Havoc and the Cafeteria Queen: Chapter 15: Jackie 1.8: Zero Tolerance Bullying Policy

Gangs are vicious, chaotic rabble, with subpar equipment, barely any discipline, and frequently high on one or more mind-altering substances.  Joining a gang is the worst thing you could do for your future prospects... except living in the slums with no protection at all.

• Stock PMC Recruitment pamphlet, 2051

***

Yeah, so it turns out the addition of thirty five more mouths to feed isn’t my biggest problem. Not even close, really.

So after I realize that I have thirty five new mouths to feed and no points to buy them food, I make my way upstairs to the main floor, looking for Willy, or Tony, or the new folks. I don’t see anyone, but hear an ongoing… not really an argument, more of a loud discussion going on in the auditorium. When I get to the auditorium doors and look inside, my heart starts racing.

There’s a couple dozen people scattered across the seats, just kinda chilling and panting like they’ve run way further than they’re used to. Which is a lot less than it would be for me, but I can’t really blame folks who spend all day scrounging for food or whatever for not exercising. I have a little privilege, what with being the keeper of a whole stockpile of food approved of by the gang leaders and what remains of the government as well.

Then again, that stockpile is all Füd Bärs. Was all Füd Bärs. Which I’d still have if I hadn’t used them as anti-Antithesis defenses.

Ah, well. Mom always said you do the best you can with what you have at the time, and sometimes that means information.

Of course, the reason my heart is going a mile a minute as I walk down the side aisle of the auditorium isn’t the people in the seats. It’s the dozen people standing just in front of the stage, one of them in particular. On my left are four of my boys, Tony in front with Willy, DeShawn and DeJuan backing him up. Facing Tony is the biggest single reason for my racing pulse. Hector.

Hector’s the guy in charge of Tony’s gang. Technically. He’s also the guy responsible for like eighty percent of the gang violence in the city. Everybody else knows that if it comes down to shooting, everybody involved loses in the end. Yeah, they’ll still do it now and then, but most of the ‘old heads’ in the gangs know it’s all just posturing to get a better deal in the inevitable compromise.

Except Hector. Hector never backs down. He’s that awful combination of dumb enough to think he can win all the fights, tough enough to survive all of them, and mean enough to not care if his people pay the price. He’s always been like that. I grew up with him, sort of. He was going to the school when I started, and still hadn’t ‘graduated’ when I sort of permanently took over for my mom in the cafeteria.

Honestly if Tony wasn’t around, he probably would have died a long time ago. But Tony’s too good of a guy to shoot one of his own in the back of the head, and Hector’s just a little too mean, too tough, too lucky for Tony to take him on face to face. Most likely because Hector is also the sort who would take it out on anybody who ever said anything nice about Tony.

So I listen in as I quietly, gently bounce down the aisle toward the group. “So Derek’s up on the roof with that fancy gun. Three more guys up there too, one on each corner.”

Hector’s been staring at the Foxteeth grip sticking out of Tony’s pocket the whole time Tony’s been explaining the situation to him. Which means he hasn’t heard a word Tony said. “That’s a nice gun you got there.”

Tony pats at it, incidentally putting his hand nearer to it. “Yeah. The new Samurai got us each one.”

I don’t want to be standing on either side of the line, really, but I also don’t want to be in between the two groups if something goes down. So I bounce around behind the guys standing with Tony, slipping in between the groups and the stage.

“So he’ll get you another one. Gimme.” Hector leans forward, reaching for the gun, and his face twists when the heel of Tony’s palm rests against it, his fingers clearly spread to show he’s not planning on drawing, just not giving it up.

Tony shakes his head. “Yeah, she gave it to me. Mad respect to you, bro, but I don’t want her pissed at me for giving it up.”

“She? She? Oh, that’s rich. What idiot thinks a girl can be a Samurai?”

Did I mention Hector’s also a sexist? Yeah. Total package. “That would be my Protector AI, Chyrl.”

He turns to me, still bent a little where he reached for Tony’s Foxteeth, and snorts out an ugly laugh. “Okay, then, Miss Samurai. Gimme one of those guns.”

I shake my head, and he tenses, but before he can explode into action I explain, “I got no points, Hector. Spent the last of it on food for the kids.”

He stands, chortling in what I guess he thinks is a superior way. “That was dumb. I had my boys loot every bodega on the way here. Grabbed up all the canned food.”

I sigh. “Okay. Guess that means I gotta find the can opener. Did you get the hot food?”

He snorts. “Nah. I got the food that would last!”

I shake my head, sighing again. “Yeah, you should’ve brought the cooked stuff…”

My explanation is cut off by a lightning quick backhand that picks me up and tosses me back onto the stage. “Nobody tells me what I should’a done! Nobody! Definitely not some stupid puta like you!”

I blink. Blood drips from my nose, my lip. Both of them sting a little, but nowhere near as bad as what the Model four did to me this morning. My lower back aches, the sign of an impending bruise where it hit the edge of the stage and sent me tumbling. Again, unpleasant, but nothing like what the Models had done to me. I shake my head to clear it, then kip up to my feet.

I roll my neck, then spit out a wad of blood and mucus. Everybody in the auditorium is staring at me except Hector, who is spouting some bullshit about being the one in charge. I take half a step forward, then barely have to raise my voice to speak over him. Lots of old broken shit here at the school, but acoustics are acoustics, and the place was built before the age of microphones and amplifiers.

“The Antithesis sniff out easy food first, so you left them a banquet. A high calorie banquet, and people working to secure the building and fighting to keep us safe need calories to do all that.” I shake my head, making my disappointment in Hector clear. Meanwhile he’s shouting slurs at me, but where he’s standing and facing let me drown him out. “Now all that food is gonna wind up more Antithesis tryna eat us all.”

Hector’s ongoing stream of profanity isn’t worth paying attention to, and I have a thought. I turn to Tony, hands on my hips. “Speaking of, send some guys to that bodega across the street. After that close encounter with the nine, I’m pretty sure he’ll be willing to pack up shop and join us. Bring all his hot food back, and as much of the bagged and boxed food as they can carry.” I know I shouldn’t antagonize Hector, especially with his hand hovering near the gun at his waist, but I can’t help it. “Cans last.”

Hector stops vomiting curses and just screams incoherently at me, his hand coming up with an old automatic pistol clutched in it, finger already squeezing the trigger. The first bullet takes a chunk out of the floor. I tense up, and the second bullet sends me flying backwards again, tumbling across the stage. Bits of plaster and cinder block fly from the back wall of the stage, and the thundering cracks of the pistol end with a tremendous explosion.

I lie there in the shocked silence afterward, my belly aching. It feels more like a burn than a puncture, which is weird, so I sit up…

I try to sit up. My abs ache like the worst period cramps ever. I run my fingers across my belly, expecting them to come away warm and wet, but before I can even realize why I yank my hand away. “Hot!” I bark out, then roll over and push myself onto my hands and knees.

Hector’s ongoing swearing is punctuated by Tony’s cry of, “motherfucker!”

“Language!” I call out. 

Okay, it’s at least as much groan as shout, but it’s still enough to get a stunned, “Miss Jackie?” from Tony.

I look over to see Hector, still screaming, once again incoherent, clutching the ugly mutilated remains of his right hand with his left. Bits of metal are scattered across the stage. Tony and most of the gang members stare at me, and their eyes only get wider when, with a weird twisting, pulling sensation, something drops off my belly onto the stage with a thunk of metal hitting wood.

Best to rip the band aid off. Quietly enough it hopefully won’t carry to the folks at the edge of the stage, I mutter, “Chyrl? How bad off am I?”

You’ll want some painkillers and ice for your belly and lip, possibly a damp washcloth to wipe your face down, and I’d recommend some tissues to keep your nose from dripping all over your Bodysuit.

“But… I got shot.”

While wearing your Omni-Protective Bodysuit. I wouldn’t charge you two hundred points and not get you something worthwhile.

I straighten up, reaching out to pick up the weirdly twisted bullet lying on the stage in front of me. Before I touch it I realize it’s still hot, and I pull away, just staring at it. “I’m bulletproof now?”

It would be more accurate to say your Bodysuit is highly bullet resistant. Especially resistant to poorly loaded low power rounds. Much like it’s resistant to the heat of a freshly fired round. Just like your gloves.

I smirk, take the hint, and pull my gloves on. The little bit of pressure when they cinch shut brings me unexpected comfort. When I pick the bullet up, it’s warm to the touch, but not anything I can’t handle after years of working in a kitchen. Gritting my teeth, I push myself to my feet, then calmly walk over to glare down at Hector.

He stares up at me, his ongoing flood of verbal diarrhea going quiet as he stares at my approach. That leaves the auditorium in silence.

I shake my head, take a deep breath and blow it out. Mostly because I need to gauge how my abs are gonna react to projecting my voice. It’s gonna hurt a little.

Nothing life threatening, and nothing we can’t fix completely with a Nano-Regenerative suite once you’ve got a few more points.

I look down my front to the spot where the bullet hit. Everybody else seems to be staring there. I wipe my hand down to brush off the faint gray smudge, leaving the slightly baggy bodysuit clean once more. Then I look back at Hector.

“You done?” He whines, little bits of coherent profanity laced through it. I look at Willy. “Put a tourniquet on that. I’ll get him something for it when I’ve got the points.”

Willy blinks. “You trust him after that?”

I shake my head. “Hardly. But,” I sweep my gaze across the auditorium, then glare at Hector. “I kill Antithesis. I save people. And you, Hector, are a jerk, but you’re a people.”

“Dumb bi…”

I cut him off by flicking the remains of the bullet he shot me with at his forehead. By some miracle, it nails him dead center. Not even enough to leave a mark, but enough to shut him up. “I can’t have him going around stirring up trouble, though. We don’t really have space for a grown healthy person who isn’t doing something to help out, either.”

That’s kind of a lie, but I’m mad at Hector right now. He shot me, and my abs still hurt. “See if Dirk still has that old bike with the generator hookup. He can pedal for his food.”

“I’m not gonna..” I take a sudden half step toward him, and he flinches. There’s a kind of collective quiet gasp at that.

“You want your hand back?” I realize I’m standing next to what looks like the mangled remains of one of his fingers. Ignoring the pain, I bend down and pick it up between the tips of my thumb and forefinger. I flick it at him like I did the bullet, and he flinches again. “Functional-like, even?”

“You stupid enough to…”

I cut him off. “Every time you insult me, it makes me want to help you less and less. I’m a Samurai, Hector. I’ve got access to that Protector tech. You give me a good reason to spend the points, I can get you the stuff to grow that back, good as new.” I nod to Willy, who grabs Hector’s arm and slips a belt around it, cinching it down, hard, as Hector hisses. “Or I can maybe even splurge and get you something better than new.”

I pause, waiting deliberately until the macho idiot opens his mouth. “Or I can leave you like that, let everybody start calling you ‘Lefty’.” I squat down, still looking down at him, but no longer towering over him. “Yeah, I’m a soft touch. I save people, even jerks like you. So the only question left? Is whether you’re dumb enough to make me so mad I leave you chained to that bike until you’re old and gray.”

I nod to Willy, who leads him away, followed by two of my new guys. Because by the way they’re looking at me, the way they’re looking at Hector, they’re not his guys any more. I turn back to Tony, who nods and says, “I, uh, might need one of those med packs.”

I take a closer look at him and realize he’s got part of Hector’s beat up old pistol lodged in his chest. Doesn’t look to be too deep, but it’s gone through his jacket and has blood sluggishly seeping around it. “That looks nasty? Doesn’t it hurt?”

He nods. “Yeah. Sorry about the cussing earlier. Surprised me.”

I laugh. “No, you right. That’s a reason to swear if anything is. Soon as I get some points, I’ll…”

Distant cracks of gunfire echoing in through the windows interrupt me.

Targets Eliminated!
Reward... 21 Points

“Everything okay, Chyrl?”

Another small pack of Model threes. I see a flock of Model ones approaching, you might want to hold off on sending your scavengers out until I’ve dealt with them.

I shake my head. “I do that, we’ll just see wave after wave and never go out. Two Nano-Restores, please?”

New Purchase: Class I Nano-Regenerative Suite
Points reduced to... 1

Two boxes with my crossed spatulas settle to the stage. I pick one up and hand the other to Tony. Both of them contain little inhalers. “What’s with the inhalers?”

Both of you have a variety of small injuries, this will spread the nanites through your system faster. Not to mention the difficulty in penetrating your Bodysuit with a needle.

“Oh. Thanks, Chyrl.” I pick mine up, wrap my lips around the mouthpiece, and push the button, inhaling as I do. I clamp my mouth shut to keep from coughing as something that burns like mint spreads through my chest for a second before dissipating just as fast.

“Tastes like menthols,” Tony mutters a second later.

“Smoking’s bad for your health.”

He shakes his head, puts the empty back in the box along with the hunk of metal he unceremoniously yanked out of his chest, and sets both on the stage next to me. “Yeah, welcome to Camden. You want me to take the guys out to the bodega now?”

I nod, then look around the room. “Anybody bleeding out?” That gets a general murmur of negatives, so I nod and say, “okay, everybody with food, bring it up here, leave it on the stage. Leave the bags, too, the guys are gonna need stuff to carry food back from the bodegas. Anybody who’s hurt, either from Hector’s gun or from the run here, head over to the nurse’s office. Everybody else, go find Miss Williams, ask her what you can do to start turning some of the empty classrooms into bedrooms.”

I look around, trying to think if there’s anything I’m missing. My mind drifts as the light dims; sunset’s a ways away, but the big windows that light the auditorium face east.

Windows.

“Okay, anybody with any construction experience, we’re gonna need to cover up the windows. Not all of them, not all the way, because if we can get enough guns we’ll want people shooting out of them, especially the second floor ones. But we can’t have Model ones…” Another smattering of gunfire interrupts me. “Can’t have them breaking the windows in.”

Targets Eliminated!
Reward... 17 Points

One of the adults in the auditorium seats tentatively raises a hand. I don’t recognize him, he’s older than me, and his accent tells me he’s from the islands originally. “I can maybe make shutters?”

I nod and point to him. “Okay, anybody who has a good idea like that, let me know. Or let Miss Williams know.” 

I pause, shoot a quick text to Miss Williams, just ‘Congrats, VP Facilities Williams!’.

I get back a string of emojis, none of them happy looking, followed by ‘Fine’.

“Get to it, people. Antithesis aren’t gonna wait for us to get our butts in gear.”

That spurs them all to get moving. Before long I’ve got a pile of bags, backpacks, and cardboard boxes on the stage next to me, and everybody’s heading out the doors. Tony and his handpicked crew are helping me unload everything; the second bag we just dumped wound up with a plastic jelly jar lid cracking and spilling half the jar into a sticky mess, so we’re doing it the slower, less wasteful way.

“You know Hector’s not gonna forgive you for that,” Tony murmurs as we work.

I nod. “Yeah, well. I meant what I said. I kill Antithesis, not people. But I’m not dumb, we’re keeping him locked up or locked to that bike for the foreseeable. Got it?”

“Got it, Boss.”

I shake my head. “No. Nope. None of that. I take Hector out of circulation, then you guys start calling me ‘boss’, every gang in the city’s gonna start thinking we’re another gang.”

“We’re not?” Funny, I can tell he’s not joking.

“Look around. This isn’t a gang crib. This is a school. Kids come here to learn. Yeah, we’re gonna fix it up so people can ride out this incursion here, but when the Antithesis are gone, we’re still gonna need to teach kids. Only maybe, just maybe, if I can earn enough points along the way, we can maybe get some up to date materials, maybe start rebuilding stuff around here.”

“Big plans, Bo…” he laughs as I cut him off with one raised finger.

“Not my plans. Maybe Ariana or Carmen. Maybe Jazz, she’s got skin in the game with Ernesto.” I pause, shrug. “I can’t do all that. I’ve got no idea how. I’m just here to keep everybody safe, healthy, and fed.”

“And boss everybody around to get them working instead of getting worked up and panicking.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well. Somebody’s gotta do it. Dirk’s too old, Miss Feliciano would make all kinds of plans and never do anything, and Miss Williams would just kick everybody out. Can’t have one of the kids running things, they’ve got enough on their plate tryna learn in this mess. Can’t be one of you guys, or the other gangs will fall on the place like it’s rival territory. So… it’s down to me.”

“You sure?”

I sigh. “Yeah. I’m sure. No idea why I got tapped to be a Samurai, but I got the AI in my head, I can get us the stuff we need to survive. So I might as well get the blame when everything goes wrong.” I look at the mess on the stage and sigh. “So get a crew who can move fast, go empty out that bodega and bring the owner back if you can.” He nods and starts to move. “Oh, and send one of the kids down to the cafeteria to bring back a bucket of water and a sponge.”

He pauses. “What happened to old…”

I cut him off. “He passed a few months after you graduated. Nobody to clean up now but me. So please have somebody bring me a bucket, I’m gonna be here tryna sort out what I can make with what Hector brought. You got all that?”

He smiles at me as he walks away, shooting me a salute as he does. “Yep. Got it. Principal Jackie.”