“Yes, it’s hilarious.” Vlad said, as he pushed his way out of the trash bags surrounding him.

Vlad’s neatly pressed suit and cape were stained with all kinds of garbage and dirt. Obviously, he had been buried in the trash somehow. Shaggy continued to cackle loudly as he grabbed his stomach and looked at his new friend. Vlad tried to brush his clothes off while giving Shaggy a glare. He plucked a stray banana peel and tossed it at the werewolf.

Shaggy easily dodged out of the way and continued to laugh. He had met Vlad in the in-game jail he had been placed in when he had been arrested. Vlad was another mutant player, and he had chosen to go with a Vampire-type power. He grew in power the more blood he drank. Unfortunately for Shaggy, Vlad was a role-player. Vlad enjoyed acting like an old-time movie vampire. Complete with what he called an ‘authentic accent.’ An accent that he had a tendency to drop when he was annoyed.

“Seriously, why would the login point for this car wash be back here?” Vlad complained as he gave up on cleaning his suit.

“Ha ha,” Shaggy slowly stopped laughing and wiped a tear from his eye, canceling his transformation. “Who knows? Maybe it’s random?”

Vlad trudged his way out of the pile of trash bags and walked out of the car wash station. Shaggy followed, still grinning with mirth. It looked like Vlad had logged out after they had split up. Shaggy wondered what Ren and Slink were up to as he and Vlad got out to the middle of the enclosure. Vlad was looking around, a look of disdain appearing on his face.

“This von’t do at all…” Vlad said, sinking back to his accent of replacing W’s with V’s. “Ve need overhead cover, and a better Vall.”

Shaggy shook his head and sighed loudly. “It’s just the rendezvous point, Vladdy. Once Ren and Slink get back, we can figure out where we wanna work and start setting up our network.”

Vlad wiped the look of disdain from his face and dropped the accent again. “Yeah, about that. I heard Slink tried to take off while we were at the dump site?”

Shaggy grimaced. “Not really, he was just real squirrelly about fighting heavily armed K-tech security. It looked like he was prepared to bolt when he took a stray shot in the fight. Straight to Deathville.”

Deathville was the name the players gave to the weird world the game sent you to once you died. Once there, the player would have to solve a puzzle or complete a task before they were sent back to the game world. Probably with all your equipment damaged or broken entirely. Shaggy had been there a few times already, most villains had, but he wasn’t keen on going back.

“He complained when we escaped from prison, he complained when we got down to Under-Town, and then he complained at the dump site. It doesn’t look good.” Vlad said.

Shaggy nodded. “I get it, but he’s a kid. What are you going to do?”

“I just think there needs to be a conversation.”

“And I gotta be the one to have it with him? I’m not his dad.” Shaggy scratched behind his ears as he got annoyed.

Vlad put his hands up. “I’m just saying one needs to happen. Not that you have to do it. But a teammate who’s not helping isn’t really part of a team, is he?”

“I hear you. How about we all talk to him when he comes back?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Vlad just nodded before the look of disdain was back on his face, and he picked up his accent. “So Vhat is this network you vish to set up?”

Shaggy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He did not know how to set-up a criminal network. He was a repairman. At best, he knew about gaining new clients. People always needed things to be fixed. But people weren’t really looking to be robbed. Luckily, he was saved from having to say anything by a loud shout, drawing both of their attentions back to the pile of trash Vlad had climbed out of.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

A large gray humanoid rhino came crashing out of the washing station, kicking bags of trash and random detritus everywhere. Called a Perinadon in-game, Ren was a player who had chosen Alien at the start of the game. Shaggy and the others met Ren as he was searching downtown Austin for a fabled Under-city of criminals. With himself, Slink, and Vlad being on the run, they all joined up together and wound up finding one of the hidden entrances to Under-Town.

“Seriously, why put the Login Point there?!” Ren shouted, displaying none of his usual calmness.

Shaggy stifled a chuckle as Vlad said. “Right?”

Ren patted the random bits of trash off his jeans and T-shirt before turning a grimace at them. “We seriously need to find a better place to work out of.”

Shaggy nodded in agreement as Vlad raised a hand and shouted. “Here, Here!”

“Well, we are all here for now. Except for Slink, of course, but we can keep an eye out for him while we look around for a new HQ.” Shaggy said, looking around.

“We know what the landscape looks like?” Ren asked as the three stood in the center of the car swash's enclosure.

Vlad and Shaggy just gave him strange looks, causing Ren to sigh loudly. “I mean, what gangs are around here? Who runs which blocks? How is Under-Town carved up?”

“Ohhh, yeah. Ve have had little time to get the lay of the land down here.” Vlad agreed.

“So, who do we know about?” Shaggy asked.

Ren rubbed his chin with his large, gray hand. “Tinsel was a free-agent down here, but he seemed to know a little.”

Shaggy thought about the Perinadon NPC they had temporarily teamed up with. “Like what? What did he say?”

Ren grunted and shook his head. “Not much, but I asked him why the police and everyone else up above haven’t come down here and arrested everyone. Apparently, they don’t consider the criminals down here that much of a problem. They have taken a ‘don’t bug us, and we won’t bug you’ approach.”

“Vell that Vill, but good for Vs... Vvs……. Us.” Vlad said, tripping over the last word.

Shaggy grinned. “Having trouble there?”

“Shut it, mutt.”

Shaggy continued to smile as Ren spoke up again, his deep voice rumbling. “Other than that, he was going on about how the Phreaks were on the back foot after taking down the Faceless. Both groups lost their leaders in the fighting. Also, it seems like a bunch of... Basilinoid aliens? Have moved into the Faceless’ old base.”

“Basilinoids?” Vlad asked, accent slipping again. “Snake-people?”

Ren smiled, revealing tombstone-shaped teeth. “Lizard people. In fact, he assumed our Professor friend was working for them.”

Shaggy shook his head. “I doubt it. That guy works out of an airstrip outside of downtown Austin.”

Vlad snapped his fingers. “Didn’t he mention them? He called them the Brute Clan.”

“Oh yeah, he did mention that he helped them kick out The Faceless. He even mentioned killing some lion dude from the Phreaks. Think that was the leader?” Shaggy recalled as he silently thanked the gaming gods that Vlad seemed to have forgotten his accent again.

Both Ren and Vlad shrugged their shoulders, unsure. Shaggy thought back to the other player, trying to recall if he had said anything else. “He also asked that we don’t mess with them or the Quinica. Although the Quinica might have leadership trouble too here soon. Apparently, he had some sort of deal with them that fell through and they attacked us above ground. We had to kill a bunch of them and this big silver bastard.”

Seeing the looks on the others’ faces, Shaggy explained how he and the Professor had to deal with a Quinica named Blutschläger and several of his minions. He even went into detail about Blutschläger’s giant transformation, where he grew in strength and size and they had to hit an actually glowing weak spot to take him down.

“It was a hell of a fight, my dudes. But those rifles we found really helped.”

Ren nodded slowly before he gave Shaggy a searching look. “Wait, where are the guns, then?”

“I left them with the professor. He was gonna work on them for me and Vlad. But guys, that means two of the gangs down here are weakened and one was wiped out completely.”

Vlad shook his head and gestured at the nearby landscape broadly. “Yes, but how many others are down here? How big were they? We need information.”

Shaggy sighed. “I know. Guess it’s time for the three of us to head out into the city and see what we can find. Slink’s snakes would be real helpful right now.”

Ren nodded and crossed his massive arms over his chest. “We don’t want to wait for him? He could be doing anything in Deathville.”

Shaggy went to answer, but a loud retching reached his ears and he smiled. “Oh, fucking gross. What the hell!”

“So I was the only one who didn’t set this place as his login point, huh?”

The others just gave him lop-sided grins as they listened to Slink complain about being covered in trash.