Guerillas in the Mist

The sounds of sirens faded behind the five figures moving down toward the Santa Marina pier. It was late in the evening and the tourists had left the pier behind, empty food wrappers and unwanted promo fliers littering the concrete nearby. Whilst the people slept, the boys of La Raza were out on the prowl, gang colours on show.

“It's too quiet out here, man,” Jose Marano muttered pulling the flat peak of his cap lower over his eyes.

“What, you gonna book, Mara?” 'Slim' asked, through a mouthful of double cheese-burger.

Beside him, Alvaro 'Shadow' Valdez grinned as they passed beneath street-lamps onto the rickety wooden board-walk, the lights around them dimming to near-darkness under the influence of Alvaro's mutation. The only sound roundabout was the dark waters of the ocean sloshing beneath the pier. Unseen beneath them, a would-be banger tagging territory with a spray-can held his breath and uttered a silent prayer to be left alone. Slim slurped noisily on the last of a McDonald's super-sized Coke and tossed the cup to Felipe 'Trick' Torrez, who let it balance on his fingertips for an instant before shooting it into a nearby trash can. “Three points for Kobe and the crowd goes wild!” he roared, highfiving Slim.

“Hey!”

The four of them came to a sudden halt, turning to look back at the leader of La Raza, Pedro Calaveras.

“You think we're on the way to fuckin' Disneyland?” Calaveras asked, with a lift of his chin.

“We was jus'-” Slim started, but Pedro cut him off, grabbing the half-eaten cheese-burger out of Slim's hands and tossing it over his shoulder.

“You was jus' nothin'. We got business to do, cholos,” he added, nodding towards the end of the pier where their contacts would be waiting. “Let's go.”

Jane stood with her back to the ocean, leaning against the wooden railing at the end of the pier with her arms crossed in front of her. She almost looked relaxed. Boomer and Geryon were having a quiet conversation beside her, but all three Brotherhood mutants perked up when they heard the voices coming towards them.

The moon was bright, and the La Raza members weren't hard to see as they approached. Jane straightened up, popping her neck a little as she mentally prepared for the meeting. La Raza was a bunch of punk ass Hispanics - good for distractions, but ultimately useless for the greater goal of the Brotherhood.

Which made this meeting even more interesting, because she was going to find out who was calling the shots in the mutant gang. Something had changed, for the better as far as she was concerned.

"That's close enough," she said, when the five La Raza were within fifteen feet of them. "Thank you for coming - I wasn't sure you'd show up."

The rest of La Raza fanned out around Calaveras as he sized up the trio, the boys forming a loose but deliberate line between the unfamiliar three and their only way back to the shoreline. Pedro made a fist of his left hand and pushed it into the palm of his right, cracking his knuckles.

“Well, we here. So talk.”

Boomer and Geryon fanned out beside Jane, as unbalanced a line as one could imagine. You could be forgiven for thinking the dark, lanky man with his hair in cornrows and the huge Polynesian man in the tank top were there for the woman's protection. Of course, you could also get killed thinking like that.

In contrast to Pedro's posturing, Jane stood perfectly at ease, as if there was nothing La Raza could do to harm her. Which was more or less true. "My name is Jane. This is Geryon and Boomer. And you're Pedro Calaveras. So now we're all on equal footing."

"You already know we're with the Brotherhood of Mutants," Boomer said. "La Raza's been cutting into some of the same territory we've been scouting for years. We think it's in both our best interests to make sure we don't accidentally step on one another's toes."

Pedro turned narrow glances at the boys on either side of him. He knew what they were thinking: La Raza wasn't cutting into anyone's turf. They'd fought for and won what was theirs, though that was only half the battle.

“Me and mine came up on these streets. Born and raised in Los Santos. We ain't cuttin' into nothin' that wasn't ours to begin with.”

"Right," Jane said dryly, "That's why its been in Tres Once hands for years." She raised an eyebrow. "You've been doing a lot of expansion lately. Just last year La Raza was comfortable in their own hood.

"Like Boomer said, we've maintained a presence in Los Santos for quite a while now. Its in our mutual best interest that we don't clash over a misunderstanding about property lines. La Raza doing well is something we both want."

Pedro shrugged. Maintaining a presence was just a fancy way of saying that they'd been watching Los Santos, and who hadn't? La Redencion House was one of a kind and had attracted attention from those who had previously written the area off as worthless. The Brotherhood was just one more nose sticking in where it wasn't wanted.

“I don't see why that means we should give a fuck 'bout you people.”

Geryon lowered his head and made a low rumbling noise in the back of his throat - the sort of noise made by wild beasts posturing in the wilderness about ten seconds before someone looks up to see their gushing trachea in someone else's jaws.

"Hey, now, let's keep it civilized, gentlemen," Boomer said with a smile that shone like the crescent moon. "The Brotherhood isn't a bunch of knuckle-dragging shithead mundanes banging war clubs over a few more city blocks. And from what we've heard, neither are you."

He took a few swaggering steps into the no-man's land between the two factions, smiling straight at Pedro.

"This time last year, La Raza was the whipping boy of the barrios. Now you march up to the Tres Onces' biggest strongholds and send them scattering like roaches under a rock. I've got to be honest with you, we're impressed. And more than a little curious."

“Whipping boy?!” Slim took a step forward but Trick's arm shot out to bar his way. Pedro didn't acknowledge either of them. His attention was on Boomer, studying that Cheshire-cat smile he wore in the long silence that followed. It was the kind of smile that made him wish he could let Slim knock Boomer's teeth out.

“The game's changing.. and we learn fast.”

Jane shot Boomer a look that read, was that really necessary? and then turned her attention to Pedro. "You do learn fast. And making the mundanes pay for their prejudice against mutantkind is what the Brotherhood is all about." She smiled, the expression barely touching her eyes.

"We'd like to work with La Raza. We can give you weapons, funds, and recruits. All we ask is that you keep doing what you're doing." Jane paused, and then pulled a small vial out of her jeans pocket.

She held it up so it caught the moonlight. "You ever heard of the new drug, Nectar?"

La Raza had become a mutant only gang out of circumstance and necessity, rather than any shared prejudice against non-mutants. That didn't exactly change the fact that Pedro and the others had found themselves at war, of course. The us and them mentality only extended as far as the Tres Onces for the time being, but it would be a short step to cross the line into the kind of territory that the Brotherhood occupied. Crossing his broad arms over his chest, Pedro lifted his chin at the vial.

“No. Should we?”

"It's big business for the Tres Onces these days," Boomer said. "Just weeks ago, Jane, Geryon, and I, we busted up a club the Onces were using as a distribution hub. Oh, they had cocaine, heroin, meth... But half a dozen cases of this stuff? That was the real prize."

"Its a drug out of South America, its mildly hallucinogenic to mundanes, but if a mutant takes this shit?" Jane gave the vial a little shake. "'Causes your powers to go off the charts out of control, and then after you've spent your load you'd be powerless for hours."

She tossed the vial over to Pedro, who caught it, gave it a once over, and then passed it back. Jane tucked it back into her pocket. "Jericho's been importing it from the clinics that make it in South America, and using third parties to transfer it to their clinics around the country. Like the Tres Onces.

"We would like that activity to be stopped," she added.

“Fuckin' onces,” Slim turned away and spat on the board-walk.

“No doubt,” Trick said with a solemn shake of his head.

Grunts of agreement went through the rest of the gang, who shifted restlessly at the thought of their arch-rivals making profits from – and fools out of – the local mutant population. Pedro's jaw flexed with tension.

“You got a plan?” he asked.

"We always got plans," Boomer said with a shrug. "But seeing as you're the expert at busting the Elevens' balls, we thought maybe you'd like to take the initiative. We'll support your operations with information and funding as you need it. We dispose of a common enemy, you take uncontested control of Los Santos. It's a win for both of us, man."

Pedro nodded slowly to himself. There wasn't a lot of time to consider the implications of what he was about to say. La Raza wasn't a one-man show but when it came down to it, he had to make the tough calls. Calling the boys aside for a debate on the issue wasn't an option, not as long as he wanted to maintain control and respct. The others trusted him and, united by a common hatred of the Onces and Jericho, could put aside their mistrust of the Brotherhood temporarily.

“Alright. Done deal. You got some way we can get hold of you, when we need to hit you up for this... information and funding?”

Jane extracted a business card from the back pocket of her dark wash jeans, extending it toward Pedro between two fingers. "You can call any time of day, or night." The La Raza leader took the slightly warm card, a white rectangle with BROTHERHOOD typed in red on the center, a phone number printed in black underneath the word.

"I look forward to hearing from you." Jane said quietly. "Don't wait too long."