Shaggy rubbed his forehead. Mr. Angelopoulos, after getting his bearings, proved to be an annoying negotiator. Even when Shaggy grew his claws and threatened violence, the gray alien did not budge at all. He just gripped his weird forging hammer and stood his ground. Shaggy hated how much he liked the guy.
Once he figured out what the score was, Hethor brooked no argument about his services. He insisted that the contract be only for a few months. Just long enough to teach a few lackeys the basics and then he would leave. Hethor wanted to return topside and continue his way up the rankings. The top metal workers in Austin were a surprisingly large group, and he didn’t want to lose his place as the third best in the city.
“I thought you were thinking of leaving?” Shaggy asked.
Hethor grimaced as he glared across the War Table. “Yeah, I was. Your information network is annoyingly good.”
“Well, it’s not that hard to read the paper.” Shaggy said, bringing the article up on the table’s interface.
It had been a quick blurb that one of the Number Crunchers had found. Apparently, Mr. Angelopoulos wasn’t doing so well in the saturated world of metal working. Competition was fierce and his tenuous spot as third best in the city was rocky. At least, according to the article.
“Don’t believe everything you read, kid.”
“Bullshit. You're on your way out and you were looking for something new. Why not let this opportunity be it? We can provide you with a facility and even get you equipment. Like I said before, we don’t want you to build weapons. We just need you to melt the metal and make us something better.”
Angelopoulos snorted as he took in the command room. The brown and grey metal sheeting dotted the walls. Shaggy had used the table’s interface to build metal hallways and rooms. But the metal was shit. They needed to smelt the metal down and make something better with it. Angelopoulos rubbed his chin, the gesture sounding like rubbing two rocks together.
“You’re going to lose a lot of metal. You know that, right?”
“Metal is the one resource we have in abundance. At least for now.” Slink said, joining the conversation.
Angelopoulos seemed to think about it again for the umpteenth time. Shaggy knew enough not to get excited anymore. The alien had used the tactic several times. Pretend to be interested, only to pull the rug and claim they needed to sweeten the pot. Right on time, Angelopoulos shook his bald gray head sadly.
“No. It won’t work. Under-Town only has a few years left at best. With the new influx of Supes, this place will be overrun as soon as the city gives the go ahead.”
Shaggy gripped his hair and tried not to pull. Slink had yelled at him when he had crushed the rim of the war table in anger. At least with the hair pulling, he only hurt himself. The little stone bastard was truly playing hard ball. There was obviously something he wanted, but the shit wouldn’t say what it was. Negotiating went a lot faster when you knew what your opposition wanted.
Unfortunately, Angelopoulos had few friends and even fewer family. So threatening or moving those individuals closer was a no go. He was annoyingly honorable. So taking out his competition was also a non-starter. Shaggy wanted to leap over the table and demand the gray fuck to speak his demands. There had to be some reason the guy was still here. He could’ve left at any point. Levy and Slink had demanded Shaggy announce that at the start of the talks. Even so, Hethor Angelopoulos just stood there, arms crossed, glancing lazily about the room.
“Just… what do you want?” Shaggy asked for the third time.
Angelopoulos shrugged. “I’ve given my conditions. Two or three months and I’ll train ya up some metal forgers. They can smelt your damn metal all day.”
Shaggy’s head snapped up. Something in the tone of the stone man’s voice had tickled something in his mind. Turning, he saw Slink had also caught it. Did the forger not want to smelt metal? Wasn’t that his job?
“Then again, how many people hate their jobs?” Shaggy thought as he tried to find the words.
“Do you want to do something else besides smelt metal? We can accommodate you there as well.” Slink said.
Angelopoulos leaned against the war table. Face still a black mask. “No. But I suppose if you need me to work in other areas, that can be worked into the contract.”
Shaggy blinked. Suddenly, the stoic stone alien was a coy teenager for some reason. He studied the alien’s features for a few seconds. Had they misjudged the alien’s age? He appeared to be a thirty-year-old rock humanoid. But for some reason, he was acting like a damn teenager!
“Well… we have a lot of work in other areas. We have the bar, the war room, the arcade, or maybe Roald could use some help?”
“What about your gang?” Angelopoulos asked, face back to its stoic mask.
Shaggy bit his cheek and tried not to groan. “Of course you’ll be a part of the gang. That’s what the Master Forger position is, Hethor!”
“Ahem… No. I mean, can I take part in any battles your group has?”
Shaggy raised an eyebrow and glanced toward Slink. The slim, pale teen looked just as confused as Shaggy. No one knew what to say, and the room fell into an awkward silence. Shaggy didn’t see a real problem with it. But Hethor was acting strange. Almost like he was afraid they would say no to his request. The gang could always use more grunts. But why was that so important to the Forge Master?
Slink coughed into his hand before he asked. “Is there a particular reason you want to, uh… fight?”
Hethor looked at the both of them, confused. “You two don’t know what I am?”
“Stone alien?” Said Shaggy.
“I don’t like to make assumptions.” Slink said.
“I’m a Tramilitus. We are rock soldiers made for war and combat.” Hethor said quietly. He touched the orange lines that crossed his whole body like veins. “But I came out wrong. My core is fae-touched, and I am therefore unfit to join in combat with my mold mates.”
Shaggy rubbed his eyes to stop them from rolling. “Okay, so you want to fight? First off, can you?”
Hethor summoned his hammer and glowered at Shaggy. Who remained unfazed. Eventually, Hethor looked away and shook his head. Sighing, Shaggy nodded.
“Okay then, we got to get you into training with the rest of the Lackeys. Also, we need a protection detail on you. No sense losing our forge master.”
“Also, what does fae-touched mean and who makes Tramilitus’? Tramilitai? Your people, who makes your people? Where do you all come from?” Slink rounded the table and immediately fired off questions.
Hethor looked confused until he realized they were going to take him in. The short, muscular bit of stone grinned. His white teeth contrasting with his gray skin. But he happily set about answering Slink’s questions. Shaggy tuned them out as he stretched out his back and looked around the room. The War Room wasn’t jammed packed with people, but it was getting crowded. Even with the Data Center being dug out.
He was about to excuse himself when Levy and Roald came in. The sweaty boy seemed excited, while his wife looked slightly annoyed. Shaggy could guess what had his wife so perturbed and the young Technomancer so elated. Shaggy stopped himself from pumping an arm into the air in triumph.
“You found some?” Shaggy asked.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Really, Shaggy?! He’s supposed to be working on the emitters and you have him searching through the net for...that?” Levy asked.
But Shaggy merely smiled at his wife and turned back to Roald, who was almost vibrating in his chair.
“I found the source codes for a bunch of them. I just need a station to test them out and then we can build our own cabinets. Sylus says that actually making the cabinets is the easiest part. I can do the internals. But Shaggy, you should know, these were not easy to come by.”
Shaggy grinned and rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Oh, I bet. But you got them? How many? Also, which ones did you get?”
“NO! Pause! Cease this immediately. Shaggy! You are going to explain to me why you had our technomancer scouring the net for the source codes to ancient arcade games. He should’ve been focused on the emitters!”
“He/I was!” Shaggy and Roald said together.
“I had the machine working on the emitter parts and in the meantime I was doing this little side job for Shaggy. I have to agree that having some of the rarest arcade games in our establishment will make it extremely popular.”
“Right?! It’s going to be great. See, Levy? There was no issue. The emitters were being made, and I got my games. Win-Win.”
Levy rubbed her forehead and turned to Roald. “You and your damn arcade addiction, hun.”
“It’s not an addiction! I haven’t been in an arcade for months.” Shaggy defended himself.
Levy gripped his shoulder and herded him out of the room. “Slink you have the room. I’m taking my menace of a husband out to set up the teleport blockers.”
“But my arcade!” Shaggy said feebly, reaching for the War Table.
“It will still be here when you come back. Roald, those cabinets are a tertiary objective, do you hear me? They do not take priority over anything else.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Roald said sadly.
“No wait! What did you get, Roald? Tell me! Did you get Dig-Dug? Galaga? Asteroids!?”
Levy drug him from the room. Shaggy knew he could easily break out of her hold. But he would probably hurt Levy in the process. So Shaggy let himself be dragged as Roald waved at him smugly. Little shit was going to get it later.
“You can find out about your toys later. We need to protect our territory.”
“Bah! The turf is already protected. All we are doing is setting up a defense net to keep the gnats away.”
“Yes, but even that is important. So let’s go grab the emitters and then place them around. I think Roald said that they need to be at least five blocks apart. So one may have to go in old Quinica turf. But according to Roald, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“So it’s Roald, and not Neuro anymore?”
“Sobriquets go out the window when you lie to me for over thirty minutes. I was waiting for the damn emitters to be finished. Only to find out that he had already finished them and was now looking at shit for you. Ya damn addict.”
Shaggy grinned, not feeling the need to defend himself. As they stopped by Sylus and Roald's shop, the old man tried to engage Shaggy about the arcade cabinet designs. But Levy’s frosty glare stopped him dead. The old man handed them the emitters and hurriedly went back to work. Shaggy gave the old shop owner a sad look, but followed his wife outside. She thrust the long slim emitters into his hands as they walked out into Under-Town’s false sun.
The emitters were five slim metal sticks. With a quick twist of the wrist, they opened up into small satellite dishes. Shaggy opened and closed one a few times to get the feel of it. The chubby little kid did good work. Shaggy was almost willing to call him Neuro.
“Okay, the first one is to the south.” Levy said, checking a paper map she pulled from somewhere.
“So you know where each one is supposed to go?”
Levy snorted. “Pfft! Before you distracted the poor boy, we were mapping out a good protection net. We also left a hole in the net near the bar.”
“Why?”
Levy flicked his forehead and furled the map back up. She grabbed the emitters back as the map disappeared from her hand without a sound. “Have you forgotten about Ren? Stuck in god knows where, fighting Quinica for his life.”
“I just figured he was dead by now. I mean, if he had survived, he’d been back by now, right?”
“We can’t know that. So we left the area around the bar open for teleportation. So any teleporting in our area should get shunted toward the bar and we can get the drop on them. If it’s Ren, he’ll pop up near the bar, and then we can set up the final emitter and close out those fucking vamps.”
“Then we deal with Cog.” Shaggy grinned.
“Indeed. Now hurry up, wolf out. Mama needs her mount.”
Shaggy winced. “Please don’t say it like that.”
“Mama will refer to herself the way mama wants! Mama can’t be stopped!”
Shaggy put his head in his hands as nearby NPCs looked over at them. Levy smiled at him as his body started to shift and twist into its wolf shape. Once her weight was settled on his back, Shaggy took off to the south. The denizens of Under-Town seemed to have copped to the sudden appearance of giant wolves. Cause all that met Shaggy this time were shouts of ‘wolf.’ No gun shots, no screaming, no running masses. Just a slew of wide-eyed people moving out of his way as he and Levy headed to the first stop. Shaggy briefly thought about biting someone just to keep the fear in them. But he decided against it.
Levy guided him with her telepathy as best she could, and they eventually found the spot. It was an old cement building that was crumbling. The building straddled the border of Rak and Legion territory. So Shaggy kept his nose up. He could already scent a few scouts on the wind, but they weren’t close enough for him to see. Levy hopped off and looked for a suitable spot. Shaggy was about to join her when she suddenly stabbed the emitter into the dirt.
It sunk deep in the dirt and its satellite like rim opened up and pointed at the sky. A green light flickered to life in the middle of the dish. The green glow slowly faded as the emitter disappeared completely. Shaggy gave a surprised yip and Levy chuckled.
“Yeah, Roald said they would disappear once activated. To tell the truth, I didn’t believe him. But hey, glad to be wrong. This way, the Raks won’t find it.”
Shaggy nodded happily and then bent down for Levy to get back up. Once seated, she directed him to toward the next spot in the east. Which, when combined with the north sector, were the two easiest to implant. Cog’s robots were getting scarcer and their patrols proved a decent deterrent to small gangs. The trouble came when they headed into contested turf.
With the Quinica gone, their old turf was proving to be a hotbed for trouble. They needed to find a good spot for the emitter. But the constant UGB, Phreak, and even Brute patrols were making things tricky. Shaggy even had to drop his wolf form as he drew too much attention.
“Can’t we just set it somewhere and call it good?”
“Not if we want complete coverage. The four emitters need to be placed more or less exactly. But we are talking a difference of feet, not blocks.”
“Well, then we are going to have to crack some skulls, Levy. Cause these idiots are going to start shit. I just know it.”
Levy sighed. “Just leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. No one wants to start shit. Not here, at least. This is still contested turf. We have more right to it than anyone else.”
“I doubt they care, dear.” Shaggy said, spotting a group of hybrid aliens marching closer.
Two hyena-men, a humanoid cheetah, and what looked like a walking octopus were walking up the street. Shaggy did his best to keep his eyes trained forward. Levy was right, no one wanted trouble. Just a quick jaunt through old Quinica turf. No need to stab anybody.
“Hey! Sweetheart! How about you ditch the dwarf and I show you want an alien with tentacles can do?!”
Shaggy felt his eyebrows shoot up as Levy stopped in her tracks. Shaggy barely had enough time to register his wife’s anger before a bolt of purple energy slammed into the octopus-man. The lance of energy pierced straight through the hybrid’s body and the guy fell over dead. Shaggy stifled a laugh at the shocked expressions on the Phreak’s faces.
“So much for not starting shit.”
“You bring up tentacles around me and I fry your ass. You know this, love.”
“Yes I do, dear.” Shaggy said, forming his claws and readying himself for a fight.
“Looks like we get to do this the fun way!” Levy shouted as she summoned her staff and glowed with power.
“My god, I love you.” Shaggy murmured as he pounced toward a hyena hybrid.