A Man of Honor.

Chapter 3: A Night at Junior's Club.

"When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality." ~ Al Capone.

Luckily I wasn't forced to use that gun anytime soon. A couple of my coworkers however weren't quite so lucky when they had their run-ins with the 24k Dragons. A least four other cabs got thrashed along with their drivers. I was asked a couple of times to work double shifts since some of the guys were in the hospital, O-Ushi certainly made sure that I got paid well for the trouble.

I was honestly lucky that those thugs just tried smashing up my cab. One guy had one of the dragons drive up with a motorcycle and threw a molotov cocktail through the open window. Lucky for him the bottle didn't break but the burning rag certainly left him with a few scars. After that O-Ushi made it very clear that we were supposed to keep the windows closed at all times because of that.

And it wasn't just O-Ushi getting flak from these guys either. Tonen too had some trouble with some guys trying to bust up his shop and tag the place with graffiti. I was at my apartment enjoying some miso soup Hana had given me when he called.

"Hey Jaune!" Tonen said to me. I didn't even know that he had my number. "I'm working late here at the shop and I think I saw some 24k boys driving by, you got that gun O-Ushi gave you?"

"Uh yeah," I told him, looking at it laying on the table in front of me.

"You been drinking?"

"No," I told him.

"Then get your ass over here! I need some extra muscle and they should know not to fuck with you!" He told me, "I'll make it worth your time, all you gotta do is stand around and look tough."

Tough? I thought. Since when did I look tough? I was the guy who wore a Pumpkin Pete sweatshirt. But if Tonen wanted me to be his muscle for the night then that's what I needed to do, besides it wasn't like I had any plans for the night. I hardly had a social life so I was probably going to watch TV and think about what was happening at Beacon.

"I'll be right there," I told him, sticking my food in the fridge and grabbing a jacket that didn't have a cartoon bunny on it.

"Hold on I'm sending a car." Tonen told me.

Sure enough after five minutes a car pulled up by the laundromat being driven by this guy Toshi. "You Jaune?" He asked me.

I nodded to him.

"Get in."

I climbed into the passenger side and he drove me to the shop. Tonen was waiting outside when we arrived. "Thank you for coming," he said, shaking my hand and passing both me and Toshi a pack of cigarettes.

"Just smoke and walk around the place with me for a couple of hours," Tonen explained to me, "my boys are putting the finishing touches on some nice cars, we'll roll them out when we're done and then drinks are on me."

We did just that, we walked around keeping an eye on everything occasionally stepping in to get some coffee. Toshi and Tonen both had guns under their jackets and one of his guys inside had a shotgun resting on a table.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" I said to Tonen as I lit what was probably my seventh cigarette of the night.

"Sure," he said as we scanned the sidewalk together, spotting an old van driving by that we kept an eye on until it rounded the corner.

"Why hasn't O-Ushi done anything about these punks causing her trouble?" I asked Tonen, releasing a breath of smoke. "I mean she has people, she has guns and if these guys used to work around here with her then why doesn't she just go and take care of them?"