Nate was lead into another room after some basic questioning.

After Dr.Pemberson had his identity as Nate's benefactor leaked out, Nate had really nothing else to keep from them. He answered all his questions truthfully, mostly due to the fact that the leader could easily see through lies and he had at least one gun trained on him at all times.

The room was a basic one, just about any other room you could find in a semi-abandoned warehouse. It was filled with random mechanical parts, some in pristine condition, most damaged in some way or another. Nate saw one item. A trigger, seemingly frozen.

How that had happened was a mystery to Nate, but he decided not to ask questions. He didn't need to know how a random trigger had been frozen in the middle of summer. And Nate knew that his question would only be met by challenge or insult.

Nate was currently being escorted by the same woman that had readied her blade to cut him into ribbons when he arrived. They had called her Mantis, which made sense considering her appearance. Aside from the Mantis' eyes on her forehead, Mantis's eyes were dark green for both of them. She had a slender body, tight and filled with muscles. Her skin was a blend of sandpaper and purple for the color while she spoke with a middle eastern accent. She wore a basic black shirt along with some black jeans. A dark green tie was woven around her neck. And her hair was light brown.

"This is where you'll work for the rest of the week, whenever you have free time, head here to get some repairs done," Mantis said.

"I doubt such a small group would even need me spending all my free time working on your weapons," Nate grunted as he felt the butt of her blade hit him in the side.

"Don't act like a smartass. You won't even see my guns unless I'm killing you, we have clients and other men and women who need repairs or mods for weapons."

"So you run a black market?" Nate asked.

Mantis replied, "One of many, about eighty to ninety percent of criminal goods in this city flow through us. From guns to counter-fit money. From sex slaves to mechs."

"Where do you find such products?" Nate asked.

"After the war, plenty of factories had massive amounts of war-machines that the army didn't need or want, plus. Plenty more were refunded cause they hadn't seen battle when the treaty was called. So in order to make bank, the owners had to get a bit creative with who they sold to," she said.

"That's insane! I can't imagine anyone in their right mind would hand military equipment to criminals."

"Well it was either that or scrap some perfectly good products, and even if they didn't sell, we could've easily scavenged war zones for them. Hell, I bet there are some homes in the city made from spare and randoms parts of killing machines!" The woman laughed as if it was some joke, though it was kinda funny that in the city some kid was walking home to a house made from a murder bot.

Mantis gestured to the boxes full of spare parts, one of them marked red, the other marked blue. "You use the red crap to make random junk that benefits us or something that you can sell on the black market. You use the blue crap to make repairs to our customers."

Nate walked towards them and looked at the parts more closely, they were crammed into the boxes randomly, aside from which parts you had to put into each box, there was no care about how they were put. Though Nate noticed that a large number of triggers, attachments, and other things you would find in or attached to guns were in the red box.

"Guess I know what I'm going to be selling to the market," Nate said as took out a small sniper attachment and looked through it.

"If all you can make are guns from this pile then you obviously won't rise through our ranks quickly," Mantis said.

"Speaking of that, what is your organization called?" Nate asked.

"Please, don't minx your words we're a gang. And I would think our names are pretty obvious," Mantis said as she pulled at the shirt she wore. It was just something regular, a large black shirt with a 'you can do it!' Kitten on the back. In the front was a massive red cross, though it was so dark you could barely see it.

"You're called the Red Crosses?"

"Bingo!" She said with fake excitement.

"So, when is the market starting?" Nate asked.

"It's around Saturday, the rest of the week we either take part in missions or make products, even if we don't look like it all of us are basic engineers. We have to look over our own equipment for most of the time we're on the job."

"So it happens in the entire slum?" Nate asked.

"Nah, just most of it."

"Then how do you expect the police to not bust down the door and bring your entire operation down?"

"Well, have you ever heard of M.A.D?" Mantis asked.

Nate frowned at that, of course, he heard it, M.A.D stood for Mutually Assured Destruction. or M.A.D for short. It was the assumption that if the Great War happened, then all the countries that took part in it would be ruined, it was a concept that had stalled the Great War for almost nine years.

The entire thought process had failed in Nineteen-Twenty though. The countries and kingdoms across Europe had armed themselves and set up enough failsafe that M.A.D had fallen through. So when the war did break out, it was longer, harder, and more brutal than ever. The countries did have nearly another decade to prepare after all.

"Of course I know it, it's what made the Great War so long in the first place! It's a concept that fell through in the end, and with it, the concept of peace for most of the world for half a century," Nate said.

"Well, we use that concept to keep Johnny Law off us. Just about everybody has or knows someone in this city who signed a deal with us, no matter how small, no matter how bloody. And this includes police officers, we easily have enough power to break the city if someone tried to hit us in office."

"But won't they just think of ways to counter this?" Nate asked.

"That's the thing, the reason the war happened was that everybody tried to create the perfect armor when really, they should've made the perfect spear."

Mantis looked at him, "And believe me, our organization will not make that same mistake again."

"We hereby declare, that both the United States of North America along with the Grand Columbian States declare neutrality in the Great War. We seek nothing in this foreign conflict and want nothing to do with it, our nations shall not be beholden to our once masters. And we seek not to send hundreds of millions of men to die in a war that will in no way benefit us. Yet we know that without involvement we would ultimately be forced to come into this war for one reason or another. So the USNA and the GCS will trade with all. No matter if German or British, Serbian or Austro-Hungarian. We will sell both sides guns and food, tanks and aircraft. But let it be known that any warship that enters our sea not stand down, or if any of our trade ships are sunk. We will retaliate with the strength and rage of two continents."

- Wildrow Willson's Speech of the Neutrality Act of 1920