I knew what I was and what I was always meant to be. A street samurai. A petty thug looking to make a name for himself through a life of crime. As I dragged the wagon onward through this dirty place, my eyes then went to the paper in my hand which told me to go inside of an alleyway. My eyes would then turn to see an alleyway that looked just as any alley in the slums would look. A dark filthy corner that smelled of piss and vomit with the finishing touches of a raggedy walkway littered with garbage cans along with a few trash bags sitting against the wall. When I pulled my wagon within the shady looking alley, upon further examination I could see that there had been multiple people who used to live in this alley since there were tattered clothes near the trash cans and within the trash bags. One of those barrels which had been once used for a fire were also visible however there were no coals or embers that still burned from the bonfires that the squatters would use to keep themselves warm with. There was also graffiti on the walls which he didn’t really bother to try to understand but it didn’t take someone with a detective skills to know that a gang had the throw the squatters off their turf so they can open up there places of business within the alley,
This alley had 4 businesses along with a big red arrow which lead to a mysterious pathway without any hints of what the arrow might have when you go into the other alley it was pointing to. I moved slowly, cautiously through the alley. The tough looking bouncer from the strip-joint looking in his direction in which I kept moving, in the windows of the strip joint all I was able to see was many neon green eyes blinking in my direction. As I continued on, the other businesses that I could see were a weapons shop and a hotel. When I moved on to the red arrow, my eyes would then be drawn to a door in which was guarded by a large sharkman who looked to be eating a grapefruit and a salad. The sharkman was pretty buff too with a few tattoos which was viable since the shark was shirtless in black jeans. I walked right up to the sharks street with my Wagon before clearing my throat. “Hey, Sharkbait. You've seen Lucky around here lately.” I said, almost instantly grabbing the shark mans attention who possibly thought that he had a different kind of biz with his boss. “Boss said to meet her around here, said she needs a guy with good crafting skills.” When I said that; I thought that it was in my best interest to quickly hand the shark the paper that led me here to avoid causing any confusion since the sharkman looked a bit on edge.
The shark would then snatch the paper from his hand then looked at the hand wringing as well as the signature before lowering his guard just a little. “Whew! Thought I was gonna need to break ya legs.” the shark laughed then opened the door for me before pointing at the wagon. “Leave that here with me, don’t worry I’ll keep watch of it till you come back out or if she says it’s alright. She's waiting for you upstairs.” said the shark.
Leaving my wagon with the shark, I would then walk in through the threshold to see a few demi humans loading up shotguns while smoking a cigarette, a box sitting in front of then as a radio blasted in the background. Avoiding drawing attention to myself I went straight to the stairs of this filthy then made my way up to the second floor where there were numerous rooms but the one that caught my eye was the room with a sign saying ‘MY OFFICE; KNOCK FIRST JACKASS.’ When I approached the door, I knocked on it three times and waited. Nothing, but I did hear movement in the office and hushed whispers so this time I knocked on the door harder this time. “Let me in.” I said almost annoyed but then the door would suddenly fling open. A rough looking dude with mirror shades on and elf ears would start to pat me down then went into my pockets to take away my screwdrivers. Holding me back with one hand to my chest, the elf would then tell someone behind him that I was clean.
“He clean, though these things could stick you if he wanna.” he raised the tools up then moved over to the side. “Get in here.”
I adjusted my jacket, giving the elf a mean look before walking inside. “Could’ve taken me to dinner first hotshot.” I made one sly remark since I wasn’t expecting to be groped today since elf ears were feeling on my legs and going in my pockets but whatever. Sitting at her desk was a woman who was wearing a blue, purple and black glitter leopard print dress. Over her dress she wore a cheap looking fur coat with pink shades, her skin was brown however the rabbit ears on top of her head were white and the ears appear to be as legit as the ears on top of my head. Lucky was smoking a cheap cigar, gesturing for the neat nearest to her. “Take a seat right over here and let me talk you up bushy tail” Lucky said, phrasing it as an offer but I knew that if I wanted to make a good impression I had to sit down. Taking my seat in front of the nice bunny lady, I waited for Lady Luck to continue to see what they had in-store for me.
"Soooooo~ Speedy right?"
"Yeah Speedy."
"Mhm. So Speedy, I'll give you as much detail that I can about what you'll be doing for me around here. Basically we've heard you're tech savvy and pretty good at bootlegging ninja items. Right? A little handyman for the streets are ya?" Lucky asked as if trying to see if I was legit when it comes to crafting.
"Yeah, you need ninja tools? I got you. Traps? Peace of cake. Poisons? Not a problem. Can even build ya one of those Commodore VIC-20 if I got the scraps for it." I said with a hint of arrogance, leaning back in my seat with my arms spread before refolding them again to listen to the details of the job.
Lucky smirking at my boldness, she blew her smoke up before going into her drawer to pull out a contract and slapped it onto the desk. "How this gig works is that you run the weapon shop downstairs, my people will provide you materials for you to fix up or use once a week that they get from ruins. If what you sell is good you get paid– After! The expenses are all paid up." She stated.
"So basically you want me to ruin a ninja tool junk shop while you take a big chunk of my earnings, huh?" I snapped though keeping my tone down.
"Well going out there into those ruins put my men in a risky situation. There's creatures, thugs, Anbu, and all sorts of dangers out there. They ain't risking their lives out there for free, especially for someone like you." She shot back at me, her attitude was as cold as ice which made me have to think so I could squeeze some more money out of this.
"Alright Lucky, I'll cut you a deal. I'll handle the weekly savaging that way you just got me to pay. How about it, huh?" I asked, seeing it as a good deal but it would take a little more than that to get her on his side.
"Good on ya, trying to save me a little money." She complimented me before following up with a little jab to my deal. "But as you know we might have some deadlines. When we set a date, people expect their shit to be there on time so what happens if you can't find the shit you want out there?"
When she asked that question to me, I thought for a moment before getting an idea. "How about this, if I can't find anything on my scavenger hunts I'll come here so I could ask you to hit the Black Markets and score some deals on materials whenever you can. You can take that out of my cut plus anything you have a hand in helping me get you'll get a sweet 75%. Anything else that I make would be 40% since I'm the one taking the risk out there. I'll even give you full control of the amount you pay me you need to have people with you to secure the deal. That seems fair right." I said, which seemed pretty effective. Lucky seemed interested however by the look on her face she might want a little more than for him to work in the junk shop.
"That's very gracious of you.. tell ya what I'll take that deal if you also do a few jobs that come across my desk." She stated, putting out her smoke in an ashtray. "The last tech guy we had got popped, my teams a little short and since you seem like a talented negotiator we could use that for some deals. Though some jobs may not really involve yanno... crafting so you will have to help with some break ins, sabotage, robberies and just little hustles I'd pay top dollar for. You do a few jobs along with keeping that junk shop afloat then maybe we'll have something…" Lucky stated, pushing the contract towards me then I looked at the contract which stated the conditions of the draft from my current employer to Lucky. Both signatures for my employer's were already on the agreement, all that was left was for me to sign on the dotted line.
"Full time junkman, part-time thug huh? Bigger the risk, the greater the pay from what you're telling me. Sounds like a scumbag's wet dream. Got anything else I need to know?" I asked before I signed up.
"Nope, just sign the contract and everything will be set." She explained which gave me all that I needed to sign the contract. I know that there wasn't really any legality to the contract but I also know that there won't be the Anbu I'd have to worry about… I would have to deal with some guns. Lucky would then take the contract then smirked. "Pleasure doing business with ya, you ain't got no jobs right now but come tomorrow you'll be working some of the things that got backed up. Are you ready to get to work?"
"As ready as I'd ever be." I said, starting to get up then bowed to Lucky. "Been cool, but I gotta see how the place looks. See you in the morning?"
"Yeah… yeah tomorrow morning." She agreed. With that I went to the door but before I walked right up to the elf douchebag and held my hand out. The elf placed my tools in my hand then I walked out of the office with my skin intact to make my way down to my new workspace…..
______
Just as expected the weapons shop I was in charge of was a mess. Some of the wiring could be seen hanging out ceiling along with numerous cables that littered the floor that had been connected to who the fuck knows. The walls paint were flaking but someone did cover certain parts of the condemned interior with a bit of graffiti which was a nice touch however the cracks in the walls from the great earthquake were still viable. The floor was littered with blueprint paper, several boxes, and some kind of metallic crate that the former owner of this place could have possibly have stored their tools in. There was also shelves with weapons mostly caked in dust however most of the shelves were empty with a counter on the far side of the room that I was in. As I moved in, I examined the shelves noticing that the weapons sitting there were rusted but finding nothing really off about it. Looking around, I saw that the former owner had broken Commodore Pets which had been smashed along with the cassette that had been burned beyond repair.
“Hm. Either this guy had something he shouldn’t or he didn’t want anyone figuring out what he’s got.” I said to myself as I decided to go over to the counter to look under it. What I found at the charred wooden counter was a shotgun along with an old radio in which out of curiosity I turned it on to then tuned it and when I found a song that I liked my hand quickly went for the shotgun. Cocking it with the satisfying clicking sound, I pointed the gun at the door to my shop to get a feel of what the last owner would have probably done. I also could see that this place kinda looked like a jacked up pawnshop from this angle. When I finished playing around, I just went into the backroom to find the place in the same condition however it was more livable than what was going on in the shop.
A charred work table with a canvas showing a blueprint to some thing that I couldn’t quite grasp. This also had a fridge in which was the first thing I examined only to find rotten food that I’d have to take care of later on. There was also a mattress laying in the corner, the mattress filthy with some of the springs hanging out and it might have a colony of bedbugs which was usable in my books. “Beats sleeping in the cold.” I shrugged then looked at the far wall which had numerous tools neatly placed on a shelf. The only problem was a wrench that looked on the verge of falling so I walked up to it then pushed it back only to hear a loud clicking sound… That was when the shelf moved, I started to cough from the dust cloud that shot from the shelf leading to a new room…. I went in with a coughing fit before trying to find a light switch then flicked it on….
What I saw was that this guy had like a whole freaking armory back here, guns, swords, high powered crossbows, and even gear along with some tools. I looked around for a second then whistled to myself, setting the shotgun in my hands down to look around. What caught my eye was a strange looking device that has a simple note into it saying ‘Need Some Help?’ with full instructions on how to use the core to make an automated familiar. Of course, the button was damaged and it seemed to have gotten some water damage despite no evidence of water being present here. At this point, I almost was sure that the ghost of the former owner of this hell hole was testing me. But the core was not completely damaged so I decided to get to work on a copy of the core..
I disassembled the automation core to examine the types of parts it used along with the kind of board to copy what the previous guy did. Using the scraps around me I harvested whatever materials using whatever inside the useless technology outside recreate the core, soldering in circuits I harvested from scraps and repurposing other things to build the core. In about 3 hours, the core was completely complete with a seal on the circuit board so instead of relying on a power source it was capable of using my chakra to keep itself activated. Once the core was finished, it was time to test it within something. The first prototype that I created was a spider dog-like puppet about the size of a great dane, four legs supported its body, the feelers on top of its mechanical body that could transform into pitchers so it could handle any tool that it uses. The metal that I used for it was dark and hearing sensors to act as eyes so it could navigate a room with a capability to make small clicking noises that it will make if the echo vision is somehow hampered by a silent room. I ordered it to move from side to side and it did. It could flex its legs, jump, climb, slice and blast its way through any enemy. With a scroll within it that allows it to produce traps and other devices with the capability of hacking into enemy traps. This familiar was a perfect foot soldier for my new arsenal. Looking down at the little mechanical horror that I made would make me smile down at the large spider dog. Bending down to his familiar, it seemed like it was looking at him with six litter red eyes which were just small invisible scanners that it was using to look at me.
“Well…. Think I’ll call you Terran. Common Terran, we got a city to run….” and with that he started to snatch up some blueprints so he could pick up where the last guy left off from….. Out of the frying pan and into the flames..
WC: 3137
MFT
[Left unless stopped.]