just another wannabe warlocks who wants to get some powers.”
“Could be.”
I scroll down and then the picture of this gangrene covered flesh golem was on the screen, walking the unmapped part of this service tunnel.
But what caught our eyes were not the golem itself, but the way it opened up the tunnels. The sender clearly survived the encounter, but also wrote how just twenty seconds of being in the presence of this flesh golem his skin started to become gangrenous. He suspects the more the flesh golem stares down. The more it rots their bodies.
“And they haven’t checked up on the OB or the Priests for this?”
“It says here they did, but it looks like they couldn’t resolve the problem because it’s neither arcane nor demonic in nature.”
“Odd. Even if it isn’t. They should have an idea on how to remove this creature. They should have no problem doing this, so why us?”
I scrolled down at the bottom and it said someone from the OB recommended we take a look and see if we can take care of this problem. The Bureau and The Church Union have somewhat separated the citizens and even caught the ones doing the ritual, and now they want us to take a peek at what this creature is.
“So they got it under control and now want to learn more about it. Hah, I guess they don’t like the idea of the flesh pits having gangrene and pus everywhere.”
“And here I thought they’re doing it out of responsibility.”
“So are we taking this, Boss?”
Kei takes another read of the request to send us to Alonzo. Checks our schedule and then puts a hold on the investigation for the AHC about the recent problems with the outskirt monsters and sends a quick template reply.
“We will. Also, can you send me the macros you are using.”
“Thought you were going to scold me for it.”
“Eh, everyone does it now. As long as you don’t fully automate it, I’m fine with it.”
We didn’t want to go unprepared so we readied up first. Took some equipment with us and placed them in my dimenbag. Kei also went to visit the thieves holding Asobe Street and told them about what happened. How she knew these guys, seeing their familiarity, makes me wonder what Kei’s been doing to meet these kinds of people.
