A Werewolf In Under-Town

Stealing a car and driving back to their neighborhood was actually far more difficult than catching the assassin. Shaggy and Ephemara managed to figure out how to start an old-style car thanks to watching Sybil do it a few times. But it was a hit and miss procedure for the two of them. Thankfully, their passenger stayed unconscious for most of the ride. It was when they pulled into Sybil’s auto-shop that the man started to wake up. Ephemara smacked him again in the back of the head and they switched cars.

Rin and Vud, the two bug brothers, were working in Sybil’s shop and helped them find a car that had already been chopped. The few lackeys in the place got to work taking apart the stolen car as Shaggy and Ephe drove back to the deli. A quick parking job at the side entrance and some none-too-gentle maneuvering and they got the bastard into the store.

Rita and Ruby were gone, replaced by a group of Lackeys that all stared at them. A purple alien with tentacles for arms was sweeping the glass off the floor as his compatriots played cards. Shaggy gave them a dirty look, but walked on by to the door to downstairs. Down the maintenance tunnels and into the caves, Shaggy and Ephemara carried their prisoner all the way to their cavern home.

Cekrass and Vick were waiting at the entrance to their cavern. Claws and rifle ready. Shaggy nodded in recognition and looked past the two questioningly.

“Rita’s been healed. The energy weapon did a number on her. But she’s fine. Pissed she missed the action, though.”

Cekrass nodded and pointed to Shaggy’s log cabin home. “She’s in there with the Mistress.”

Ephemara passed off the assassin to Cekrass, and the four of them walked to the cabin. All around them, Lackeys were harvesting wood from the magical forest that surrounded the cabin. It wasn’t growing back as fast as it used to, but they were still producing a good amount of wood. The Wood was stacked onto pallets and shipped through the portal to Under-Town as Lackeys went back and forth with crates of goods and supplies. They had a decent supply chain set-up.

As they approached the cabin, Sybil opened the front door and sneered at their captive. She made way for Cekrass and they all piled into Shaggy’s house. Levy was there drinking coffee and reading a book as Rita sat across from her, scowling. Ruby was curled up on an armchair, pointedly ignoring Levy. Cekrass dumped the guy on the floor and they all gathered around as Levy closed her book.

“Hey, boss? Where’s the guy’s gun? It blew a hole in Rita’s shoulder. Something like that would be a hell of a thing to have,” Sybil asked.

Shaggy shrugged. “I don’t know. It wasn’t on the rooftop we chased him from, or where we picked him up. He probably ditched it somewhere, or it has some kind of quick-destruction feature.”

“But at least we caught the guy,” Ephemara added, going into Shaggy and Levy’s kitchen.

“So, who does he work for?”

“The HLO probably.”

“You aren’t sure?”

“No, it’s not like he ran right to the HLO’s front door. We chased him into downtown and caught him near a bar on the east-side.”

“Downtown?” Levy asked, staring at Shaggy.

“I was careful. I don’t think any of the drones spotted me.”

“You’re still technically a wanted man, boss. Once they set a new court date, they are going to come for you.”

“Like I said, they aren’t going to set a new court date. The HLO can’t charge me with anything. So they will not come at me legally. Which, again, explains the shooter on the roof.”

Ruby scoffed. “I hate to break it to you. But he was aiming at me, Shags. Rita managed to get in the way of the shot, but I was his target.”

“That still means he probably works for the HLO. You’ve been looking into one of their shells companies, so they send this guy.”

“We still don’t know if that’s the case. Someone is jamming up city hall with false paperwork. But we have no proof it’s the HLO.”

Shaggy waved the cat-woman off and knelt down. He hovered over the assassin as he ripped the guy’s shirt off. He looked at Levy and pointed to the strange magical glyph on the man’s chest.

“He say’s that can stop mind magic. He was fairly proud of it, too. Was he right?”

Levy crouched down next to him and studied the strange runic marking until she blew out a breath. Shaggy could hear her exasperation as she shook her head.

“I don’t know what the fuck that is, but it looks nasty. It’s got multiple arcane booby traps set within the glyph, but I can’t figure out the how they have written theirs. It’s like someone invented their own Runic language and dumped magic in it.”

Levy summoned her staff and held its crystal tip to the man’s body. A purple glow seemed to scan over his skin, but Levy quickly stopped what she was doing.

“Yep, that’s some strange juju, alright. I ain’t touching it.”

Shaggy nodded. “Cool. So if I kill him, can you bring him back and question him?”

Levy thought about it as everyone waited with bated breath. Soon the tall drow woman shrugged her slim shoulders.

“No idea. But we can give it a try. If the rune or glyph is powered by his life force, then we might be in luck.”

Shaggy nodded and shifted his right hand into its clawed form. He jammed three long claws into the man’s chest and pierced his heart. The assassin gave a short, shuddering breath and then went still as Shaggy waggled his nails in the man’s chest cavity. Pulling his claws free, Shaggy ordered his pack to stand back as Levy stood over the body again. Ruby quirked an eyebrow at him as Levy went to work.

“Well, that was mildly disturbing. Do you think this guy is the only one after me? Am I safe to continue my investigations?”

Shaggy shook his head. “Probably not. But you were leaving Austin anyway, right? To go to the Department of Revenue’s offices? So you might be fine. We just need to check if anyone else is on the job and who hired this guy.”

A green light flashed through the room, and Levy cackled happily. The assassin’s body was consumed by a green light that soaked its way into his skin. So the light disappeared, and the body lurched off the ground. It floated in the air as Levy held her staff up to it. Shaggy could see a green tint to the dead man’s lifeless eyes.

“Alright. We are good for question time!” Levy said happily as she held the corpse up in the middle of the living room.

Shaggy was the first one with a question. “Who do you work for?”

The body’s mouth fell up a small stream of blood traveled out of the open mouth and down the assassin’s chin. Accompanying it was a creaky, unearthly voice that spilled forth from the corpse.

“The Ravens… Assassin Guild…”

The corpse wheezed after every few words and Shaggy wondered if that was because he stabbed him in the chest. He looked about the room to see if anyone had heard about the assassin's guild. But all he got was a sea of blank faces. Sighing, he asked his next question.

“Who hired you?”

“… Don’t… know… just… given a… name.”

“Where is the guild?” Rita asked hurriedly.

The corpse slowly gave them the address of a building that was far to the south of their neighborhood. Its wheezing was growing more pronounced and Shaggy was worried the dead guy was going to keel over at any minute. But Levy didn’t seem concerned, so he followed her lead.

“Who’s your boss?”

“Romero…”

The corpse wheezed for a long time after that answer and Shaggy was sure he heard another death rattle coming from the guy. Looking at Levy, Shaggy raised an eyebrow. She shrugged her shoulders.

“I still got him. His spirit is still trapped in his body. But I think it’s growing weaker. I think he’s given as much as he can. Besides, we got this assassin’s guild’s address. You and the wolves can go out and have a chat with them later.”

Shaggy nodded his head as he watched the corpse rotate slowly in the air. “Sounds fair.”

Levy dropped the spell and the assassin’s body went tumbling to the floor. He quickly turned grey and became dust before their very eyes. Rita, Cekrass, and Vick all covered their mouths as the body puffed into the air. Ephemara came from the kitchen with a broom and dustpan and immediately cleaned up what had once been dead NPC.

Shaggy turned to Ruby. “Have you heard of this guild?”

“Naw. It looks like it’s an NPC underground guild. A few players have tried to join. But they are very selective.”

Ruby had the far-off look people get when they are in their menus. Shaggy figured she was on the forums digging up information. Turning to his pack, Shaggy waved them out.

“Alright, pups. We’re hitting the assassin’s tonight. Get rested and get your shit ready.”

Levy sighed as she shook her head. “That’s a no-go, Shaggy. We have to do the rounds tonight and I want you there meeting the other business owners.”

“Didn’t we just do that!?”

“That was in an official capacity. Now we need to meet them in their natural habitat as neighbors. Besides, you went into downtown today. We need to make sure we don’t get any blowback from that.”

“I told you it was fine. The angels aren’t out looking for me and the HLO will not cause a fuss about me missing a court date. The only thing I have to worry about is frying the angel’s tracking device. Which I can attribute to an accident. I’m telling you, I’m in the clear.”

A healthy dose of skepticism hit Shaggy from both his wife and his pack mates. He feigned a hurt look and threw himself into the living room couch.

“So I’m back to waiting for nighttime then? Just sitting here, ‘overseeing’ the cavern construction?”

“Oh, it’s not that bad. We are actually building an underground town here, Shaggy. That’s pretty cool. Besides, we need to stay underground until we get our legitimate businesses up. Which means we wait for the cat-girl to find the evidence against the HLO.”

“If they are even a part of this,” Ruby added.

Shaggy gave the cat-woman a withering look, but she merely smiled at him. Brushing imaginary dirt from her pants, Ruby sighed and started for the door.

“Well, I need to get back out there, anyway. Maybe the assassin being dead will give me a better head start. I’ll send you a message if I find anything.”

Shaggy waved the woman off as he sat on his sofa looking glum. Levy joined him as the pack waited in silence. He sent them an order to beat it and they scattered out of the house. Levy put her head on his shoulder and sighed.

“What do you want to do?”

Shaggy rubbed his face. “I don’t know. I feel like we teed up the HLO pretty good with the warehouse. Now we just need one more big push to knock them flat.”

“Pfft! The HLO being tangentially involved with an illegal animal warehouse isn’t that great. You got the cop’s attention. But we need the court of public opinion.”

“Is that why I’m meeting the local business owners… again?”

“Yep. Maybe speaking with them will give us some ideas.”

“You already spoke with them, right?”

Levy rolled her eyes. “That was mostly business planning and trying to figure out how our different places can work together. Now we need to meet the people, get a feel for them, see if they know anything about the HLO.”

“I’d rather be hunting and hitting things.”

“I know, love. But there are only four of them that want to meet you tonight. We can visit the others later. Then you and your pack can run off into the night, fight giant cats and go around burning businesses.”

Shaggy snorted. “I really don’t think tonight is going to be anywhere near that interesting.”

“Pfft! Now we know it will be.”

“There just has to be a way to catch the HLO with their pants down. Some link between the companies circling this neighborhood and that Mr. White bastard.”

“Isn’t that what your cat-girl is for? Let her worry about the nitty-gritty. We need to get ready for when we run this neighborhood.”

Shaggy slowly nodded. “I do like the sound of that. Have you started work on your cafe next door?”

Levy shook her head. “No. I’ve been stuck down here building a small town.”

“Well, let’s do that! We can have the place cleaned out and ready to go by tonight.”

“No! Comfy.” Levy said, digging her head into his chest.

“Haha! Fine, but soon. That’s what we can do for the day and then tonight we’ll meet more business people. We need to get your area squared away.”

“What about down here?”

“Meh, the bots and Lackeys can handle it, right? Besides, you have to have a Henchman that can take over by now.”

“Nope. A few of my mages are close, though. But that’s another thing for the list. We need to get more of our Lackeys up to Henchmen. The stat increases are worth it and each one will get a class. Or, if they are extremely lucky, a subclass.”

“Oh man, that reminds me. Have you taken a look at Franklin’s Henchman page?”

Levy looked up at him curiously as Shaggy began to explain about their deli owner’s Meatmancer class. The two shared a few cozy moments on the couch as a grey dust blew through their house. The remains of the latest assassin to try to kill one of theirs. Shaggy was sure there would be more. But he filed the location of the assassin’s guild away as he snuggled on the couch with his wife.