Max looked around the table as the final signatures to the truce were signed, and the rival Mafia groups prepared to put their schemes in place to make themselves filthy rich without breaking the rules of the agreement or disturbing the public peace.
That started with a broadcast apology from the leaders of both groups that would play on the screens in the public areas around them, apologizing for letting their rivalry get out of hand and making the lives of those around them less pleasant.
They promised to turn over a new leaf, and Max didn't object as they slipped in a short sales pitch for their cornerstone businesses at the end.
With that solved, the locals started to come out of their homes to see what the strip would be like without all the noise, and the shopkeepers raced to get everything cleaned and polished to make the best possible impression.
There were cleaning bots that came by and picked up trash in the streets, but the shopkeepers still tidied up and wiped down the trim around their windows with a bit of gloss polish to make the storefronts shine or adjusting the lighting levels to make the storefronts look more inviting.
Some shops would be changing over the next few days as they worked out the kinks and adjusted to each other's strategies, but it was enough that Max had hope for them.
The next item on his list was a possible illegal fight ring since many people had seen bloodied young men come out of a back alley, but there was no reported violent crime in the area. Even if most of them didn't want to talk about it, at least one busybody neighbour would have reported if there were any muggers hiding that close to their new business.
The other people in the transit pod that Max caught all looked shocked to see the Commander in such common surroundings, so Max did his best to put on the charm.
"How are you getting settled in? Do you like the new apartment?" Max asked a small Valkia girl.
"It's amazing. Dad wouldn't agree to get one in the Aviary, but we're on the tenth floor of that one over there, and we have a balcony, so I can fly straight from my room to the school down the road. My class is on the top floor, so when I start school next semester, I can practically glide straight out of bed and into my seat." She replied excitedly.
Her father frowned at her assessment of the situation, and his thoughts said that under no circumstances was she to be flying down the road in morning traffic.
"You will want to wake up early for a few days and check how busy the sky is first. School starts right around shift change, so a lot more transit pods and taxis will be flying about, not to mention all of the other flyers who want a quick route to school." Max reminded her.
"Oh, good point. There are other Valkia in my building and a few Harpia as well. They will all want to fly to school instead of walking down the road. I should talk to them, and we can all fly together."
Max shrugged at the parents, and the father let out a long-suffering sigh.
"I don't know how it happened, but we were blessed with a real daredevil. It's like dodging traffic is in her blood. If I didn't know better, I would think that she planned to become a traffic cop and not follow her mother into forensic accounting." The older Valkia informed Max.
Just the words 'forensic accounting' was enough to make the girl scrunch up her nose in distaste, and Max didn't have the heart to tell the man just exactly how low the chances that his daughter would actually follow through on her parents' chosen career path were. But she didn't want to be a traffic cop, at least not at age nine. No, she wanted to be an aerial circus performer, doing beautiful ballet shows in the sky with streamers and holographic lighting.
In her thoughts, it looked amazing, and Max set an alert in his watch to have it inform him if any such activities were scheduled aboard Absolution. If there weren't, he would make a point of finding a group and bringing them here for a tour.
"This is my stop. It was lovely to meet you all. Don't forget to forward any suggestions on amenities or other activities that you would like to see Terminus Trading Company bring to the cities of Absolution." Max told them as he waved goodbye.
That was going to get two definite complaints about there not being a bylaw to prevent children from flying through aerial traffic lanes and one request for a circus, but all feedback was valuable feedback.
Max followed the pin that he had set to the alleyway where the bloodied young men had been coming from and used a scanner to follow the scattered blood drops back to a rear entrance to what the business license identified as an arcade.
That wasn't what he expected, but his override let him through any door on the ship if he wanted, so Max simply walked in to see what was up. He had an energy barrier active, so even if he got shot, it wouldn't be a big deal.
Well, as long as they didn't have a plasma cannon that the scanners didn't detect.
The door led into a back room of the arcade, but not a storage room. There were machines here, mostly VR pods, but a few strange simulators caught Max's eye. He hadn't seen anything like them before, and they were labelled as running the newest craze video game, with the flying courses and the intense combat.
There was a player in all of them at the moment, despite the fact that most arcades would be slow around dinnertime, so Max just waited and watched the screens. They weren't doing too bad, but they were at less than fifteen percent of the high scores for the stages set by Nico, Huntress Khan and the Valkia Envoy.
The game flashed a death, and the door to the pod swung open, allowing a bloodied and staggering Valkia to stagger out. Max caught him before he could fall and mentally activated the First Aid scanner built into the room.
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶