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[b]Word Count:[/b] 1,044
[b]Level 3 Captain Falcon:[/b] 18/30
[b]Exp Gained:[/b] +2
[b]NEW EXP Balance---[/b] 20/30

[H3]Mafia Town[/h3][/center]

Earning pons was slow going at first, but by Day 2, Captain Falcon had already begun to become known as one of the best cyclists working for Crazy Eats. But while his skills as a racer lent themselves well to the demands of a stunt-riding delivery person, the actual payout of the job was admittedly suboptimal. What Cap really needed was to find where the bounties were posted. Even in a town run by a Mafia - harmless as they mostly were - there surely had to at least be an occasional call for certain people to have a price on their heads. It was incredibly fortunate for the Captain that the person he was looking for just so happened to be the owner of the restaurant he had first entered on the day he initially arrived in town.

A former mafia boss himself, [url=https://i.redd.it/27f1ks95bic81.jpg]Tianyou Zhao[/url] had essentially given that life up some time ago under circumstances he had so far chosen not to share. Instead he was more interested in cooking and making You Tian the best restaurant in town. It was merely poor timing that he happened to be out at the time Falcon first showed up. Despite his mafia days being put behind him, Zhao had no problem pegging Captain Falcon as a bounty hunter. And on the night of the second day since Cap’s arrival, the two actually met for the first time when the Captain came into You Tian for dinner that evening.

“C’mon, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you’re a helluva lot more than just some delivery boy.” Zhao had told Falcon when he served him the meal. And so this got the two chatting about what kind of work Cap actually specialized in: Bounty Hunting - at least when he wasn’t winning Grand Prix trophies that is.

Despite keeping his own restaurant completely above board, Zhao still occasionally found himself having to butt heads with Mafia Cooks attempting to run their lousy rackets in his little corner of town. As far as Zhao was concerned, Mafia presence was simply bad for business and would drive his actual paying customers away. So he enticed Falcon with a little job offer. He could point the Captain in the direction of some baddies that needed to be taken down, and pay him a bounty to make them go away. Simple, but at least it was a start. Starting out, Zhao was mostly interested in cleaning up his own street where You Tian was located, but then he started showing interest in maybe trying to clean up other parts of town as well.

Of course, Falcon knew he had to avoid becoming too infamous. The Seekers here were supposed to be keeping a low profile after all. Not that Juri ever seemed to care. In fact she was half the reason the Mafia of Cooks had started to ramp up their own operations at times and when that happened, Falcon was usually the one to have to remind her that they shouldn’t be getting too ambitious with their activities. Again, not that she cared. About the only language he could get her to understand was with his fists. Still, this at least allowed the two to act as a sort of check and balance against each other. Juri’s presence with the Mafia ensured that someone like Falcon would always be needed to keep them from going out of control, and it would also simultaneously ensure that they would be able to bounce back and not be wiped out or something. In other words, in a roundabout way the status quo was being maintained - for better or worse.

All of that led to this evening, nearly a week after Falcon’s arrival to Mafia Town. Earlier today, he’d received another job from Zhao, but this one wasn’t like any of the others. Falcon wasn’t here at the port harbor to actually take anyone down that night. Rather, he was there simply to confirm the presence of a [url=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nCrhdt6Rgwo/maxresdefault.jpg]specific individual[/url]. As for why Zhao didn’t want Falcon to take any action against him yet, well, he didn’t really say. The best explanation that Cap got was that Zhao wanted to be absolutely sure it was really him before he did anything else. Falcon couldn’t begin to imagine what made this guy so different from previous targets. It felt like he was doing detective work more than anything. But still, jobs were jobs.

Falcon stood a few dozen meters away from the harbor’s entrance. He’d stopped before getting too close in order to formulate some kind of plan of approach. From what Zhao said, the harbor was run pretty much in its entirety by the Mafia of Cooks. So for the guy who’s been spending the past four days or so being a thorn in their side to just brazenly walk up to the front door was probably not the best idea. On a normal job, he wouldn’t have minded just kicking the door down, as it were. But this was not a normal job, and in fact was going to require some degree of stealth. And that was when an idea began to form in the Captain’s head. What if instead of approaching as a bounty hunter, he approached instead as a delivery guy?

And so, minutes later, Falcon found himself on duty for Crazy Eats. He had changed into his crazy eats uniform, and this time even left his helmet behind so he wouldn’t be immediately recognizable. If he could concentrate his deliveries to the harbor and pier, that would give him license to roam around the sector without raising any eyebrows and keep an eye out for Zhao’s target at the same time. And besides, evening and night time deliveries tended to pay extra, so a few more pons on the side certainly wouldn’t hurt anything, either.

The only thing Falcon might have to worry about is the attention he might draw toward himself while performing bike stunts. But since Crazy Eats was a pretty commonly used service all around Mafia Town, he was hopeful he wouldn’t look too out-of-place.