Rebirth: The Shadow Of Greed

... We need some credits to survive too."

The homeless man raised his hands as two bigger looking men came from behind him. One of the men had a pot belly that wobbled as he walked. He took a deep breath and spat at a nearby trashcan, the trashcan melted almost instantly, leaving nothing left.

The other walked forward growing spikes out from all over his body. He twisted his arms as he pointed at a nearby wall launching the spikes into the wall.

"So, do you want to be impaled or to be burnt by acid. Of course, there is a third choice and that is for you to give us your credits. I'm not asking twice, but because I'm a benevolent man, I'll give you 5 seconds to think about it."

The homeless man smiled again, he thought he had handled the situation quite well.

Z pressed his commswatch and showed him the symbol that only the students of A city academy would have.

"Do you recognize this?"

The homeless man took a passing glance and replied nonchalantly,

"Sure I do, A city academy, right? Is that supposed to make me scared? This area is under my control now and if I make you disappear, no one would ever know. Your 5 seconds are up. I want you to lose an arm or a leg to acid first. Boba, melt him."

The fat man, Boba stepped forward and gathered his acid and unleashed it all at one go. But instead of it projecting forward, it was as if the acid had hit an invisible wall and the acid rebounded right on his face.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!" Boba screamed as he rolled around touching his face, which had been partially melted off.

"Oh, that's interesting, even though you spit acid it seems that you're not immune to your own acid, wouldn't that kind of suck?"

Z vanished from his location and appeared above Boba,

"you can still hear what I'm saying, and I know for a fact you can still speak. Say please and I will grant you a quick death."

"Please kill me!"

With a flash of his dagger Z slit the throat of Boba leaving him bleeding out and dying.

"The reason I've shown you the symbol was to tell you that I'm a student there and I'm trained to kill. According to your logic, you can make me vanish and no one would care, but the same can also be said to you."

Z's eyes shone red, akin to rubies as he stared at the homeless man.

"Go get him spike!"

He shouted, only to have no response coming from the bulky man. He turned around to discover spike floating in mid-air unable to move an inch.

"There is no way any of you can come out of this alive. I'm a benevolent person, so I'm only going to give you a choice, submit to me or perish. You have 5 seconds to decide."

Z spoke harshly, throwing the words the homeless man had said earlier back to him.

"Young master, I submit to you, please don't hurt me. The rest of you, stop surrounding the young master, give him some space to breathe."

The homeless man, knelt to the ground in almost a kowtow fashion as he started to beg for mercy.

Z let go of spike who was still floating in mid-air and let him collapse on the ground with a thud.

"What's your name?"

Z asked the homeless man, who was still kneeling on the ground.

"My name is Rat, young master. Please tell me what you need me to do and I'll definitely get the job done."

"Rat, for now, I have no matters I need your help with, but the time will come. Just keep your ears on the ground and let me know if there is anything that happens. Oh and clean up the corpse, would you? It's dirty enough as is."

Z slipped him a piece of paper. You can send me a message anonymously. I'm sure I don't need to teach you how to do that right?

"Yes sir, thank you very much, sir."

Rat continued to bow as he guided Z out of the slums personally.

______

"Boss, are we seriously going to let the brat get away with it?"

Spike asked, still upset that Boba was lost just like that. His boss had also just been humiliated and he really couldn't stand for it.

"You've seen his strength for yourself, it isn't like we can beat him if we gang up together. But... There is always more than one way to deal with a situation like this.

Look, he has an attachment to the church right? Recently the Scythe gang has been looking for more products. Spread this information out to our runners, tell them to disseminate the information as quickly as possible. Tell them that the church past the slums has kids with some pretty interesting manifests."

Rat smiled, his blackened rotten teeth exposed in all its glory.

"Boss..."

A small voice could be heard from amidst the crowd. It was loud enough to capture Rat's attention.

"Who called me? What is it?"

"Boss, I'm Helmut, I joined recently... I don't think it's a good idea to mess with the church... Even though it's just a branch it still has the backing of the Holy capital... What's more, those are kids we're talking about."

Rat stared down at Helmut, before moving his leg giving him a hard kick into his stomach making him flinch and kneel down on all fours.

"Let's make this clear, I am the boss, when your boss is humiliated, you do not get to think of consequences. When I ask you to attack, you ask me when. This shabby church is requiring donations to survive, I'm pretty sure even if they're under attack they wouldn't even bother to trace it back to us."

Rat laughed as he returned back to the tentage at the side, grabbing a woman so drugged up she wouldn't know the sky from the ground.