At the sight of the three flat-faced kitrekins, Reginald cursed quietly and met Vee’s inquisitive eyebrow with a frown.

“I’ll tell you later,” he muttered, and the [Dungeon Master] nodded.

The newcomers seemed to fill the room, and as Vee stared at them, he felt the discomforting click of [Stiffen Spine] activating. Across the table, he noticed that Alforde sat up straighter too and looked ready to flare his own Intimidating Presence. The armorsoul’s gauntlets settled around Slammy’s handle, and there was a challenging question in his eyes as he rolled his pauldrons.

Vee shook his head and flicker of disappointment trickled through his and Alforde’s bond. Still, the [Dungeon Master] couldn’t help but be relieved when it vanished almost as quick as it came without becoming anything more than that.

A second wave of Intimidating Presence filled the room with a third behind it, and each one was stronger than the last. Even [Stiffen Spine] couldn’t protect against them all, so Vee clenched his teeth and tried to will away his unease. I’m not in danger, he scolded himself. Relax. Unfortunately, his Faith in his own assessment wasn’t strong enough, so he couldn’t quite manage full relaxation. Instead, he simply felt vaguely uncomfortable, like he was sitting at a table with a couple in the middle of an argument. It’d have to do for now.

The kitrekins were all different colors – the shortest one had white fur, the biggest of the three had gray fur that looked like ash, and the one between had brown fur the color of milk chocolate – but they each had a distinctive maple-leaf shaped marking around their left eyes and a similarity in their features that made Vee think they were related.

It was obvious that they were gangsters; they were dressed in gaudy pinstripe suits that were a few sizes too small and wearing enough jewelry between the three of them to start their own store should the mood take them.

With a smile that showed entirely too much fang, the gray kitrekin stepped forward and lifted his paws to his mouth. Light caught the multitude of jewel-encrusted rings that adorned his fingers, and the heavy gold bracelets around his wrists clinked as well.

“Oy, Big Bro, you back there? Come out, we’ve gotta talk!”

Carrying a pair of plates, Big Simon stumbled out of the kitchen. His eyes were wide with surprise– or perhaps fear, or even a combination of both – but after a moment he collected himself, stretching to his full height. He set down the plates on the table beside him and returned a grin that showed his own chipped fangs. His whiskers flared and twitched as he rubbed his paws on the towel tucked into his belt. Vee shivered as another wave of Intimidating Presence filled the room.

“Atlas? Smore? Aris?! What are you three doing out here?”

“We just wanted to see our big bro,” the white kitrekin drawled as he leaned forward and flashed his own savage grin at a woman nearby. “And see what kind of people can stand to eat your cooking. How are you doing, darling? Stomach still intact?”

The woman, a pale purple salamander, squealed and spilled her drink as she muttered something Vee couldn’t quite hear. It almost sounded like an apology.

Snorting, the white kitrekin turned his attention back to Big Simon and held up his arms.

“What? Is it a crime to ask someone a question? Are we causing you trouble by being here? Huh?!”

“Knock it off, Aris,” the brown kitrekin said as he clapped a paw on his companion’s shoulder and pulled the white kitrekin away from the table. Unlike the other two, who had raspy voices, the brown kitrekin’s was warm and full, but Vee’s knuckles reflexively tightened at the sound. There was something…deeply menacing…about the way he spoke.

“Remember why we’re here,” the brown kitrekin hissed.

Aris looked around the restaurant and shrugged. “You’re no fun, Smore. Why should I care about any of these people? Who are they to me? Look at ‘em. They’re all wimps.”

Alforde started to move once more, and Vee shook his head vehemently. Irritation surged through the bond, but Vee met it with his own and the armorsoul backed down. Reginald gave Vee a look and the [Dungeon Master] shrugged.

With a single, smooth movement, Atlas the gray kitrekin reached up and flicked Aris’ white ear. The aggressive kitrekin yelped and glared, but stepped back and sullenly started grooming his paws.

Atlas turned and faced the diners, who were mostly watching the unfolding proceedings with abject terror in their wide eyes.

“I’m sorry about this inconvenience folks,” Atlas said, “but I’m afraid that my brothers and I are here about a family matter, so you’re all going to have to leave. In exchange for the interruption, I’ll be covering your bills for the evening. Get the door for them, will you Aris? Smore, you can go ahead and sit down. Over there near the back, I think.”

The white and brown kitrekin moved as directed, but none of the patrons left their tables.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Atlas’ polite façade vanished and his eye started twitching.

“Did I stutter? Scram, all of you,” he growled.

It was like a spell had been broken. Tripping over themselves, everyone inside the Grinning Pig scurried to get up and out the door as quickly as they could.

“Let’s not stick around,” muttered Reginald. “Come on, be quick about it.”

Vee and Alforde joined the crowd heading for the door. The white kitrekin leered at them as they passed, and he grinned when he saw Alforde’s defiant stare. The armorsoul shifted his grip on Slammy, and the two sized each other up.

Aris grinned and rolled his shoulders.

“Some other time, eh?”

Alforde shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

Outside, it was snowing and there was a stiff breeze, so Vee hurried back to the boarding house as quickly as his tired legs would carry him. Once they were a block or so away from the Grinning Pig, Vee tapped on Reginald’s brim.

“Alright, start talking. Who were those three kitrekins? Why were you so dismayed to see them?”

“That was Atlas, Aris, and Smore Whiskerkins. They’re the Don’s problem solvers.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means they’re high level [Enforcers]” Reginald said. “When the Don finds something he wants, or if things get messy, he calls those three up and they take care of it for him. They’re as ruthless as they are dangerous.”

Well, that didn’t sound good.

“What do you think they wanted with Big Simon? You think he’ll be okay?”

“I don’t know what they were after,” said Reginald. “But I wouldn’t be too worried about Big Simon. Didn’t you feel that surge of Intimidating Presence when he looked at them? You know, he used to be a pretty high level [Enforcer] himself.”

“Really?”

“Where do you think he got all those scars? Making soup? Even though he’s mostly retired these days, I wouldn’t be eager to bet against him if things get hairy. He was a heck of a fighter, back in the day.”

Still, Vee felt a mixture of unease and irritation as he climbed the steps of the boarding house and opened the door to his room. It pissed him off that the kitrekins had simply waltzed into the restaurant and kicked everyone out. That wasn’t right! But more than that, he was afraid of what they’d been after. If Reginald’s description of the three [Enforcers] was correct – and Vee had no reason to doubt that it was – then the Don was after something. But what could it be?

Worse, Vee had a gut feeling that Sacre was bound to be interested in it too, which could only mean that tension between the gangs was going to start escalating again soon. Or maybe it already had; hadn’t Walnut said he’d gotten his blackeye from the kitrekins? Okay, fine, he hadn’t said the word kitrekins specifically, but what other “furry freaks” lived down in Southtown? Somehow, Vee doubted that like, yetis lived there or something.

Though, to be completely honest, it’d actually be pretty cool if they did. He’d always wanted to see a yeti!

The room was warm and Vee’s exhaustion hit him all at once as he stepped inside. Though his thoughts about why the gangs were choosing to cause trouble now of all times continued flickering back and forth, his body demanded sleep.

He was out almost as soon as he hit the mattress.

Vee woke up later than usual the next morning and his legs made it quite clear that they disapproved of his play the day before. He really had to start making more effort to get regular exercise. Future Vee, diligent chap that he was, would have to see to that.

Slugging down coffee, the [Dungeon Master] trailed after Alforde on the way to the dungeon with Reginald perched atop his head.

When they got to the tower, Vee summoned the light and medium sections of his orchestra and ordered all of them but Dandelion – who’d brought slimes from the menagerie and had other duties there to return to – to go out and start looking for a bigger and better place for the snowball fights. Vee wanted something big and open, so that they could accommodate more than two people at once. Eight seemed like a good number, but maybe twelve would be better. Then they could offer team snowball fights, or some other rulesets. Maybe even a battle royale! That’d be fun.

Once his orchestra was gone, Vee summoned Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers] and assigned them to making better walls for the game. Poorly packed piles of snow had been fine for just him and Hanako, but Vee wanted more than that if they were going to let random people form the city come and play.

The fiends flipped him a snappy salute – where had they learned that? – and went to work. They grabbed discarded bits of debris from around the dungeon and started shaping them, whistling merrily as they did so.

That left Vee with nothing else to do but handle the drudgery of the day’s runs. Even with the new supply of slimes and his slapdash ghosts, there weren’t enough minions to properly stock the dungeon, and the adventurers quickly took notice. After the first eleven runners, the rest of the thirty adventurers who’d come that day canceled their runs, coming up into the tower to tell Vee that the dungeon needed to be more of a challenge and asking for refunds.

It sucked to hear, but Vee couldn’t really blame them. It was reasonable for them to not want to spend their money when they wouldn’t get much experience out of going through the dungeon, and the prospect of fighting Alforde lost a good deal of its shimmer when the armorsoul was likely going to spar with them anyways.

He grit his teeth and promised to return the money after it was all collected for the day.

When the last one left, Reginald turned to Vee and said, “Boss, you’ve got to hurry up with that mini boss.”

“I know, I know,” Vee grumbled. “I’ll work on it today.”

An unexpected upside of the dungeon being empty so early was that it meant that Vee had plenty of time to work on his projects, and he fully intended to use it. After putting the day’s scant earnings into the vault and telling Alforde to deliver the rest back to the sparring adventurers outside, Vee headed down to his lab with Reginald in tow.

He was going to make himself a mini boss.

The work went quickly, with Vee grabbing great globs of ectoplasm out of the air and rolling it into giant spheres. They were heavy, but not so much that Vee himself couldn’t lift them and put them into place. Attaching the snowball throwing arms was a little trickier, but the [Ghost Maestro] had learned more than he’d realized during his work with the first versions of the sponge ghosts.

In less than two hours, Vee had a full-sized prototype. It could throw snowballs with both arms, and he’d worked out rudimentary sigilmancy that should let it turn to follow a target in its eyes.

Appearance-wise, the ghost looked pretty simple, so Vee got to work on making adornments. He’d been practicing his ectoplasm shapes a bit here and there, and had gotten better at making circles and stars. Picking the right shapes was still a little tricky, but He was getting better and after another half hour or so he had a basic outfit that suited his needs. It looked like the snowmen he'd made as a child – hat, scarf, etc. – except Vee made the minion’s face as angry as he could. It was all in the eyebrows.

“What do you think?” Vee asked as he smoothed the last few sheets of ectoplasm on the ghost’s hat.

Reginald rocked back and forth on the desk. “Looks good, Boss. How are you feeling? That was a lot of power you just used, there.”

Vee held out his arms. To be honest, he felt fine. His limbs weren’t trembling and though his forehead was a little damp, he wasn’t particularly sweaty either.

“Good,” he said. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.”

Reginald smirked at him.

“That’s just what I was hoping to hear,” his [Majordomo] said. “Because I think it’d be a good idea if you made two or three more. These things are going to get demolished.”

Vee hung his head.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

Taking a deep breath, Vee started gathering more ectoplasm.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 12

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 13

Plotting: 17

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 21

Leadership: 16

Guts: 12

Intimidating Presence: 9

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 6

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 3

Might: 38

Wit: 12

Faith: 25

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 17

Intimidating Presence: 13

Heart of a Champion: 8

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 5

Vanity: 3 (+1)

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 39 (- 1)

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 14

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 7

Might: 1

Wit: 32

Faith: 11

Ambition: 26

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 35

$#&*[email protected]!!

Loyalty: 45

Patience: 10 (+1)

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7

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