N I G H T C L U B

A Story by bobtheninjaman

You know what’s the best thing about using a biaromatic engine propulsion system over your standard V7 one? Well for one, the parts are a lot easier to get your hands on. Every hunk of junk flying in the air uses the parts for a biaromatric rig, but most operators don’t know how to look past whatever piece of crap manual the manufacturer gives them. As soon as something breaks they throw the whole engine out, replace it with a newer, shinier model, which is actually the same model as last years but with a little bit of rearranging so the patent office doesn’t get mad at them. The second- or more likely first- best thing about it is that how much better it is at everything. For example, I acquired a used rig with a standard V7 engine in it, and got maybe 500 Volts out of it. After I changed engine systems, I got a goddamn 2500 Volt output before I had to hit the manual override. You know what that means? It means I now get to equip that second laser to the mech suit I was installing it into. And that’s not even the best part! I have four more that just came in tonight, and my boys say that they found another 11 they can bring in tomorrow.

Which, of course, is a really bad idea. Cops are dumb, but if 11 engine blocks disappeared from a bunch of airships over a weekend, I’m sure even they could figure out something was up. Eventually they’d wander their way here and once they see what kind of operations I’ve got going on here I doubt any type of bribe would keep this one under wraps. See- if I left things up to my sorry excuse for henchmen, this whole place would get shut down or blown up within a week. Seriously, it is so hard to find good help ‘round here.

For example, about a year ago I was upstairs in my club checking up on things when this 19 year old kid comes in wielding a goddamn sword. Not a gun or anything sane or civilized, a f*****g sword that was nearly as big as he was. The thing must have been a hundred pounds. So what does my highly trained, highly paid security team do? They let him in. He straight up kills my bouncer and waltzes in drunker then my mom on a Tuesday night. A drunk 19 year old with a sword kills my ex-bodybuilding bouncer. It’s pathetic. So he’s down on the dance floor covered in blood, totally killing the mood, and if there is one thing I cannot stand is someone killing the mood for my guests. The club may just be a front, but it was a goddamn classy front. What’s the point of having a nightclub if you can’t have high standards?

Anyway, there we all were with him yelling something about his dead brother and standing up for “all that was good and pure”, my security trying to simultaneously calm the crown and stop him from stabbing anyone else, and me just watching the chaos of it all. After realizing my staff was not going to calm the situation down anytime soon, I downed my drink and shot him with a tranq round. He went out like a light, and I was about to tell my boys to dump him in the river with a pocketful of led bars, when I finally figured out what he was blathering about. His brother was one of my test subjects who had volunteered for an extremely dangerous series of experiments back when I was in my “super solider” phase. I remembered him because after all the mutating and changing, his red hair stayed the same. The only human feature left after the trial was complete, the same hair shared by this young man now unconscious before me. The test subject- Johan I think it was- agreed to do it if the considerable amount of money he was getting paid would go to his family, which of course after his passing did. But it seemed like now his little brother was not satisfied with it and wanted revenge.
So I had him thrown in one of my cells and ordered a round of free drinks for the now perturbed crowd. In the morning I sat down with the hung-over adolescence and offered him a job as a bodyguard. Ever since then I have never had another problem with my security team. That’s the worst thing, I didn’t even find this kid, he found me. One of the best fighters I have ever seen and I didn’t even know he existed till he was kicking down my door. God knows what I’ll do once I start getting these mechs operational, I’m going to need a whole lot of guys ready to do some dirty work. I guess I’ll blow up that bridge when I get to it...

No rest for the wicked I suppose…