Waste the Wife!

The next morning I got a phone call from the Mystery Voice, telling me to get to a phone across town. These are the guys who had Leo Teal hit us, and I want to find out who they are. It’s a more direct route than waiting on Cortez, I figure.


Well, one tries. He tells me the job details are taped under the phone.


A woman? The hell does she have to do with drug dealing? I find her a nearby jewelry store. She’s got a sweet-looking sportscar, so she’s loaded. If she’s rich in Vice, she’s associated with drugs in some way, I know.  Everyone with money uses. That’s why taking this town is going to be so easy.

The details want me to total Dawson’s car using another car, and I know the perfect way. Vice City cops like to ram people they’re chasing, and they don’t care who they hurt in the process. Sounds ideal.


Just call me Officer Not-So-Friendly.


I follow her a spell, then floor the gas and aim for maximum damage.


She tries getting way, but runs into more police cars: this is working better than I could’ve hoped!

My squad car rolls, and I have to steal a Glendale, quick. Only, Glendales ain’t so quick. They’re slow-ass cars, really, and trying to chase her is pointless.


All right, almost pointless.  I finally cripple the car near Leaf Links apartments and ditch the battered Glendale. I don’t get what she has to do with the big picture, but if I keep doing little jobs for Mystery Voice, maybe I’ll find a way in.

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In the meantime, I need to see what the Wig has for me to do. He was my first friendly contact here, and I’ve no interest in losing whatever opportunities he may offer.

Mall Shootout

After that bit of work for Cortez, I become one of his regular dinner guests.  Sometimes he inquired into my past, but usually we talked shop.  He’s running all manner of schemes hiding behind his diplomatic immunity, and seems most interested in guns.

He tells me that his people are doing their utmost to figure out who hit our deal, though I don’t think his ‘utmost’ is much at all. In the meantime I’ve been keeping my head above the water making money however I can, usually driving a stolen taxi I liberated from a cabbie who wasn’t paying attention. It’s not bad money, considering that I don’t pay for a license, I don’t pay a firm, and I don’t pay for gas or insurance or any of the other crap. If my cab breaks down, no biggie. I “acquire” another.

A few weeks into my life in Vice, we had some excitement. A few tropical storms systems in the Atlantic appeared to be moving toward the Gulf and East Coast, and one in particular looked like it was going to hit Vice head on. Cortez called me to his yacht. 

With the storm coming, people were deserting Vice in droves; our side of town was damn near abandoned, and the Colonel said that made tonight an ideal time to take care of some business.  I get edgy whenever he asks me for a favor, given how little he’s given me in regards to the money.

Yeah, ass-slow.

But still, he’ll pay me for the job and put him more in my debt - so I take it. Money’s money. 

The hurricane sent rain hundreds of miles ahead of it, and we were getting the first of the storm when I drove to the mall. 

I arrive at the mall and approach the contact -- who stands out like a sore thumb, let me tell you -- with caution. Cortez warned me that he might try to run off without handing over the merchandise if I seemed an easy mark. 

…yeah, it’s a hurricane, pal. 

I didn’t know what Cortez meant by ‘guidance chips’, but he seemed to think they were important. 

What the f- 

The contact takes off, and these SWAT-type start fucking shooting at us. I jump from the upper deck to the floor of the promenade, chasing the rat outside.

He tries to escape, but I  got his tires. He took off anyway, and I grabbed my bike to follow.

Flat tires meant he couldn’t much go anywhere, and I took the bastard out. Cortez just got his chips without having to make a payment. He’d better come through with info.

Treacherous Swine

Vicelord: Index


After getting Avery’s rival all fired up about his new proposal, I decided to accept Colonel Cortez’s dinner invitation.


 As we eat -- some weird damn thing from down south -- he tells me about his efforts to find who hit our deal. He’s not making a lot of progress, but he does know that a guy inside his organization, Gonzales, is the one who talked. He’d like me to pay the schmuck a visit.


I told him I was more interested in finding the money than tidying his own loose ends, but he insisted. “Use this,” he says, motioning for one of his men to place something down on the table.


…..this guy’s a fucking psycho. Jesus Christ, remind me not to fuck with him.


 I drive over to the apartment building where Gonzales lives.  I stroll oh-so casually inside carrying my shotgun, then convince an elevator man to take me to the Penthouse floor. Turns out Gonzales is on the roof.


He tries to run for it. I stop him with shot, then hit him a few more times to make sure. After spotting a Tiki statue mounted in the corner, I head back downstairs. The police were called.


I lost my fear of the VCPD pretty damn quick in my first coupla weeks in Vice. They’re not corrupt as all hell like in Liberty City, but they’re underpaid and go out of their way to avoid trouble. I’ve jacked eleven cars in my few weeks here,  with no consequences whatsoever. So I ain’t too scared when a cop car pulls up to the hotel, nor need I be.  I take off in the direction of the mall, and they lose interest.


This place is a hoodlum’s paradise.

Four Iron

• In the Beginning
• In the Beginning II
• The Party
• Back Alley Brawl
• Jury Fury
• Road Kill
• Riot

Avery requests to meet me at a construction site. While the men work, I’m directed to his limousine. 

“Now, my daddy always told me never to look a gift horse in the mouth, and by golly he never did,” says Avery by way of introduction. He’s a strange one. “The real estate property ain’t just high-falutin’ paper-pushin. It’s about DIRT, and the ability to clean that dirt. Now, I’ve got a tenacious bastard who’s clingin’ on to some dirt like a good ol’ prairie rat. I reckon you’re the type of guy to persuade him!”

“’Persuasion’s what I do best,” I say.  He likes that. The mark is on a golf course, inaccessible except through a main gate that has metal detectors. That’s supposed to make my job easier, since his goons won’t have guns.  Means I don’t have guns, either.  But, I’m good at spotting opportunities.

There we are. Now I’ve got access, and my guns. I know I don’t have a lot of time on the course, since no one plays golf alone,  so I hurry things up. He’s at the driving range, so I drive over there in a dinky cart until I see him. 

I’m still not sure what I’m going to do at this point.  I’ve got my handgun, but his goons seem to have every direction covered.  There were some driving clubs inside the cart, so I pretend to practice while I mull things over.  Maybe once he comes down to leave, he’ll present himself as a  better target.

After I start fooling around with the driving -- I ain’t no golfer -- he gets pissy. Seems like he wanted the range all to himself. “Who IS this guy? Boys, deal with them!” Some of the goons started walking for me, so I pulled the pistol out from under my vest and fired through the wooden platform, directly at the rich boy’s feet. He started running for it. 

I fired at the guards and started running after the mark, but he was in one of the carts and toodling away. I used a club to get some of the goons off of me, then took off after him. “A car chase on a golf course,” I said,  making the box go as fast as it could, “Un-fucking-believable.” 

I caught up to him and started firing when I got a shot, while at the same time trying to ram him. These things couldn’t take too much abuse. 

I was set to push his cart - and him with it -- into the water, but his goons caught up us and hauled me out of the car. I still had my pistol, though, so in short time they were running for their lives and I was in the cart. 

I caught up with him again near the entrance, and was able to fire directly at the driver’s seat. I took care of the evidence, made sure he was dead, then got the hell out of there. 

Riot

Vicelord:

• In the Beginning
• In the Beginning II
• The Party
• Back Alley Brawl
• Jury Fury
• Road Kill

I’m not too much interested in drug wars, but I am interested in having a good time.  While I wait for the dealer’s brother to contact me, and for Ken to come up with something, I’ve been taking things easy again. There’s a contest called the “PCJ Playground”, where contestants try to complete a stunting course under a minute in a half, and it stretches for a few miles. It’s a promotional thing meant to advertise the abilities of the PCJ 600, and whoever finally does it gets a free PCJ 600. 

I prefer chopper-style bikes, but the contest sounds like fun, so I’ve been trying my hand at it. So far, all of my attempts have been failures, but that doesn’t mean much. I’ll get better, and keep trying.  A similar promotional thing is being held by some new Tiki bar: they’ve  put one hundred tiki statues all over the city in obscure locations, and whoever is able to map out all one hundred locations gets a ton of money. In the meantime, people are hearing about the tiki bar all the time and are going there to spend their money. Nice idea.  I’ve been working on this one, too: so far I’ve found thirty of them in strange locations -- parking deck corners, under bridges, in back alleys, that kind of thing. I’ve heard rumors that some of them are on top of roofs, so I need to establish a way of getting access to that.

I can’t fool around too much, though. There are angry Italians who want me to find their money. So, I go to Rosenberg, who is…calming down, a little bit. He’s actually going home now. He leaves the office.  It’s impressive, for a man who now thinks there are Sicilian hitmen lurking around every corner.

It’s been nearly three weeks since the ambush, and when I go inside today I see a stranger -- a guy wearing a wig. 

“Not in person, no,” I say. I saw him. Didn’t pay attention to his name, though. It seems Rosenberg is trying to get a handle on things, generating business for us:  he’s recommend my services as a professional goon to this amateur goon. Lovely.  I’m a hood for hire now.  The Wig wants me to go “stir up a hornet’s nest” at a local business to convince them to abandon some land he wants, or something like that.  Boils down to him giving me money for causing trouble. That, I can handle.  

I pay a visit to the place the next morning and learn there are some serious labor/management issues. The workers can’t unionize -- this is the South -- but they’re pissed about wages, so they’re striking anyway. I decide to mingle. 

“I hear they’re about to hire forty new workers,” I say. “Going to throw us all out on the streets.” Rabble-rouser, that’s me. I start whispering sweet nothings into workers’ ears, spreading rumors about how they’re going to blackball us from work in Vice City.  I start yelling at management’s offices, saying we should burn the place down. The workers start yelling -- some at me, some at the offices. When I fire my trusty shotgun at the building…jesus!  The cops-for-hire go beserk, and the workers charge the fucking gate. A brawl breaks out, and I sneak off to the side until the coast is clear, then bolt inside the truck yard.

Avery wants me to destroy their trucks, parked near a big gallon of gasoline. That simplifies things nicely. The fire that starts scatters the employees, and I walk out, too -- after spotting a tiki statue behind the building and writing the location down. My phone rings. It’s Cortez.

No shit.  He tells me he’s investigating the manner, and would like to meet with me at his boat.  Hot damn -- there’s my door in to Cortez. Maybe when I see the helicopter guy next time around, I’ll have something to tell him. In the meantime, the Wig has other goon work for me. 

Road Kill

Vicelord:

• In the Beginning
• In the Beginning II
• The Party
• Back Alley Brawl
• Jury Fury

Forelli’s phone call has given me pause to think about what happened fifteen years ago, and more importantly what happened just over a week ago. Before the ambush, my plans were set: I’d run a distribution network, rough guys up from time to time, but sit back and enjoy the money for the most part. I had a private pool, fast cars, and the beach in mind: the good life. Crime would pay.



But now? Now I’ve got no money, and I’ve gotta hunt down whoever screwed me over. And I am. Not for Forelli, no, but for me. Because whoever that guy is, he’s making life more difficult than it has to be. He took away my pool and my fast car.  Now I’m back to having to work over sleaze balls and pack a pistol on me all the time. It’s like I’m a punk kid again, doing Pops’ Forelli’s bidding. Hey, kid, go pick my my car. Hey, kid, go rough that guy over.



I’m not that kid anymore. I’m tired of doing errands. I want money, I want a big fucking house, I want a car. I want to live.  I don’t think I can do that under Forelli’s thumb. He’s not going to let me live the easy life down here. Besides, even if I find the money, there’s still Diaz to deal with.  I’ve got a feeling that he doesn’t take kindly to competition in this town.  Dealers who operate outside the big player get taken down. I found that out this afternoon.

Teal’s phone rang, and I answered it. I heard a voice I didn’t recognize, congratulating me -- by which they meant Teal -- for a job well done. What’s interesting is that they were thanking him for taking care of those “outsiders” -- Harry and the dealer? -- and had more work for him.  They wanted me answer a pay phone at the Washington Mall that night. So I do.



I figure -- find out who this guy is, I find out who ambushed the deal, and I find out who took the money. Then I kill him and…then what? That I don’t know.  War against Diaz, I guess. Not the kind of thing that interests me.

The voice on the other end wants me to hit Carl Pearson, a pizza delivery man. I know Pearson, from when I worked at the restaurant doing deliveries. They don’t just deliver pizzas:  sometimes the warming bags I was given were cold, and the pizza boxes didn’t exactly have pizza in them. Instead of people ordering pizzas and a Coke, they ordered…coke.  That’s Pearson’s idea.  I guess someone objects to his enterprise.



So, the next day, I figure out his route and then lie in wait. A couple of redlights later, one coke distributor bites the asphalt. I used a gun I’d picked up in a little Cuban neighborhood after the Haitans hit it: dead men don’t really have a use for guns.

Maybe the mysterious voice works for Diaz, maybe the mysterious voice owns Diaz. I don’t know. What I do know is, the drug dealers in this town like the scheme of things, and if I try to establish a network down here I’m going to have to slug it out all the way.

And like I said, that’s not something I’m interested in.

FireRed Omega: Soul Badge

Here we are in Fuschia City, home of the Safari Park. I'm challenging Koga so I can use surf and get the hell out of this town. Training seemed more monotonous than usual, and since I accidentally challenged gyms out of order, Koga should be no match for me.


The team, as you can see, remains mostly unchanged from the battle with Sabrina. Ordinarily I would've leveled them up to at least sixty, but the low-level mons made it too much a chore. Eager to get to Cinnabar Island -- with its mansion ideal for level-grinding --- I decide to take on Koga without lot of training.


He's taken aback that someone as inexperienced as I am would dare tackle him.


Eris starts us off, thunderbolting this Koffing to death.


The name made it sound like a ferret, so I figured Eris could just zap her away. I winced when I saw it; looks like a Rock-type, at least. It doesn't take to electricity well, though.


Oh, f-


Stupid...rock-thing.


Toxic, then sleep powd - heey, Koga's withdrawing him?


...ookay, use a water-type against a grass-type. What do you call a trainer who does that? NOT A VERY GOOD TRAINER.


Only...Razor Leaf doesn't do much. It makes a little dent, but damn: it should've KO'd Gaia's rival.


What in the...


TAKE THAT! God, I love this bird. He's my revenge weapon.


And now the Electrode comes back.... :-(


Nobody faints Matthias and lives!


...why didn't I change pokemon? "Oh, it's just a bug," I said. Bugs aren't impressed by his fighting techniques.


VENGEANCE BIRD STRIKES AGAIN!


Maybe I should just let Drei handle the rest of Koga's team...and maybe I should start THINKING in this match instead of fighting by the seat of my pants.


The Bat from Hell survived, and used a Confuse Ray on Dre. The silly bird pecked himself stupid.


As did Hornblower. o_O

Well, that's my entire team...I lost. :-/

Or...DID I?


This is what I was doing while Blastoise punched himself to death.


...no, I haven't. That was an abysmal performance on my part, although a streak of bad luck didn't help: Blastoise and Dreikopf injured themselves every turn they were confused.


...go team.

Oh, well. We're off to Cinnabar Island for some real training.