164: A Company of Fools: Sho’lajah's Justice I

"YOU DID WHAAAAAAAAT?!" Nate bellowed loud enough to make what glass remained in the shop start to shake. He groaned and started pacing in a circle in the center of the shop.

"Why are you yelling?" Iris groaned and covered her ears.

"He's prone to dramatics." Bo said with a chuckle, which earned a slap on the back of the head from his dad.

"You just told me you wiped out another gang! I think that deserves a little dramatics!" Nate snapped. Sin walked in front of me and leaned against a nearby wall.

"I'm surprised you're not harping on the fact that we took Bo with us?" Sin said. Nate sighed and crossed his arms.

"Honestly, at this point, I'd rather he was with someone when all this stuff goes down than off on his own again trying to 'fix it' himself." Nate said, making air quotes.

"Hey!" Bo grumbled. Jade nodded and patted her son on the head and then looked to Haws and Louie, who were standing by the front door looking confused.

"Nate's right, and honestly, I'm more interested in the two you all brought back with you." Jade said.

"Jade, Nate, this is Hawthorne Frederickson and Louie Gents. They used to work with my parents when I lived in America." I said, introducing the two of them. Jade smiled and walked over to Haws and Louie.

"I'm Jade Kestrel. That's my husband, Nathan Kestrel, but just call him Nate. We're Bo's parents and used to own this shop before Chase bought it." Jade said.

"Nice to meet you…" Haws said, then froze and looked at me sideways. "…wait did she say you bought the store?"

"Yeeeeeah…I kinda started a company and bought up this shop." I said.

"Since we last saw you?!" Louie exclaimed. "It's only been a few months!"

"A lot happened in those few months." I said sheepishly, rubbing the back of my head.

"That's putting it mildly." Iris muttered. I looked at her and frowned, but she just ignored the look.

"Either way, come and make yourself at home." Jade said, motioning to the rest of the shop. "Please ignore the mess. We're in the middle of a remodel."

As she spoke, Gargesh walked into the shop carrying more lumber and building materials. He walked past everyone and laid his load down in the corner with the rest of the materials he'd carried in and then headed back outside.

"Ummmm….what's Gargesh doing?" Bo asked.

"We managed to get a construction company to agree to come and help us with the remote of the shop, they'll be here to take a look at the building later today but…someone decided to buy materials before hand and have them delivered." Jade said, eyeing Nate. Nate smiled sheepishly and looked away. "So they don't get ruined or stolen we're storing them inside the shop."

"Make sense." I said.

"Not to be that employee Chase, but...where is Sin?" Nate asked.

"He's interrogating their old boss to figure out where she took Louie's son KC." I said.

"WHAT?!" Nate and Jade exclaimed.

"Yeah, so, Louie and Haws boss kidnapped Louie's son and was forcing him to come work for her on her new project." I explained. Jade nodded and then looked over at Louie, then back to me.

"So it's fair to assume that you are planning to help him get his son back?" Jade asked.

"Yep." I said.

"So we're probably going to get pulled into yet another conflict with a force that outnumbers us a hundred to one?" Nate asked.

"Oh, definitely." I replied. Nate sighed and shook his head.

"Okay, what do you need from us, Chase?" Nate asked. Both Haws and Louie looked confused by our little exchange and then worried.

"Wait on a second now. You seem like a good guy and all, but you don't have to help us. You have a family, I don't want anything to happen to them with you trying to help me." Louie said. Nate chuckled and shook his head.

"If it hadn't been for Chase, I wouldn't have my family. He's saved my life and my family's lives several times already, he's a good man and true to his word...It's why I agreed to work for him. I figured that also meant getting pulled into life or death situations a couple of times." Nate said.

"The least we can do to repay his kindness is help, and old friend of his get his son back." Jade said with a smile.

Louie looked at Nate and Jade, then down at the ground. I saw a faint smile tug at his lips before he looked up at me.

"Okay. So what do we do right now." Louie asked.

"Now…we wait. We can't save little KC if we don't know where he is." I said.

"True…" Haws grumbled, then frowned when he saw Gargesh walking back into the shop carrying even more lumber than last time. "…Jeez! How strong is that thing?"

"Gargesh super strong! Chief Bo made me powerful!" He exclaimed as he set down the lumber.

"ANOTHER EVO THAT CAN TALK?! Haws and Louie exclaimed.

"Yeah…I used to be shocked by that too, and then I met Chase and Bo. Almost all of Chase's evos talk now, and Bo is a ten year old prodigy." Iris groaned.

"How the hell did you get all those evos, Chase? And why can they talk?" Louie asked, rushing over to me and grabbing my shoulders. He looked at me with an all too familiar look of intrigue and desperate need to know. I'd seen that look too many times back at the Spirit factory.

"Okay…but that's a long story…" I said.

"We have time. Plus, I want to know how you've been doing here in Egypt." Haws said.

"Okay. Well, you see, this all started my first day here…."

***

Haws and Louie listened intently as I told them everything that had happened to me while I was staying at Andromeda. They got a little excited when they learned about grandma Lulu's original tribe and the fact that her sister was still alive and somehow they weren't too surprised to hear that we got into a skirmish with the local army. When I started explaining Magic and my grandmothers tribes affiliation with it. They didn't know magic existed, like any American, isolationist is as the country is.

A quick demonstration from Iris and me made them understand what exactly it was. It also cleared up a misconception that they had about splicing. One that was common in America, splicing was something that was done by special machines that only splicers can use because of their mana crystals.

Having grown up where nobody could use magic, magic was thought to have been a myth or something lost to time.

Once that was explained, I went into detail about what had happened after all that, including starting my company, defeating the red dragons, and the creation of my new shaping technique. Which of course Louie and Haws were interested in.

"….I got it….so shaping in basically just planning an evo out using techno-splicing techniques and then using splicer abilities in order to create their core. Thanks to this evos made by shaping can use mana." Louie summerized.

"Yeah. So far, the only evos I've made so far are the void drakes, like midnight you see outside and Jiggles."

"Was that the massive rhino looking evo with the tusks and horns?" Haws asked.

"Yeah, but it it's actually has rhino and elephant dna in it." I said. Haws nodded and crossed his arms.

"I see. All those evos look strong, and they can talk, which isn't something that you can see that often…or at all, among techno-splicing factories." Haws said.

"It's not something you see among splicers either!" Iris grumbled.

[Boss, your underling is back.] Bone-lasher informed me then shared his vision to show Sin flying on Twilight's back towards the shop.

"Looks like Sinner's back." I said, then turned and walked out of the shop. Everyone followed after me, and sure enough, Sin Twilight was circling to look for a splicer to land.

"How did he do that?" Louie asked.

"Bone-lasher…." Iris said, then sighed. "….Chase can share his thoughts, emotions, and senses with his evos and vice versa. This means he has the wide range of vision that his liger shark has."

"Explains why he was so useful at the Spirit factory in St. Louis." Louie said.

Twilight swooped down low and landed, skidding to a stop in front of the shop. Sin stood up off his back, looking worse for wear, then kicked Karen's tied up, gagged, and beat body off the evo.

"I know where your son is." Sin announced as he jumped off. His landing was a little unsteady, and he nearly fell over but quickly corrected himself. He walked over to Karen and undid the gag, then grabbed her by her hair and forced her to a seated position.

"Tell them what you told me!" He snapped viciously. She looked up with a pleading face and tried to pull away.

"Please don't let him kill me!" She screamed. Sin tolled his eyes and then yanked her hair harder.

"TELL THEM!" He roared then dragged her across the ground by her hair over to Louie and forced her to a standing position.

"OKAY! OKAY!" She screamed. "Your son is at the Justice Technologies facility here in Egypt!"

"Wait, we both live in the facility. I have access to almost every floor! There is no way that KC could be that close, and I didn't know about it!" Louie exclaimed and pointed to Haws.

"He's in a section of the lab that only a select few people have access to. It's not even on the facility's directory. It doesn't exist." Karen said.

"Tell him everything." Sin said sternly.

"But…" Karen started only to be interrupted by Sin casting an axiom spell sigil and used hos blood axe spell. He pressed the blade of the axe against her neck, which silenced her.

"Tell him….everything….or I will slit your throat."

"We were using him to help create the thrads! Splicer DNA helped stabilize them long enough to sell them to a buyer!" Karen cried out.

"YOU USED MY SON AS A GUINEA PIG!" Louie roared and grabbed Karen by the throat. He lifted her off the ground and dangled her on the air with one hand. He reared back to punch her with his free hand but grabbed it and stopped him.

"We need her, Louie. If we want KC back, we need her alive." I said calmly and in a low tone. Louie glared at me, gritting his teeth so tightly I could hear them creaking.

"Thrast grite, you need meeef!" Karen gurgled, barely able to speak because of Louie hold. The smug look on her face when I said that sickened me to the core, so I let go of Louie's wrist. The second I did her punched three times in rapid succession, each blow echoing with a blunted thud.

"I said we need you alive bitch, not whole. You kidnapped a toddler and then used him in a twisted little experiment. If it wasn't for the fact that we need you to get him back I would let Louie break every bone in your body, skin you alive personally and turn your wrinkled skin into a coat!" I growled.

"Skinning would take too long and she'd pass out from the pain and die before you were finished." Iris piped up. She walked over to Karen and pointed at her chest right over her heart. "Hivdrix's can create a special toxin that paralyzes most muscles and also slows blood flow. Use that toxin along with another toxin that slowly causes necrosis in the body. The decreased heart relate will make the toxins effect take longer."

"Monsters!" Karen yelled.

"You separated a child from his parents and used him in a experiment while blackmailing his father into doing what you want! You are the last person who can call someone a monster!" Jade snapped bitterly.

I was slightly surprise by Jade's sudden cold and bitter tone but at the same time it seemed appropriate. After all she was a mother and I know she would do anything to protect Bo, she probably emphasized with Louie a lot.

"Louie let her go. I have a plan to get KC back now." I said. Louie looked reluctant to let the woman go but did it anyway. As she dropped to the ground she coughed and tried to catch her breath.

"You better pray to whatever dark God you worship that my son is okay or what they want to do to you will seem like a vacation to what I will." Louie warned coldly. Karen pales even further and curled into a small ball. Louie looked to me with determined eyes. "What's the plan Chase?"