Another set of hits had gone up on Grin-07 and members of The Grin Gang. The total figure had started to creep somewhere around 600 million dollars. A total waste. As a man from humble origins, to see money burned so flippantly filled Zapata with an enormous sense of dismay. Something had to be done. Standing in the street, next to a row of large crosses onto which hung several members of The Grin Gang, he began to speak. 

"Anti-Grin hitlisters, we have played this game of cat and mouse for weeks now. You, with your endless supply of cash. Us, with our rank and power and HQs and strong guns, looking cast in stone like the labors of Hercules. The hits go up, we buy them off, ad nauseum. It has become clear to us a blood tribute is necessary in order to quench your diabolical desires. I can see you now, chic hooded black robes doing wonders for your figures, chanting hexes and curses against the boss of Chicago from the damp adult movie theatre one of your order manages. 

We recognize the power emanating from your sticky hideout, and so it is with your appeasement in mind that I introduce The Grin Gang Sacrifice Lottery. 

By the end of this lottery, a cross will be tied to the back of one member of The Grin Gang and they will be marched out of town, where you may capture them and do whatever depraved things your ruthless and cunning minds can come up with. That is my promise to you. 

Now, at first, it seems a given that Elodin is the natural choice. He is extremely insolent and spends most of his days sifting through trash, most of which ends up in his mouth. You may have noticed this, as you put a 15 million dollar hit on him just yesterday. However, you cannot always take the easy option. That fruit is so low-hanging, molemen are wondering what rabid bounty just crashed through their ceiling. You have to be fair. 

Who are the other candidates?

Well, we have Hawk of course. Big beard, very hairy, a bit surly. I think you'd be very happy with him. He's got a bad back, so his escape mobility is minimal. The kind of great mind who thought 'living in his car' was an option with a motorcycle. If all else fails, his emergence from multi-day slumbers can help you predict 6 more weeks of winter. Plus, he runs an OC like Kirsty makes friends: with little success.

And who better to lead into than Kirsty herself? A timid, inquisitive interviewer and journalist, and renowned friend of JimmyTheWeed. She's got a mouth like a field howitzer; you may nail yourself to a cross after an hour in her company. Do you know what men do to each other in prison? You will now. 

What about Sao- or Zoom? Exceptional young gentlemen, both of whom would be a huge loss for our gang, which I'm sure is the kind of expression that gets your engine running. Woof. Do you want a couple more? 'Fat, stupid Grin'? 'Grin's fat, stupid funeral'? I know that last one did it for you. Clean yourself up. With TwoKnucklesDeep by your side, you wouldn't even have to lift a finger for one of those wet towels lying around the lair in abundance. Just make sure it's unused. 

I would put Lucifer-Morningstar on the table but the guy is essentially invincible. Our man has been caught in wars, scams, calamities; they say city hall put his head on a spike and he was still at home sucking spaghetti down by supper time. How about WesWatson? Full disclosure, he could put my head between his bicep and forearm and squish it like a tomato, so if you want to come here and claim him, that's your prerogative. 

Now, of course, we can't exclude the big man - Grin-07. He's the one you want, I know. But is he worth it? He recruited a man named Nipples just last week. Wouldn't you rather take me, Zapata? I don't wish you would, but wouldn't you rather? I've got the least-yellowest teeth in all of Chicago. This operation falls to pieces without its trusted deputy. I am the one who straps the velcro in the morning. Last winter, Grin has smallpox and is being such a baby, just crying about it, and the whole time I've got bigpox and I'm being very brave. Make the smart choice.

The truth is, we've got a gang full of healthy, bleating goats waiting to be led into the lion's den. Who's it going to be? KevinChiles?! At the very least it'll be one less hit to buy off when you do this again in 3 days.

The lottery will begin soon. I think, first, these guys want to yell for a while from where they're hanging."

Zapata, I applaud your efforts, and I feel that it is only right that I offer myself up for the Lottery. Although during my short time with Grin, and my Father's time there we were never subjected to the petty vindictiveness of being hit listed (If you exclude the wonderful hit listing that was most definitely not SamAdams but done on his behalf when my father started his Newspaper in challenge to the plethora of Snoozepapers that were available), I do serve one of Grin's Captains as his Left Hand Man. Therefore as a point of honour and in deference to the leader of the great city of Chicago, I offer myself in sacrifice for your lottery. I may not be as juicy a choice as Sao- or as bearded as Hawk, but I am as furry as Elodin, and at least 200 times better smelling. 

Zapata - thanks for this, and, of course, I'd cheerfully lay my life down for Chicago.

But what these anonymous hit-listers don't realise is that if they just left us alone, we would surely get back to hating each other, fighting, and ultimately killing each other.  The only thing holding the smouldering cauldron of resentment and bitterness that is Chicago together at the moment is the fact that we face a common, faceless enemy.

I am not afraid of dying.  I'll be dead, and I'll have a son, or a daughter, or maybe some of those ones with both, and they'll be proud and happy.

For my part, I find being a CL extremely hard work, and I can no longer get the validation that I require from constant interaction on the Streets.  I'm not even in the top 5 most active people on the Streets.  Can you imagine the indignity?  It's awful, and not the arousing type of indignity that led Big Andy behind the sheet with Big Ape.  So when I saw that someone disliked me enough to spend $15M on letting me know, I got hot and bothered, and had to head back to my HQ and "beat off" - I was that excited.  Imagines of bars and men and sexual alchemists creating lubricant from very limited resources flooded into my head.  I thought of the terrible beauty of men like Big Ape as they morphed from stridently heterosexual men into purveyors and consumers of Greco-Roman purity.  I thought of that incredible jolt of excitement as a hairy chest rests on a man's back, and muscular, well developed arms engulf another man in an embrace that is not a hug, but that is comforting.

And then I am done.  And then I can get back to the business of running the joint third biggest HQ in The Loop, Chicago.

Thank you Master_Splinter, feel free to nail yourself to a cross right next to Vincent_Kray over there. There is room aplenty for willing participants in the lottery. I'm sure our enemy in the shadows would not turn down a crack at the resident tabloid editor. In their service, you may even be of use drafting press releases for the next round of hits posted against our Windy City heroes, if they can stomach the inevitable tangents about your experiences spying on Grin in the urinals. 

Kirsty does make a very prescient point in that, if not distracted by a faceless foe, there is little doubt the ruthless cannibalism inherent to a group as jealous and bickering as ours would allow our Ourobrous to continue unopposed and lead to an imminent implosion in our ranks. It's a small wonder we still tolerate Elodin at all, his constant disappointment to us ignored by the neck-turning of constant, million-dollar peril. My head has been so occupied by the finances of funding hundreds of millions in buyouts that I often find myself waking up from terrible nightmares about a homeless person sneaking his way into our upper structure wondering if any of it really happened at all. 

Does being a friend of mine scare you, Hawk?

Hawk, it is obvious that you did not read The Sewer Pipe - Issue 2 otherwise that you would know that Elodin's failure at organising Crimes pales into insignificance compare to the legendary failures of Zapata who is assure infamy for all time and whose personal failure amounts to almost two and a half thousand OCs to date. Most people would of course be horrified by this level of ineptitude, but Zapata revels in it.

I succeed at OCs. My team fails at OCs. And as the famous expression goes, there is no I in team, therefore I am absolved of all responsibility. 

Your inability to understand these basic concepts is making one hell of a good argument for a weighted lottery. 

Official Preliminary Output From MobGov Survey 1

Future Question Suggestion - Why is Grin-07 the king of OC failures?

Probable Question Suggestion - Who Is At Fault For Chicago OC Failure?

Mister Zapata, your lack of thinking outside the box is perhaps why you fail so often. Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. A wise man once said there is no I in team, but there is a ME if you look hard enough. However, I have come to learn that there is also an I in TEAM after all, if you know where to look. 

Remember, Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else. You are the leader, the planner, and the organiser, ultimately it is on you that the weight of failure must fall.

This is a wonderful idea, Zapata. It seems strange to say that to you and mean it, but this attempt to appease the crow-mask-wearing lamelords who piss away their money on futile hits is probably some of your best work. Granted, we might lose a Hawk or a Sao-, maybe if we are lucky only just an Elodin, but the pound of flesh will have been exacted.

Alas, it has been 36 hours and none of our offerings have yet caught the eye of the avian coven so I am hoping to sweeten the pot a little. Nipper is only small, I'm sure we can get some nails through her kimono and have her up on the next cross besides Nipples. Two Nips for the price of one. Will that do it? Will that appease your heathen deity or must he drown in a sea of wasted dollars for contracts nobody is going to collect? 

Supply and demand, chief, we need to put some success in their bubbling cauldrons. I'm not sure how they'll be able to justify all of this expenditure without some results to show for it. My man at the FBN shows up on a weekly basis to inform me of another hit on my head and it fills me with an enormous sadness to envision the performance reviews these guys are going to face when their guru of anonymous inconvenience sits them down for a check up. The least we can do is throw them a WesWatson. His life-coaching could do wonders over there. 

the old bum had finally come around from her overdose of las vegas morphine. through the ringing in her ears she picked up a few words being talked about.

Lottery eh, could you spare a bum a couple a tickets? old Maggy fancys gettin herself a bed to sleep on and a younin to sleep with, HA!

she cackles before beginning to cough up her lungs, a chartreuse flem with red lining is wiped onto her side coat.

Maggy, I'm afraid this lottery is only for the brooding gang of lurkers who have been putting hits on us on a weekly basis, not for scraggly old hags such as yourself, with all due respect of course. I am curious though, given your strong wiccan & wiccan-associate vibes, if you may have run into these guys at a weird convention or seance or something similarly old timey and superstitious. The last rumour I heard they were engaging in - similar to when a conservative parent sends their child to 'pray the gay away' - some ritual ceremony to 'jinx the Grin back in the bin'. 

Another day, another 40 million dollar hit on the boss; a cryptic reason note slid into the mailbox, its edges full of dried snot & cheese fingermarks, the paper noticeably damp from a soaking of angry and frustrated tears. While the Grin Gang ruled mightily over Chicago like the guardians of Olympus, the m'hitlisters were squeezing sewer water out of the only pair of three-quarter denim shorts in their wardrobe that made them feel cool enough to make life's bleak realities slightly more tolerable. '

'What is it going to take to make them feel accomplished?', Zapata thought to himself, 'I may have to offer someone a bit meatier than a KevinChiles'. 

Elodin was as tempting a solution as ever but throwing rabies into that incognito gaggle of sadness and delusion struck him as a dangerous tactic.