Lariats Are Heroic (2.4)

Lariats Are Heroic (2.4)

…

Neo San Kyoto, ???, 10PM PST.

…

Catherine rounded out the group.

Partly because she was a smartass with incredibly high self-esteem.

But mostly because her abilities were the last piece of the puzzle that we needed to crack the mystery behind our opponents.

Though she needed a lot of setup if she could be relied upon to take anything on, with her unprepared version barely more capable than a trained gunman who could cast multiple fireballs, she was an excellent tracker when provided with the right materials.

Thanks to all our former raids, we had a lot of material.

We went from hitting warehouses with ‘product’ in transit to hitting production lines.

The threat level of the enemies increased as a result.

Most guards started using silver weapons and submachine guns modified to use higher calibers. When we knocked out the lights, they had night vision at the ready. Squads of regular people with those weapons supported mercenaries who knew what to expect and prepared accordingly.

Some tried to fight us on their own game using stealth and corrupted weapons to gain the advantage, while others did away with any caution and tried to use explosives or outright summoned malefic spirits to inhabit their body to give them immense power. Ogres became a common sight, and they worked alongside task groups of orcs armed with heavy shotguns and were covered in armor.

Why the sudden stiffening of resistance?

It was simple.

Taking out a couple of warehouses and saving a couple dozen people was negligible.

Taking out their breeding pits and modification centers?

That took out potential future profit while also making it impossible for them to meet demand. It allowed their enemies to eat up the market share, and it probably even had their clientele demanding refunds. Refunds during a time when they needed to replace production facilities and hire people to deal with the problem.

When we were hitting their warehouses, we were cutting into profit, but now we were presenting the possibility of their corporation falling into a death spiral. They were an illicit and underground organization. No one was going to bail them out. In fact, if they grew too weak, their fellow organizations might finish the job for us and take them out of the picture while securing their territory for themselves.

Therefore, they were throwing mercenaries and better-armed guards at us, because with Catherine’s help we were finding and destroying the cornerstone of their empire.

Naturally, that meant that things were about to get more hectic and chaotic, while the risk of my teammates finding themselves captured rose higher and higher.

The fact that Asakura’s childhood friend suddenly showed up again just made it clear that we were hitting the latter half of the eroge.

You know.

Where all the real fucked-up shit is after all the normies got weeded out.

Yeah, I’m going to start loading up a lot more explosives.

“How is this possible?” Asakura stared at the screens. Multiple angles and timestamps. We hit the facility hard and now had control over it. Once we took one, there usually wasn’t any effort to try and take it back as long as we made it clear their assets were destroyed.  I had to admit that fighting for the Hiyo clan was business, but setting fire to bio-tanks with walls of living flesh and hearing them scream gave me some satisfaction. “I burned his body to ash!”

“Judging from the knife ears and goat horns, I believe your little friend got plucked out of one of the hells. Probably to fuck you and the Hiyo Clan over.” Catherine almost always had a cigar at the end of every fight. Once the first paycheck came in, she moved to cigars quick. The tobacco she used was made on the other side and apparently gave both nicotine and replenished mana. “Fresh souls usually can’t be retrieved, so I think Mother Dearest is starting to get close.”

Asakura turned to Catherine. The dim light of the screens was the only source of light in the room, so turning away hid her face in shadow.

I could hear her gritting her teeth just fine, though.

“If they believe that I’ll hesitate after all that he’s done, then they’re wrong. More importantly, though, I need to contact Mother. Keita works with Leon and scours the footage for his first traces. Give me a moment.” I gave her a two-fingered salute and approached the security system. They made us practice and learn how to skim through security footage in school. Scrolling through multiple days of footage would take time, but I could eliminate chunks of it by looking for Asakura’s childhood friend turned devil. “Mother, I have news. Our low-end security measures are compromised. They revived Daichi as a devil.”

I tuned her out, focused on searching the first half of the data prior to Daichi’s first sighting.

He died when I first met Asakura, so I started searching from then. Then, I started looking for when we started hitting challenges just a couple of days ago... and there he is.

Walking through the main part of the facility, pointing out places where we could hide, while coordinating the new guards.

“Get everything, but make a separate copy from this point.” I told Leona, and the suit-clad cyborg nodded. From her wrist came a cable that disgorged multiple fine filaments that interfaced with the ports on the security terminal. She fished out slim SSD sticks from a pocket. Each one was encased in weatherproofing and she attached them to ports on her arm. Her eyes flashed, the screen flickered, and in moments she had the data stored and ready. Before she put them away, I held up two SSDs from my pack. “Spares, just in case.”

Vital intel on how places like this operated should be shared.

If the Hiyo Clan had multiple copies of the data, they’d be a lot less worried about duplicating it and sharing it.

I’ll also be telling them to make sure to do it on an air-gapped computer and to go over the data as well as they can so Leona can’t slip in any viruses.

“All done, here you go, Keita.” She gave me a smile, I gave her a nod, and I turned to Asakura just as she finished informing her mother. The raven-haired kunoichi seemed relieved.

“So, what’s next?”

“When was he last here, and do we know where he might be?”

I was ready to go back to the security terminal when Leona chimed in.

“He was last here five hours ago and left in an unmarked vehicle from the facility’s garage. However, this system also has tracking systems for all the facility’s vehicles.” Leona accessed another program, and various dots appeared across the screens on maps of the city. “From the timestamp, this vehicle here left at the same time and went here.”

She showed the vehicle leaving the garage beside a screen that watched it travel.

It moved from the facility to just one location in the heart of Neo Kyoto.

The downtown district where all the Zaibatsu had their palatial, corporate skyscrapers.

Thankfully, the vehicle didn’t enter one of those heavily defended buildings.

Not that any of the corporate overlords would put a devil anywhere near their legal assets.

Instead, the vehicle stopped at the outskirts and settled into another address, which Leona projected on the screens.

“It’s the red-light district of the city. No better place for a mother to fester up in.” Catherine chimed in. The red-light district was close to the downtown district as a place for those laden with money and influence to spend it. Whether it was flesh, food, or mercenaries for hire, they could spend their money there to achieve their desires. “A new devil will need a place to partake in some sinning to reinforce their existence. Where better than a place that most good people would avoid?”

“Dammit. That place is under the protection of rogue clans. All of them. Going in there will have us swarmed.” Asakura was more worried about the number of opponents rather than the quality. Given the concentrated power of a group, that was valid. Once we started getting tired, numbers could get us, especially since our arrival will herald a response from the people we’re hunting, and they were happy to throw semi-elites our way. “We’ll all be noticed if we go… but perhaps not with proper disguises.”

Ah, this was the infiltration section where we all get split up and face off against different endings.

Yeah, no.

“I have some contacts there from before I started working with you. Before we try infiltrating, let’s see if we can smoke him out instead.” Splitting up was basically just asking the perverts playing which gallery they wanted to see first. Loli-esque vampire, tomboy cyborg, classic female lead, and ‘hag.’ Seeing my current team, I had no doubt that most of our initial attacks were probably just introduction paragraphs to hype up the upcoming ‘fall.’ Bringing someone at their height into corruption and depravity was the perfect ‘spice’ to hedonism in this world. “And, if that doesn’t work out, I can cause enough chaos for the four of you to slip in and get things done without having to split up.”

Given my recent interaction with a certain ogre, I was inclined to fight like hell and not let myself get caught.

“You will be shouldering an immense amount of risk, but your proposal has merit.” Asakura hesitated and didn’t outright reject my statement. “Make your calls and tell me what you might need to cause this chaos. We should strike this evening when they expect us to retreat.”

I was ready to agree when Alecia suddenly spoke.

“You cannot be serious! This is an affront of a strategy. You’re putting the entire mission on one man’s soldiers!” Alecia rarely spoke, but when she did, her voice was almost gratingly high-pitched. The vampire princess was probably at the biggest risk for the most horrible ending given her high-speed regeneration and incredible toughness. The gothic Lolita style that she had, along with her powers, just screamed that she was going to star in the more brutal tags. I didn’t like her but didn’t want her to suffer that kind of ending. “We may as well simply mount a frontal assault and damn the consequences!”

Asakura was ready to talk her down, but I moved in.

“Do not underestimate me. I’ve killed more people than you ever have. I saved Asakura’s life by myself after she was captured. The Hiyo Clan recruited me after acknowledging my ability.” People who spoke like this in VNs usually got killed off-screen, but they usually got cocky or underestimated their opponents. It was a better fate than getting turned into a sex toy, so I didn’t mind if I died in such a way. At the very least, if that was my ending, I’d want to put up a decent fight. “Wreaking havoc and causing enough damage to let the four of you through undetected into the red-light district? It’s a challenge. Not an impossibility.”

I glared the vampire princess down, and she broke first with a scowl and with her fists bunching up the front of her skirt. Presumably to hold back from yelling at me in return.

Asakura took a steadying breath before speaking again.

“Go now, Keita. Be ready within three hours. We will prepare for our combined infiltration with your distraction in mind.” I gave a small bow in return and ignored the vampire princess looking at me with gritted teeth. You know that I’m trying to spare you from getting bad-ended, right? “Retreat once I send the signal that we are through. Do not take any unnecessary risks, and do not try to join us. Once you distract our enemies and lure them away, your task is done.”

“Got it, and here are some of the things that I’ll need.” I turned on my phone and sent a file her way before making a quick getaway. “Get as much of it as you can to me within the time limit.”

I managed to get out of the security room filled with screens before she screamed.

“YOU’RE NOT GETTING AN ASSAULT HELICOPTER FOR A DIVERSION, KEITA!”

Drat.

I really hoped she’d sign off on that.

The plan to distract with a helicopter was a no-go.

Let’s see how many trucks I can rent, fill up with explosives, and get parked all over the district.

Scanning for several home goods stores, I found several that sold propane. I plotted my route to the district, looked at my funds, and decided that a handful of U-Hauls driven by contractors on apps were available. I couldn’t use Hiyo-clan explosives for this, since they created balls of heat and created superheated plasma rather than exploding, but I had plenty of the old tags left in my safehouses.

I estimated the yield of six rented trucks in key locations, considered buying boxes of nails, and added some propane grill kits to the order. For all the contractors, I basically set the job up as setting up several grill stations in a couple restaurants and set the drop-off points properly. All I’d need to do was to get into each truck, layer the insides with explosives, empty the fuel tank, set up the emergency brakes, and open up one or two of the tanks.

That way the entire back of the vehicle was a fuel explosive, and if someone barged in after smelling the leak, they’d find that they’d need a tow truck to get the vehicle out of the way.

Hm?

That’s domestic terrorism?

I mean, yeah.

That’s the plan.

The people in the red-light district literally cater to elites by selling people for pleasure or act as centers for mercenaries for contract killing. Not to mention the fact that they’re fronts for shadier organizations that traffic people, get people hooked on all sorts of drugs to enslave them, and have politicians and the police in their pocket. Sure, there’ll be people in there who are ‘just doing their job,’ but if doing your job has you turning a blind eye to kidnapped, drugged elementary and high schoolers being used as toys by elites before being thrown to monsters for processing, personally, I consider you complicit for not at least leaving.

I worked there and got my jobs there as a mercenary right after leaving the clan and never did a day pass when I didn’t refine my plan to burn the place to the ground.

Anyway, I had a lot of calls to make and a plan to put into motion.

Even if this whole shtick gets me killed, burning and destroying a den of depravity like Neo Kyoto’s Red Light District would make that death worth it.