Greg Vs Raid 9-11

It was weird how news anchors had a certain look to them. 

At least the white guys.

Maybe it was just the way the newscaster voice required you to speak when you delivered the news to cut out any trace of accent, and it eventually made your jaw and face shape change to kind of all blend together or something…

Theories aside, the talking head on the TV right now had exactly that kind of face; just something about it that seemed downright genetically engineered for delivering news that made people stop and listen and only feel a little background radiation of panic instead of losing their shit. 

It also helped that the guy had the ideal square jaw, perfect hair, and a calm stare that said 'I'm concerned, but not in a way that will affect our ratings.'

"…being officially classified by the PRT as a series of 'Sudden Onset Hysteria' events," the man said, voice a smooth, buttery baritone that made the word 'hysteria' sound less like straight-up mass psychosis and more like a missed flight. "While authorities are urging calm, citing the lingering city-wide stress from the recent Endbringer attack, eyewitness accounts describe the outbreaks as unusually violent and entirely unprovoked. Officials have yet to identify a cause or a clear pattern…"

A single red-gloved finger clicked off on the matching power button, the anchorman's face collapsing into a single bright point of light before vanishing completely.

Sudden Onset Hysteria, he worked the words around in his mouth, fighting the urge to twitch in annoyance. Right.

Instead, Greg just snorted, the sound low and quiet as he shook his head. He knew what that meant, what the real truth behind whatever bullshit the PRT or mayor’s office was feeding the city actually was. The city's gone batshit insane and we have no fucking clue why.'

Greg Lucas Veder simply stood there in full Hardkour gear; black motorcycle leathers, red boots, red gloves, the whole nine yards. It was the only costume he had right now that he could wear, the only one usable to him until he could fix the White Knight suit and honestly…

Without Gram… He shook his head. What’s even the point? It just felt incomplete more than anything, wearing a knight costume without the appropriate shining sword. Speaking of incomplete costumes, the only thing he didn’t have on right now was the helmet-mask; that was still sitting on the table to the right of him. 

His hair was a mess, sticking up in a dozen different directions from running his hands through it all night. 

All night.

He literally hadn’t slept a wink, too busy talking this over with Theo and Sparky over the phone while keeping one eye on the news and PHO updates.

It had already been a full twenty-four hours since the first domino had tipped over, since he'd had to put that mechanic to sleep on a downtown sidewalk, and the situation had only devolved from there. 

Devolved from a localized weirdness into a couple streets of downtown being cordoned off just in case it was a zombie apocalypse minus the zombies.

Which, somehow, was worse.

Zombies you could punch. This? This was like trying to punch a bad vibe.

And the most irritating part about all this; the major part that was really, truly, insanely grinding his gears, without even a hint of lube?

No quest notification.

Not a single pop-up. No dramatic musical sting. No glowing text in his vision saying [NEW QUEST: THE CRAZIES]. Nothing. 

Ms. Game, his own personal cheat code for reality, was giving him the silent treatment. Well, not really, but… she was more quiet than usual. This is fine. Everything's fine.

Which meant either this wasn't yet a "quest," or it was some kind of bugged, unwinnable scenario. His own little Kobayashi Maru.

And he wasn't a fan of either option.

How am I supposed to win if the game doesn't even recognize there's a boss fight? Am I just supposed to grind on these random rage-mobs until I figure out the trigger for the main event? This is some bullshit game design. Where's the patch notes? Where's the dev blog explaining the new mechanics?

"Boss?"

Greg held back a sigh and turned around, one eye going from half-expecting a pop-up any second to meeting the gazes of the people in charge of keeping his current kingdom from going kaput.

His Four Heavenly Kings.

His senior management.

His... guys.

Still feels weird.

Seo Asada stood a good distance away, the man with a tablet in his hand and the screen reflecting the dark circles under his eyes. Once again, the man looked like he hadn't slept in a week, which, to be fair, was his default state more often than not. Guy's gonna give himself a stroke before he hits thirty at this rate. Wesley Yang was leaning against a support beam, his massive arms crossed over his chest, the red of his muscle shirt a slash of aggressive color in the cool blue light of the room. He was bouncing his leg, restless percussive rhythm of contained violence that was making the floor vibrate slightly.

Wesley's about two minutes from punching something. Noted.

Joon was sitting, the Korean man looking crisp as a freshly-opened pack of Ritz crackers in a blue button-down, and entirely focused on the information staring back at him from his laptop screen. How does he stay that crisp? Does he have a backup shirt in his briefcase or something? Is that a thing normal people do?

And Jonouchi... Jonouchi was just standing near the back, a silent bald mountain of a man. He was also flicking through a tablet, but something about the way he did it made it look oh-so-menacing.

Granted, Greg knew the guy was a softie, but he had gravitas.

"Talk to me, Seo," Greg said, walking over to the table and propping himself up on the edge because standing still made him feel like he should be doing something productive and he had no idea what that something was. "What the hell? And don't try and tell me 'Sudden Onset Hysteria.'"

Seo sighed, the sound dry as any smoker desperately wishing for another pack. "Not looking good, boss. Natural or not, it's looking like hysteria. And what we do know is… limited."

He swiped a finger across his tablet, and a map of the city lit up on the main screen, dotted with dozens of flashing red icons. Oh good. A doom map. Love those.

"Dot dot dot," Seo tapped at each of the biggest spots with the stylus, making little clicking sounds that were weirdly satisfying, "What we're looking at for the last twenty-four hours. Assaults, riots, domestic disturbances, public brawls… all spiking by over five hundred percent."

"Five hundred?" He didn’t mean to but a whistle slid out of his lips, Greg shaking his head just at the sound of that. "That's a lot of percent." Just mathematically speaking, I mean…

"Don’t stop there either, boss, we looking at some serious shit past just numbers on a screen, being real," Wesley cut in, pushing himself off the beam with enough force to make it creak. "My boys getting run ragged on these streets right now, nothin’ even simple like that. Had to break up a fight between two rival bakery crews this morning. Bakeries, boss. Muthafuckas tryna kill each other with rolling pins and bags of flour."

Bakery gang war, Greg raised an eyebrow… why the fuck not?

"And then, one'a my guys, Chen, he's solid, got his head on straight, full on top guy, been with us for years… man just… snapped." Wesley's hands moved as he talked, big gestures that nearly clipped Joon's head. "Tried to bite another guy's ear off over a parking spot. There's no reason for it. No turf war, no disrespect. People are just… goin' crazy." The confusion on Wesley's face was genuine as anything else, which was somehow worse than if the musclehead had been angry. 

"Impact is… both unfortunate and entirely expected," Joon added, voice clipped and precise as the man didn't even bother turning from his monitor as he kept staring at whatever spreadsheet of doom he had pulled up. "productivity down by thirty-nine percent across all legitimate ventures and it’s only been all of… a day.” The youngest of his Kings shook his head, clearly doing his best to hold something back. “A day, sir. Storefronts closing temporarily due to staff either becoming violent or refusing to come to work out of fear…” the Korean number-cruncher let out the longest sigh Greg had ever heard from him. “It’s not a tenable situation. Not in the slightest… sir.”

Can't blame them. Greg Hard to run a cash register when your coworker might try to eat your face.

"On the other side… protection revenue is becoming… at the very least, difficult to collect, when a primary threat is a business’s own customers attempting to burn it down." Joon finally turned to look Greg’s way, the man looking as half-dead as Seo casually did. "This is not a sustainable business model, Greg. Chaos is bad for the bottom line."

Greg had to respect the focus. 

"Is there any pattern?" His eyes stayed on the map, trying to trace any pattern or sign or connection but no… Damn it. They were all just scattered, random, like someone had just sneezed blood all over the city. "Are they targeting assets? Specific neighborhoods? Is it a Master effect targeting people with, I dunno, a certain blood type? Hair color? Do they all like Nickelback?"

"That's the problem, boss," Seo said, his voice laced with the deep frustration of a man who lived for patterns and couldn't find one. "There is no pattern. Victims as diverse as you get in the Bay. No common social links. No real shared locations prior to their… episodes."

Great. So it's random. Random is the worst. You can't predict random. That's literally what makes it random.

"So we got nothing," Wesley grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "We got people going nuts, and we got no one to punch to make it stop. This is bullshit."

Preach.

"Patience, Wes," Jonouchi's deep, steady voice filled the room for the first time since they'd started this whole depressing briefing. "No point swinging against the wind."

"Yeah, well, the wind is currently kicking our ass," Wesley shot back, not quite managing to keep the edge out of his voice. “No disrespect, Joe, but it ain’t lookin’ good. None of this shit lookin’ good. Can’t protect shit if my guys might be their own fuckin’ threat, man.”

A sigh slid out of Greg’s lips, the sound more like a hiss as it escaped through teeth gritted tight as anything. His feet carried him back and forth as he stared off at nothing for a good few seconds, a wall staring back at him on all four sides as he looked past all four faces. After a while, he blinked as he was pretty sure he was stomping, instead of just walking.

“Alriiiiight,” Greg tried to open his teeth, but it all came out sounding the same way as if he was locking his jaw anyway, so he didn’t even bother. "We're being hit by some kind of city-wide rage plague, a psychic virus, a… a Master attack, and we have no idea who the Master is, why they're doing it, or how to stop it." 

Both hands went up into the air, gloved hands clenched tight to fists because what else was he supposed to do with them? "Wesley's fucking right! How am I supposed to fight this?"

The frustration was a physical thing, a tight hot coiling knot in his chest that made it hard to breathe properly. This isn't a fight. Fights I can do. Fights have rules. Fights have win conditions. This is...

It was… bullshit.

"From a strategic standpoint,” Joon spun in his chair, glasses pushed back on his face as he stared Greg’s way. Dark eyes met bright blue as the Korean financial analyst continued speaking, “there’s three possibilities, sir. Awide-area Master or Tinker effect is our most likely option, possibly broadcast from a central point. The lack of a discernible pattern makes this a matter… that we can’t exactly track down effectively."

Joon let out a breath of air, half-hiss and half-sigh that Greg understood deeply.

"Two: a biological or chemical agent, introduced into the water supply or air. Less likely, given the sporadic nature of the outbreaks." Joon's fingers steepled together like he was calculating ROI on human suffering. "Three… is… something we don't have a category for. A known unknown, if you will."

Mystery Box C.

"Great. My favorite option," Greg muttered, still pacing because he couldn’t get himself to stay still right now. "Mystery Box C, which is probably full of spiders."

Or worse. Spiders with Master powers.

He stopped pacing, slamming his gloved hand down on the table; a physical display of irritation that made all four sets of eyes snap his way.

"No. No, we're not doing this. We're not gonna sit here and wait for the whole city to tear itself apart." His eyes swept over his captains, and something clicked in his chest; the goofball packed away in whatever mental drawer he kept it in. 

This was the guy who had looked an Endbringer in the eye and hadn't backed down. Okay. Think. What would actually work here?

Brute force wasn't the answer. Wesley's guys couldn't be everywhere at once, and punching the symptoms wouldn't cure the disease. He needed information. He needed a different kind of weapon.

His gaze landed on Seo, annoyed as the pieces refused to piece together. So, we need more pieces then.

"Seo," his voice was all business now. This was too important and jokes wouldn't help. "The White Faction. Your guys are the best at this. I'm giving you a new directive."

Seo straightened, his tablet held at the ready like a shield. "Boss?"

"Forget the patterns. Forget trying to find the source. We're looking at it backwards," Greg said, and the idea was solidifying in his mind as he spoke it. A new quest objective, self-generated since Ms. Game was apparently on vacation. "I want you to change your focus. Stop looking at the incidents. Start looking at the people."

The antennas, not the tower.

He pointed at the map on Seo’s tablet, at all those angry red dots clustered across his city. "I want a full workup on every single one of these red dots. Not the event, the person. Who was the first person to snap in each cluster? Where were they an hour before? A day before? What did they eat, who did they talk to? I want to know if they all bought the same brand of toilet paper."

That's actually not a bad lead. Greg clicked his tongue together as he fixed his face. "I want every piece of data you can scrape together. We can't find the broadcast tower, so let's find the goddamn antennas."

Seo's tired eyes flickered his way as the man gave a single, sharp nod, ponytail bouncing with the movement. "Understood, boss. We'll start immediately."

That's my guy. Seo gets it.

"Good," Greg said, and looked around the room. At the faces of the men who had, against all odds, put their faith in a sixteen-year-old kid with a god complex and a video game for a superpower. The frustration was still there, coiled in his chest like a spring wound too tight, but now it had a direction. 

A target.

We can work with a target.

"Wesley, your guys are on crowd control. De-escalate where you can, contain where you can't. Non-lethal only. I want these people sedated, not buried." Blue eyes flicked over to the analyst sitting at his table. "Joon, you need to keep the businesses running. Offer hazard pay or anything you can. I’m gonna put an extra five mil down for you to make use of. Do what you will with it but you better keep the lights on as best you can."

Money solves problems. That's what Joon's for.

"Joey…" His attention turned to the quiet mountain at the back of the room. "You do what you do best and keep everyone in line. Everyone." Greg shook his head, another sigh leaving him. “Not gonna ask you to keep them sane, but the kids… the Big Brothers and Sisters… make sure they don’t do nothing… do anything… retarded, okay?”

Jonouchi gave another one of his slow, deliberate nods that somehow carried more weight than an entire speech. "Order is born from a calm mind. I will see to it."

Greg took a deep breath, taking that spiritual advice in like it was actually going to do something at this point. It wasn't a quest from The Game. But it was… enough.

"Let's find out who's trying to burn down our city."