“So…” Shaggy said, staring at the framework of the still under construction bar.

“So?” Vlad answered.

“The bar is still being built.”

“Yes.”

“Some of our Lackeys are injured and had to go back to the Needle Sisters.”

“Yes.”

Shaggy nodded understandingly. “But it’s okay, because we also got a bunch of new recruits.”

“Again, yes.” Vlad answered.

“BUT. They aren’t exactly loyal so they aren’t Lackeys yet.”

Vlad sighed, this time not answering.

“All that I get, but the confusing part,” Shaggy said, pointing a finger at Chromia, who was seated at the same table. “Is what the hell she is doing here!?”

Shaggy had returned to a not that different looking Bar. But they were drawing attention from the various gangs in the area. Some had even tried to strong-arm them, but for the most part, his guys crushed anyone stupid enough to get close. They also were getting new people looking to sign up. So overall, aside from a few infrequent attacks from the Rakgu, everything was going swimmingly.

He had sent Seymour off to Scholer and returned to the bar just as his crew was beating a few unwanted thugs back. Ren and Tinsel had taken a few people out for another shipment run. Blobby was out and about, getting materials for the builders, and Slink was still offline. Meanwhile Vlad had been entertaining the Needle Sister’s door guard, Leslie and the one-eyed Chromia. After sending their injured off with Leslie, Vlad had addressed Shaggy’s various questions. All except one.

Chromia scratched at her eye-patch and looked annoyed. “Where the hell else was I supposed to go? I failed Tillani once, and he took my eye. If I went back now, what do you think he would take?”

Shaggy looked the metal woman up and down. She was in her human form now. So her typical silver-metal look was now tan-brown skin and her hair was a dirty brown bob. She had a permanent scowl on her face that Shaggy couldn’t really fault the woman for having. They had screwed up her chances with the Rakgu fairly royally. But that didn’t mean they were going to just trust her out the gate.

“I figured you’d just stay with the sisters.”

“Hmph.” She snorted. “What if Tillani finds me with them? He’ll send his thugs at them. They are tough, but they ain’t that tough. Also, they have a business to run.”

Shaggy waved around. “We got a business too and you're not concerned about Tillani coming at us?!”

“Not really, no. I honestly don’t care what happens to your chicken-shit outfit. You’ll last a month, if you’re lucky. But for now, you're a good place to hide out.” Chromia said, crossing her arms across her chest and looking around.

Nearby Shaggy saw Dave leading a small group of Aliens and Humans in what looked like stretches. Shaggy raised an eyebrow, but shook it off. He turned his gaze to Vlad, silently pleading for some answers. The pale vampire player raised a hand, placatingly.

“She’s right. We are being attacked anyway, and she was the one that told us about the recent attack. So I promised to look after her for the Needle Sisters. In exchange for a discount on healing, that is.”

“She could be a spy, you know.” Shaggy said, seeing the wisdom in the deal, but still petulant.

Chromia whipped her head around and glared at him. “I’m right here.”

Shaggy waved her off as Vlad looked pensive before barreling forward. “Yes. But I figured if she was, then it was better to have her here where we could keep an eye on her. I already told a few of the old Lackeys to monitor her.”

“Gee, thanks.” Chromia scoffed.

Vlad raised an eyebrow at the woman. “Are you truly surprised?”

Chromia sighed, but shook her head and remained silent. Shaggy glanced at the both of them but decided to just go with it. She couldn’t do that much harm, really. Also, once Seymour was with Scholer, and she kept her end of the deal, then Tillani would have bigger fish to fry and they could be left alone to build their little empire.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Shaggy also still wanted to tell the others about Cog. But so far, all the players in their crew hadn’t been in one place at the same time. He still wasn’t sure if Dave was going to hang around with them, either. The young guy seemed kind of flighty in general, but his mutation was no joke. Also, a real world martial artist would probably get some decent bonuses to his in-game skills.

Shaggy took a sip of his water and glanced around at the dirt square. Several new members of their crew were talking with a few of the ones he knew. But mostly people were just milling about the place in groups. Taking a wild guess, Shaggy figured they had somewhere around twenty or more people in their crew at this point. Although he was a little nervous about not knowing them. They were going to have a spy problem with or without Chromia.

“We really need a vetting process.” Shaggy muttered.

Chromia scoffed again, and Vlad shook his head. “Not really. We’re still too small to be considered much of a threat down here. There’s going to be some drop-off anyway, as people decide we aren’t their particular brand of criminal. We even had a few who tried to get us to boot all the Aliens out of our gang.”

Shaggy grinned. “Oh yeah, and how did you handle them?”

Vlad grinned back, revealing his growing fangs. “Viciously. But such a display turned a few more away from us. No, what we really need to do is cement our leadership. We have a few that are technically our Lackeys, but we are going to have to get everyone here under us so we can check their loyalty ratings. That will help root out the undesirables. We also need to focus on getting Ephemara, Blobby, and Tinsel to Henchman. Once that happens, they can take some of the Lackeys.”

“Is that how Henchmen work?”

“Yeah, someone posted it on the forums. It goes Lackeys, Henchmen, and then Captains. No idea what’s above a Captain yet, though. But each tier can help manage the lower tiers. Probably freeing up the players for more fun. Managing a criminal empire is a lot of grunt work and someone has to oversee the grunts.” Vlad explained.

Shaggy nodded as Petra came running up, a holo-tablet clutched in her hand. Shaggy raised an eyebrow. The young woman’s scales, that were arranged haphazardly on her skin, were now a brighter green and Shaggy was sure there were more of them. She had also found a sharp emerald suit and black tie. Shaggy looked bemused at Vlad, but his friend just shrugged. Petra breathlessly nodded at them all before speaking.

“Sorry, boss. But Mr. Blue has been having problems with hiring new personnel.”

“Whats the problem?” Shaggy sighed.

Petra bit her upper lip nervously. “Uhhh, no one wants to work for us.”

Shaggy groaned and glanced over at Vlad. The vampire took Petra’s words in stride and nodded. “Okay, that make sense. The hearts and minds tour has been put on hold for a bit because we kept getting attacked. Also, having all these thugs milling about in an open square probably isn’t helping. Petra, just do what you can. We’ll do our best to get you some civilians to run the bar. If the worst comes, we’ll have some grunts do it.”

Petra looked around doubtfully. Shaggy agreed. No one wanted their beer and food served to them by a surly gangster. They needed to get the neighborhood on their side. Which should’ve been easy. This was an underground criminal city! You’d think people would be more understanding. Petra gave them all a weary smile and walked back toward Mr. Blue, who was standing with Frank, the builder.

“Hey, what if we hired from topside? There’s gotta be someone up there who would do it.”

Vlad shrugged. “Maybe. You’d know better than me. I haven’t been topside since we got down here. How is it up there?”

“Dude, you wouldn’t believe me. It’s a pain in the ass just moving up there. Drones everywhere, brightly colored Supers, fucking ninjas! It was an experience.”

Vlad raised an eyebrow. “An experience you haven’t told us about because…?”

Shaggy groaned again. “Because I wanted all of us here before I went into it. We need a leadership meeting or something. Because I have news.”

“News like where Ephemara and Slink are? Cause we are going to need our lead spies back as soon as possible.”

Shaggy waved him off. “Yeah, Slink had to log. But Ephemara was making a pit-stop for something. She’ll be back soon. She’s tough as nails and twice as sharp. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s my first Henchman, honestly. Although I haven’t been spending a lot of time with Blobby and Tinsel, now that I think about it.”

“Still though, sounds like you got a decent amount of points out of everything that happened up there.” Vlad said.

Shaggy choked on his water and coughed for several seconds. “Ahem. Yeah, the points were... great.”

Vlad narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t checked your Evo Points? What the fuck happened up there?”

Shaggy grimaced. “It was a damn marathon, man. I didn’t even feel like I had a chance to breathe. It was just one thing after another.”

Vlad stood and said. “Well, you got time now. Check your points and get them spent. They do no good just sitting there. You don’t want to be menu-diving during a fight.”

Shaggy nodded in agreement as he opened his menus. But just as he was navigating toward his Evo Trees, a loud, angry voice yelled from the west of the clearing.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!”

Shaggy growled as he dropped out of his menu and turned to stare at the voice. Every head in the square was turned to look at the large-muscled man standing at the edge of the clearing with four other people standing with him. Shaggy grinned as he stood and started walking toward the angry man. Vlad and Dave joined him as they approached. It looked like Muscle-Lord had beaten Deathville and come back for revenge. Shaggy grew his claws and cracked his neck. Behind him, he heard their assembled crew shuffle around. He pointed a clawed finger at the shirtless player.

“What do you want, Mucus-Horde?”

Vlad choked back a laugh as he spoke up reproachfully. “Shags. That wasn’t his name. It was Focus-Board.”

Shaggy dropped his clawed finger and turned slightly to his friend. “Are you sure? I was sure it started with an M. Mussel-Floor? Molly-Tore?”

“It’s MUSCLE-LORD! You thieving cocks!” Muscle-Lord shouted, chest muscles expanding and ripping out of his shirt completely.

Next to Shaggy, Dave summoned his blue armor and hopped around excitedly. “Oh, man, that’s so gross. I love it. Hey, do you think that’ll make wearing armor completely pointless? I mean, that’s gotta suck wearing armor just to burst out of it completely over and over again.”

Muscle-Lord’s face went slightly pink and Shaggy was sure he heard giggling from behind the large man’s expanded chest. The four other guys he had brought looked like regular humans and Shaggy wondered if Muscle-Lord had brought more Players or NPCs. He couldn’t get a good look at them anymore with Muscle-Lord’s grossly expanded chest muscles.

“I have come for what is rightfully mine. Just give it up and there won’t be any trouble.”

“Awww, I like trouble.” Shaggy whined.

Vlad sighed dramatically. “You lost, Gusset-Fjords. So we got the bar, which we are rebuilding. Move on and find your own spot. Maybe we can have competing gangs. But this spot is ours. Now git.”

Muscle-Lord’s chest deflated, literally, as he used his mutation to enlarge his forearm muscles instead. He slammed his arms on the ground like an angry gorilla and shouted.

“But that place was mine. Same with those fucking NPCs. You took everything from me!”

Shaggy and Vlad shrugged. “That’s the game, man. You can move on and rebuild or try to take it back. But trust me, you don’t want to start that.”

Muscle-Lord pointed a giant finger at Shaggy. “Fuck you, hairy hands. I want that. I’m going to camp all you fuckers until you go log out and go crying to your mommies about how the mean video game guy kept killing you.”

“You are really an idiot.” Shaggy sighed and raised his claws.

But before a fight could get started, another voice spoke from behind Shaggy.

“Vlad! I had to log, but I think Shaggy’s in the shit!” Slink voice came out slightly distorted as he logged back in.

Shaggy turned to see the slim boy standing in the center of the square. Slink was spinning around, looking for everyone. When he found them at the western edge of the square, his eyes went wide. Shaggy turned back to Muscle-Lord just in time to see him shift his muscles again. This time to his legs. His pants burst as this time his grossly over-sized calf muscles tensed and the angry player leapt right at Slink.

“Oh, shit!” Slink muttered as a large human missile flew straight at him.