Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Chapter 919 My Honest Offer

The De Leon family were a mix of Gearheads and/or Gymrats, and the single digits among us—Jesus and Quinn—were ready to commit bloody murder for Jonathan basically murdering Dave's baby. And as I recently discovered, it was one of the rarer vehicles, a 1st Generation Toyota MR2 which was a 2-seater, mid-lined engine sports car.

Its later generations were also rare but like my old professor's adventure, the 1st Generations are much, much rarer.

Cutting it in half, and throwing out the engine that Quinn probably worked on was a death sentence.

In any case, it was one of the few times I saw Jesus and Quinn emotional because once they saw the car/sofa looking like the most hideous furniture in the father and daughter's private room, they just knelt on the flooring and started to cry while cursing Jonathan's actions.

"WHERE DID YOU THROW IT AWAY?!"

"W-What do you mean?"

"T-THE ENGINE, DUMBASS! WHERE DID YOU DISPOSE OF IT?!"

"I-I don't know! Outside? I-It's been a fucking while so I'm not sure if it'll still work b-because it was probably rained on and shit—I even remember shooting at it when we threw it out—"

"Y-YOUUU!"

It was a nigh-impossible feat to stop Quinn when she was like this but if we consider the technical process of ownership, Jonathan did nothing wrong. He was the current owner of Dave's vehicle at that point so even if what he did was basically treason, he was well in his rights to do so.

After a few moments, the two just huffed and shook their head as they went back to the group while I was still with Jonathan and Allie. The guy never felt so bad for his actions while his daughter kept rubbing his back to comfort him.

"It's okay, Daddy! You did nothing wrong, right?" Allie said as she turned to me.

I nodded, "Technically speaking… Yeah… But it's like finding a fighter such as Kuzma and making him work as a janitor…"

Jonathan was looking down as he kept shaking his head, "I should've known, alright?! It looked really old and dented when it came here, even though it's Dave's car, I thought he parted with it due to its condition! I fucked up real~ bad."

I dryly chuckled as I waved him off, "Listen. They'll be probably mad for a good while—no, a long while but they'll get over it. It'll be great if you find the same thing out there in the wild but your chances are slim."

"..."

"But… Can we move it a bit?"

"W-Why?"

"I just needed to take some pictures—"

"C-C'mon, man! It's bad enough that I did this, it'll be a whole other thing if Dave saw the pictures!"

I chuckled, "It's not for blackmail or proof, don't worry. Let's just say that if worse comes to worst, Dave would need to get on with a fabricated body. It's just that in this vehicle, the selling point—I don't even know if it's the right word—is the engine being in the center of the vehicle, so it'll be more difficult if we try to make a replica. I probably have pictures of this MR2 back home but I need to see what minuscule additions Dave did with the exterior."

"What? You can make an—"

"Not exactly. I'm only good with copying the outside, not the inside. But yeah, the De Leon family has the perfect place to make anything from scratch as long as they have the blueprints for it."

Jonathan let out a sigh of relief, "That's… That turned out better than expected… You literally saved my life—"

My ears suddenly perked up, "What did you just say?"

He suddenly had a realization and tried to play dumb, "U-Umm… I said it t-turned out better than e-expected?"

"You said that too but what came after that? Hmm?"

Allie started chuckling from behind him, "Oh~ You're fucked, Daddy! You shouldn't have said that!"

Jonathan just let out a heavy sigh as he dryly chuckled, "FUCK! D-Does that mean w-we're even—"

"No. I'll still hold up the deal we had earlier but you owe just about now. You're pretty much everyone else from the De Leon Family because of my little trick so, you're in the same boat as them."

"Right… I don't mind owing you for some reason but all I'll ask is some understanding. This place is not like Cuervo's or Mauro's but we could hold on just fine."

"Don't worry, I won't ask something dangerous of you but you should start networking if you don't mind working with another person. Let me tell you, it's kinda rare to see an independent place such as this that doesn't seem to be having problems despite the different visitors. You can either work with the De Leon Family to turn this place into an outpost or move over to Cuervo Heights and be one of Mr. Cuervo's hosts. You'll do great with either, honestly…"

Jonathan scratched the back of his head, "I… I don't know about that… Working under—"

"I meant no offense but there's this question that goes like this: Would you rather be the head of a chicken—pun(?) intended—or the tail of a dragon? In your case, you can probably move up with your abilities but I'm not explicitly telling you to throw everything that you've worked hard for."

He let out another sigh, "How about joining you? As you already know, my relationship with both families is a little strained, and since you're a new head, this place could be the tail of a dragon, no? Since you have that cool tattoo over there…"

I nodded a few times, "You see, I just recently formed a group to stay inside Cuervo Heights and do any kind of work to increase our reputation or whatever, but with that, you'd probably have a better start than anyone else trying to move up in that cartel ladder, and he'd be more convinced to forgive you if you work under me. I'm gonna be honest with you and say that I won't be in that place as much as I would've liked so if you prove to that group that you can lead, the seat's all yours."

"T-That's really tempting… But no offense, w-working under someone is a little… you know—"

I chuckled as I shrugged my shoulders, "Then no harm, no foul. I just had an idea and it didn't work for both parties so that's that. Besides, we've barely known each other and no offense, it's a huge risk for me to ask a random person to lead my group over at Mr. Cuervo's place. And at the same time, it's also a very huge risk for you to trust on someone that recently popped into your life…"

"That's true—"

Allie cut in, "But Daddy! Don't you think that he's leagues away from the people you tried to work with? All of them are dum-dums and he's the only decent one! Do you remember that guy who tried to sell magic rocks—"

"Wut—"

"A-Allie! T-That was years ago! It was a bad decision, I admit—"

"How about the one where we almost lost all of our savings because he said that the money we'll put up will double overnight?"

"That's—"

"And the auntie who's selling love potions—"

"Ah—"

"And the one who told you he'd sell his fighting cock but turns out it was a mother hen—"

"S-Stop—"

"And these dozens of fighting chickens but you'd have to wait a while because they haven't hatched—"

"A-Allie! T-That's enough! We get it— I get it, I made a lot of bad decisions, alright?! B-But you can't mistake me now for not having experience! Those times were just whetstones for me so I'd be this sharp businessman/entertainer that'll rock the world someday! Don't keep telling my faults without telling my achievements too! That's just bad marketing!"

Allie gave me a look as she turned to Jonathan with a bright smile, "Alright, Daddy! If you say so~"

"T-Thanks…"

'These two…'

In any case, since Kuzma needed to take care of a few things before we drove away, the three of us talked for a bit more despite the noise and I did leave him the additional bonuses of our earlier deal plus a long-range radio so I could drop by and check on them from time to time.

I wouldn't take a second look at this place if I'm being totally honest but Jesus proved to me that knowing a lot of people—whether they'd be a good investment or not—could sometimes hit the jackpot once in a while, and it was a bad way to look at or judge people based on what they could put on the table.

But yeah, as small as this place was compared to the other places we've been in, it was the perfect size for the number of soldiers he had to properly protect and run it without something bad going on. I didn't even notice at first that some of them were even strapped with automatic rifles and just above were a few mounted machine guns that were ready to bore holes in anything that wanted to disturb the peace.

'He did have the means to save Kuzma's life with this firepower…'

However, I soon learned the reason they were armed to the teeth was also Kuzma's doing because he was tasked with taking down DDR Camps that had gone AWOL and he had succeeded on a majority of them around this area except for the one he hit a snag.

"We can't just leave those guns lying around, can we?" Jonathan said with a smug smile.