Chapter Eighty – Punched in the Dick!

Chapter Eighty – Punched in the Dick!

“Join NICE today and get the following benefits on day one:
– 500,000Cr sign-on bonus
– 600,000Cr Student loan repayment
– Heavily discounted privacy and identity protection Augs and cyberware

Become part of the force bringing peace and security to your neighborhoods!”

-NICE recruitment post, 2037

***

I stared blankly at the third first to start. It wasn’t even eleven yet. The people here were the early ones. And yet, despite that, this was the third group to start shit.

“Oh my god, they’re all morons,” I muttered.

I’d been kind of hoping that Kevin and Kneeboy in the basement were the most egregious case of stupid I’d have to deal with today, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that I was very wrong.

As it turned out, people in gangs, even when in limited numbers, tended to be the kind of people that came with grudges and fewer fucks to give than the average civilian.

What was the term for it again… right, civic sense. This specific brand of stupid had a higher likelihood of lacking in civic sense. I saw a few spitting on the carpet, and some of the gangs already in line looked like they stank.

It wasn’t all of them. Maybe one crew in five looked a bit iffy, and one in ten looked like I wouldn’t want to have them in the same district as me, but the other eight-tenths were… maybe not fine, but at least passable.

Guys and gals in leather and with cool neon tags, or matching cyberware, or even matching tats was fine. A few of the gangs here had a more corpo look. Suits and ties and loafers or whatever, and some looked like they had proper blue collar day jobs and that was their uniform.

I supposed that since unions counted as gangs for all intents and purposes, at least in New Montreal, that a few of them would be represented here.

I shook my head and pushed through the line, just in time to arrive as one woman swung her fist around and bashed a man in the crotch.

He went down with a choked-off squeal and his buddies squared up for a fight.

“Alright,” I said, hand straying onto the grip of my Trenchmaker. “First one of you who moves now is leaving this place in a bodybag.”

I didn’t even have to shout. The punch-happy lady looked at me, eyed me up and down like I was a piece of meat on a hangar, then seemed to decide that this wasn’t a fight she’d win.

“He started it,” she said.

“And then you punched him in the balls?” I asked. “Look, I don’t care. You’re not here to argue, or to see who can smack who around. I’m the final arbiter of smack-arounds here, and I’m telling you to calm your tits.”

She crossed her arms. “The Nut Punchers don’t take kindly to insults.”

I stared at her, something tickling the back of my head. “Wait… the Nut Punchers?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Heard of us?”

“No, but maybe,” I replied. “Come on, follow me.”

“What about our place in line?”

“You lost it when you punched that guy in the dick,” I said.

My new buddy and her friends didn’t seem happy about that, but what were they gonna do? Punch me in my non-existent nuts? I pulled them to the side, then gestured for them to stand in one place so that I could look them over.

There were five of them. Three men, two women, all of varying heights, all looking like New Montreal natives, more or less. “Okay. So, first of all, who are you lot?” I asked.

“I’m Zoe,” the woman I pegged as the leader of this bunch said. She crossed her arms and looked down her nose at me. “This is Pete, Brian, Rachel and Joshua. We’re the Nut Punchers.” A few of them waved. They were all in similar-ish getups. Layered clothes, sleeveless vests and undershirts with long trench-coats atop it. A few were wearing shades even though we were indoors.

“And you punch nuts,” I continued.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

“That feels like it’s not quite enough to build a gang off of,” I said. “But hey, you do you?”

“We do more than just that,” Zoe said. “Sometimes we do cosplay.”

“I… huh? No, actually, don’t explain,” I said, raising a hand to forestall any explanation. “Do you happen to know a pair of morons called Kevin and Kneebreaker?”

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It was just a hunch, or a vaguely recalled memory, but hadn’t Myalis mentioned something to do with Nut Punchers in relation to those two?

Zoe frowned, then turned to one of the others behind her for a quick conference. She came back with a nod. “Yeah, we know them. They were part of the Ball Busters.”

“Of course they were,” I said. “And the Ball Busters weren’t a friendly gang, I take it?”

“We offered them to join up, but we had fundamental differences that couldn’t be reconciled.”