Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Five - Mistakes Were Made

This was a mistake.

Not so much hanging out with Becky. She was... fun. Carefree and loud, and opinionated, but fun. I actually thought that she'd get along well with Jane, because she had ideas about fashion that would clash with Jane's own ideas.

No, the issue arose when we arrived at a pizza shop owned by the Weiss gang.

There was no hiding who ran the place. The joint was called West ENE Pizza, which wasn't the most creative name I'd ever seen. The building was squeezed in between two others. Half of it was a hairdressing salon, and to one side was a tobacco store and on the other was a small grab-and-go roboticized pharmacy.

It was in a corner of the city with slightly wider roads, along a one-way street with cars parked on both sides.

The shop had a stylized white W spray painted on the wall next to the door, and one entire wall on the inside was covered in some pretty nice street art of a man wearing a white bandana and scarf throwing a lit molotov at a corpo building.

Not exactly subtle.

Becky and I lined up before a long glass counter and eventually it was our turn to order from a young woman that couldn't be more than sixteen-ish. That's when the horror started.

"I'll have... just a small pepperoni and cheese, with a soda," I said with a gesture to the drinks fridge to one side.

The girl behind the counter nodded along, tapping the order into an old tablet. "And you?" she asked, looking up to Becky.

"Yeah, gimme a med. Uh, a Jalapeno, pineapple, onions," Becky started.

"Hmm, okay," the girl said, tapping her tablet.

"And mushroom, black olives, pepperoni, of course. Uh, extra anchovies. And can you sprinkle some garlic powder on top? Hey, do you do banana?"

The girl paused for a moment, processing all of that. "No? I mean, no we don't do fruit here. We do... pizza."

"Alright, fair 'nough," Becky said with a casual shrug.

I paid. I didn't want to. Not because it was expensive (as far as pizzas went, it wasn't actually that bad, price-wise) but because I didn't want whatever that was to mar my financial records for the rest of forever.

I sat, and Becky slumped into the seat across from me. She sat strange, legs spread and shoulders loose. Somehow, just the way she was sitting screamed 'troublesome punk.' I supposed that you could dress her nice and tell her to pretend, but it was impossible to remove the punk from her.

"Not a terrible spot," I said.

"Yeah, not bad," Becky said. "The Rats should get something like this going. The best we have is this sandwich truck. You know the sorts that deliver food to construction sites? It's not even a Rat thing, but like, it's run by someone's cousin or something and they're friendly. I get a discount for showing my tat." She patted her gut, where I knew there was a tattoo of a rat.

I nodded along. "So, the... people from here, they don't seem entirely unhinged. This place is working well enough. The neighbourhood isn't the nicest, but I've seen worse."

"Yeah, probably doing alright," Becky said. "I know of a couple of gangs in the area, but they're mostly chill."

"Chill isn't something I associate with gangs," I said.

Becky snorted. "That's cause you're not in one. You think it's shootouts and drive-bys all day long?"

"I mean... a little?"

Becky giggled. It was a strangely girly sound. "No no. C'mon! We're doing it for the money and the cred and the rep, but most of all it's a nice way to get a roof over your head and food in your stomach and maybe it's a good way to make some friends. You can't be fighting all the time. It's not like that."

"So what, drivebys are weekend activities only?"

Becky shook her head. "Nah. It's rare. Usually things are handled with words first. Cooler heads and all that. Fighting in the streets is bad for every sort of business. Look at this place? What if it burned down? That's a big loss of cash. You'll have a cook or two without work, a waitress or two, some drivers. Less money flowing around."

"So, the other place that burned down could have been a hit?"

"Yeah, maybe, but it was probably not. I mean. Why? Things usually escalate in like, little steps. First there's insults, then someone bangs someone's girlfriend, then maybe some scuffles, maybe a knife gets pulled. If someone dies, then it might get serious faster, but I haven't heard anything like that. No one just jumps straight to burning places down. Not between gangs that aren't already fighting."

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I supposed that made some amount of sense. It painted the whole thing as something a lot more reasonable. Civil, almost. Or maybe the right term would be political.

"Okay, so those are all reasons not to burn a place down. But one was."

"Yeah, weird right?" Becky asked.

"Can we work backwards, then? Find out why? Or who, I guess?"

"I mean, if Weiss knows, then they'll go after whoever's responsible," Becky said.

I sat up a little. It couldn't be that obvious, could it? No... but maybe it could. Dammit, I'd have to pay attention tonight and see who Weiss targeted, specifically.

I was startled out of my thoughts when the pizza arrived. Mine looked greasy and warm and like a pizza should. Becky's looked like something off the side of a cigarette packet.

"Hell yeah, pizza," Becky said before ripping a slice out and chowing down on it with all of the energy of a puppy discovering leftovers carelessly left within reach.

I kept my attention on my own meal for a moment. I didn't want to see Becky doing horrid things to that poor pizza.

I... kind of wanted to Reload, but I really didn't want to. This was fun, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to recreate it.

I was debating over what to do when I felt someone walking up to the edge of our table. Three someone's. Younger guys in their later teens, wearing thick synthetic coats, tough jeans and workers boots.

One of them grinned at me, and I almost recoiled at the sight of the gaps in his teeth. "Heard you two talking about us," he said.

He was wearing a scarf, one of those lighter, more airy ones that was more middle-east than middle-of-the-arctic. A member of Weiss?

"Just talking," I said.

"Yeah, fuck off, you're ruining the vibes between me and my pizza," Becky said.

The boy's lips thinned. "Don't piss us off." he reached for Becky's pizza.

Becky paused, slice halfway to her mouth. She then looked up and met the boy's eyes. The lights in the room flickered. "Touch that and I'll fry every one of your nerves, Weiss-boy," she warned.

He pulled his hand back. "What're you talking about the Weiss about?"

What? Did he pick up English from the back of a milk carton? What kind of broken vocabulary was that? "We heard that one of your shops burned down," I said.

"Yeah? You heard that, huh?" he asked, attention turning to me.

"Yes," I replied evenly. "Who did it?"

"Why you wanna know?"

"Because we don't do business with people who rock the boat," I said. "And it sounds like someone did a lot of that here."

The boy worked his jaw. "That's it? You're here to eat our za and talk shit?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Maybe they're gay?" one of them said before snorting.

I looked over to him, then cast See Darkness, just to make my eyes glow. "You have a problem with that?" I asked. "I'm just here, on a nice date with my girl, grabbing something to eat, and we're talking about what's going on around town. We didn't ask for the reject squad to come out and poke us."

The boys backed up a little. But boys were stupid like that, and they rallied. Becky smacked the table. "Oi. My g-girlfriend said to go away. Dumbasses. Bunch of one-star pulls. Now, fuck off... wait, no." Her hand shot out, so quick that I could barely follow it, and I was sure three normal boys couldn't follow at all. "Before you go. Who lit that fire?"

"Fuck, lemme... Y'ouch! Fucking shocked me?" the boy yelped.

"And I'll do it again. 'Til you piss yourself. C'mon, spill."

The boy shook her off, or tried, but when he saw that it wouldn't work, he gave in. "Fine. We don't know. We think it's some big-wig corp."

"Seraph, probably," one of them said. "We took one of our portals in our turf that they keep calling theirs, and was pissed about it."

"Dude, shut up," the quieter boy hissed.

Seraph, huh? Interesting.

Almost as interesting as seeing Becky blush.

***