Ravens of Eternity

57 The Seven, Pt The Seven spent the next few hours building their dossiers. As Locke mentioned, going after Nightmare meant finding all his associates as well. It wasn’t enough to just go after him – his entire outfit needed to be removed.

To do that, they pulled together all kinds of information gathered from all sorts of sources, and sifted through the things they needed – names, associates, places they frequented, and so on.

By the end, they had built a rather long list of names.

Nightmare, of course, along with 21 of his associates. All of them were refugee players, and were stronger, tougher, and smarter. Well, supposedly smarter, anyway.

Eva surmised that they had played Bellum Aeterna for years, and were incredibly familiar with each other. They no doubt worked very well together, at least in the realm of their expertise – griefing.

Beyond the 21, there were a dozen others that they had recruited into their ranks. More than likely they were just some scum that were scraped off Helios’ streets.

Regardless, it didn’t really bode well for them or the rest of the galaxy.

Nightmare had become a professional griefer, and was recruiting.

“Issit time to knock some heads around or what?” asked Xylo.

.....

“Let’s knock on some doors first before any heads,” replied Eva. “But don’t worry – we’ll get there soon enough.”

“Who do we talk to first?” asked Amal.

Miko tossed another list up on the main display, and it was suddenly populated with a handful of faces. Their street names accompanied their 3d portraits.

There were only nine of them, but they looked significantly different from Nightmare’s thugs. In fact, they were actually his connections to the rest of Helios’ criminal underground.

The people on that list were fences and smugglers and forgers and fixers and worse.

Locke’s eyes immediately went wide as he recognized some of them.

“You definitely don’t want to knock their heads around,” he said.

“Fair enough,” said Amal, “but which one do we talk to?”

Eva reviewed the list and was surprised to find that she knew one of them. She quickly focused in on one of the faces, and his elderly visage filled the display.

“Him,” she said. “I know the Toymaker.”

His face should have looked kind, but didn’t. His face was thin, wrinkled, and worn. But his eyes looked sharp and deadly.

~

One of those piercing blue eyes looked through a jeweler’s loupe at a thin and delicate strip of metal with a couple of bends in the middle. He held it with a pair of thin tweezers, and flipped it up and over as he inspected every angle.

Dust and grime was present all over it.

The Toymaker then picked up a cleaning tool with a soft tip and carefully cleaned off the strip of metal. His movements were precise and exacting. Perhaps too much so.

Once he was satisfied, he laid down the piece onto a plain white cloth. Then he picked up another piece, though it was larger and more complex in shape.

He began to clean that, too.

The door rang as a person walked into his little shop, but he didn’t seem the least bit phased. His guests walked through the old pawn shop, its shelves littered with the dusty remains of someone’s forgotten, or stolen, life.

Two of them then came up to the counter where he worked diligently on restoring an old toy. He was still laser-focused on the job at hand.

“Miss Freya,” he said. “And Miss Raijin. You’ve brought friends.”

“How do you always know it is us, before you have confirmed it with your eyes?” asked Miko.

He then put the piece he was working on carefully onto the cloth, then set his tools and his loupe aside so he could talk to the two of them properly.

As he did so, he surreptitiously took a glance at the pair’s entourage. He silently studied their demeanor as they wandered around his shop and looked at various things.

He also noted that though they had given him plenty of space, they were still close enough to be within earshot.

“One doesn’t get to my age by chance,” he said. “So. Are you visiting for business, or pleasure?”

“Bit of both,” answered Eva. “All of us are after this man.”

She then sent him Nightmare’s wanted poster through her DI.

“Ahh, official business then,” he said.

“Best-case scenario, really. We all know how things actually work out in the field.”

“If only the galaxy spun the way we wanted it to. I... understand the need for hot-blooded competition, but you should be well aware I can’t just sell client or contractor data. Makes for bad business for everyone involved.”

Eva nodded her head in agreement.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t want you to sell him, and we don’t expect you to. But how about one of his lackeys instead? One of the little ones that no-one will miss.”

The Toymaker leaned back in his chair. A look of intrigue was etched on his face.

“I could agree to this. But it honestly depends on what you’re offering in exchange.”

“One D-Tier contract,” said Miko decisively. “Fully pro bono.”

His eyebrow arched greatly. A D-Tier contract wasn’t that high of a sum. In fact, it was rather middling in regards to lower-ranked underworld jobs.

Standard bounties on the other hand rewarded amounts around that sum.

He immediately knew what they were planning. They were going to work their way towards Nightmare from the bottom up, and what they needed was the lowest worm in the ranks.

They got to take down the thug, and he got paid the bounty.

It was a good suggestion, but only because it came from them. Had it come from anyone else, he would have closed his books on them.

Eva and Miko had done a couple of jobs for him previously. One mission was for them to retrieve a case full of doubly-stolen goods, while another was for them to retrieve someone’s head. Pretty standard.

In both cases, the jobs were done quickly, quietly, and meticulously. On top of that, their operations ran strictly grey, legally speaking.

Their offer was essentially them promising to continue working with him, as compensation for him losing access to Nightmare as a contractor.

They were perfectly professional, while he was a chaotic liability.

That was a trade that he couldn’t pass up.

“Very well,” he said. “It’s quite an offer, and I can’t refuse it.”

~

The bed made a rather annoying squeaking noise over and over as the thug continually thrusted into the prostitute underneath him.

Her face was beet red as his hands clamped down on her throat.

“You like that, bitch?” he asked.

She slapped at his arm as she started to turn purple. Then slapped at it some more when he didn’t ease up on his grip.

Her body tensed up as she started to fight for breath, which he responded by pumping into her faster. He only let up after a few moments of her convulsing, and she gasped in a huge amount of air.

“You fucking asshole!” she exclaimed. “I told you not too much! I got clients other than you, and they- ”

He slapped her even as he continued to carelessly piston into her..

“Shut the fuck up. You’re on my time.”

The door suddenly slammed open, Locke and T-Rex having kicked it open. Their guns were drawn and pointed at the thug’s chest.

The thug immediately hopped off the prostitute, and went for his gun on the nightstand.

But Locke’s aim was true, and blew the guy’s hand off in a flash.

The thug screamed bloody murder as he gripped the stump that used to be his hand.

T-Rex looked at the prostitute and ordered her to get out, which she did without a shred of hesitation or modesty.

Locke flashed his badge at the thug and put it away just as quickly. Never mind that it was expired and his outfit long since disbanded.

“Let’s have a talk about some of your new friends,” he said.

“Get fucked!”

Locke shrugged, then turned towards T-Rex, who blinked in confusion before realization hit him.

“Oh!” he said. “It’s my turn!”

The thug blanched as the hulking beast cracked his knuckles and walked closer.

~

The basement was dark and hazy. Many people lounged around on pillows that were scattered all over the floor. Beside each of them was a tray with a number of pills, dried plants and mushrooms, and injection guns.

Everyone was in some sort of drug-induced haze, and were beyond subdued.

Private alcoves lined the walls, but the only thing that separated them from the center floor were simply some thick curtains.

Behind one of them was a thug who snorted up a pile of a crushed-up pill. The euphoria hit him almost instantly, and his head waved in the air as all sense of balance left him.

A hedonistic grin spread across his face as the high swept over him, but it soon disappeared the moment a dark-haired woman walked into his alcove.

.....

“Whatta hells s’is?” he slurred. “I paid ferra private booth.”

His hand limply fell on his pistol, but he was too fucked up to do anything else.

Eva didn’t even bother to acknowledge him, and instead struck him on the side of his head with a vicious blow.

He slumped over to the side, unconscious.

She then grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him out of the smoky drug den.

~

A door swung open. Two drunk thugs stumbled their way out into the street, barely lit by the digital night sky.

“Did’ja see that asss-hole’s face,” said one of them, “when I tol’ ‘im his girl wassan ugly sacka shit?”

“You shoulda seen ‘er face instead!” said the other

They both howled with raucous laughter.

A black hovervan zipped up and stopped on a dime right next to them. Its side door opened with a SWOOSH and Xylo fired at the two of them with a fully primed sonic rifle.

The sound waves struck the bumbling thugs, which caused their inner ears to go haywire. They both stumbled to the ground, unable to tell which direction was what.

With the two of them completely neutralized, Amal had no problems as she picked them both up and threw them in the van.

She hopped into the van right before it took off down the street. It turned the corner and vanished from sight

~

Light split the darkness of the dusty old warehouse as a door at the far end was thrown open.

Eva, Amal, and Xylo came into the warehouse, each of them with a thug slung over their shoulders. The thugs had been disarmed, bound up, and gagged.

They joined the rest of the Seven, and threw their quarries on the ground. They groaned as the wind was knocked out of them.

“I’ll get ’em ready,” said T-Rex.

He then picked a couple of them up and brought them over to the side. There, the other thugs were seated on metal folding chairs. They too were bound and gagged.

A couple of them were already banged up and bruised. The one whose hand was shot off had his stump cauterized. He was covered in sweat, and was no doubt in severe pain.

The thug had passed out from the pain.

T-Rex got to work and strapped the new thugs to empty chairs. He was a little too eager to question them, to bleed them of info.

“What’ll we do with all these,” Amal asked. “We can’t just kill nine people and dump them out somewhere, could we?”

“Probably best for the galaxy,” Fluke responded. “But we need ’em alive for now, so we can pick at their brains. See what they know.”

“And after? Do we just...”

Amal made a neck-slicing motion with one of her hands.

Fluke shrugged. They certainly could just kill most of these thugs – no-one would miss them. They had also exceeded three felonies each, and so they were eligible to collect, even if they were dead.

“Let’s see how they end up after we work on ’em. Then we’ll turn in what we can to get their bounties.”

“Their bounties total up to seventy-five thousand credits,” said Miko. “Not a bad sum for a few bottom-rung goons.”

“Hey, that’s a little over a grand for each of us,” said Xylo. “If each of these guys are worth about ten thousand each, we’re gonna be swimming in credits by the end.”

“I’m gonna be giving my share to the other victims,” said Amal.

Xylo turned to look at Amal, incredulous at her statement.

“What? Why?” she exclaimed. “There’s at least a hundred of ’em. They’ll end up with maybe a thousand each. What good would that do?”

“I don’t know, it’s just something I need to do. Even if it only ends up paying for one or two meals... I feel like they deserve to get something after all of this.”

“Well, it’s your share. You can do whatever you want with it. It’s just foolish of you, is all.”

Eva peered at Amal. She was a little mystified by her. Not only did she outright reject the rewards, but she wasn’t as bent on revenge as everyone else. And that was in spite of the fact that she had been hurt the worst.

If it had been her, Eva would have burned the galaxy to get at them.

“Amal,” she said, “have you been back to the farm?”