Chapter 12: Raiders of the Trashed Hotel

The trio manages to enter the hotel and tries to locate Garbanzo, in order to properly formulate a strategy to take him down.

"Thanks for the save, X. Gotta say, you looked pretty badass back there," I commented.

"Yeah, until you were almost crushed by a corpse of all things," Tequila giggled.

"At any rate, now that the exterior of the hotel is safe, I say we hurry inside before we miss this important meeting." Xavier dusted himself off.

That being said, the three of us crept around the back of the hotel until we found an exterior vent, just large enough to hold our weight.

"Y'know, it's kinda' funny: several years from now, I'm gonna be looking back on all the best memories involving my best friends, and I'll remember how most of those moments involved crawling through vents together," Tequila chuckled as I followed suit.

"Some people just don't ever get to live normal lives," I replied.

"Well the way I see it, 'normal' is just another word for boring," Xavier butt in. "And it's always the least normal folks who wind up as historical figures, for better or worse."

Following that brief banter, the vent shaft ended in the back of the lobby. Even without prying open the vent cover, I could spot several armed thugs patrolling the whole area.

"Wow, Garbanzo's definitely stepped up his game over the years," I commented. "Something tells me we'll need to be stealthy here, though."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Xavier replied. "Alright, back up guys."

Tequila and I crawled backwards a bit so he could have enough room to turn around, aiming his feet at the vent cover ahead of us as he switched his boots to cleat mode. I was expecting him to harshly kick the vent open, but instead he pressed his feet against it, allowing it to creak as slowly and quietly as possible before it popped off, the carpet below masking most of the resulting sound. Why, it wasn't even loud enough to alert the guard who was slowly walking right outside the hole in the wall.

Speaking of that guard, he was quickly knocked out as discretely as possible, no thanks to Xavier slipping out of the vent and switching his gloves to chloroform mode, before tightly pressing them over his face.

"Alright, guys. The coast is clear," he whispered into his earpiece, allowing Tequila and I to hear him clearly. "Just silently take out any guards you see, and then we can look around safely. The schematics show a surveillance room somewhere in this lobby, so if we can find that, maybe we can figure out where those crooks are cooped up."

"Roger that," I replied.

"Heh, well I guess I can also add sneaking into surveillance rooms to the list of things I fondly recall doing with my friends," Tequila joked quietly as I nodded.

---

Wasting no more time, we switched our own gloves to chloroform mode and snuck up on each guard we came across, laying out the fallen bodies of their coworkers as bait to lure them right where we wanted them. Occasionally I found myself having to use X-ray vision to spot thugs around corners. Once that was done, we each spread out in our admittedly brief search for the surveillance room, until one of us found it, that person being me.

"It's over here, guys," I said into my earpiece as my cohorts made their way to me.

"Good work, Jasper." Xavier slapped a hand onto my shoulder.

I opened the cracked door as we entered the rather cramped space, immediately noticing a dead body that had been lazily tossed into the back corner. Presumably, he was the benevolent guy who once occupied this room for a living. The blood on and around him was all dried out, suggesting he'd been killed quite some time ago.

"Gruesome." Tequila cringed. "Let's just see where he is, so we can get out of here as soon as possible, okay?"

"Er... refresh my memory, which assassins are still on the loose? Because they're all here right now, and we should make sure we're prepared to take on each one," I said, somewhat awkwardly.

"Hang on, I think I have it written down on my notepad app somewhere," Tequila took out her phone. "Aagh! Wrong app. ...Wait, what? Oh my God, I almost forgot about this!"

"Forgot about what?" Xavier asked.

"I managed to take a photo of Queen Cobra when one of you slammed her against the wall. Hah! How priceless is that?!" Tequila cackled, showing us the photo and zooming in on the ninja's face.

Queen Cobra's mask was off, her body spread-eagle against the wall. Her fully black eyes were widened and her teeth were gritted.

"Hee hee hee! I am so gonna caption this and post it online!" Tequila eagerly tapped on her smartphone screen. "'When your period starts in the middle of a pap smear!' Hahaha!"

"Ugh, how about we just check the cameras to answer your question, Jasper?" Xavier rolled his eyes as I nodded.

---

We proceeded to gaze upon the multitude of screen sections before us, before I spotted what we were looking for in one of the screens in the upper right. I pressed a button on the control panel to select it and have it take up the whole screen. It showed Garbanzo strutting around the hotel's dimly-lit penthouse, where the large dining table had been stocked with bottles of water and various refreshments. I could make out a few briefcases tucked away beneath the table, presumably containing the prize money.

By now, Garbanzo had ditched his overcoat but retained the rest of his previous outfit. He still wore the multitude of rings, but now they were worn directly on his fingers, which were no longer covered up by leather gloves. Also in the room was who appeared to be Cold Blood, The Drunken Bull, and Giant Moth. A fancy laptop was resting on the table, displaying a video-communication with Garfield Kramer.

"Welcome folks, to our first and hopefully last meeting of this type. As we are all aware, I have hired each and every one of you to kill off Jasper Collins and his sidekicks, and there's a whopping- Ohohohoho!" Garbanzo momentarily opened one of the briefcases, causing a mysterious golden light to shine upon his face. "...$90,000,000 riding on their deaths."

"Yeah yeah, tell us somethin' we don't know," Giant Moth spat, speaking in a distinctive Cajun dialect.

"Silence!" Garbanzo snapped. "Now I'm not sure if any of you know about this, but those annoying activists have already taken out most of you, and they completely blew my cover too!"

"Yeah, so?" Garfield butt in.

"So, I need the rest of you to step up your game, lest they take you out too!" Garbanzo replied, casually popping a shrimp puff into his mouth. "Alright, meeting's adjourned! Now get your asses out there and murder those fools! Take as much time as you need, though! I'll wait decades if I have to..."

With that, the other assassins left. Garfield simply disconnected from the video chat, while Giant Moth flew out the window, paying no heed to the shattered glass that resulted from his actions. Before long, a helicopter appeared, which Drunken Bull landed in after leaping through the hole in the window before it took off again. That left Cold Blood, who simply stood in the same spot he'd been in for the entire meeting.

"You heard me! Move it or lose it, bluey!" Garbanzo placed his hands on his hips.

"Not a chance. They're probably coming for you now, so why not wait for them to show up so I can kill 'em before anyone else?" Cold Blood spat.

"Well hey, can't fault you for thinking outside the box." Garbanzo shrugged his shoulders as he chuckled. "But if you're proven wrong, that's on you."

Cold Blood said nothing and proceeded to slowly pace around the penthouse, his skates forming small dents in the wooden floor with each step as he presumably waited for us to show up.

---

"Huh. Looks like ol' GG's starting to get serious," I commented.

"I'm just surprised that those notorious killers could sit comfortably in the same room with all that money on the line," Tequila said sardonically.

"And it's kind of a shame they could, because it would mean less work for us," Xavier replied. "Nonetheless, let's hurry up there before either of them can escape. Care to lead the way, Jas?"

"Of course," I replied confidently.