Chapter 8: The weirdo chose me as a hostage?
Even though the gun was discovered and held, the cat-eyed young man in the gray-blue hooded jacket showed no intention of "cooperating" with her.
He held Chaomu's wrist and slowly exerted force to remove her hand. He gathered his coat and glanced at the two robbers in the distance. There was a hint of helplessness in his voice: "Be quiet, it will attract other people's attention...Aren't you afraid that I am their accomplice?"
After all, ordinary citizens don't carry guns with them.
"Don't be afraid," Chaomu said sincerely, "You are much more handsome than them."
Although the robbers had their faces covered, one could tell from their outlines and figures that the modeling was not of the same precision, so they were probably not in the same group.
The young man with cat eyes was at a loss whether to laugh or cry for a moment.
On the one hand, he should have been wary. After all, his judgment of the girl's identity had clearly been subtly off. Not only had she discovered where he'd hidden his gun, but she'd also noticed that there were no blind spots on the street behind him where cameras and surveillance cameras were located...
While the girl before him might indeed be a novice robber, she was definitely not some harmless, ordinary girl who had gone astray.
On the other hand, her age, erratic behavior, and remarks made it difficult for him to consider her a villain. Instead, he involuntarily adopted the perspective of an elder and whispered, "When faced with dangers like hijacking and being vulnerable, it's best to be more cautious..."
Especially when the other party has hot weapons in their hands, the police generally do not encourage unarmed people to confront head-on.
"So, I'm looking for your cooperation." The other party looked at him as if it was a matter of course, as if he had made some inexplicable suggestion. "Two of us, you also have 'that', two against three, the advantage is in my hands, what's there to hesitate about?"
The young man with cat eyes felt more and more complicated: "..."
What are the advantages of an unarmed girl and him with a gun facing three robbers who have two guns, a knife and hostages?
Aside from her amazing calculations of combat power, her attitude also left a lot to be desired: if you say she was vigilant, she was plotting loudly right under the robbers' noses, as if she was worried they couldn't hear her; if you say she was careless, she knew not to mention the gun directly, and she also knew to find someone to cooperate with her...
Chaomu, who was chatting normally in the teammate channel and skillfully avoiding blocked words: Hmm?
She completely failed to understand the other person's complex expression and directly sent out a team invitation. Although the NPC in front of her didn't directly agree, seeing that the system had determined that the team was successful, she knew that he was willing to do so despite saying no.
[Ding! You have successfully become teammates with NPC "Luchuanjing". You can use the friend channel to complete tasks and share progress and achievements.]
Now that his teammates were in place, Chaomu had nothing to worry about.
While they were talking, the robbers had already taken the store clerk hostage and plundered the ATM and the store's reserves, but they showed no sign of leaving. The leader, who had just stopped "Old Third," held his gun and tuned the TV to the news channel, while instructing Old Third to confiscate the store's customers' wallets and phones.
On the background news, the host was seriously discussing with the guest the social impact of the recent wave of unemployment caused by the economic fluctuations. The guest, dressed in a suit and tie, was chatting and laughing, listing a long list of figures to prove that the Japanese economy was still thriving and that unemployment was only an isolated incident.
Relying on the fact that the robbers wouldn't overhear his in-game chat with his teammates, Chaomu nudged the cat-eyed young man named Midorikawa Jing, leaned closer, and whispered, "These robbers aren't in a hurry to leave after robbing the ATM. They're probably planning to take hostages and drain their money. We can launch a surprise attack while they're approaching to collect the money and subdue the two armed men."
Her attitude was quite serious, and Midorikawa also became serious, analyzing the situation with her in detail: "But they still have hostages. Even if we can subdue the two armed robbers separately, how can we subdue the one holding a knife without harming the hostage? Seeing his companions captured, there's no guarantee that he won't become desperate and do something desperate."
The safety of the hostages is indeed a problem.
Chaomu actually didn't care that much about the NPC's survival - but since she had chosen the route of bravery, she planned to do her best to see if she could achieve the no-damage achievement.
"Just ask them to change the hostage." She didn't hesitate too much about this question. "They're holding the female clerk hostage just to get her money. They shouldn't mind changing someone later."
What do you mean by changing someone... Could it be that she wants to...
The young man with cat eyes frowned slightly and quickly dissuaded him, "Don't be impulsive! They chose a location not far from the Metropolitan Police Department to commit the crime, and they only robbed a convenience store. Money is not their most important goal, and they may not limit casualties like ordinary robbers..."
I just heard the robber boss say, "Wait for the police." If his guess is correct, these robbers are most likely...
Before he could finish, the third irritable robber, who had been planning to confiscate wallets from the outside, turned around and walked straight towards them.
"Stop whispering! You young lovers are still in love, right? You're so in love, or are you going to commit suicide today and make the news?" He was obviously still remembering Chao Mu's "contradiction" just now. He walked up to her with a grin, grabbed her collar and lifted her up, "Hurry up and put your wallet and phone in this bag, or I'll shoot you!"
It has always been the players who take advantage of others, but I have never seen any NPC dare to take anything from the player's pocket.
Chaomu calmly memorized the physical features of the masked NPC, exchanged a glance with his teammates, and allowed the other party to pull him up.
Midorikawa, who didn't actually understand the look in her eyes, responded: "......?"
An ominous premonition made him tense, and he put his hands behind his waist: the gun in the hands of the violent robber was indeed dangerous, but for some reason, his intuition told him that her strange behavior and the consequences it brought were more worthy of defense.
Under his gaze, Chaomu raised his hand innocently: "Whether or not to die for love is a small matter. Can you not hand over the wallet?"
She hadn't simply skipped Midorikawa's earnest advice just now...perhaps because it contained important clues, and NPC dialogue couldn't be skipped. Therefore, she had grasped his message: these robbers weren't primarily after money, but rather wanted to provoke the police and create a major news story to exact revenge on society.
After understanding this key point, it didn't seem particularly difficult to incite them to exchange hostages. Besides, these people were so annoying. What had these white-collar workers, with their short lunch breaks and having to eat their lunchboxes at convenience stores, done to offend anyone? Life was already tough, and now they had to deal with this kind of shit...
Facing the third robber's bewildered gaze, the short-haired girl sighed and said sincerely, "I really don't have much money. This is all I have in my wallet. If I give you the money, how will I live for the rest of this month?"
Her words clearly resonated with the office workers squatting in the corner—after all, if they weren't truly overwhelmed and broke, they wouldn't be eating simple bento boxes at convenience stores. A white-collar worker, crouching with his head in his hands, whimpered in empathy, perhaps thinking about next month's rent or car loan.
"Just pay it if I tell you to... What's it to us if you starve to death?" The third robber was completely out of control. After two seconds of silence, he finally reacted and grabbed her collar viciously, threatening her, "If you don't pay, you'll die here today. Think about it for yourself: money or your life?"
"Obviously, money is more important." Chaomu let him carry it and stated confidently, "If you lose your life, it's gone. If you lose money, you have to work hard to earn it again... The cost of living is much higher than dying."
They are like this, if they don't have to think about the future, who would work so hard to earn such a small amount of money? If they die, it will be over once and for all, without having to worry about what will happen after death.
"That's right! Do you know how hard I have to work to make back the money I lost today?" An office worker who was originally taking out his wallet felt the same way, tears streaming down his face, soaking his suit and the cheap lunch box in front of him. "This contains all my savings since I graduated and started working... When O Company released three of my favorite card pools in a month, I didn't hand them in..."
The other office workers finally couldn't hold it in any longer and started sobbing with their heads in their hands. They looked like they had been robbed of millions of dollars and cried uncontrollably.
Midorikawa Jing was the only one who didn't cry: "..."
In order not to appear too out of place, he pulled down his hood, wiped his eyes, and looked at Chaomu thoughtfully: Did she really realize the robbers' intentions? The real target of these words was not the office workers, but...
As expected, it wasn't just the office workers who were emotionally shaken. The third robber, who had seemed quite irritable just a moment ago, couldn't help but let go of Chao Mu's collar, and his voice became less loud: "It's like we took the money and won't return it to you later. We're just putting it away first..."
"Third brother!" The robber leader's eyebrows twitched slightly. Unable to bear it any longer, he pulled his brother aside and said, "Why are you nagging them? Just take away their wallets and phones!"
"But big brother, that chick was so mean! She made it seem like we were the bad guys... It was clearly all those worthless cops' fault!" The third brother still had a bad temper. His mouth was firing like a machine gun, and he cursed the police with foul language. "If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have ended up like this! And that bastard president...!"
Under the robber leader's cold stare, he realized that he had said the wrong thing and his machine gun went silent.
But the few words he leaked were enough to verify Chaomu's point of view - this gang of robbers did not want money, but revenge on the police and society.
Perhaps due to her role as an intelligence expert, Chaomu discovered she was quite efficient at gathering information and transforming it into useful intelligence. Every detail of that minor scandal was etched in her mind, along with the president's awful and vulgar rhetoric, and the threatening words he'd brushed aside as a gesture of charity also surfaced:
"The company has been laying off employees recently, but you know I love you. You certainly won't leave here like those security guards who made mistakes but stayed on to collect a salary."
Among the newspapers taken out of the same trash can, the largest part of the page was a speech by a congressman on improving unemployment benefits, while in the small fragments on the edge, there was an insignificant piece of news: "A company was robbed, the police did not catch the murderer, and because they suspected an insider, the president fired all the security guards."
Other people might not directly put the robbery case together with these trivial information, but for players, every piece of information given by the game cannot be meaningless.
After confirming both sides, and also confirming in the intelligence column that the company mainly operated a chain of convenience stores, the identity and purpose of the robber in front of her were already very clear - and after confirming the other party's purpose, what she had to do next was completely within her area of expertise.
"I thought they were just robbers, but it turns out they're self-proclaimed righteous people who want to use ordinary people, who are also victims, as a scapegoat to take revenge on society." After analyzing this, Chaomu felt a little furious. She looked at the robber leader expressionlessly and asked sincerely, "Want to make some big news? Let society know what happens when they underestimate a bunch of middle-aged men like you who are actually unemployed and have accomplished nothing? That's a good idea. Can I join?"
"...Huh?" Her attitude was quite sincere, but it always made people feel an inexplicable sense of sarcasm. Before the eldest brother could even say anything, the third brother was so angry that his blood was boiling. He pointed his gun at her, "What do you mean by joining? Who are you insulting? Who are you calling a complete loser..."
Although he didn't want to show his face, Midorikawa Kei's arm, holding the gun, tensed up, ready to strike at any moment. Even though he knew the girl was just trying to provoke the robbers, he couldn't help but worry about whether she would be shot by the robbers who hit a sore spot.
Chaomu herself is not afraid at all - at worst she will die and go back to the previous level. If she tries again, she might be able to get more materials. She doesn't know if she will get any achievements if she fails in her brave act.
We are all in the game, and we are not afraid of death. Who would want to endure such a crap?
"I say... you need dead bodies, right?" She stepped forward, grasped the gun in the man's hand, and used her own strength to forcefully press it against her forehead. "We don't need too many dead bodies in front of the police, proving the government's incompetence. Too many will be a psychological burden on you. One is enough."
"Compared to that shop assistant, I'm the best choice right now, right?" Beneath the gun barrel, the short-haired girl seemed completely unafraid of the gun going off accidentally. Her golden eyes were filled with sincerity, as if her proposal came from the heart. "Your boss should have noticed... I've guessed your identities, and killing me to silence you will put less moral pressure on you."
The third brother's neck flushed crimson beneath his hood, and the veins on the back of the eldest brother's hand, where he held the gun, bulged. The knife-wielding robber who had been holding the clerk hostage was a bit bewildered and tried to refute her, but she interrupted him.
"Ah, I don't mean to condemn your moral standards." Chaomu seemed to sense their anger and added considerately, "After all, your revenge on society wasn't about assassinating the unscrupulous president who made the decision, nor was it about attacking the incompetent police directly. Instead, you kidnapped innocent store clerks who work for the same company as you... I don't think much of your moral standards for making such a decision, so naturally I won't condemn you."
When she said this, she thought she was quite considerate and had eased the other person's psychological burden very well - and the result was gratifying. The other person looked at her with even more ferocity, and it seemed that he would replace the hostages or kill people at any time.
"Even if you're so determined to 'join,' replacing us won't do us any good." The robber leader took a deep breath, stood in front of her, and pressed the gun to her forehead. "You're not an employee of this company. Killing you won't be enough to deter those scum."
"Then, would killing a shop assistant, who was just an ordinary worker and might even be labeled a temporary employee because the company didn't want to compensate her, have any deterrent effect on the company president?" Chaomu blinked and asked sincerely, "I don't understand the deeper meaning of this. Could you explain it to me?"
As a public security officer, Midorikawa Jing had received specialized training in negotiation and interrogation, so he naturally knew that her idea was correct: for criminals who have certain bottom-line beliefs and are not entirely motivated by money, using ideology and ego to stimulate them often has extraordinary effects - such techniques are also often used in the interrogation of undercover agents.
This trick worked, and her tongue was certainly sharp... but it made people worry that she would be beaten up by the angry robbers. After all, during an interrogation, the person being interrogated was usually tied up.
He calmly took a few steps forward, shortening the distance to within his attack range.
As expected, the robber leader fell silent.
He opened his mouth, speechless for a moment. The other robber, who had held the knife to the shop assistant's neck and remained silent, was clearly under greater psychological pressure than he was. He muttered, "Boss, why don't we let this woman go... I, I don't want to... She's just like us..."
The shop assistant reacted quickly, without even pinching her thighs, and burst into tears: "I'm just an ordinary worker, wuwuwu... The damn boss even withheld our wages! He also exploited our rest time! I haven't even had lunch yet since I started working today..."
She cried more and more, and the cries in the store grew louder and louder. The office workers who were already wiping their tears now empathized with her and cried bitterly: "Work is hard enough, why do workers have to make things difficult for workers?"
The robber leader was so annoyed by the noise that he fired a shot at the ceiling in an attempt to scare the gang into stopping. However, his two underlings were also affected by the noise, their eyes reddened, and they obviously didn't want to continue.
We can't let this woman keep talking nonsense... They've been planning for so long to teach those bastards a lesson, there's no way they'll be shaken by a few tears! These people may cry, but they're still young and have a future, but at his age, he has nothing...!
His heart hardened again, and he decided to deal with the troublemaker first. If that didn't work, he could replace her, but it wouldn't be as effective as bringing the clerk along. How about taking both of them together...
"Friends who often kill people know that quality, not quantity, is key." Chaomu saw through his hesitation and pressed on, "To protect what's left of your conscience, you can't kill the shop assistant. Wouldn't that make you the dragon slayer who becomes the dragon himself? Be careful, or the company will turn the tables and accuse you of being vicious criminals."
"Besides, if only I were killed and everyone else was saved, what a dramatic effect it would have been." She continued to ramble calmly as she stepped forward. "What about the police disregarding the safety of people without connections, how poor orphans with no family became victims of the government... Victims of the system, how jobless and helpless vagrants voluntarily martyred themselves, falling prey to robbers' guns—if domestic reporters don't report it, foreign reporters will surely rush to report it. Then, who knows if no one will analyze your injustice?"
As she spoke, the young girl raised her hands high to show she was truly harmless, then faced the gun. "So, choose me as your hostage? Then you don't have to worry about retaliation from my radicalized relatives. I have no relatives at all, so I can just be a simple and meaningless 'body count 1.'"
"Taking it all into account, if you choose to kill me, the effects and consequences are so good, anyone who isn't a fool would choose me, right?"
The bandit's gun trembled and shifted its focus towards her, as if she wasn't unarmed, but rather fully armed, declaring war. Her life weighed both lightly and heavily in these words, steadily adding weight to the scales of her victory.
For their future, there must be a sacrifice... Just one is enough... And she is willing... Anyway, she is just a disgusting little brat...
"...It's your turn," he said with difficulty, tightening his jaw. The younger brother behind him, whose psychological defenses had long been broken, immediately let go of the crying shop assistant, and he himself extended his hand to the girl in front of him, "I don't know if you are talking nonsense or what... but if you insist on stepping forward, I will..."
"You can't change her either!" At this moment, a suppressed roar suddenly came from behind them. Among the office workers who had been squatting with their heads in their hands, a woman with red eyes suddenly stood up and shouted, "Change what?! Is this girl supposed to die?"
Office workers, having vented their fear through their cries, rose to their feet one after another, their long-suppressed rage finally erupting: "You vengeful bunch, don't you know that every wrong has its perpetrator? Bullying us is nothing!"
Seeing the hostages riot, the robbers panicked. The third man, gun raised, was pinned before he could even pull the trigger when a passing figure pinned him. A young man in a gray-blue hood pressed down on him, sternly restraining him. After removing his arms and ensuring he couldn't injure anyone, he went on to subdue another robber, who was holding a knife.
At the same moment, the shop assistant stumbled over, Chaomu had already moved. A powerful knee strike landed heavily on the most vulnerable part of the male sex. The robber leader screamed in surprise, his center of gravity shifting. Before he could react, she spun around, twisted his wrist, and snatched the gun away.
One move wins the battle, worthy of her - so it turns out that the reason he was killed four times was because Kurosawa's formation was too outrageous, and it was not the player's fault at all!
Chao Muzhi raised the corners of his lips with pride, and stuffed the confiscated gun into his backpack... If she picked it up from the ground, it would be hers. If she really couldn't throw it in the trash can, it would be even more hers.
The hostages rushed forward and surrounded the robbers. Someone grabbed some tape and used it to bind their hands, cursing them for being unscrupulous and involving innocent people. Some people cheered even before their tears dried, and the store erupted in jubilation.
[Special Event: Convenience store robbery completed without taking any damage!]
Rewards: Raccoon Coins +20, Beika Town Reputation +10, Midorikawa Kei Favorability +10, Combat Skills EXP++
【Because you cleared the level without taking any damage, you will receive a reward multiplier x2】
[Special Achievement: Gab Expert (Use the power of words to change the course of a special event) Raccoon Coin +50]
It feels great.
Before Chaomu could even count her rewards, she was already surrounded by the crowd and placed in the center. Seeing Midorikawa Jing's favorability listed on the rewards list, she instinctively turned back to find her "teammate," only to find that he had somehow withdrawn from the crowd and was standing near the edge, giving her a slightly complicated look.
Midorikawa Kei is looking at you, his eyes filled with a mixture of pity, admiration, guilt, and suspicion.
A system prompt popped up. Chaomu looked at the young man with cat eyes in confusion. After all, he couldn't make out so many words from his eyes - although his eyes were not small, they couldn't write so much content.
While she was trying to explore further, the young man had already turned around, pulled down his hood, and disappeared into the crowd.
...Wait, she hasn't added them as friends yet! She hasn't completed her mission to visit the residents of Beika Town and build good relationships with them yet!
The author has something to say:
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My tears wet the meal I had prepared, and I ate while wiping my tears.
Since someone asked, I'd like to add that this article has nothing to do with Collapse! I used to play it myself, so I don't mind comments like "as shitty as Little Gray Hair" (after all, we're all shitty players), but this article is really not about Collapse, and its inspiration is not from Collapse!
I started writing this article simply because I wanted to write about raccoons (in real life, raccoons in foreign countries also like to invade residential areas and rummage through trash cans). In the middle, I really wanted to write about the Fourth Calamity, so I developed the current setting. The setting of rummaging through trash cans in person to reduce favorability comes from Stardew Valley, and entering a village and rummaging through it to collect resources is also a setting in many RPG games, and it is not a derivative of Starmetal.
When designing the Dusk Cub, I also specifically avoided gray hair. He has short black hair with silver-gray bangs and a few strands of silver-gray highlights, and golden eyes (to show his animal nature). Because of his charm D, he looks very sarcastic; and he will not use a baseball bat as a weapon in the future.
As for memes, many of the game-related memes that have appeared so far are Stardew Valley/Sword 3 or Zelda, and there is also FGO's Lucky E. The krypton gold gift pack card drawing is a very common meme of crazy gift pack cheating mobile games. There will probably be many others in the future (after all, I have played quite a few games), but it's just memes; some friends use memes in the comment section and I accept them all. This is the fun of game memes. When everyone sees it, they can associate it with their own games, and the sense of substitution is very strong (just don't use raccoons as stars in the fan fiction, really not! There is no reference!)
I have finished the long-winded explanation. In short, I hope everyone can enjoy reading and playing games... There are many game activities in the New Year, so take care of your liver and wallet. I'm going to go buy the lucky bags first.
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