Chapter 1433: Upgrades - Civil Case
I thought I was the only one capable of saying outlandish shit out of the blue— in the proper context, it isn’t. But yeah, talking about being genuine then clearing a cow’s bowel movement due to an impaction wasn’t in my normal repertoire of segways.
In any case, I just wore proper gloves, cleared the impaction, and helped Unc with a bit more farm work just before noon.
It was a nice change of pace from the current "City Life", and after we grabbed a quick bite for lunch, I took it upon myself to have a proper gander at the place to do some tweaks or some needed improvements.
First thing I did was to map out the current property line by flying a drone from above and walking around to get a better look from above and in person.
The bamboo maze kept itching the back of my head, but thinking that it was by design eased a lot of the tension— telling myself, it’s the beauty of imperfection or the regularity in the irregularities is the main concept of this build.
One of the gripes I had with this build though, was that the elevated platforms around the perimeter acting as watchtowers— for lack of a better term, a little dumb.
The maze was maybe 5-ish meters away from the main wall, and the visibility was quite poor.
Motion sensors and alarm systems could aid somewhat, but my personal preference is to see where a fucking bogey is standing so I can nail them from a hundred meters away.
But then again, the number of people who could do that in this place is next to nil.
’Unc needs more hands here...’
With that said, it was easy enough to leave a handful of people to supplement his base, because not only him— even I had more than a handful of reasons to keep this place intact.
I briefly radioed in to our vessel before I headed back to the house and checked the basement.
We brought some supplements to Unc’s reserves since it’ll definitely take a hit with the number of people we brought over—but he still had enough to go around for quite a while, even if we didn’t bring over some supplies.
It was because their consumption couldn’t compare to the thousand or so we’d have to feed every day, and they have a good rotation of food cycling around. Their shelves look a bit disorganized but that may be because of the time when Aunt Michelle was about to give birth.
In any case, I was about to start organizing some shit in his basement like a goblin when I received a call from one of my people who was still in the main town:
-
*bzzt*
[Bro— I mean, sir? There’s been a situation here, thought you should know?]
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
"Hmm? What happened?"
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
[The CO here and the Barangay Captain’s already trying to resolve it but shit’s brutal. Two dudes literally hacked each other with their machetes— and their families are about to do the same to each other.]
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
"What? Why?"
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
[I’m not a 100% on this but the first dude— Let’s call him Dude A has been safekeeping a bunch of supplies from Dude B— no, let me start over, fuck. Dude A’s brother, I mean, has been keeping shit for Dude B but like a week ago or so Dude A’s brother croaked. And when Dude B tried to get his stuff back, Dude A wouldn’t budge. One of the older ladies here mentioned that they’ve been stewing about it since Dude A’s brother kicked the bucket and they definitely hit their boiling point today.]
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
"Fuck, both of them alive?"
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
[Dunno. Critical, I guess? Should we step in just in case? We brought non-lethals? You coming?]
*bzzt*
-
*bzzt*
"Offer help, don’t take over. We’ll be there in a few."
*bzzt*
-
After a while, I thought I’d bring Kaley and a few others with me but about half of the group I brought to Unc’s ranch followed. The trip back to the main town wasn’t far but we headed over to Barangay 4 where most of the people had gathered.
It seems that this altercation was the few bits of excitement people would have every now and again, and they dropped what they were currently doing to see how it’d end.
People were either gossiping to the side or loudly talking about what they knew but I went on ahead the main town hall to get to the bottom of the issue. And fucking yeah, there was a line of soldiers keeping the two families apart and they weren’t doing a good job of it.
I would’ve fired off a few shots to shut them up but I released just the right amount of killing intent to fill the room.
*VHOOOOM*
The ’surge’ came in and went out in a split of a second but the silence that came after was music to my ears.
Everyone else didn’t know what the fuck just happened, and it left them with beads of cold sweat, sitting on their asses, or as tense as a motherfucker for no goddamn reason. But yeah, all of them were looking in my direction and as I made my way in between the two families, I opened my mouth and spoke in a clear manner:
"Okay, we seem to have a situation. May I?"
"..."
"..."
Captain Malapitan cleared his throat before reintroducing me to the families present, "Ehem. That young man over there is Mr. Ishiyama, directly working under—"
I cut in, "With. Independently."
"O-Okay... They’re working with the President and such, and he was the one who led the Roro Vessel yesterday. He’s here to visit family, as far as I know, but I believe that he’s also here to help us in one way or another. Is that right?"
I nodded, "If you’d let me, yes. I was informed by one of my people about what happened but I need to hear the same thing from both parties as well. Can we start from the top?"
At that point, I was once again met with silence but it only took one pip from one of the family members from either side to start another full-blown shouting match which is this fucking close to once again come into blows.
What my informant, let’s name him— Marvin, was about 80% correct but the rest of the 20% didn’t matter.
This is as petty as petty as it could be.
Captain Malapitan was already giving me a helpless look— along with this place’s Barangay Captain, Mrs. Serna Valdez, who couldn’t even voice out her opinion or cut in between the opposing sides.
It wouldn’t be that difficult to send out another surge to keep them at bay but I already figured that it was just a band-aid fix.
Though I did it one more time to stop the noise.
So to make the last surge I sent worth something, I picked the most bloodthirsty dude from each side and handed each of them a knife.
"Go on."
The two of them looked at me confused, but it was then that the one keeping silent all this time finally took her chance:
"How is that gonna fix things?! You call that a fix?!" Mrs. Valdez took a few steps forward, glaring at me.
I chuckled, "My bad, this is a thousand times better than you standing behind the Captain there waiting for a miracle."
"You—"
Before she could speak out once again, the same older ladies from the two families had already started to shout at each other, egging their "representative" to make the first decisive move already.
The two just glanced at me before they slowly gripped the knife I gave them but before Captain Malapitan ordered his troops to stop them, I gave them a piece of my mind which made them stop, from killing themselves that is.
"Hurry up and kill each other, we’ll go through your families until there’s a decided winner."
"MY UNCLE’S JUST TRYING TO GET HIS STUFF!"
"IT’S NOT HIS STUFF! NOT ANYMORE!"
"IT WAS ONLY THERE AS COLLATERAL!"
"BECAUSE YOUR UNCLE OWED US—"
"US?! WE OWE YOU SHIT! WE ALREADY PAID FOR—"
I cut them off, "Jesus fucking Christ— a sack of rice, a lawnmower, five chickens, $20 in change, and two fucking cows where one doesn’t even produce milk anymore."
The two clapped back at the same time, "IT’S FIVE COWS AND A BULL!/IT’S TWO SACKS OF RICE AND $40!"
I rolled my eyes, "Huh. I thought you fucks would bring up the plot land first. I omitted it already, and you seem to worry about the irrelevant stuff."
"HOW...!/YOU—"
"I dabble in gossip, don’t ask. But yeah, there’s no written agreement between you fucks and one of the people on that verbal agreement is dead, and you’re all going off hearsay. I’m not sure if you forgot, but the world has gone to fucking shit. If none of you are going to compromise, may the strongest survive. Let’s see if the $40 is worth it."
