The high-pitched wailing of bikes ripped through the evening air, stirring the residents of The Slag fortunate enough for the comfort of sleep and gripping those still awake with a sense of unease. The ever present rain drizzled and slickened the asphalt, turning the road into reflective pools of glossy black. A slipping hazard for the lesser rider, not even an inconvenience for the pack of Screaming Banshees astride their matte black rides.
Switch glanced at the waypoint ARO superimposed against the inside of her visor. They will soon exit the comfort of home turf and enter the Wonderland neutral zone. Neuterland, as the locals called it. Needless aggression on these grounds was discouraged and frowned upon, so this leg of the journey concerned her the least. Besides, riding three strong should be inconspicuous enough to keep them from getting any unwanted attention. She glanced at her left rear view mirror, catching a glimpse of Cherry Pie's massive frame and her equally large bike. Quick amend: as inconspicuous as they could be.
Past the border into Wonderland, bursts of neon pink and blue from giant signs on pristine facades bathed the tourist-filled sidewalk. They made it too obvious to Switch's eyes with their overt attempt to blend in by wearing street tough chic. The look fell apart when combined with them worrying about the effects of acid rain, the odd tourist here and there throwing up a tarp to cover their brand-new cars that lined up the streets.
To her right, just a scant few meters behind, her other escort popped a wheelie. Stiletto, failing to restrain the urge of doing tricks. The accompanying loud revving scattered the tourists like exhaust smoke before a storm, a sight that invited a slight grin to her lips. It made their little entourage more conspicuous, but it was a fair trade-off.
«To: Truce Squad»
«Good work. We need to be a bit more invisible now, though.»
«From: Stiletto»
«Sorry! Couldn't help myself.»
«From: Cherry Pie»
«…I'm doing my best, captain. I apologize for being large.»
A few sharp turns and they've entered the Flesh Blocks. The air was a thick soup of perfumes melding into one heady scent, a strong undercurrent of tailored pheromones wafting from the joygirls and joyboys peddling themselves. Switch increased the filters of her cyber-enhanced chemosensory system. It just won't do to have her neurochemical balance disturbed right before leaving Neuterland and entering hostile territory.
Another glance at the waypoint ARO. They have entered Ashborne. Red Gorgons country.
This neighborhood of the Slag retained most of its pre-catastrophe appearance. Housing blocks left relatively intact greeted their entry, seemingly occupied by non-gang elements, judging from the absence of tags on the walls and parked vehicles. They needed to go deeper.
A message popped up in Switch's peripheral vision.
«From: Cherry Pie»
«Are we going through their turf on the bikes?»
A fair question. Switch slowed down to cruising speed, taking stock of their surroundings while mulling over the options. Her escorts copied her tempo, effortlessly maintaining their wedge formation.
«To: Cherry Pie»
«Stay on the bikes. Just in case we need to make a quick exit.»
Minutes of riding at a speed slow enough to not grab attention, yet fast enough to not make it a slog, Switch spotted the first Red Gorgons tag sprayed against the outer wall of what had the facade of a regular housing block. To the untrained eye. She glanced up at a corner of the roof and spotted the telltale signs of a fortified overlook perch, the presence of which meant good news and bad news. The good news being they were headed in the right direction with almost a hundred percent certainty. The bad news? The Red Gorgons were most likely already aware of their trespassing.
A nagging thought crept in the back of her mind as they continued making their way into the heart of Ashborne. Maybe proposing a truce was a fool's errand. Maybe she should have just organized a war party and beat the Gorgons into submission. The unfamiliar streets, now littered with Red Gorgons markers and tags but devoid of bozos sporting bright red fiber optic dreadlocks, didn't help quell the growing unease brought about by the maybes.
From the upcoming junction came a sudden low rumble, like a great beast stirring from deep slumber, forcibly clearing her head of doubts.
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Harry did not like this one bit. She was most at home perched on tall buildings, and there was a severe lack of them in this part of the Slag. Here she was, stuck ducking from alley to alley like some kind of scurrying mutant rat. It was effectively like she was grounded, wings clipped.
She wasn’t explicitly told to come along, but she had it in her mind that it was in the Banshees' best interest that she did. After all, if there were corpos making rounds, she’d rather be in a position to help.
At the very least, the heavy downpour was masking her movements a little. Not that she was pleased with having to wear a thick rubber raincoat. Another thing that made her feel more restricted and weighed down.
Not to say she wasn’t nimble, all things considered she could still clear an open street to duck into an adjacent alley in the blink of an eye. It was still a handicap if she had to deal with a heavy hitter, and it was one that couldn’t be helped. Not that she would complain. She wasn’t raised to complain.
She scrambled up a fire escape, bounding from staircase to staircase. A three storey building. It wasn’t exactly an overlook, but at least she could make out the surrounding area to a vague degree through the rainfall. The area was anything but familiar to her, let alone the inhabitants. Go-gangs were far outside of her realm of expertise, given that there wasn’t often a big paycheck to be had in gang warfare.
At least the Gorgons made themselves visible enough, with their fiber optic dreads marking off who was a serious member. Not to mention turning them into beacons through the darkness of the rainswept evening streets. There wasn’t any mistaking who she needed to avoid. She wasn’t here to kill anyone. Hopefully. The Gorgons weren’t who she was worried about, even though she could tell from her current perch that they had numbers well beyond the Banshees, just from the few that were hanging out in the open that she could see.
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She made her way to the far end of the building, hoisting herself up and over the lip. A three storey drop back down into a plascrete-paved alley, and she was back to being an alley rat again. It would take some time navigating through the spider-web of streets and past the go-gangers milling about on the streets before she’d even make it to the Snake Pit. If they did catch her, they’d more than likely mistake her for a corporate stooge than figure she had any affiliation with the Banshees. Still didn’t hurt to be on edge, though.
She hurried her way through the route she mapped out, only to stop cold in her tracks a few steps into her jog. She could feel eyes on her back. Whoever it was that was watching her quickly picked up on the fact she knew they were there, given that Harry could hear the scrambling of feet on plascrete. She turned to pursue, catching a glimpse of a black raincoat dipping around a corner away from her. They’re fast as hell. Even running full tilt, dipping, weaving, and vaulting over disused dumpsters; Harry had a hard time keeping pace.
That definitely was not a Gorgon.
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The low rumbling of pursuing trucks and howling of redlining bikes reverberated around the streets. Switch still led the wedge formation, doing her best to navigate the unfamiliar streets. Gorgons in their black-and-red colors swarmed the sidewalks, also trying their best to impede the interlopers on their turf by tossing whatever was at hand. Bottles, rocks. No gunshots yet, and Switch hoped it would stay that way.
An intersection loomed up ahead, with all possible exits blocked but one. Most likely an attempt to route them out of Ashborne and back into Neuterland.
«To: Truce Squad»
«We're going straight and breaking through the roadblock. That's the most fortified one, they definitely do not want us going that way.»
Pings of confirmation came in instantly. If they managed this, it would come with the added bonus of losing their growing tail. She doubted the Gorgons would risk friendly collateral damage just to get them.
Wired reflexes kicked into overdrive, slowing the world down in Switch's eyes. The extra seconds afforded her to spot a slight gap in the blockade. She steered towards it. Standing Red Gorgons jumped out of the way. The dull scrape of her fairings against metal and brick. A tight fit that will not leave her bike unscathed. She gritted her teeth. Too late for takebacks.
She cleared the obstacle and heard the clamor of unintelligible shouting, prompting her to glance over her shoulder. She caught a glimpse of Stiletto somehow clearing the blockade via the aerial route with some serious hang time. How that girl always managed to find a ramp of some sort, Switch would never know.
Cherry blew through the gap widened by Switch's passage, the reinforced frame of her enlarged bike making short work of the hastily arranged blockade. The Red Gorgons didn't even bother trying to stop her. Not that they could. Bringing her along was the best decision Switch has made tonight.
«From: Onigiri»
«Any issues gettin’ through? I called ahead to say we weren’t comin’ to cause trouble.»
Switch stared ahead, past the floating ARO containing Onigiri's message. Then doesn't that mean they were chased around for nothing? She shook her head and composed that thought into a message instead.
«To: Onigiri, Cc: Truce Squad»
«You are telling me we were chased around and just cleared a blockade for nothing.»
«From: Onigiri»
«Might’ve been the way I phrased it. Shit.»
«From: Stiletto»
«Wait, what's going on?»
«To: Truce Squad, Cc: Onigiri»
«What is happening is I will string Onigiri up in front of the clubhouse after this excursion is done.»
«From: Onigiri»
«Putting in a request for a leave of absence? Startin’ from when you guys get back.»
Switch ignored that last message and gunned it down the street. Groups of Red Gorgons stood on the sidewalk but made no real effort to stop their progress now. Perhaps Onigiri amended her phrasing. Perhaps the Gorgons just tired themselves out. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that they were being herded somewhere.
They entered a part of the neighborhood dotted with warehouses and storage units and a building that looked too much like a manufacturing plant, all of which were under relatively heavy guard. Must be nice to have that much manpower. A Red Gorgon with particularly thick fiber optic dreadlocks waved and pointed towards the end of the road. Yeah, so the feeling of being herded wasn't just her imagination.
The neon signage on the sole building that sat at their supposed destination said ‘The Snake Pit.’ How thematic. The colors were a bit faded, thanks to the coating of dust and grime covering large swathes of the exterior. It was par for the course in industrial areas like this for the facades to be a little more worn down than usual, considering the heavy pollution in the years prior when the factories were running at a full bore. Not to mention what turned the Slag into the Slag.
Unlike the Banshee’s clubhouse, the front parking lot wasn't filled with only bikes. There were a handful of cages marring up the tarmac. Nobody wanted to make this a prolonged affair, so their choice of parking was directly in front of the doors. If the Gorgons were going to do something dumb, they’d have done it by now, yet the tension was thick enough you could cut it with a knife.
If it wasn’t blatantly obvious by this point, they were expected, what with the ork bouncer wordlessly stepping out of the way and ushering them inside. The interior of the place completely contrasted the outside, at least in terms of cleanliness. It was still tacky as hell, with the place being covered in pseudo Kheyro-Atron architectural elements. Grand pillars lined the place, some of them obviously cost-cutting plaster-casts while others seemed to be made of more authentic materials like marble. In other places, there were off-white statues in much the same fashion, though all of them seemed to be cheap reproductions done in other materials. Getting authentic Kheyro-Atron sculptures out to the Slag in one piece would be difficult, expensive, and for the most part, pointless.
The other clubgoers paid them no mind, their attention held in a chokehold by the band currently on stage. Secutor, according to the logo on the drum kick's face. The three Screaming Banshees tried their best to avoid the mosh pit's edge and not rub up against the sweat-drenched crowd.
“Ladies.” A heavily scarred woman approached the group, flanked by two burly bodyguards. She was clad in the usual racing leathers one would expect from a go-ganger, with the addition of a replica Kheyro breastplate donned atop it, all dark red with bright gold trimming.
“Hekabe,” Switch responded curtly. She didn’t want to make this a dog and pony show.
Apparently, neither did Hekabe, considering how quickly they were ushered across the open floor of the club and into the back room to talk the situation over.
The back room had that same sheen of extravagance as, if not more than, the rest of the club. Switch stared at the stone throne that sat atop the dais, a relief of coiling snakes carved onto the backrest. She kept her deadpan expression until Hekabe planted herself on the throne, looking more smug than she had any right to be.
“Screaming Banshees,” the Red Gorgons leader began, her voice cutting through air like a freshly whetted blade, yet coarse as grains of sand. “Let us proceed with the discussion.”