Word Count: 1,424
Level 3 Captain Falcon: 26/30
Exp Gained: +2
NEW EXP Balance--- 28/30
Mafia Town
”This is the place.” Captain Falcon said to Zhao after they made it to the harbor. They were standing in front of the entrance to the storehouse that Falcon had earlier seen Mabuchi disappear into just before the Captain had made his exit from the pier. ”Odd though. You’d think it would be guarded.” Falcon added.
“Well, I imagine everyone’s got their hands full with the circus wrestlers.” Zhao offered. Even he and Cap had fought a couple more of those cartoonish fighters on their way here. “And with whatever coup Mabuchi is trying to pull off.” He also added. Without wanting any more delays, the two entered the unguarded doors into the storehouse itself.
Inside, the scene was something that looked all-too familiar to Zhao. “I don’t believe this.” he muttered, looking around at the crates of shark fins and other items as well as the supply crates marked as “resin” and “dyes”.
”How do you mean?”
“This looks almost exactly like the same counterfeiting operation Mabuchi used to run back in Yokohama. Right down to the same front business even. Did the idiot not learn a single thing from the asskicking he got back then?” Zhao asked while rolling his eyes. As the two searched they eventually came upon a pile of pons on a nearby worktable. Next to them was what clearly looked like molds.
“Hey, Falcon-kun, can I borrow one of your pons for a sec?” Zhao suddenly asked. Falcon nodded and handed him a pon from the purse he’d been given back in You Tian. Zhao took that pon in one hand and another pon from the table in another hand. He held them both in his hands as if comparing the weight, and then even bit onto the pon he grabbed from the table like a jeweler testing the authenticity of a gold coin. “Yep, thought so.” Zhao handed both pons to Falcon. “See for yourself.”
Of course, Cap was by no means an expert on this. But the more he held both pons in his hands the more he began to feel the difference in their weight. ”So then, these really really are fakes?”
“I’ll say.” said Zhao who then gestured to molds. “See those? They mix green dye into the resin and then pour that resin into the molds so that they harden into the shape of pons. A classic counterfeiting scheme if I ever saw one. And almost beat for beat identical to the scheme he ran in Yokohama, too. The dumb bastard.” Zhao muttered before he suddenly kicked over the entire work table without warning, “It’s like he’s deliberately doing this just to taunt me! The fucking asshole!”
”Hey, don’t lose your head here.” Falcon said, trying to calm him down. ”There’s probably an office somewhere in here. We should check it in case he left behind some clue as to where went from here.”
“Yeah…” Zhao said, calming back down. “...yeah, good idea. Let’s go.”
The office they were looking for was located at the top of some stairs that led into a series of catwalks that one could use to traverse the storehouse without needing to weave through sections of workstations or storage areas. Inside, they found a desk, although the papers on it weren’t especially helpful. Mostly just ledgers and records of transactions through the counterfeiting operation. It was Cap who first noticed something a bit off about the office. ”That’s weird.” He said. “Don’t these places normally have radios for communicating with the ships outside?”
“Yeah, or with delivery trucks for that matter.” Zhao added. “I guess Mabuchi figured they were a waste of space since almost everyone has a cell phone these days. Still kind of weird though.”
”Any idea what this is?” Cap asked, pointing to what looked like some kind of bowl atop a pedestal that was filled with water.
“A birdbath?” Zhao offered with a shrug.
”Who keeps a birdbath indoors where there aren’t any birds?” Falcon retorted.
“You got me.” Zhao admitted. “Hold on, what have we got here?” he’d been trying to pick the lock on a drawer in the desk and finally got it open. Inside was another ledger of sorts, except this one did not mention anything about the counterfeit operation. Instead it made repeated mentions of a certain individual. “Consul 𝙸? What does that mean?”
And now it was Falcon’s turn to be surprised and become deadly serious. ”Consul? Let me see that!” he took the ledger from Zhao and skimmed over it himself. ”This is not good.”
Zhao could tell Falcon recognized the name. “You wanna fill me in, here, Falcon-kun? What the hell is a “Consul”? Is it someone you know?”
Falcon shook his head. ”Not personally. But I know their organization. My friends and I came here so we could hide from them for a while. But according to this, Mabuchi figured out who we were and alerted Consul 𝙸.”
“So this Consul is the one sending those cargo ships to attack Mafia Town? To target you?”
”Not just me, a few of my friends as well.”
“And Mabuchi is using the chaos to try and take over town.” Zhao said through gritted teeth. “That means there’s only one place I can think of where he would be right now.” Zhao paused and pointed upward. “The disk, where the Mafia HQ is.”
”I don’t suppose you know how to get up there?”
“Well-”
Before Zhao could get anything else out, they both suddenly felt the storehouse begin to rumble and tremble. Moments later, the water-sde wall of the storehouse began to crack and break before something from the outside seemed to tear it open. They were able to catch a small glimpse of what was attacking the storehouse below. Some kind of shark… octopus… mutant thing. It had the head and body of a great white shark, but looked like its tail end had been replaced by the tentacles of a massive red octopus.
“What the fuck?!” Zhao yelled, “The hell is that thing?”
”I’m not waiting around to find out!” Cap said, ”Come on, if we can make it far enough off the pier it probably won’t be able to follow us!”
And so the two began their run. Zhao and Cap stuck to catwalks first, hoping it would keep them out of reach of the monster’s tentacles. But unfortunately for them, those tentacles were able to shoot what looked like blasts of different colored ink as a projectile attack. For the superhuman Captain Falcon, this wasn’t as difficult to deal with. But Zhao, on the other hand, had a far harder time of this. One particular ink shot managed to hit close enough that Zhao slipped on it and tumbled over the railing. He was lucky that Falcon was fast enough to catch him by the hand. But there was no time for him to pull Zhao up and eventually the ex-mafia boss slipped from his hand and fell down to the ground level of the storehouse and scrambled to his feet to keep running. But the monster was giving chase with its tentacles.
Falcon kept running along the catwalk but after a few more meters he hurled himself over the railing and dropped down onto where the sea monster was chasing Zhao, charging up his fist all the while. ”Falcon!” Cap shouted out as he fell down to the lower level, then lunged himself forward to throw the attack. ”PUUUUUUNCH!” the explosive punch connected, which wasn’t hard to do given the monster’s size and threw it back several meters and even appeared to stun it momentarily. But the monster was far from vaniquished and was quick to recover and resume the chase.
By the time it did, Falcon and Zhao had burst back into the outside, still on the run from the attacking sea monster. Some more wrestlers had appeared by now but they were far too distracted by the sea monster to commit to their assault on the harbor. Zhao and Falcon punched and kicked their way past them as the stragglers were snatched by the tentacles and swept toward the jaws of the shark head.
”C’mon, Zhao!” Falcon shouted between gasps for breath. ”We just have to make it off the pier! We can do this!”
“We damn… well.. Better!” Zhao answered, “Or we’re fish food!”