Eric looked up from the devastation we’d wrought upon the Roly Poly Ninjas and caught my eye.

“Okay Boss, what’s next?”

I didn’t have a lot of time left before one of the versions of me was sucked back into the other, and I wasn’t entirely sure which one I was. I also wasn’t completely clear on what would happen when my time ran out. Existential crisis had reached a cliff’s edge and dove right off.

I nodded back toward the entrance, and we headed out together, taking care not to trip over any random body parts or slip in any puddles of blood. Or puddles of other stuff.

Anyway.

When we made our way outside, the children’s park was already in the process of being completely transformed. Nolan and company had already set up several turrets up around twenty feet, which were only accessible by people of a certain size. The whole thing reminded me of a city for furry little Ewoks out of Star Wars, but the timber was really reinforced concrete that some of Nolan’s elves were covering with a layer of foam rubber and painting up to look like wood.

I beckoned him over. “Sitrep,” I said.

He nodded. “Situation report, right. Okay, we’re installing all new playground equipment here and there. Children are going to have buttons in here to alert the security system. That temporarily shuts down the entrances and exits for anyone the cameras identify is over fourteen years old. Next, they’ll get a countdown from the loudspeaker to vacate the area or be terminated.”

“Do go on,” I said.

“Afterwards turrets appear from the roofing here, here and here, and shoot to kill. Armed assailants are identified and put down first, and then anyone who’s not running away.”

“Well done,” I congratulated him.

“We’ve also got ziplines, trampolines, rope nets for climbing, corkscrew slides, monkey bars, the works. Or we will anyway, in a couple of hours… we’re about sixty percent done, I’d say, now that the security measures are in place.”

I let him know he was doing good work, then thanked everybody there and told them they were to finish up with the security force Eric had brought over. Then I went door to door and introduced myself to the new residents here.

It went a little like this: “Hi there, I’m Dirk Stone. I noticed you had an infestation of Roly Poly Ninjas, but my people took care of it. You’ll find the former hideout of the RPN gang has been… fumigated. So, great news! You won’t have to worry about them any longer. Unfortunately, since there aren’t any police currently policing the city, you’ll now be under my protection. Whatever the ninjas were asking for, we will need to take that much plus one. As you can see by the children’s park over there, it will be money well spent.”

I then called Hirataka, a little salty that I didn’t have Flicker Blue’s business card. He was in the middle of thrashing the ever-loving hell out of some Brass Crosses, but stepped aside and told Flicker to handle them for a second. Behind him, she flew by like she was launched from a cannon, feet first, and blasted a cross in the jaw.

He adjusted his impeccable cuffs. “How is it I can help you, Mr. Stone?”

“I’ve just taken over the Roly Poly Ninja’s territory. It’s annexed. I wanted to call and apologize for not filing the proper paperwork.” After all, forgiveness was better than permission. “It was a spur of the moment decision, given that they’d set landmines in a kids’ park, and I have this thing about endangering kids’ lives.”

“Given the state of the city, I believe some allowances can be made,” he said, then whipped aside and cut a man in half with a sword. “Roly Poly Ninjas?”

“Correct. You know the territory?”

He nodded. “Do you believe yourself capable of handling a special task? It turns out the Brass Crosses had a lot of preparations made for their hostile takeover. This is a far lengthier assignment than anticipated.”

My people were stretched pretty thin, honestly. I was stretched thin enough that I was literally in two places at the same time. Still, I needed to meet The Godfather, and that meant ingratiating myself to his people.

“I think I can handle something else.”

Behind him in the video, Flicker Blue flipped around and slammed her hammer into something off screen. She then backflipped away from it a second later, just as it blossomed into an orange fireball of an explosion. Hirataka didn’t even duck out of the way. The two must’ve been telepathically linked with cybernetics somehow.

They were probably a couple… and anyway she was well out of my league. I had at least twenty levels to go before I could even consider taking her on, in any fashion. And it was possible that I was going to have to murder her boss… so there was that.

“I’ll relay the details in a moment. It’s a pleasure to have you on board, Mr. Stone.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The call was over before I could even thank him for the sincere, yet emotionless compliment. Ah, well. I’d thank him later.

SIDE QUEST RECEIVED! SYNDICATED ARSENAL

The Godfather has put Syndication in charge of safeguarding a stockpile of weapons, and it appears the Brass Crosses have discovered it. Worse, the Syndicate lost top people in the Brass Crosses’ initial attack and are in disarray. If you’re quick, you can move the cargo to a secure, and more importantly secret location. If you’re not, you’ll be fighting even more heavily armed Brass Crosses.

Objective: relay 5 crates to safety. Some Syndication goons are available to help you.

Reward: increased reputation with The Godfather, +2000 xp, +1 random uncommon card

Amazingly enough, this Syndication territory was only a few blocks from my current position, so I set off.

The timer on my character sheet read 36 minutes and thirty seconds remaining, so I hoofed it over there. Hirataka’s quest now flashed with a blinking red light, and I followed it with the minimap open for reference.

My people were busy building up this park, and securing our hold over this new neighborhood, so there was no stopping them to get them on this new thing. It’d be a solo mission and that was that.

The neighborhood around the children’s park had been ten to fifteen floor high rises done in some Asian style I wasn’t familiar with, and that didn’t change. The first two floors of each building here were lit with the neon signs of butcher’s, clothes shops, restaurants, bars, kissing clubs–

“Kissing club?” I muttered.

I didn’t stop, but stared at the front of the shop. As I passed, the door cracked open, and several tiny Asian girls peeped out, grinning and waving at me. It honestly looked like they were stacked up like firewood in there, and I nearly ran into a street sign.

They continued giggling and beckoning me, but I shook my head and kept moving. I’d never been to Asia before… did they really have places where you went and paid for makeout sessions?

I had gang territories on in the minimap settings, so they now appeared in front of my face, a big neon line. I stepped over it and into Syndication territory.

A sushi restaurant, crab restaurant, and a huge kimono emporium later, I started to get that feel of syndication… or at least franchise. I passed all the old fast food favorites, slightly Japan-ized, blinking hard in case this was a dream.

“I’m coming back, baby. Daddy needs a Baconator, okay? You just stay right there and don’t go anywhere.”

Way, way better than a kissing club.

I followed the blinking light on the minimap a little ways further. The distance to the objective was shrinking rapidly, down to a hundred meters, which meant I needed to get a good look at what I was heading into.

“You the guy?” someone asked from the shadows.

I pulled up short. “I’m definitely a guy. Is the guy you’re looking for… incredibly handsome and very capable?”

“I heard he was a tremendous dick,” the guy said, “but he came recommended. That you?”

“Hirataka sent me,” I said.

“He’s the dick,” another shadowy figure said, this one a woman. Referring to me.

“You bring any back up?” the first guy asked.

“I am the back up.” If I was going to be accused of being a dick, I figured I’d better lean into it.

“Come on then.”

I followed them through my very favorite franchise store, (the Japanese version, with all the items written in weird glyphs I couldn’t understand) around the counter, and into the kitchen. The smells of my childhood assaulted me, all of them deep fried and greasy, and the woman had to stop to ask if I was going to follow them or not.

I gave her the finger and followed.

Syndication gang members always had something franchise-ish about them: the girl had a big patch on her posterior of the green mermaid, the guy had a white castle embroidered into his leather duster.

Oh, and the guy was an ogre.

He actually, no joke, was hunched over all the way through the fast food joint, but once we headed out the back and into the alley, he straightened up to a full nine feet high. His back popped several times, and he cracked his neck as well. When we got closer to a streetlight, the illumination fell on lumpy, thick skin like a rhino, with tiny ears.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” I told them.

“You got somewhere to be?”

“You have no idea,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“The sooner we get this stuff moving the better.”

Back a bit more, through a few more twists and turns, the ogre dude turned, stared down the alleyway, then back the other way. Then he gave a quick series of knocks on the door. When the little eye slit slid aside, he mumbled a password that sounded like ‘sack of ten for ten bucks’, and we were let in.

The crates themselves were situated in the middle of a small warehouse, and a good six or eight despondent-looking Syndication members were milling around with their thumbs up their butts..

Once upon a time their base of operations had been filled with a whole lot of fast food and big corporate paraphernalia, and a lot of it had been converted into dart boards or used for target practice. Right now though they were slumped into folding chairs around an empty poker table, with one guy absently poking his finger into the holes in their bullet-ridden McDonald’s golden arch.

“You people know it is possible to go and get some sweet, sweet revenge. Which is a dish best served cold, right? Revenge is basically iced tea.”

“Or ice cream.”

I nodded. “Or that. You’re welcome to join the Looney Toons, and pledge this territory to us, we’ll give you some extra equipment to protect yourselves, add some security detail. No pressure, no war, no muss, no fuss. I just took Roly Poly Ninjas by force because they blew up some kids.”

Some dark muttering followed this.

“But as long as you don’t attack us, or explode children, we’ve got no beef. Anyhow, if you want, Flicker Blue and Hirataka are taking on the Brass Crosses right now, and those tatted goons are not going to have a fun time of it. You know, the two hyper-heroes… they’re mopping the floor with the Brass Crosses as we speak.”

One of them responded with, “We just lost our three best.” Others sukily nodded along, or pouted, with hands jammed in pockets.

My charm skills apparently still weren’t up to task of rallying these broken people, but I saw a lot of them considering eye contact. Whatever the game rolls had been, they’d been close.

“That’s fine, just keep your eyes open for any other attacks. This place might be quiet, but most of the rest of the city is a ground-zero epic disaster right now.” I didn’t want to insult them by questioning whether they had guards posted, so I just gestured to the five crates dominating the rest of the empty space.

“This is what The Godfather asked for, huh?”

More despondent nods.

“Cool, great, wonderful. Hey big guy, can I have a word over there?”

He started to follow me over. “What’s this about?” he grumbled.

“I’m going to need you to hit me as hard as you can.”