The leader slowly crawled away from me. He didn’t take kindly to my ‘I have questions’ statement earlier. I just kept walking towards him, maintaining a constant distance for ease of communication. Apparently, that only made him more scared of me.
It didn’t take him long to reach the breaking point. He suddenly scrambled to his feet and started running as fast as his legs could carry him. Feeling a little annoyed, I shot him once in the leg as he ran. He crashed into the floor and curled up into a quivering ball. His eyes clearly portrayed his fear.
Suddenly, I noticed the presence of several people in the entrance hall through my psionic senses. I turned to the leader and said “If you aren’t here when I return, I’ll hunt you down.”
He vigorously nodded his head in acknowledgement and I turned around, heading back down the passage to the top of the stairs.
Upon arrival, I saw a group of men dressed in grey. Correction, men and women, about a third of them are women.
I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment, analysing the group. None of them seemed to show me any hostility or make a move to attack me.
<[ They don’t seem blatantly hostile. Maybe we can negotiate with them. ]>
Nodding mentally, I tried to indicate that I was willing to talk. I did, however, intend on negotiating from my position as the leader of Dragon’s Nest and thus spoke with exaggerated pride and authority.
“Seeing as you have yet to open fire, I assume you aren’t quite as indiscriminately hostile as the last bunch.”
For added effect I threw in a small smile afterwards. The smile really seemed to be the finishing factor, almost everyone’s cheeks went red and their gazes became heated – women included. The only exception was the guy at the back with an incredibly flamboyant stance.
“Y-yes! I-I am R-Ross Ackerman! Commissioned officer for the military!” called out the man in a slightly different uniform. His voice held a mixture of nervousness and excitement that reminded me of the maids I took to bed.
I cocked an eyebrow in confusion, “Military? What’s the military doing here? Also, by your uniform I thought you would belong to one of the local gangs.”
“The Skull Clan is an undercover military operation, I was assigned to this operation early last year!” said the man, rambling along so fast I thought he had something urgent to get to. His little mumble also earned him several betrayed looks, the worst of which came from the woman standing next to him. His girlfriend maybe?
I giggled, feeling slightly amused by his giddiness. That had an even stronger effect than the smile, even the guy at the back started to blush.
“Forgive me, I have yet to introduce myself, I am Tiama Cusith…” I said, leaving a pause before saying “Current leader of the former Wolf Pack group. We are now called Dragon’s Nest.”
This shock and betrayal in their eyes was far more intense than when Ross spilled his beans earlier. There was only one person who didn’t don a look of betrayal. The woman next to Ross gave me a scrutinising glare.
“Did you kill these men?” she asked coldly.
“Well, yes. Though they shot first, so it could be considered self-defence.” I said factually, “You lot seem far more civil though, perhaps we can talk with words rather than bullets.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Perhaps… but I have a few issues with the notion as it is,” said the woman coldly.
“Such as?” I inquire curiously.
“You claim to be the leader of Wolf Pack, yet the last time I checked Voss Brunner was running the show. What happened to him? Does he still live?” asked the woman suspiciously.
I furrowed my brows as I considered the answer to that question.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. I tossed him into a cell at some point… though I don’t remember telling anyone to feed him.”
The woman squinted at me, scrutinising my claims as if to see through a lie. Before long she asked “When did you take over? Can’t have been that long ago of you aren’t even sure what happened to your predecessor.”
She smirked after finishing her question, as if confident in her victory.
“About three weeks ago, give or take a day or two.” I responded confidently.
She closed her eyes and nodded acceptingly after a couple of seconds. She opened her eyes and looked at me with a serious expression as she said “I can accept that. We stopped monitoring Wolf Pack a month ago, the higher-ups decided it was wiser to reallocate resource to watching Blood Fang‘s movements. They caused this conflict.”
Happy to finally know who I was dealing with I let myself say “Blood Fang, is it? Good to finally know my aggressors.”
“Yes… did you not know?” the woman asks, her words full of suspicion once again.
“No, cleaning up the mess that Voss left behind has kept me occupied. It’s been incessantly getting in the way of gathering information. Not to mention that our information networks practically vanished along with all our elites. Fixing that is next on my to-do list, right after beating the men into line.” I spoke solemnly, mentally recounting the issues I must still fix.
“I see… but what are you doing here?” she asked, unable to hide her curiosity.
“Last night the Viper Clan decided to come for dinner… they tried to use the change in leadership to quickly take over but it ended with their highest authorities both dead by my hands. We were heading over to Viper territory to turn the situation around and use their eagerness against them. Unaware of what was happening between the other groups in the area we walked into the middle of this skirmish blissfully unaware of the danger.”
“But why are you running around on foot?” she asked.
“We were hit by artillery fire before we could escape. Judging by the side that was hit, we were attacked by whoever is in control of the tower,” I said, “and judging by the situation that seems to be Blood Fang.”
The man made a surprised face as he exclaimed “Ah! Those two transports that stopped in the middle of ground-zero!?”
“I believe so. I’m not sure how the rest of the crew are doing, but I decided to get out of there before another round of bullets started bouncing around inside.” I said solemnly.
“You guys almost made it out of the conflict zone, the only people near the site of the crash as it happened was a flanking team under Blood Fang’s banner. We arrived pretty soon, the driver seemed alright but most of the men in the back were heavily injured,” said the man sadly.
“Is that so? Where are they now?” I asked, curious about the survival of my men.
The woman answered. “They were locked up if I’m not mistaken. We couldn’t risk letting an armed group get on with their business without knowing their purpose. Unfortunately, none of them gave clear answers. They did mention something about getting payback on the Viper clan, but we dismissed it since Voss Brunner wouldn’t pull something like that.”
“Voss was a hedonist, I doubt he would have made any effort to do something even if he was smart enough to understand necessity.” I said smugly.
The woman made a wry smile and responded “Well now we know more about the situation… Would you be willing to talk to the higher ups? I’m sure you have questions, they’ll be able to answer you better than I.”
“Can I be guaranteed that they won’t try to imprison me for my ties to the underworld?” I ask dubiously while rolling my eyes.
“… Not immediately. They know how the underworld works, they’ll be willing to parley long enough to decide on your position.”
“Alright. I’ll speak with your superiors.” I said, pausing for a moment before noting one last thing.
“There is a quivering mess you might want to take for interrogation. He was the leader of this garbage.” I said, gesturing to the corpses scattered around the floor.
“So it really was you…” murmured the woman, looking half impressed.
The man perked up excitedly, “Show me! I’ll help carry it!”
<[ Let’s humour the boy. ]>
Agreeing mentally, I gestured for him to follow. The man’s face brightened up as he bounced along merrily up the stairs. I turned and walked down the passage to where I had left the trash, hearing the woman speaking into her radio behind me as I walked.