It was the morning of the plan and Bobby and his group were putting costumes onto the twenty skeletons they had decided to bring into the event officially. The great thing about a masquerade ball is that you didn’t need to show your identity, but the skeletons needed to at least look like disguised humans. If you just threw some cloaks on them as they were now, they would look more like coat racks. Too many bones were visible through thin clothing.

  Bobby slipped two ping pong balls with irises and pupils drawn on them into the skeletons' physically empty eye sockets, then slipped a balaclava and a monkey mask over the top, finishing off the look with a navy blue fedora covered in sequins. It wouldn’t really hold up to scrutiny due to the visible manufacturers logos, but he hoped the flamboyance of the other parts of the outfit would distract onlookers. Originally he had thought of covering the eyes with shades, but sunglasses seemed to be a rarity in the undercity, due to the fact that no one actually had a need for them.

  Bobby spun around the skeleton to face Michaela. “What do ya think?”

  “Are those ping pong balls?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, they look surprisingly good! I think they would suit you too, do you want me to make you a pair?”

  “Noo, I will never ever put a pair of ping pong balls into my eyes!” She shot back with a glare, putting one of the few pairs of sunglasses they’d found over her empty sockets.

  Bobby grinned evilly. You have gained a quest! His brain helpfully filled in where his system was lacking.

  It took them about two hours to make sure all of the skeletons were suitably disguised, a time slot long enough for Gary to instill into them all of the wisdom and strategies they would need to both take down men far stronger than themselves and also what points of interest they would need to infiltrate and protect and how to get there.

  The operation would be manned mostly with skeletons, no humans would be brought aside from Bobby, Gary, Jay and James. Bobby thought that would change after this takeover, it was just currently more reliable to bring unhesitating skeletons and thralls than men more used to playing dress up than functioning as part of a covert operation.

  Mr Skorne’s son, Sammy, had helpfully provided them with a rough map of the base, printed on the back of an ancient looking hockey leaflet. Apparently, the base had once been a stadium for sports, so it had many possible entry and exit points (all of which would be guarded or blocked) and many winding corridors that would be easy to get lost in. The boss of the gang who they would need to subdue resided in the Vip box near the roof of the stadium, which would make it difficult to get to without being spotted.

  Bobby was very prepared himself, he had memorised all his new spells, getting their cast time as low as he could manage in such a short time window, he also had a kevlar bodysuit and a titanium mask, which should make him significantly more bullet proof, which seemed to currently be his greatest weakness.

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  Although even with all that protective equipment, he would still need to be careful of larger calibre guns and getting bludgeoned to death by the ape of a man that the boss of the gang was reported to be. Also he wasn’t quite sure how the man was cybernetically enhanced so he would have to put extra caution into how he handled the situation and keep to a distance.

  Bobby, James and the skeletons, one of which was a disguised Michaela poured into a pimped up minivan, one of the vehicles that the gang owned, it had bullet proof glass, a deployable machine gun from the roof and reinforced tires. The thing was a mean beast, it would keep them well protected until they reached their destination.

  A similarly to Bobby armoured Gary, Jay and some more skeletons were in a small truck, they had managed to fit around a hundred of them in, so the rest were being left behind with Lucinda, Mcgunkin and Mr Skorne, who would hold down the fort until they returned. Bobby knew the mission was a bit ambitious and they might not succeed, but he was confident that even if they failed the other gang would not be in a state to retaliate and they would be able to return to finish the job.

  The plan was that Bobby and the skeletons would be let in on the guest list and meet up with Sammy, then after the event had started, they would attack the entrance from the back at the same time as Gary attacked it from the front. Then when the men there fell or fled, the rest of the skeletons would pour in and use their inexhaustible stamina to overrun the place. After they had produced enough chaos, they would make their way to the bosses VIP box and get the jump on him.

  Once they had the boss it should be a trivial matter to use him to control the rest of the gang into submitting to them. Though they would have to somehow use fear to stop the gang members who were probably far more loyal than the members of the JJJ from turning round and rebelling against them. That’s something to worry about afterwards, thought Bobby, we need to steal the cake before we decide how to cut it.

  The Minivan and the Truck pulled out of the hospital garage and left through the front gate, then Bobby put some distance between himself and the Truck until it vanished behind them, they would be travelling together, but in case they were spotted from a distance by someone hidden along the route, he didn’t want the Kamden Crew to think the second vehicle was with them.

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  “Turn left at the next junction and then perform a U-Turn, after going over the bridge you should find the stadium car park on the right side of the left intersection,” said TODD helpfully.

  “You know I am going to throw you out the window at this rate,” Bobby told the infuriating device.

  Luckily he soon spotted a series of gang symbols spray painted on the wall next to helpful arrows, so he didn’t have to follow through with his threat. Following the arrows he went over a bridge that had been constructed over a sinkhole that the declining hadn’t been bothered to fill in. Soon he saw hulking silhouettes of men perched atop buildings, the guns they held looked like matchsticks in their meaty digits and the letters ‘Kc’ had been tattooed on a few of them in various places, one even had them on their forehead.

  Taking a deep breath, he slowed down a little, driving across the junction beyond the bridge to join a traffic jam of cars that were pouring into the stadium's dark underground car park. It felt a bit like he was entering the maw of a beast as the minivan eventually reached the front of the queue and descended.

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