Chapter 39 - Minor Insurrections (IV)

Honnouji was goddamn sick of Gejuth, and he was goddamn sick, too, of those Gravts or whatever it was they called themselves.

Being born in the ghetto meant shit prospects, but he was a smart man and he'd made do with what he had. When he'd failed out of school because his bitch mother had gotten herself jailed, he'd picked up side jobs for a local gang to feed himself and his siblings, kept safely hidden.

Honnouji knew how to keep secrets. He was smart, and he was tolerant of risks, and he got his hands dirty when he didn't need to. He picked up the riskiest jobs with the highest pays around town and sent his secret siblings off to school in the Cayman Hills with fabricated identities and an envelope full of money. He told them never to come back again and never to find him and never to contact him again.

He told them why, and he told them very clearly that they needed to leave and build their own lives and stay safe. It was the greatest gift they would be able to give him. They accepted his cash and left him, if tearfully.

Now leader of one of the local gangs - someone had the gall to name them the Gejuth Gods, what the hell - it was his responsibility to keep order in this musty motherfucking town.

Primarily, by beating the shit out of anyone who tried anything stupid under the pretence of it 'being his territory'. In this way, Gejuth had stayed mostly peaceful.

Then these Gravt people had to come around, and of course they were all smart and educated people who went around actually helping people and running errands and shit and while he didn't mind that - their work was almost complementary - he definitely minded it when they were intervening in local conflicts without any idea about the strum of cautious alliances that lay just under the superficial skin of violence.

In a short few years, they had assaulted and 'put down' almost every gang in Gejuth save for his own, and there were rumours going around that these people all had new technologies that gave them abilities no one had ever seen. What the fuck was that.

One person had returned with their brain wiped clean and fresh as a newborn baby, but their muscle memory couldn't hide the flinches and tremors at violent triggers.

Children of the slums grew up to be adults of the slums. Adults of the slums behaved as such, bitter against their circumstances and bitter against the world.

Didn't they deserve some empathy from the world too, other than to be dealt with like dogs?

Fuck the Gravts.

All indications showed they weren't even planning on staying forever, with whispers of leaving and whatnot. All their efforts had been superficial and half-assed, and when they left a fucking power vacuum would be left and then Gejuth would descend into unmitigated chaos, no thanks to them.

What the hell was he going to do about this? He was a goddamn sitting duck and no matter how many books he read with the money he earned and spent he was no educated gentleman able to negotiate or some shit. He was just a gang leader trying to keep his shit together and get as many people to college as he well fucking could.

So when this Aiam Adhick guy comes around and offers to help him get them the fuck out of there, he's suspicious but interested.

Aiam Adhick wasn't a public person, but he seems to know a lot about the Gravts and he seems to know how to hit 'em where it hurts, and maybe Honnouji's being used but like—

Why the fuck not?

No reason to trust the guy, but no reason not to support his sabotage of the Gravts. Everything's going to hell already anyway, and if he didn't make a move his entire gang would just be wiped out like the others.

Aiam Adhick swears he won't harm the citizens. Honnouji can't trust that, but he'll do everything in his power not to harm the citizens himself.

Apparently, all he has to do is stand around and threaten to fuck up the sewage system. Aiam Adhick's already told him why that mattered and it made sense. He looked up more information online just to double-check too.

He wasn't going to actually do it. Just make up some bullshit excuse about fucking up the sewage system if the Gravts don't fucking leave. Just make a lot of noise.

A distraction.

Aiam Adhick's probably trying to infiltrate their base or something. He says there are people down there, from Wren. He doesn't say why they're there.

Just pulling that sewage stunt would be suicide, though, so Aiam Adhick gives him something that makes him agree: a list of all available Gravt members and their 'abilities'. Aiam Adhick doesn't tell him where these abilities come from, and he doesn't ask.

He thinks he doesn't want to know.

His only role is to get these dangerous fuckers out of his city, and this information can help. He can draw them all in, create contingency plans for the Gravts still in the city, and probably take them down.

If what this suspicious person says is true, then there are people down there who are being worked on. That drops the Gravts in his eyes from 'vigilantes who mean well but don't know any better' to 'villains actively hurting others' and that means he can't afford to be soft.

He briefly entertains the thought that the Gravts, too, are innocent, but puts it away.

It doesn't matter. His duty is not to them but to Gejuth.

To keep Gejuth safe, he needs them out of the way.

"Oi, Tetsuya."

"Yes, boss?"

"Round up the boys. Put them in one of the big rooms."

"Put them—where, now?"

"Are you fucking deaf? In one of the big rooms. I need to brief everyone."

In all of his years serving Honnouji, never once had the words 'brief everyone' left his mouth, and so it was understandable that Tetsuya, right-hand of the Gejuth Gods, was slack-jawed.

"Goddamn it," Honnouji throws something at him half-heartedly. "Just fucking do what I say. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Tetsuya scampers out of the room to gather the remnants of his gang, half-decimated by those vigilantes. He puts them all in a room and places a chair upfront for the boss, which he knows the boss will kick over and then ignore.

The doors open.