Downtown Automobiles

The Downtown Automobile showroom: Spacious, well lit and showcasing several cars from the basic models right up to the latest in designer luxury.

The showroom is staffed with well-dressed gentlemen, as knowledgeable as they need to be on the vehicles for sale, and more knowledgeable than most on the best way to fiddle the official sales ledgers to suit the business' needs.

There is always a representative available to discuss sales with a client, in comfortable and more importantly, confidential, "Sales Offices", that line the back wall of the showroom.

It was a well-kept open secret to those in the the know, that this wasn't your average car showroom. It was a front for moving money and occasionally, merchandise.

For a fee you could purchase any of the cars offered and have them shipped to the city of your choosing. The fee would cover the car, the cost of shipping it and any other merchandise required, in its trunk, with a little extra going towards the business for their swift service and discretion.

The showroom managed to avoid unwanted attention from the local authorities on account of the Mayor and Chief of Police being two of the biggest clients of the services offered. A few kickbacks to the Mayor and a few donations to local fundraising events ensured a good, clean and honest reputation for the business.

As you enter the showroom, you're greeted by a smart and friendly gentleman, ready to publicly sell you on the highlights of the cars offered, before walking you back to one of the private rooms so you can discuss the real deal.

Mr. Edward Bren was in a meeting in the main office of the Downtown Automobiles Showroom. He was discussing the monthly takings and the discussion was good.

He took a stash of cash, held tightly with a rubber band, and handed it to the manager.

"You've been doing an excellent job here of late. Profit is through the roof and we can toss a little more out in the way of charity this month. There's a new school opening up, they're looking for donations for a few classroom extras and this" Ed paused as he picked up another stack of notes and waved it... "This helps keep us square with the local authorities, when we're just so damned helpful and loved by the community."

The manager, known as "Mr. Smith" on the showroom's letterheads, nodded his agreement as he took his cut and placed it into the business safe.

"Ok then, Smith. I'd like you to make sure the other employees get a cut of this month's bonus for their hard work. I believe we've discussed all we need to discuss on the accounts front."

Standing up and extending his right hand, Ed flashed a grin as "Mr. Smith" shook hands with him.

"I'll be back within a few days to check in on things Smithy boy. You have yourself a great night, take the wife out somewhere nice, you've got the money to spoil her a bit."

"I'd actually planned on that already" Smith said. As he walked Ed towards the door he continued on,  "booked us in to a nice new Italian place just around the corner from here, she's out shopping for a new dress right now." Smith shook his head and smiled at Ed as he said the last.

"Well that's just dandy, she deserves it. I will see you in a few days, Smith, keep on doing what you do"

Ed exited the office and headed out through the main showroom, he stopped to retrieve a piece of paper from the floor, dropped by a rather beautiful female customer. Offering the lady her dropped item, Ed flashed her a charming smile, and held her hand just a little longer than was necessary when handing the item over. The woman smiled shyly at him and blushed. Tipping his hat to the lady, his smile became a huge, cheeky looking grin and he winked at her as he turned towards the exit, with that Edward Bren continued on his way.

The middle of the showroom floor suddenly has bits of glass fall onto it, follow very quickly by Bender. He picks himself up, dusts himself down, takes out a cigar, casually and lights it.

"I certainly wasn't eyeballing these fine motor vehicles and deciding how many of them I'm going to steal and which order. You've got no evidence, chump, so cram it,already!"

Bender realised he was talking to himself and no one was actually accusing him of anything. It turns out Mr. Smith and the other staff members had already been warned about Bender and his penchant for stealing luxury items.

"Ahh, Mr. Bender. we've been expecting.." "That's señor Bender to you, meat bag!" He interupted, followed by an arrogant puff of cigar smoke to Mr. Smith's face.

Moments later a well dressed show room assistant approaches Bender holding a silver tray with a $10,000 cigar and a bottle of Maltese Liquor

"HOAAH!" Bender gasps in disbelief

"Compliments of the manager Mr. Bender, for NOT stealing our cars"

Bender reconsiders allowing these people to build up their profits and getting some even more expensive cars, BEFORE he steals them.

"Fine, I'll go. There's nothing but crap here that's not even worth taking" He says, sounding annoyed, to hide his excitement for the gifts "But you better not take forever getting something worth stealing or I'll make sure to give you a bad review in the local papers!"

With that Bender exits, planning where and when would be the most perfect time to become completely wasted on maltese liquor and where the best place to light the stinking $10,000 cigar was.

With no warning at all, simply because he didn't last time... Bender crashes in through the front window. Runs over to a car, uses one of his utility fingers to start the engine of a high-end Sports car steers towards a window he didn't break entering, and exits through it. As he swerves to miss an on coming truck he raises his fist and yells at the driver:

"hey! I'm being an inconsiderate jerk over here, if you don't mind! Sheesh!" He then turns his fist towards the showroom, raises his middle digit and yells as he speeds off "Later, losers!" Completely ignoring the fact that minimal amounts of petrol were kept in these show room cars, just to let folks hear the sound of the engine, only. As soon as he pushed the pedal to metal the car shuddered and stalled. Complaining under his breath about it, Bender jumped out of the car jogged to the back of it and using 1 of his extendo-matic arms to steer began pushing the car away down the road.

Bender had had fun playing around on the west coast. Setting up casinos and blackjack with hookers as well as another branch of his famous "Chumps 'R' Us"

After coming back to check his business around detroit, he noticed he hadn't had ANY customers. Nor, it seemed, had anyone else. Most likely just to the general laziness of the local mobsters and their inability to actually conduct business that didn't involve silently shooting at the range or silently shooting at comatose patients in their beds.

Once Bender had chewed out his employee who he felt hadn't been doing enough to gain business for him, Bender looked over to the Downtown Car Automobiles front. It seemed it had been abandoned. He thought maybe stealing one of their cars had put the owner off the idea of continuing business there, but that couldn't be it as the show room still had cars in it. The windows hadn't been fixed, the glass not swept. The criminals in this city were so lazy that cars literally sitting unprotected, unobserved were STILL there. Keys in the ignition.

"Well if these idiots can't be bothered, I suppose I'll help myself, at a leisurely pace..."

Bender couldn't decide which car to steal first. So he eanie meanie miney moe'd for it. It was a generic stock ford, black. There was nothing particularly special about it but Bender wasn't about to argue with his own decision making processes. He carefully opened the door, climbed in, removed the keys from the ignition, took out his burglar kit from his chest compartment and began picking the lock.

Once he started the engine up, he drove through yet another window, laughing to himself as he did. He didn't even feel the need to store this car in a garage or lock up as absolutely no one in the city, criminal or law enforcement seemed to be doing anything, looking anywhere, talking to anyone or showing ANY other signs of life what so ever.

He knew so long as he didn't take the car to a rmute click monkey society gun range or the long term comatosed patient ward of the local hospital no one would EVER see it in this city.

He decided to drive it a pub which he had not long ago burned down himself. There was a car park at the back. When he reached there he noticed the embers were still alight. The damned local fire brigade didn't even show up and the smoke must have been a mile high.

He sighed at the low level of activity in the city of his ancestor, the automated assembly line. He parked the car and casually kicked a can down the road as he walked back to help himself to another car.

After  standing  out  in  front  of  the  bar  waiting on a  cab  ,in the  cold , Candy  gets  pissed and  decides  no  more  cabs  , Im  going to get me  a  car  a  nice  little sporty  model  preferably  a  convertable ,  she looks  in  the  window  at  the  show  case  floor ,  hmm  nothing there   i like , all at  once  she hears    breaking  glass  and  barely   jumps  away  just  as  a  car   comes  crashing  through  the  window  from inside ,  staring at the car  drivng  away  she  knows  she  doesnt  dare  be  seen  around  the  dealership  so  she  turns  and  hurries  down  the  street  and  slips  into  a  bar, taking a  seat  at  the  bar  and  orders  a  j&c  double ,

BlackAtom was walking through the business district of Detroit when he realized that he shouldn't be walking. He saw the sign for Downtown Automobiles and went to the showroom to go shopping. Of course they the latest edition of the Model T. BlackAtom paid for the vehicle in full and drove off the lot in a brand new car.

He later went to a small chop shop and had new rims installed.

Madara casually strolls into one of the many many MAAAAANY derelict businesses that Detroit sadly had left to grow mould and become covered in cobwebs. 

As he walked through the door a literal pile of dust which had formed in the gap between the door and the frame fell onto his head. He ruffled his hair to clean it of the dust. As he walks a little further in he sees several skeletons slumped over in waiting chairs. It seems that some guy by the name of "Virgil" was looking to buy a car and was in such a determined mood to obtain one that he wasn't willing to leave without one. In anticipation of the long wait, he realised he'd be sleeping there so he wrote a sign and hung it around his neck stating he was looking to buy a car... although his entrance to the property had suggested this already. 

Madara actually wasn't there to buy cars, car parts of anything of the sort. He had saw in a part demolished building next door graffiti informing him that his great grandfather Bender, "licks butt". He wanted to know how such defacement of property was tolerated and more importantly why no one around here had bothered to clean it up. Although from his very first impressions of the content of this building it was obvious why. No one gave a fuck. The mobster in charge had squeezed the life out of the local population and demotivated them to a point where they no longer felt a reason to even bother to come out any more. They were all content with sitting in HQs and telling old ladies to simply give their purses to the guard at the gate. 

No one in this line of work was even remotely interested in creating something positive which future generations could enjoy, anymore. Simply hiring 175 bodyguards, training their gun by murdering thousands of people was ALL they were interested in. Pseudo politics, pseudo leadership, pseudo achievements. No real mark to be left behind for anyone to acknowledge. 

Madara sighed wearily at the state of the business district in his home town and wondered how anyone would WANT to be a leader of this, for a lack of a better word, piece of shit. It was abandoned long ago and no attempt to revive the place had been made. What was needed was a leader who accepted they were going to die and that only the stories that were passed around the streets and businesses were the ONLY true legacy left behind. No one new to these shores were aware of who killed who, several years ago and even long standing bloodline's like Madara's didn't give a shit enough to remember who shot what, where and when... Only who was good company, what stories made him laugh, cry and reevaluate his way of thinking. Yet, despite his best efforts, no one would bother to even look at what might have been. Madara had explained and argued, repeatedly until blue in the face and finger tips that something... no... fucking anything had to be done to revitalise these districts and he was shot down with "get people to change it themselves" months on, the result shows that despite detroit being one of only 3 cities actually occupied the place was still dead. There were but a handful of people who bothered to come out and they usually only went out of their way to make their own business or attend a close personal buddies establishment. 

He was so confident that no body would actually bother to come out to the businesses to have a look at what was going on he dared to address the gods directly by yelling out crazy people speak which had had people removed from the streets in the past by yelling words that were seemingly blasphemous like 'game' saying 'users' and 'players' and all sorts of out of the ordinary phrases. Madara glared back one more time at the dust covered skeletons. What had disappointed him most about this was the fact that he didn't have to go to any obscure places to find this dead business. It was in the first row of shops. the prime fucking real estate! what a joke. There hadn't been anyone here for months and before that it had been abandoned since last year and it was still on the front row of buildings. 

He yawned, casually. or maybe he didn't. maybe he yawned excitedly. whilst a giraffe sporting a snazzy pair of purple speedos waltzed about on it's front legs, doing a sort of hand stand? if that's at all a believable thing. is it a believable thing a giraffe might do that? I'm not sure. Perhaps in an alternate universe. Tired of the lack of effort put into these business districts Madara decided to just be honest and yell out for anyone who could be bothered to listen to him.

I really am irritated by this. The place used to be buzzing with activity and because of poor planning and for unknown reasons a serious lack of willingness to actively involve themselves in the effin' business district by the Gods, the effort put in here by mobsters has dramatically decreased over time and the bloodlines who dedicated their time around these parts have slowly trickled away. I get it's a business, not just a pass time, but it seems that far too much effort has been put into attracting new people rather than keeping the old ones. Banks do that. Seriously, go watch any advertisement with banks. They're always advertising shit for new customers "join us and we'll give you a hundy dorrah. sign up a buddy and will give you one fiddy!" but you ever see them say "you know what, fuck the new guys for a bit. we get that our continued existence depend solely on the old school customers sticking around, so here. These changes that've repeatedly been requested and denied for unfathomable reasons, we'll make them. Shit, anything has to be better than the continued durptastic approach of "you guys change it" cos it clearly isn't fucking working.

Madara sighs. again, maybe he didn't. maybe he just punched himself in the face. It didn't matter. it was highly unlikely there would be any effect to him or the world he lived in. So, he decided to just shrug at the piss poor attitudes to repair the broken functionality of the business districts and wandered off to find another "business" that probably wasn't even a business, wasn't attracting customers, wasn't being paid attention to and give some time yelling about random crap there. Since all these places were good for any more was increasing street smarts and maybe a small amount of prestige increase compared to the other mobsters who weren't bothering to take 5 minutes to come out and support their own cities local businesses.

After exiting the once promising car sales dealership, Madara pretends to take out a cigarette, light it and smoke it. He didn't smoke but he'd seen everyone who could be bothered to talk in the streets do just this one action, as to not seem like they're standing with their hands by their side and orating in a monotone with a completely blank facial expression. 

The_Blacksmith stops in front of the derelict business, looks at the sign with a couple of missing letters that looks like it used to say Downtown Automobiles. He grabs a piece of paper from his pocket, on it is an address and name, he compares to two and shakes his head in disappointment. This was the place.

He got a tip off a while ago that this was the place to go to get the car he has been looking for. A rare (on this side of the ocean) Talbot-lago t150c-ss teardrop coupe. 

He crumples the paper and throws it on the ground, turns and walks away. His search continues