The aftermath

Well, it all went well. Actually, it was a bit more complicated than getting a SIN. Others got their SINs. They told me, that even though they considered me a sentient being with my own will, the government didn't. So to get a legal SIN I would have to get an owner. It was unbelievable. I asked if dragons had owners, because they weren't people. Apparently they weren't citizens either. They were so powerful they told everyone else to adapt. And because most of the world wasn't suicidal, they adapted. I wished I was that powerful. Just think about it. A dragon with my attitude...

I asked a lot of questions about my situation, and what would it mean to have an owner. They told me, that I wouldn't be responsible of my actions, the owner would be. But the government could take me away from my owner and put me in a lab, or kill me. It seemed the government thought I was a thing that could be owned. My blood was boiling, but I decided to let that slide, because these Draco foundation guys were helping, and there weren't any government officials around that I could kill.

They gave me lots of court cases. There weren't any situations similar to mine, but they were close enough. I read them, but I understood just some of it. I have realized that most people consider me a thing, but as I read the law-text, it considered people things as well. Weird...

I thought long and hard about who I should pick as my owner. Nerdy was out of the question. He would be too nervous to do anything. I didn't trust Jinx enough, and Bobby is a troll. So only possibilities were Shrew and Morgan. I don't know if I can trust them either, but they are good candidates, they have their own strengths. Morgan has connections and she's smart, and she has good ideas. And I already live with Shrew, and I know how she works. The only problem was, that the owner would legally own all my money as well.

I decided to ask Juggler before I even asked Morgan and Shrew what they thought. I asked to see Juggler face to face, and have a safe location to talk. When I told him where I was he told me to order a taxi. I did what he asked, and soon enough we were standing on a roof together, the flying taxi waiting for us to finish business.

I asked Juggler if he knew Morgan. He didn't. I asked him if he knew Shrew. He didn't. Then I told him what they were like, and what he would think, which should I pick for my owner. He asked why I needed an owner now. I told him it was legal issues. He pointed out that I wouldn't think about law before. I told him I was getting a legal SIN, and a lot of money. And to get a legal SIN I would need an owner. He told me we could just pick a random person and put my ownership there. Or forge a SIN that owns me. The SIN-thing sounded good enough, so I told him my price-range, and he got me a SIN. And it passed Draco foundations scan. Oh, and my owner needed legal permits to have a paranormal critter as a pet, or whatever. That cost money, but it was worth it.

I understood that Morgan went on a spending spree. I'm guessing she is in need of money soon... Bobby started buying big guns. Nerdy complained about his mother (she is apparently missing, and he has brought her flowers quite often, before she went missing), and that he still doesn't have enough money. How much money does he need?? I don't know what Jinx did with his money, and Shrew got some doctor-contract through Morgan.

One day Morgan told me (and others as well) something about two-by-fours and eating them. And she told me I had told Renraku about our whereabouts. Well, I only sent a message to Tracy that Bobby needed help. Apparently the message went right to Renraku's mailbox, and they had read it.

We visited the Otaku. They told us that Deus wasn't trapped. Apparently it had escaped during the trapping-situation, and jumped into people's heads. So everyone was a possible Deus-carrier. Even us. Well, not me, I wasn't able to enter the Cyberspace because the robot never got any further that cutting my head open. The Otaku wanted to scan our heads for signs of Deus. They had found that one of them had shown signs of Deus in the scanner, and they had put her in a coma. I suggested we should shoot her. No one listened.

There was a lot of talking about Deus. Its plan was apparently to divide itself to all the people it could, and the download itself to the cyberspace through the people. It sounded scary. And apparently that was the reason the army was keeping the people trapped in the Arcology when we were there. And maybe that's the reason Nerdy's mommy is missing. Maybe she's got some Deus in her. Me and Shrew talked about finding Nerdys mommy and getting to know her. It would definitely be interesting. Maybe we'll do it later.

Only Shrew showed signs of Deus in her head. The Otaku said the signs were similar with the person in coma. Well, Shrew hasn't acted differently than normal. But actually, she still had her amnesia and didn't know what she was able to do when we went to the Arcology the first time. So maybe her skills are from Deus... And she has been known to be almost suicidal sometimes. And she shot us with her fireball. Hmm, maybe we should shoot her. I promised her that if she started showing signs of Deus, I'd shoot her.

They also scanned my head. Jinx was the one doing the scanning. He did say my brainwaves were not like anything he had ever seen, but there was no sign of Deus. Surprise!

Juggler told me I got a message from some annoyed bear from the Russian Mafia telling cowards eat their words. I thought about that for a while and decided to do something about it. I couldn't let Russian Mafia to run around on the streets of Seattle thinking I'm a coward. They don't understand that I need my life to get my revenge, and after that I can be ready to die.

I decided to do some background checking. I asked if Juggler knew who the bear had had fights with before. Maybe some of them were alive to tell the tale. Two of them were. She had found one human, one elf, one dwarf, one troll and one orc to fight with. They were the toughest fighters she could find. She killed the human, the elf and the dwarf. But the orc and the troll had won her.

I decided to have a meeting with the orc. It cost me money, but I didn't care. I need to know a lot about her tactics so that I can beat her. Bears are bigger than leopards, so I have to be smarter.

The orc was middle-aged. He seemed tough, but I suspected he was too old to have won. But Hellkit was a bit older too, and she was tough. Maybe the looks are deceiving.

I asked if the orc could tell me about a fight. He told me he had had a lot of fights. I asked him to tell me about the bear. He told me that narrowed it down.

She had tracked him down as the toughest orc around. She wanted to have a fight with him, but he had refused. She had offered him a lot of money, and finally he had agreed. He told me she used a mono-filament whip. So she had started the fight as a human. The orc had managed grasp her and hit her in the head so she stopped fighting. Then he had thought it was over, and turned his back. Then he had had an angry bear to fight with. He managed to grasp the bear by its throat and squeeze so she stopped fighting again. After a few losses she transformed and told him he had won. He told me her strategy. Well, there wasn't much of a strategy. She seemed to trust brute force, just like me. So the more reason for me to not to fight like I always do. She seems to attack with full power, head-on. I asked if the orc would train with me, but he refused. He told me he could give me some names, but I told him Hellkit was good enough, if he didn't want to help. He told me Hellkit was good.

I actually have all the info I was curious to know now. Apparently bear-shifters heal just as well as I heal. I didn't ask Sencha if she healed too, but I'm guessing either fox-shifters don't heal, or magical shifters don't heal. It could be that Sly didn't heal because he was a shaman, or because he was a fox. I'd really like to meet Sly again and check if he heals. Well, right now I would settle for some fox-shifter.

I called Hellkit. I had to swallow my pride, but she agreed to train with me. And I told her it was very important for me to be able to trust her. I would tell her things I don't want everyone to know. But I think I can trust her.

I told Hellkit what I needed. I needed to kill a bear, human-form or not. And I was able to transform into a leopard when needed. I knew I was going to try and hack the bear to pieces with my dikote-sword as a human, but if it came to hand-to-hand combat as a leopard, I wanted to be good, preferably the best.

Hellkit gave very good advice. She suggested I'd use her tactics, to first feel the opponent, and make her less of a threat, just like Hellkit did with me. Then, when the opponent would be disoriented, I could strike with full force and hopefully end the fight there.

I trained really hard for two weeks. I still need to learn a new tactic, a new maneuver. But I can't get any better, so I might as well get the fight out of the way.

I decided to meet the troll as well. I asked Bobby to come along, because Juggler said the troll was a bit aggressive. I thought I needed someone to speak troll for me, if I managed to have misunderstandings with the troll. It started great, I introduced myself as Bitch, and he asked what bitch. I said not a bitch, the Bitch. And then Bobby dumbened the introduction down to the trolls level, and then he understood. Good thing I had Bobby with me...

The story was similar to the orcs story. He had accepted the fight-offer, and then they fought. The troll had managed to win the human-shaped bear, and suddenly he was attacked by a bear. He had managed to get his cyber-nails through the bears neck, and then he crawled out from under the bear.

The fights were similar, and the tactics as well. Both had to kill the bear a couple of times before she admitted her loss. Well, I don't accept my loss after one death...

I had learned all I could from these two winners. I tried to get more info from the Death Zone, and I called Jinx. He refused to tell me more than I already knew, because the bear was a better customer than I was. He also told that shifter-fights are very awesome, and good for business. No one dies, and there is still a fight to the death, lots of blood and good weapons. And both of the opponents walk out without a scratch. Well, no use in talking to Jinx.

Oh, and then I started my infiltration to an animal rights- group. I asked Juggler to find me a good group, not the nastiest, but in the top ten at least. He found me a group of people who had saved a lot of paranormal penguins. They didn't torture people, but didn't mind killing them if they were in the way. And the rest they left outside, and they probably froze to death. My kind of group. Juggler gave me a pub the group used to go to, or at least one of the leaders, or whatever. And he told me what they looked like.

I asked Shrew to come with. She seemed interested enough, and wanted to see the group.

We entered the pub. There were no one fitting the description, so we waited. We had taken a table to ourselves and talked about something until I noticed the guy fitting the description. I told Shrew they were there, and waved. Shrew waved too, and they came to our table.

The guy who was the leader or something wore long pointy ears, like fox-ears. The other guy had whiskers, just like a house-cat. I told the ear-guy he had cool ears. He thanked me. Shrew asked if he heared well with them. He told us they were fake, he had his own ears under them. Ha!

We talked about everything, and I decided to try and infiltrate to the group through this ear-guys trousers and bedroom. It would be the easiest way. People are pathetic with their feelings and things.

The ear-guy was Richard Nniemann, and the whiskers-guy was Albert. Richard told us his totem-animal was a fox, hence the ears. And Alberts totem-animal was a cat. I told them my totem-animal was a big cat, and Shrew's totem was a bird. They thought it was cool, but later they told us there was this guy who looked at the people and told their totem-animals to them. Richard also warned that it wasn't always as great as people would think. There had been this guy who wasn't happy at all with his totem. It had been a butterfly. I told Richard butterflies were cool. He agreed, but apparently the other guy didn't agree.

I told them I wanted to know my real totem-animal, and so did Shrew. They told us they'd ask around if the person would look at us later on. He was apparently very peculiar person.

I met these guys many times, we hung out, had fun, went to bars, I tried my best to enter the group. Of course, I didn't tell them my intentions. They were secret. I flirted a lot with Richard. And I noticed that Albert was his best buddy, so I got to know him as well. I found out that Richard had some girl that he used to go out with, but she was kinda old news already. And Albert told me Richard is really a fox, really clever and all that. And I managed to climb to his bed, if you know what I mean...

One day Richard told us that we would have a chance to know our totem-animals. One per day, and it cost some money. Small money for me and Shrew...

We arrived at the place we were instructed to go to. There were Richard, Albert and bunch of other people we had hung around with. They asked which of us would like to go first, and Shrew told them I would. So I entered the house. They told me the guy was already inside, and I should just find him and follow instructions. So that's what I did.

The door was closed. I opened it, and a cloud of smoke came out. It smelled funny. I walked in and closed the door. The guy asked me to enter the room. I walked towards the sound of his voice. There was also some weird music. The guy was on the sofa, looking really lazy and kind of out of it. He asked if I had already entered the room. I told him I was there. He told me to go and find a nice place in the room. He suggested the chandelier. I told him the chandelier wouldn't be strong enough to hold if I climbed there. He told me it would be great on the floor too. I decided to play it safe and walked to a corner. I crouched down, ready to defend myself.

The guy asked a lot of weird questions, the music was really weird, the smoke was making me dizzy, and it smelled strange. I knew it was some kind of a drug, but I couldn't identify it.

After hours of waiting in the strange smoke the music stopped. I had lost my sense of time, because the smoke made me woozy. The guy on the sofa asked me to walk to the mirror and tell him what I saw. I tried to get up. It went quite well. I started walking towards the mirror on the other side of the room. I fell down. I tried up again. I fell down again. Darn floor, it should know to stay still when people are walking on it! I decided to crawl to the mirror, and push myself up there. I didn't quite see anything and I saw everything on the mirror. He asked me what I saw. I said things. He told me he now knew what my totem-animal was. I was curious. He paused, I'm guessing for a dramatic effect, and told me I was a crab. Ha! He told me I was definently a crab, because I went to the corner, was in my shell all the time, and crawled to the mirror. He told me I could go away or stay if I wanted. I decided I needed air. Fresh, full-of-waste-Seattle-air. I stumbled to the door. It took me a few tries to get out. I shook myself, closed the door and walked to others. The nasty dizziness went away worryingly slowly. But it went away anyway.

Everyone were curious to know my totem. I told them I was crab. They were nodding and telling me it was cool to be a crab. I nodded also, telling it was indeed very cool to be a crab. We agreed to meet again the next day, so Shrew would find out her totem as well.

The next day we were at the same place again. This time Shrew went in, and I stayed with the group. We talked about things, and it took hours for Shrew to come out. When she finally came, she seemed to be pretty out of it. She didn't seem to know which way was up and which way was down. When she fell to the bushes the second time I decided to go and help. I walked her to the others, and she told us she was a whale. Ha! Big ego, apparently...

I had been talking about saving the animals and things like that, and Richard had told me he saved the world every once in a while, small piece at a time. I had told him it was cool, and I would love to save the world as well.

When things didn't go as fast as I had hoped, me and Shrew decided to do something about it, and asked if Morgan knew some place where they tortured animals, so that we would see how the group worked. She told us about a restaurant where they had these tanks full of crabs, and they boiled the crabs alive. We told about this nasty thing to Richard, and he promised to tell his friends.

Later we saw on the news that there was some nasty hit to a restaurant in Seattle Sea World. A group of ecoterrorists had broken in, stolen the crabs and dumped them into the sea. Some professional told the news that these crabs didn't survive the salty water, because they were some kind of lake-crabs that didn't live in salty waters. Well, they were stupid animal-rights-group. Who cares, I'm going to use them as cannon-fodder anyway. No need for brains there.

I called Richard and congratulated him on the strike. Later, when we met with others, they were quite sad, because they had done a lot of cool graffiti, and the news didn't show them. This was wrong! I didn't say anything, but I decided to help them.

I asked Juggler to get me the photos of the graffiti. He told me the best way was to bribe a cop, so I paid some money to get the photos, and I gave them to Nerdy to put in the news. Soon there was pictures of the graffiti on local newspapers. Awesome!

Couple of days later Richard called me, because I decided to not call him. He told how great it was to have the pictures out there. I told him I knew some guys. He was surprised to know it was me.

Later we met with the group with Shrew. They told us there was this animal rights group, and they would like us to join. I agreed instantly, and Shrew wanted to stay as an outside member. They told us it was cool, she could support us from the outside. Then they said we could tell about this to our friends as well. I started giving them emails. First one was Tracys. And then I told them every single email I had ever seen, except for Juggler. He gets me explosives, so there's no need to upset him...

Richard told us about this long trip some of them are going to. Saving whales from the Japanese whale-hunters. It would take months on the sea, terrorizing the whale-hunter-ships. I didn't tell them that it would be easier to just destroy the ships. Apparently these guys don't work like that. They try to make a difference, or something. Both me and Shrew refused to go there, save whales, when they asked if we were interested. Richard told us it's not for everybody. Ha! I'd have completely different approach to these problems of theirs. The bigger the explosion, the less problems.

It's so great. Now I have started my plan to infiltrate and perhaps lead one branch of this animal activist group. I already joined, so now I just have to do a few hits and find out what kind of people these guys are, so that I know how I can use them in the lab. I know I could take my followers from the humanis policlub with me, but they wouldn't agree saving magical animals. And they are too narrow-minded anyway. I think I will not lose that group just yet. They can prove useful later on. If I ever need a distraction or some kind of fight somewhere, my group is stupid enough to provide that for me.

And then I went with Shrew when she needed to learn something about herself. She had arranged a meeting with an old adept living in the bad area of Seattle. I tagged along for fun.

Shrew had realized she had a car, not very good one, it was seen better days, but it beat the taxi. And of course, the place of the adept was too deep in the Redmond Barrens for any taxi to go there anyway. So we drove there.

It was some abandoned neighborhood. There was a gang hanging around nearby. We decided to try and sell the car to them, because they would steal it anyway. They were interested, when Shrew told them we'd sell the car for beer. They left, maybe to find some beer, maybe because they didn't want the car. We decided to go and meet the adept.

The adept was an old man. He was blind. He sat on his balcony and wanted to talk. I waited and decided not to take part of the weird conversation. The old man said it was nice to have visitors. He said he had little friends in the park, and he needed someone to help his little friends. We agreed to help his friends, but he didn't tell us what they were, or where we could find them. He told us they'd find us.

We jumped into the car and drove to the park. The old man had said not to be violent. Well, he sent two totally wrong persons for that job...

We wandered around a bit. Then suddenly a tree fell on us. We managed to avoid it, but it was definitely strange. I pulled my sword, ready to defend myself. Shrew told me we weren't supposed to be violent, and yelled that we didn't mean any harm. Then she told me to put my sword away. I put my sword away, but I was ready to defend myself anyway.

I saw that there was an aura in the area. Someone had done some magic. And the tree was chopped down by magic. The same person here as the one done some magic in the area. Shrew called her spirit to help us look. Then she made a watcher spirit that's mission was to find the little friends. Later she made a forest spirit with the same mission. We kept on wandering around. The spirit found something and we went there. Apparently that something was using some sort of power to the spirit, and it figured that was the thing we were looking for.

When we got there, a tree fell on us again. We managed to avoid it again. After that we didn't find anything at all.

We returned to the old adept. He was sad that we weren't able to help his friends, but he helped Shrew anyway. The gangers had returned. They were checking out our car. I put my shotgun on the balcony and started aiming at them. Hopefully they didn't know it was a shotgun...

Shrew found out something about herself. No one stole the car. I got back home and started scheming. And of course, I have to let Hellkit teach me again, and go through my strategies. And then I have to kill that stupid bear.

Oh, I don't remember who it was, but someone from my team suggested me to organize an accident. It would certainly be a sad accident if the bear happened to sink into the harbour with cement-shoes. But she was part of the mafia. They would start wondering... Andit would be the most cowardish thing to do. Someone suggested I could rat her out to a laboratory. That person is happy to still live. I know how that is, I know what kind of pain it is, and I will not send anyone to a laboratory, even if they are my worst enemies. I rather kill them.

Well, my plans are in place. Let's see how they play out. Will the life be a bitch to me, or will I be Bitch to the life. And who dies next. Only time will tell. But I will make absolutely certain I will not die before I have had a chance to have my revenge!