Lucinda decided to stay on at the gang for a few more days taking over the cooking after finding herself quite unsatisfied with the food. Meanwhile Bobby had taken over Gary’s duties while the man recovered from working himself ragged and Mcgunkin had been directed to teaching Jay and James how to be good underlings.

  Bobby had overseen the completion of the padded funzone and after testing it for safety himself he finally allowed the mutant children in. The children had shown to be remarkably resilient over the last few days, for the most part switching out their frowns and scared looks for smiles and giggles. Although Bobby was reminded whenever he saw them that it was a fragile thing their happiness, the adults in comparison barely smiled, and only usually when around their children, although such expressions were short lived due to the constant reminder of how they had been changed that they probably wouldn’t ever be able to ignore.

  Thankfully none of the adults were suicidal, those who lived in the undercity were far more mentally resilient that the average, and dealing with an unsolveable issue seemed to be a norm for them. Most of the adults were readjusting to not being confined, but a few had decided to take more active roles integrating themselves into the gang. There was a new doctor, fully qualified and several people were helping with the renovation and transformation of their new home.

  There was even a trained lawyer, Mr Skorne, who had large compound eyes like an insect which he had taken to keeping hidden under sunglasses. He had decided to take on a teaching role for the time being and was making sure the older children knew their spelling and numbers. The man was very helpful as he acted as an intermediary between Bobby and the adults and it made his job much easier when he wanted to know how to improve their living situation.

  When Gary finally recovered enough, he took over again, although the workload had heavily decreased due to the mutants gaining more independence and the gang being run autonomously with much more efficiently due to hierarchical delegation.

  In fact Bobby had almost forgotten his original motives to take over the gang until one morning when he opened his eyes and came face to face with Wat-haf’s green pickled face.

  “Ah… good morning?” he politely said, trying to cover up his surprise.

  “I have a report to make,” said the rat in its clear but slightly raspy voice.

  Bobby threw on his suit, which had been freshly washed, and made his way to go find Gary who was long since awake. He found the man midway through conversing with Mr Skorne about procuring some teaching supplies. Gary read his expression and politely ended his conversation, promising to see to it that the supplies were delivered. Then Bobby took him to the cafeteria where Lucinda was eating breakfast with Mcgunkin and Michaela, putting Wat-haf Wedon on the table in front of everyone, so the rat could make his report.

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  Wat-haf seemed pleased with the amount of attention he had garnered and cleared his breath before beginning. “I am here to report the general state of the gangs in the city, first of all though I’m going to give you a run down of what’s what.”

  There were nods and then the rat jumped straight in.

  “We are currently in the south east of the city, one of the more orderly areas, due to the heavily defended bastions which appeared here fairly recently, most people in this part of the city are well defended and significantly better off than those in other parts of the city who are more exposed to the whims of the gangs.

  Outside of this area each of the other main cardinal directions have a big gang who likes to throw their weight around and several smaller gangs who try to curry favour with the big fish of their region. These big gangs are probably what you want to target the most, but you will need to absorb a lot more smaller gangs and raise far more dead in order to successfully overtake them. Attacking them unprepared could be fatal, as they can outcompete you in a battle of attrition.

  You want to first absorb the other gangs in the region, these are the Canks, the Gilded Glory, and the Kamden Crew. Officially on paper the JJJ has an alliance with the Canks, although that was a generation ago, I would go after them last as they are good at manipulation and could probably get the other gangs to join them in destroying you if you declared war on them.

  Out of the other two, the Kamden Crew are the most dangerous and you probably want to surprise them, they have been known to use any manner of vile tactics to get what they want. Also the daughter of the leader of the Gilded Glory is marrying into them soon to attempt to merge the gangs.”

  “And the Gilded Glory?” Michaela inquired.

  “They recycle old metal from the city, but it's really just a cover for their larger operation of weapons manufacture, a lot of people buy a lot of weapons from them, and while it’s good business, numbers wise they are about half the size of the other two.”

  “If they have all the guns shouldn’t we just go after them?” Bobby asked.

  Gary decided to weigh in, “No, because if they are in the middle of forming an alliance and you fail in attacking them, the Kamden Crew will absorb them far easier. Whereas if you go after Kamden first then it gives us a better starting point of numbers.”

  “I agree, also the Gilded Glory have set up base in an old bastion, if you attack them you’ll be in for a siege while their allies can sneak up and attack you from the back.” Lucinda said.

  “What more can you tell us about the Kamden Crew?” Gary said, looking at Wat-haf.

  “They are far more serious than the gang you are currently in charge of, they have an arena where they fight on a monthly rota, people can only leave the arena if they are unconscious, dead or no one is left to fight them. They charge people a premium to watch these shows as well as dealing heavily in enhancement drugs designed to push human bodies far beyond where they are meant to go.”

  “How intimidating, do you think they are stronger than my skeletons?” Bobby asked.

  “Definitely, they’ve snuck people into the Olympics illegally before and won every category before they got disqualified.” Lucinda said.

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