The Hit List

Ah yes, this is a fantastic and striking performance. The way that she dances upon the piano, the crispness between the notes as she dashes around, giving a resounding effect to the musical piece. Damn kids these days are missing out on the wonderful world of classical piano, it's a shame that they'll never get to listen to this wonderful woman make strides in her professional piano career. At least I can enjoy her marvelous playing myself. Ah yes, I should go grab another cup of whiskey. Do I have anything else I want to do? Oh yea, I need to -

Knock Knock Knock

Oh damn it, who in the bloody blazes decides that it's a good time to barge into a lonely man's office on a late saturday evening? I mean my office is *officially open*, but even if I get a case to do, I ain't starting till monday. Grumbling, I get up anyways, stop the music playing from the dvd and drudgery walk over to the door. As I walk up, I notice 3 men in long trench coats and with hats tipped down to mask their faces. My common sense superpowers are telling me that this these men aren't here to be messed around with.

      Fuck.

“Ah, come in Gentlemen! I am quite sorry to not have much for accommodations for you 3 as I never have had 3 members come into my humble office at once. Would you like to have anything to drink?”

“Ah no no no no no, Mr. Private Investigator. We'll just have water.”

At least the damn bastards won't be drinking from my beloved alcohol cabinet. Every proper private investigator has a proper alcohol cabinet. Just don't tell that to the kids. I gather 4 cups and pour out water into each one, then I return back to my desk where the 3 men are, 1 sitting down in the visiting seat and the other 2 men standing behind him facing the door. See normally, I would assume that these men are mafia or some part of the gang, but mafia gangsters or whatever the fuck the damn kids call themselves these days would never refuse free alcohol so they either must be the cops or some new kind of breed that I don't even know about. This was going to get good. I quickly check to see if my 1911 colt with a double action trigger was properly holstered on my hip.

      Yup, it’s still there.

“Alright gentlemen, here are your drinks, courtesy of the house. What can I do for you on this dark, cold, gloomy saturday night?”

“Mr xkcd, we are looking to enlist your services for a case of ours.”

“that part I ascertained already, sire. That reminds me, I forgot to greet you. What should I call you as I see you're the leader of this trio?

“You can refer to me as mr.Edixope. Here are 2 of my most trusted partners, mr. cap2 and mr. Ysuolaej. We're part of an organization of which you may know as TL. We do know of one of your cases that you have done in the past, relating to a certain madame game?”

Ah fuck, these guys really are mafia. I fucking hate working with mafia. They go around, pretending to be benevolent protectors of the local community, while swindling and destroying those who dare to challenge their brutal regime. GeckoXp can probably write a whole diatribe rivaling that of the Odyssey (fantastic work of literature might I add, kids should really be reading that kind of works rather than do stupid shit they do on their phones) of his clashes with the TL mafia. That's for another time. Who else would know about that previous investigation that the madame contacted me for. I remember that quite well, having to investigate the one they call Scan. But that's must not be why they are here, they must have something that they cannot do.

      Dirty wet work of course.

Do I look like a fucking hitman to these scummy bastards who unfeatured my favorite snipealot entertainment from primetime tv in favor of what I quote as “direct access entertainment”? Good Lord, I swear if I could, I would charge into their headquarters and starting giving them a hell of a beating. Don't even get me started on their recent entrance into this shaddy game called Heroes of the storm. I'm 100% positive from my personal investigations on my free time that they're using this game to launder their dirty esports money that they make from their brothels, their human/elephant smuggling business and their VIP clubs. At least choose a legitimate game like CS:GO so I can at least maintain some semblance of respect for these goons.

      Disgusting.

“Ah yes, Mr. Edixope. I am quite surprised that you gentlemen know about the business that the madame and I conducted last year. May I ask how did you come about to discover this”

“You are required by law to report all client names and official investigation requests of these clients at the end of this year”.

True, true, true. Not even a poor private investigator like me can escape the law on this matter. Madame game never really did give me her real name, so I had to make it up on the spot, but for these thugs to backtrack it, they are more than they look.

“You got me. Now that we are acquainted with each other, let's talk business. Of what do you require my services for?”

“Mr. Xkcd, this is a tricky case. We have a list of names, a list of people that we want info about, no matter what kind of info as long as it can help us lead to them. The list of names are inside of this package. With each name are details about them that we have on them so far. We need your expertise to find them, track them down, and report back to us. This will take you a very very long time as some of the name on the list are quite elusive, but we are confident that you can take this on.”

Great, another tough job. Why can't I get the easy jobs that just require facebooking a random person and go from there? That kind of work is boring but is easy to do. to add on top of that, It's been awhile since I have been in the field.

“Interesting proposal, gentleman. Now, since I am a PI, I have the freedom to decline or take this on. Now, 1st question: why are you coming to me when your organization has the manpower and resources to do this yourself? 2Nd question: when I find them, what will you do to them?”

They are mumbling amongst themselves about the 2 questions I ask with this contract or job or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I thought I would retire after the madame case but it turned out I hate retirement; I'd rather listen to good classical music, drink my whiskey, and write some shitty stories and still have the option to do some PI work. It seems that they finally come to a conclusion about this and the 2 sidekicks straighten up in the back while the head henchman turns back to me.

“ We would do it ourselves if we knew how to. These men/women on the list are extremely elusive and any attempts we have made to get close to them failed. We need a 3rd party to do for us.”

“And the answer to my 2nd question?”

“We're not asking you to collaborate in a hit. These men have double crossed us and we want them to fix what they have messed up. We would rather not go into the details of that, but we assure you that you will be safe from the law and from us.”

“Do you even know who are the people on this list?”

“No”

“Then how do you even know that you couldn’t find them.”

“We spoke to our section 13 on this matter, they got nothing so far”

So these guys are not the low tier nobodies in TL. Let’s take advantage of that

“Then in the event that me or my partner are on this list, Do I have your word that me nor my partner will be targeted as a result of this investigation? I'd rather not die early due to some slight oversight that I may not have any control over.”

“You have my word, held to my mother's grave”

“My condolences for your mother. Gentlemen, I will accept this case. Now we must talk about the payment for this. Since you're requesting a tough job for me and my partner, plus I will have to use the services of my associates in this business, this can be quite expensive.”

I don't even know why I bother asking for payment. I got enough in the bank for a lifetime, even if I were to retire right now. Must be habit.
Mr Exidope motions for Mr cap2 to hand over 2 brown packages.

      I love getting paid in cash.

“This is the down payment. Each name you track down, you will receive another payment. This continues until you track down all names on the list. The 2nd package is the list of names that you will track down. If you need to contact us, visit the local news agency on Abbey Street and carry a blue horse toy with you when you enter the front door.”

And as soon as Mr. Exidope finished talking, he got up, motioned for his 2 goons that it was time to leave and just as quickly as they came in, they are gone. I'm just sitting here with 2 brown package that I didn't even bother to open yet. Fuck it, let's open it. I start to peel at the seal; once it opened, I peek inside in the dim light of my office and I see freshly bundled stacks of crisp $100 bills. Ok, so I was right about them using HOTS to launder money, and while I got my beef with the TL mafia, cash is still green.

I walk up to my front door of my little office, switch out the signs so that it says “closed” and walk back to my office chair of which I collapse into. I now start to open the 2nd package and out falls a small stack of papers, stapled together by a flimsy stapler clip. I already start to glance down the list, looking for anything that I might already know:

2: L_Master: known for dodging managerial duties of the D-C ranks team leagues and for crappy leadership of these leagues. Rumored to just run all day, getting high of the atmosphere like they’re at a rave.

3: Kiante: loud and rowdy australian, did win a grudge match then dissappeared

5: GGZerg: swindler, created a korean clan - foreigner program to recruit foreigners into korean clans, never did make that project work and left it to die.

6: Ewya: known swindler, promised to deliver a $40,000 foreign starleague backed by the sales of his hockey cards

11: Cpt Beefy: instigates arguments and fights on TL threads, takes everything at 100% face value, most likely a small irish person who is 300 lbs+ and has freckles

14: MVP: big mouthed 15 year old indian-canadian. Talked a whole lot of shit but never was able to back it up. Disappeared mysteriously 1 day.

15:Jaevlaterran: Leader of the SWBI. Creator and leader of the STL 1. promises were made for STL 2 but still nothing occurred yet. went missing after conclusion of STL 1. Quite lethal with a baseball bat

God damn, these kind of people are on the list. Fuck, this is gonna take a while. Let's just keep scrolling down and see what catches my eye.

21:MCA: Banned from TL, creator of MCA launcher. Known for being the biggest troll Poland has ever gave birth to, kurwa!

24: Ninazerg: BW personality. known to spit hot fire and write thuggish strategy reports. Currently missing as reported by TL.

28: Bisudagger: known Bisu fanboy. Lurks BW threads until some Bisu related content comes up. Only posts in TL threads to praise Bisu like he is his fuckboy or something.

30: Birdie: Australian scammer, promised to deliver a ICCup replacement with auto match-making. Not a single piece of evidence of progress was delivered from him. Disappeared to dodge the TL loan sharks.

32: Hyrule: a nobody who tried to bust his way into being a herald of BW streams while not doing anything to actually support his position. Mastermind of the takedown of the snipealot stream's featurement.

Ok, yea I got some beef with these guys too. Never thought I would live to see the day where I would agree with any mafia's stance.

34: GeckoXp: drunk German who likes to fight the TL mods. Suspected to be part of an underground movement to “bring the political correctness out of TL”

So my partner did make the list. Did I make the list? I need to find myself to confirm this.

35: Amazingxkcd: Snipealot staff member, used to do LR posting but stopped due to laziness. Known for camping the CS:GO thread to complain about why TL doesn't pick up CS:GO

So I did make the list. Well then, at least I have 2 witnesses and Mr. Exidope's word on this matter. If there's one thing that matters in this criminal world, it's a man's honor on the promises he make. That kind of thing has saved my life multiple times in the past.

Well, time to go fetch my partner, Mr. GeckoXp. It is a saturday night so he's probably right now drunk at some brothel, harrassing the poor prostiute about the glory days of bw.de and how he was part of the grand ol golden age in his thick german accent. Poor girl, she never did anything wrong to warrant this kind of torture. But never the less, we got a job to do. I quickly clean up the office, put my trench coat and my hat, lock the office up, and step outside into the dark, bitter night, Many thoughts are now clouding my mind about this case. Where to start, what leads I have, who to start with, why even track them down? At least these thoughts will occupy me for my trek downtown to find Gecko.


Man, it is quite cold night.