East Syndicate (Complete)

In the darkness, he waited, blue eyes seeming to glow slightly in the dark as a man approached him. The dark figure, known to most humans only as the Puppetmaster, kept a silent vigil in his office, looking out from the nearly destroyed building overlooking East City. While not the safest haven he could have chosen, these crumbling ruins provided him with the best option to avoid being bothered by people who would not be foolish enough to come near him.

During the silence of the night, he had been renovating the old building, keeping the crumbling appearance while simultaneously improving the infrastructure. He looked behind himself at the only functioning elevator in the compound. "The sooner my underground headquarters is finished, the better things will be," he mumbled silently to himself.

From behind the man, a whisper sounded. "Master... it seems the building's foundation is still solid. We can dig through the center and extend the elevator shaft through the rubble, once the underground portion is rebuilt."

"Very well. But be careful and silent about it. There are rogues and bandits aside from our little outfit that would like to operate out of these ruins themselves. Until the King finishes the detour around East City, anyone travelling in from the east will continue through this city on foot to reach safer lands. This place will be easy pickings," he responded, turning on his desklamp and revealing his face to be covered by a cloth mast that revealed only his eyes. He turned to a pile of paperwork on his desk and sighed.

"Things were so much easier when I could run a legitimate business," he said, head hanging low. Then his eyes glinted slightly with mirth. "Of course, who knew crime could pay so handsomely and be organized into a business structure?" A dark chuckle escaped his lips as he began to sign his name to some contracts.

"So we have a few drug dealers who want to sign with us?"

"Yes, sir. I figured you would like to take a look at their offers as we haven't made much progress in the drug sector yet."

"Yes, you were right to bring me this information. We need a customer base set up immediately. We can act as middle man between the drug manufacturers and the dealers. We'll buy the drugs at a low price and make half again the zeni in profit from the dealers. Contact our manufacturer and tell them that we might be getting new customers and will be sending him an investment to increase his available stock."

"Yes, sir. What about the highwaymen? They seem adamant about remaining an independent franchise."

"Simple... We'll hire out for a few good mercenaries to destroy their encampments for the 'greater good' and then threaten that we'll bring them back to finish the job if they don't sign with us."

"Who should we get?"

"How about the 'Hero' of old East City, Sairai?"

"The alien, sir? Surely he could see right through us, as pure-hearted as he is."

"If the zeni is good and we frame it as us trying to clear out the ruins so that we can rebuild it to its former glory, I think his guilt over not protecting the city will outweigh anything else. Besides, I'm a businessman at heart. Putting up a contract that is beneficial to both parties was part of my job. We'll offer him payment and... let's see... Start rebuilding the city, in truth."

"That would put a significant dent in our profits, Master."

"I know, but think about it. We rebuild the city and keep this building for ourselves. We operate both a legitimate business as our front and our underground businesses from under the building. Make sure a keycard is required to reach the lower levels, and we shouldn't have a problem. Besides, this way we can use our lawful profits to fund our unlawful activities and bring in even more profits."

"You're sure this will work, sir?"

"Yes... I was always a good man of business, just not what most would consider a 'good man.' Don't worry, it'll all work out for the best. Besides, we can invest in a few lawful businesses, have some good, charitable, and hardworking businessmen be in our debt, and have them vouch for us as an upstanding company."

"And what if law enforcement returns?"

"We put people into power who are in our pocket. Grease a few palms. They might even think they're upstanding officers of the law, but since we're responsible for a good percentage of their funding, they'll look the other way on small matters and we'll have a significant standing with them as good people and we won't be investigated as such. If we are, we'll put up someone else to take the blame and bust them out later."

"Yes, sir. You have much of this planned out already, I see."

"Always, Horatio, always."

_____

Sairai awoke from a dead sleep to the sound of knocking on his door. "Of all the nights I choose the one where I'm going to be bothered to sleep in my own house," he muttered, pulling the sheets off himself and walking over to the door. "Who is it?" he asked.

"My name's Horatio Cain. I'm working on behalf of a man who wants to see East City restored to its former glory."

At the mention of the place he had once called home and had failed to protect, the Changeling perked up considerably and opened the door. "Do come in. Can I get you anything? Coffee, maybe a glass of wine?"

The man seemed to pause for a moment as he beheld the alien creature and then nodded his head. "Wine would be wonderful. What vintage?"

"Just a moment. I'll pop out a medium vintage and if I like what I hear we'll bring out the expensive stuff, alright? Let's see... Chateau 1887 sound good?"

"You call that medium vintage?"

"I'm a collector of sorts, you could say. I have bottles ranging back to the 1500s."

The visitor's jaw dropped several inches as he heard this, and then he straightened his tie and took the offered glass with a slight inclination of his head. "To the rebuilding of the city," he said.

"Indeed," Sairai responded, his ice blue eyes never leaving those of his visitor as he knocked glasses with the man before taking a long sip. "So... what can I do to help the effort?"

"Well, we have already acquired all the funding we need to begin the restoration effort on East City, but we have run into a bit of a snag. It seems that there are several parties of... criminals living in the ruins and taking advantage of any law abiding citizen who happens to come too close to the outskirts."

"I see... So you decided to drop in on the old Hero of East City to see if he'd be willing to help, is that it?"

Horatio took a small sip of his wine as he thought over his answer. "In so many words, that is exactly what I'm doing."

Sairai chuckled long at the statement. "Well, at least you're honest. I take it this isn't a volunteer job or something any normal person would be capable of pulling off?"

"Some of these people are... rather strong. That blast of energy above the city the day it exploded... awakened something in some of the people around East City who weren't killed. They found themselves capable of... extraordinary things... Flying, shooting energy from their palms and fingertips. It's all rather strange."

"They can? Now this is interesting. My race has always been capable of doing such things, but I've never heard of most humans being able to. To have so many awaken to this power all at once is a frightening prospect, especially if they have turned toward a life of crime."

Horatio knew that he had hooked himself a big fish by bringing that up. It was a fact that many had awakened to the power of ki in the aftermath of that fight, though Horatio had been awakened to it long before that.

"So, you're in?"

"I'm in, just tell me where to start."

______

Just an hour or so later, Sairai was walking around the ruins of East City, looking at the aftermath of his confrontation with Balzar. Scattered debris covered the entire area around Sairai. Buildings were hanging on by just a couple of nails or pieces of wood, and those were the ones that were not completely destroyed. Burnt corpses and ash cakes the streets with their odor.

"This is ridiculous. We didn't have to involve anyone who wasn't human... Why must the innocent suffer at the hands of such monsters?" he asked to no one in particular. He floated up into the sky and looked to the park he had formerly eaten his lunch at. There was a small encampment of people over there, around a dingy little bonfire in a metal barrel. They seemed to be talking amongst themselves.

Sairai approached carefully, his eyes never leaving the men. One of them looked up and pointed at him, and Sairai just barely heard him yell, "It's Sairai! Get him!"

A few of the men just gave him confused looks, but others, upon hearing the name, immediately turned and locked their sights on the Changeling before taking off in his direction, flying at speeds that Sairai could only equate to that of slugs stuck on fly paper.

"I suppose compared to a normal human this would be a swift speed," he muttered under his breath as he waited for them to finally approach him.

When they did, theys topped short of him, and looked at him with confused expressions. "Hello, gentleman. Shall we dance?"

They fired several ki waves at him simultaneously and he swiped them out of the way with little trouble. "You can through a few ki blasts and you think you suddenly own the world? Please don't insult me."

He lashed out with his tail and grabbed one of the brigands by the neck. With a cruel smile upon his lips, he turned to the others. "The rest of you want to end up getting choked out, or should I just smash all of your teeth in?"

"You don't scare us, 'hero.' You couldn't even save one lousy town!"

Sairai's entire body began to crack as he tensed his muscles. The breaks in his armor-like shell began to glow with a bright blue energy before it exploded outward, sending the man the Changeling had been holding in his tail flying outward and crashing into a group of his friends. As the light dimmed, they were shocked at what they saw. An emotionless look was on the being's face as he approached the men slowly.

"That... was the wrong thing to say," he said, his eyes narrowed in a dark and terrifying look. He disappeared from sight for a moment and then reappeared on the other side of the men, as the force of his mid-flight punches caught each of them in the stomachs, heads, and kidneys.

He turned around slowly and looked at the darkness of the night sky and could feel it filling his bones, his very soul. He looked at his ki as it flared out around him. It was still a bright blue, but there were black streaks in it that scared him. He took a deep breath and felt his anger dissipating. The black streaks in his aura slowly began to turn gray, and then white.

"Well, those guys won't be bothering anyone else anytime soon... I should have held back, though." He sighed as a single, solitary thought crossed his mind. I shouldn't have let that one get to me.

He flew off into the night to seek out others who might be terrorizing the populace.

_____

"Well... How's the plan working out?"

"Sairai's working admirably, master. He's knocking them out but refuses to kill them out of some sick and twisted sense of honor. They'll come around to us for protection soon enough. The ruins of East City and soon New East City will be yours," Horatio responded, a slight smile on his face. He had brought a bottle of 1750 from Sairai's house that had been given to him as a gift and was sharing it with the Puppetmaster.

"A shame. The boy has great taste in wine. I haven't tasted a vintage this good in ages, not since I was a partner at that law firm in West City, before the city went to hell. I swear it started about the same time that Ian Lancaster man set up his mansion."

"Well, perhaps he could be a useful contact in the future for our business dealings, if he's willing to negotiate a deal."

"He is a businessman. If there's profit to me made, he'll accept a negotiation at least, if not a deal. We'll approach him under guise of our future legitimate business and then find out whether or not he operates underground deals as well. I don't want to assume anything about him. Perhaps his moving to West City and the steady incline of crime is just a coincidence."

"Perhaps."

"Well, we should call Sairai about his reward. He's cleared out enough of them to have the rest running scared."

_________

An hour later, Sairai was standing with Horatio looking out over the expanse with a smile on his face.

"You did well, sir."

"Thank you."

The man handed him a small envelope. "This is your pay for services rendered. Thank you for your help. They should abandon the city soon enough, and when that happens we can begin building New East City."

Sairai nodded. He liked Horatio, but something about this philanthropic project seemed a shade off to him. He took the money and walked away, certain that he'd never again hear from these people, and with an inkling that if he did, it would be as an enemy, not as a friend and hireling.

A black look crossed his face. "Seems I can't escape criminals no matter where in the universe I run to."

A glimpse of the moon, nearly full, calmed him down. "Though... perhaps I can change things for the better, nonetheless."

He looked out into the night sky with a hopeful expression.

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