"...What the fuck is going on here?"
"Huh?"
I had just settled comfortably into my new seat when a fresh voice cut through the alley—cold, unhurried, and carrying the particular weight of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
The man who'd spoken looked the part. Swept-back brown hair, a pale purple suit worn with the kind of ease that said it wasn't his first, a polo underneath patterned with an embroidered dragon crawling up the fabric.
He was lean where the others had been massive, but that somehow made him look more dangerous—the difference between a sledgehammer and a blade. A scar ran vertically across his left eye, bisecting it cleanly, and the eye itself was a pale, washed-out brown that caught the light in an unsettling way.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and crossed my legs, resting my chin against my hand.
"Could it be that you're Mokuro? Leader of the Red Axe Gang?"
The man tilted his head slightly upward, fixing his gaze on mine. The frown already sitting on his mouth deepened into something more deliberate. "Huh. And who the fuck are you? You the wild dog that's been picking fights with my men?"
"Well." I spread my hands. "You can see for yourself."
His eyes followed the gesture downward—tracking the small mountain I was currently sitting on top of. Not an ordinary mountain, admittedly. This one was assembled entirely from the unconscious bodies of the men who had come to welcome me earlier.
The fighting itself had been manageable, if a little frustrating—still getting used to the limitations of a body that hadn't been forged through thirty years of surviving things that wanted to kill it. It had taken some adjustment. But I'd knocked them all out in under five minutes.
What had actually worn me out was stacking them.
Every single one of these men had to weigh over a hundred kilograms. They say muscle is heavier than fat. Apparently, that's not a myth.
"Bastard." Mokuro's voice dropped lower. "You've got some nerve."
I tilted my head.
To be fair, the throne had been less about sending a message to him and more about dealing with a certain lackey who had stubbornly refused to vacate the spot I wanted to sit in. The dramatic implications were unintentional. Mostly.
Mokuro's chin dipped—a small, practiced motion—and the twenty-odd men standing behind him began to move. These ones were different from the pile beneath me: leaner, sharper-eyed, and all of them carrying something. Batons, bats, a few knives. They fanned out smoothly, taking positions at both ends of the alley, cutting off the obvious exits.
Not that I was planning to use them.
"Since you've seen fit to cause trouble in my territory," Mokuro said, almost conversationally, "you won't mind losing a limb or two."
I smiled at the threat. It wasn't an empty one—I knew that. Mokuro was precisely the type to follow through, and to do it thoroughly. If this went badly, he'd make sure the damage was the kind that didn't heal properly.
It wasn't a concern.
"Mokuro." I leaned forward slightly, still grinning. "Haven't you stopped to wonder why I would do something like this?"
He said nothing. But his raised hand stilled the men mid-approach—a reflex, or maybe genuine curiosity. Hard to tell with someone like him.
His pale eyes narrowed. "...Which gang are you with? Infinity? One of the alliance outfits?"
"Hahaha!"
The laugh came out genuine. Both names were familiar—two gangs running roughly parallel to the Red Axe in size and reach. I knew them well, though not from now. When the game had descended into reality, it was those two organizations that had carved Tokyo's downtown between them, raising makeshift guilds from their existing infrastructure and making the whole district a nightmare to navigate. My knowledge of them predated the game era purely out of necessity.
"Neither, actually." I shook my head, letting a touch of theatrics into it. Time was shorter than I'd have liked, but I could afford this much. I reached into my pocket and produced a small badge, which I tossed across to him in a short arc.
He caught it.
"I'm from Ares."
The badge bore a Roman war helmet in profile, a sword and spear crossed beneath it. The emblem of Ares—the largest criminal organization operating in the greater Tokyo area. Beside them, the Red Axe Gang was a hill standing in the shadow of a mountain range.
Mokuro stared at it. Something shifted in his expression—the studied coldness cracking just enough to let disbelief seep through.
Was I actually a member of Ares?
No. Obviously not.
The badge had come from an old friend who'd spent a few years inside the organization before a falling-out sent him walking. He'd handed it to me without much ceremony and even less explanation—one of those things you hold onto simply because discarding it feels wrong. It had been a useless keepsake for as long as I could remember.
Until now.
If Mokuro recognized the weight of that emblem, this whole conversation was about to become considerably simpler.
"...You fucker."
Apparently not.
"This is an old badge. Ares changed their emblem over a year ago."
"Oh." I considered that. "Is that so."
I'd never really expected it to land cleanly. Worth the attempt, though.
"Alright." I straightened up, tone shifting into something more businesslike. "New offer—give me a hundred thousand in cash right now, and you walk out of here on your own feet." I paused. "Or you can hand it over from the ground. Either works for me."
"BEAT THIS MOTHERFUCKER INTO THE PAVEMENT!"
As expected.
Mokuro's voice cracked through the alley like a starter pistol, and his men surged forward from both sides—batons raised, bats swinging, knives glinting. No firearms. Whether that was ideology, caution, or just professional pride about not bringing guns to a beatdown, I couldn't say. Probably didn't matter.
What mattered was that it worked entirely in my favor.
I stood, lifting the crowbar—still wearing the dried evidence of the earlier round—and rolled my neck once.
"Alright." I smiled, settling into my stance. "Beat-up session it is."