Wish upon the Stars chapter 885

After my shower, I was about to try to take a nap, but I was cut off by a call from Belsara. I answered with an annoyed grunt. “What?” I asked with exasperation. “I thought we were meeting in a few hours for dinner?”

She grinned sheepishly. “We were,” she admitted. “But I got a call from one of my local contacts. A friend of a friend heard that I knew you, and decided to use me to send an invitation from a local bigshot. Turns out one of the big bosses for this region lives in town, and he was so impressed by word of your entrance that he wanted to speak in person. He’s not exactly easy to get in touch with, though, and he insists that the meeting has to happen immediately if you want it to happen at all.”

I groaned as I rolled out of bed. Callie, who had already collapsed in a nightgown to sleep, whined as I moved the blanket aside, letting in cold air and light. “Wuzzat?” She mumbled groggily.

“Going to take over the world,” I told her with a chuckle. “Go back to sleep.”

She cocked her head, eyes never opening, then let it drop back onto the pillow. “S’good,” she slurred. “Bring me a p’tato.”

“Yes dear,” I laughed. I stepped outside, spinning up my ring to make a pair of calls. Within moments, Bethy and Abel arrived outside my door, taking the stairs up to meet me as I’d asked. When they arrived, I filled them in on what was happening. “So I need you to go with me to meet this local crime boss or whatever.”

“Isn’t this a prison planet?” Bethy asked skeptically. “Wouldn’t all the bosses be crime bosses?”

I shrugged. “Or maybe none of them are, who knows. You guys coming or not? Because I’ll send a clone to meet him if I need to.”

“Please,” Abel snorted. “There’s no way I’m missing this. I’m definitely-”

“Going to WHAT?” Said an annoyed voice. We all turned to find Mel standing in the hall, an irritated tilt to her head and her arms crossed. “Run off without me on a hostile prison planet. Again. We did have the talk about you TELLING me before running off to get yourself stabbed or shot or whatever fresh torment you’re inflicting on your body today, right?”

To my utter astonishment, Abel actually paled. “I…that is, well, that’s to say…hi honey?”

She didn’t look amused, even with the mask on. “I don’t care if you want to go help, Abel, I’m just getting sick of being left behind. You said you’d let me know next time.”

“It’s his fault,” he said, mercilessly throwing me under the bus as he literally pointed to me like a small child. “I didn’t even know what this was until just now. I was totally going to go tell you before we left. Be mad at Shane not me.”

“What, no?” I sputtered. “Nobody told me about a check in. If I’d known I’d have just called Mel too. I think its clear that your conversation was so unimportant that he didn’t feel the need to keep his employer informed.”

He glared at me. “Oh you rat bastard,” he hissed in disbelief. 

“Enough,” Mel said with an eye roll. “Callie is right, you ARE annoying when you think you’re being funny. I’m coming along, get over it and move on.”

Shrugging, I gestured for her to fall in. We headed down to the lobby, meeting up with Belsara, and were picked up by a shuttle heading away from the hotel. “Alright, so tell me about this crime lord. Who is he? Where are we meeting him? What should I expect.”

“They call him the Animal,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t know a ton about him. I know he remains locked up almost all the time, and has to be restrained when he has visitors. He still runs things though, somehow. They come to consult him on all decisions, despite his confinement.”

I raised an eyebrow. “They keep their boss in prison?” I asked. “Because that seems…weird.”

She shrugged again. “No idea. That’s all I was told. My general takeaway is that he CAN leave whenever he wants, he just chooses not to. Why that is, I couldn’t say.” We drove for about twenty minutes before pulling up outside of an old building. It was made of bricks and cement and had heavy metal doors. Outside of the front was a sign that said “detention”.

We climbed out, and were met at the entrance by a cadre of armed men, some with swords, some with knives, some with guns. The one at the front of the group was a small man with dark skin and short cropped hair. He had a long hooked knife on his belt. “Mr. Wyndham?” He asked me in a flat voice.

I nodded, and he gestured me inside. “The boss will see you. But just you. Your friends need to wait outside.”

That brought me up short, but rather than being a dealbreaker, it almost made me trust them more. This was far too overt to be any decent kind of trap. Bethy, Abel, and Mel could arrive to back me up in moments, so I wasn’t too worried about being alone with their boss. Of course, that didn't mean I cared much about their rules. I made a quick gesture to Bethy, and as soon as we were out of sight, she pulled the others into her Domain and vanished into stealth.

After preparing a scroll from Nat just in case, I followed them inside, descending a large staircase to the basement level where a man was waiting to speak to me. Once I reached the bottom of the steps, the rest of them retreated, leaving me alone with just one other person.

He looked…fragile. Thin and emaciated and trapped inside a glass box. His arms and legs had large metal rings filled with padding clamped around them, and as we descended, the knife guy called out our approach. We stopped at the bottom of the steps as “the Animal” was shepherded to the back of his cell, where he placed the metal bands against two hanging metal plates descending from the ceiling. There was a clank as the plates magnetized, snapping them directly to the metal and holding him there. Bethy and the others appeared beside me, but he didn't seem to care very much, his calm eyes focused on me.

The glass box was mostly empty aside from the two hanging plates and a small cot, but surprisingly luxurious apart from that. The cot was plush and covered with soft looking sheets, and there were boxes of books pushed under it. The Animal, meanwhile, was unusually well groomed for someone who lived in a box, his hair long but well cared for and his face shaved to a fine stubble.

He smiled as we approached. “Friends,” he said gregariously. “Welcome. I apologize for the poor reception, my room is a mess. I’m something of a pack rat.” He shot a winning smile at us, eyes flicking across the room to highlight the very few personal belongings.

“Um, thanks,” I said. “And no problem. Are you really in charge here? Because no offense, but you sleep in a box.”

He barked out a laugh. “That I do. It’s a complex situation. My confinement is one of the conditions of my leadership. I’m considered too dangerous to allow free, so they submit to my rule in exchange for my willing imprisonment. They’re incapable of holding me against my will, so my authority is treated as an inducement towards my incarceration.”

“They’re so scared of you escaping they made you their KING?” I asked in disbelief. “Because no offense, but why not just kill you?”

His grin became wolfish. “It’s been tried. Poison, fire, electrocution, my abilities make me something of a conundrum for potential assassins. Of course, overwhelming force could most likely do the deed, but any attempt at that kind of direct conflict would breach our deal, and I would no longer be obliged to play nice.”

Bethy gave him a strange look, then sniffed. “You smell like a bear. Also a dog. And sometimes a fox. It’s pretty weird.”

The hanging prisoner beamed at her. “Excellent Perception, as expected, Miss. Lark. My ability allows me to internalize physical characteristics from the consumption of flesh. They call me the Animal, because I am not simply AN animal, but all animals, or at least as many as I wish to be. Of course, this is my unaltered state. I choose to remain in this form so as to appease my friends behind the glass. I appear less threatening like this.”

“That’s dumb,” Bethy said bluntly. “You’re way too dangerous to be locked up in that box. I can feel a threat from you right now. It wouldn’t even take you a second to bust out and attack us.”

“A fact they are well aware of,” he admitted. “Intellectually. Emotionally, it is a bit more difficult for them to accept. I allow them their little flights of fancy, because it smoothes our working relationship.”

I stared at him hard. “So my question becomes, why are you still here at all? Why not move to the next zone? You shouldn’t be too far away from C-rank.”

“I am not,” he acknowledged. “But therein lies the issue. I’m too strong. None of the C-rank forces want to see me rank up. I’ve been suppressed here for quite some time, and it has been made clear to me that should I Ascend, I will face fatal opposition. Hence my desire to approach you.”

I saw his end game. “You want us to bring you along,” I said with a sigh. “You’d be able to rank up safely, reach the next zone, and establish yourself based on the protection of my forces. Even if we fail out early, you’d be in a better position and one step closer to the top of the heap. Plenty of time to grow into your new C-rank power relying on whatever inroads you can make with the local forces under my banner.”

“I do so love talking to people with a brain,” he chuckled. “My position is unique within the D-rank zone. I am a terrifying threat, and one none of the local powers want to see rise, but that’s only in normal circumstances. Working WITH me…well quite a few D-rank forces would be swayed by such a possibility. Forces with branches in the higher zones, ones that could be quite useful to you in the later stages of the succession war.”

That made sense. “If you weren’t strong enough to hold your own among the D-rankers you’d be dead rather than imprisoned. And we definitely need peak D-rank combatants. We have maybe five or six, but you can’t have too many.”

Until we reached the C-rank territory, we were going to be relying entirely on me, Bethy, Callie, and Abel. Gabe and the angels were strong, as was my sister, but they weren’t universe level combatants. We were up against people from the peak of the five factions. Honestly the C-rankers were going to be a big problem when we got there, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I reached into my ring, withdrawing a contract, and started writing. I wasn’t willing to TRUST this guy, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be useful. I just had to make sure my contract with him was airtight to prevent any betrayal. The ability to smell lies and semi predict the future should help me keep him from turning on us, and I wasn’t worried even if he did, because while he might be tough even for the heirworld, he wasn’t BETHY tough, because literally no one was as far as I could tell.

Still, I went out of my way to make the contract as accurate as possible, then I drew out a scroll, and tossed the two of them into the glass box with a relatively clever use of Double Trouble. I left them on the box, then smiled up at the Animal. “Alright. Here’s the deal. That contract is your payment for your wish. What you might wish for I can’t say, but somehow I have a feeling you’ll think of something. We’re going to go wait outside for you to make your wish and somehow escape, and you can meet us out there.”

 Since I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to access the scroll until we were gone and he was released, that felt like the safest path. So we left, heading out to wait for our new teammate. Sure enough, minutes later, I felt a wish complete, and the contract slotted into place. Shortly after, the Animal arrived next to us. With a brand new guide in tow, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with everyone else. Maybe we could do dinner early. I was starving.