Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 2.11

2.11

+++

I turned around, opening the door before passing through. I took a moment to retrieve the nanomachines, but after that, I went through the stairwell, moving down silently.

They were speaking, and as I came closer, it became easier to distinguish what they were saying through the surprisingly thick walls.

“- saying, that’s a lot of stuff in that Bodega. You really want to burn it all?”

“I don’t fucking care what’s inside. Burning it will send exactly the fucking message I want to tell. Nobody fucks with me.”

There was... a surprising amount of reluctance wafting off of most of them. One was a mass of rage and paranoia, but the rest...

Some were caught up in fantasies. All but day-dreaming about the violence that they were planning to commit. People who’d been attracted to this gang by its reputation rather than repulsed to it. Others... Their auras were covered in thin sheets of confidence, undercut by fear, concern, or desperation. They were projecting a strong face to the world, but inside, they weren’t committed to this.

Hmm. This whole thing probably hadn't started out as brutal as it currently was, if people like this were a part of the inner group. That, or the leader’s excessive behaviour was something new. Either would explain why they were all so unsettled.

Well, I suppose that I would soon be liberating them of that concern.

There was a small piece of cinder block next to the door. Half of the long side of a standard brick. I leaned down, and picked it up. I tossed it up and caught it a moment later, testing the weight.

“Here’s how it’s going to work! When we go there, we’re going to drag that fucking bird out and make some fried fucking turkey!”

I stopped in front of the door leading to the second floor, and used the back of my talon to push down on the handle. The door creaked, but the leader’s raving covered the sound of it.

“We’re going to smash that head like a fucking egg!” He shouted. “We will-”

The cinder block piece smashed directly into his face, shattering into pieces and exploding into a cloud of smoke, a loud, metallic bang echoing through the room. He wasn’t dead, but he sure as shit was not going to appreciate that after he woke up.

For a moment, there was silence, nobody in the room having been prepared for a sudden case of cinder block to the face.

Then, nearly as one, everybody else in the room turned to see where it had come from.

I stood just past the doorway, standing tall enough that my head was only just below the ceiling. The lights in the room were bright, but sharp, leaving the upper half of my body cast in shadows deep enough that the glow of my eyes was the most visible thing to see.

“Fu-” One of them started to scream, and the room leapt into action, hands going for guns, for knives, for whatever they had on hand.

I was faster.

My hand closed on the shoulder of the closest, and I pulled him with me as I kept moving forwards to the one after that. He only avoided dislocating a bone because he had augments, but that didn’t help when I tossed him outright.

He flew backwards, moving directly towards the one who was furthest away.

My other hand closed into a fist, and smashed directly into the face of another ganger. The metal gave way easily, and that spread out the force he’d received from the blow enough so that he received only a concussion rather than something more permanent, exactly as I intended.

My Autgents streamed out of my robe as I continued forwards, splitting up and heading for the other people in the group. They weren’t as fast as I was, but they were definitely faster than unaugmented Humans, and they were extremely agile and precise regardless.

I was in the middle of the group by the time they finished drawing their weapons. My talons stretched out, and I sheared the guns apart, moving at such a blazingly fast pace that they didn’t have time to use them. One of them, in the process of leaping to his feet, was caught midair, and promptly thrown at another.

The first man I’d thrown hit the person I’d thrown him at, and in this moment of heightened perception, the noise that their heads made as they clanged together sounded like a gong.

One of them finished standing, knife already swinging wildly. My talons severed the blade from the handle, and I broke his wrist almost as an afterthought.

A crackling noise sounded out, light briefly flashing through the room, as the first of my Autgents reached its target and delivered a paralysing shock. Several more were quick to follow, the outer parts of the group going down with precision blasts.

One of the women threw a knife at me. I caught it by the blade as I advanced, and flicked it, handle first, into the temple of another man. It took barely a moment to reach her, and my hand closed around her head before pushing backwards.

Her reinforced skull met the concrete, and while it did win, it wasn’t an easy battle. She began to fall to the ground, though she wasn’t able to reach it before an Autgent delivered a shock that made sure she wasn’t going to be getting back up any time soon.

The final one left standing tried to stop the Autgents, but by then, he was well and truly outnumbered. His effort ended almost as soon as it began, just like this little conflict as a whole.

I came to a stop, not even breathing hard. Around me, a pile of unconscious bodies, overturned furniture, broken weapons, and an utterly defeated gang.

All but one of my Autgents returned to me, spinning around me for a moment before I shifted my robe enough for them to retreat inside. The last spun around, camera shifting as it captured a few pictures of the aftermath, none of them with me in it. It only took a few seconds, and the moment it was done, it flew towards the door and went upstairs.

I hummed to myself, looking over the gathered gangers. Plenty of injuries, but none that were life-threatening. Everyone who was out was going to stay out, for several more hours at the very least.

I shifted, stepping over a few of them as I moved towards the leader of the group.

He’d probably had the worst of all of them, all considered. Which wasn’t surprising. I threw a piece of a cinder block at his face. Even so, it wasn’t that difficult for me to be able to regulate the strength of my attacks to exactly what was necessary to not kill someone. I wouldn’t have particularly minded, in the case of most of these people, not with the way that crimson dripped from their hands, but there were reasons that I hadn’t.

For one, without a power structure behind them, most of them weren’t going to be any worse than the everyday moron. They were bad, yes, but they weren’t Scavs. Second, without this particular power structure behind them, some of them might actually be able to change their future fates and not end up unceremoniously dead in a ditch somewhere, having been nothing but parasites upon life.

The third, and honestly the most relevant matter was that it was not going to be very difficult to track this back to me, and I didn’t really want that on my reputation right now. It would cause some problems that would be annoying to deal with.

The Autgent returned, and I waved my hand as another screen opened. It took only a few seconds to navigate to the NCPD’s NETpage. Composing a report on the non-emergency line didn’t take very long at all, especially since I just put a brief summary of the situation: Gang hideout, everybody inside knocked out, estimated time of awakening being several hours. I attached the pictures I’d taken after that, and sent it off.

At this hour, there weren’t that many things being reported. The NCPD would get to it sooner rather than later, and this problem would vanish off of my hands. Nice and simple.

I sighed as I walked towards the door to the stairwell.

Five minutes of work. It almost wasn’t worth waking up at this hour. I didn’t need the sleep, but I certainly appreciated it.

I reached the bottom of the stairwell, and opened the door out into the first floor. It was... notably more sparse than either of the other two floors, and there was a significantly larger amount of gang signs all over the place.

I paused, and looked at them.

... Including the furniture.

Gang signs on the fucking furniture. Custom made.

Ugh. How extra.

I shook my head, and walked out the front door. The cameras were already disabled, as was everything else connected to the network. No absolute proof of my presence was left here outside of the memories of the gangers themselves, which would be rather open to interpretation based on just how quickly it had all happened. It wasn’t deliberate obfuscation, but it did work for my purposes regardless.

I dipped into an alleyway, and began sneaking my way through the city again. Left, forward, forward, right, forward, left again, a few brief bouts of speed to avoid attention, and then I arrived at my building again.

I paused, just before I stepped out of the alleyway, and just as it came into sight.

Even in the depth of the night, it remained well-lit. The entirety of its surroundings were bright and visible, the light warm and inviting. The walls were smooth, the decoration and markings upon them clear...

Yet, even so...

I frowned.

It bothered me.

My Human half rather liked how everything had come out, but also no real attachment beyond the aesthetic sense. My Chozo half, on other hand... My Chozo half was not satisfied. It’s something that I haven’t put any thought into, but now, seeing it with my own eyes and looking upon the results...

It wasn’t enough.

It was a building. A physical building. Nothing more than a place that I happened to inhabit. A place where it was convenient for me to keep my tools. I had given to it nothing of my own nature.

The lack of statuary was one thing. I hadn’t had the time to even begin devoting myself to that, and not even another Chozo would begrudge me, considering the circumstances.

The lack of story was another. What informed anyone that a Chozo resided here?

Script and symbols on the wall that none other than myself could read. Aside from that, nothing. Nothing at all. It could have just as easily been the residence of any of the other Enlightened Species- Or even the Younger, for that matter- with only a change in language.

I closed my eyes, and took a moment to breathe.

Unsatisfied. That’s what half of me was.

It needed more.

There was every possibility that I was going to be here, specifically here, for decades to come. I hated the corporations of this world with every fibre of my being and the warrior within me felt an incredible desire to burn it all down, but I knew that I couldn’t just do that without preparation. If I did not build something new and plant the seeds of a proper future, then burning the old choking growth would bring nothing but desolation. Care had to be taken, and all parts of me were well aware of it.

And that would take time. Perhaps things would go wrong, and circumstances would arrange such that I would leave this place behind, but that was no more guaranteed than the opposite.

A little bit of effort each day to leave behind my touch wouldn’t be amiss.

... And, perhaps, I should also do the same for the rest of this city, too.