Main Title: Children of the Eagle
Chapter 2 – Marquis of the Hoods
Andre alighted the ship at Meridian, a richer middle class city where most rich people have their rest houses, downtown districts and lots of tourist attractions. But apart from the front of being a bustling city lies the Hoods on the southern part where the communities area and run- down neighborhoods, made of ghettos, abandoned areas, low-end businesses and run-down industrial areas. The part of the city where the working class lived and most illegal immigrants hide.
Believing he was still hunted by Cathleen’s father, Andre stayed low profile and tried various jobs like window washer and construction on high rise buildings. While on a break, he observed a rich man throwing a plate of food to a waitress, obviously not liking the food. Nobody seemed to care for the waitress. He found out later that the young woman was fired to avoid being seen or working on the restaurant again.
This reminded Andre of the hatred for rich men who think they own the world to themselves. The next couple of days later Andre saw the man again and discretely followed him. The rich man was living on one of the bigger rest houses with a couple of stories high. Studying the man’s habit and schedule Andre broke into the man’s house while while the rich man was away. Despite having security guards and secured systems, Andre managed to stole some expensive items undetected.
He sold it to a fence and secretly left the amount to the fired young woman in a paper bag. He was discretely observing the young woman as her surprised reaction turn to joy and looked around to silently thank whoever gave her the money. Andre walked the other way silently with his hooded coat covering his head.
Days passed to weeks and months. Andre would do these activities during his breaks or his day offs. He would sell the stolen items on different part of the city on different fences. One afternoon after another successful activity, he was cornered by a group of men inviting him for a meeting. Not wanting to get caught red handed he escaped the men as he parkoured his way out of the dead end of a building much to his pursuers awe.
As he went to a fence to sell off his merchandise, the fence claimed to check for the quality of the item. This made Andre suspicious and tried to go out of the shop but instead was surrounded by the same group of men he escape from earlier. Andre was again invited to meet someone who was very much interested in him and assured him that they are not the authorities nor were they his enemies. Andre cooperated and came with them with his head covered on a sack cloth.
Andre was brought on what seems to be an abandoned railway station. Facing him was a big burly woman in her sixties and seems to be a bundle of profanities. She introduced herself as “Big Bertha” and calls herself as the “guild master” of the thieves in Meridian. She pointed out that she hated when someone does freelance activity without the guild’s knowledge. She invited Andre to go with her on her rounds around the Hoods.
Big Bertha explained while there are thieves and robbers seemingly doing their activities, those were always monitored by the guild and the “harvest” were always surrendered to the guild who do the selling of the merchandise and giving of the reward to the “picker”. Most of the money are to support various expenses of the guild like bribes to police, information gathering, reward to pickers but most of the amount goes to the food, shelter and medicine of the unfortunates in the Hoods.
Big Bertha explained that she does not tolerate a selfish thief freelancing on their own and were usually hunted and “disciplined”. She emphasized that in every endeavour and profession there should be rules and order to follow or else everything would fall into anarchy.
Big Bertha then introduced a young woman to Andre whom he recognized as the first woman she helped. The young woman apparently came to Big Bertha to thank her for the money so she could pay her daughter’s hospital bills and buy medicine to which surprised Big Bertha that the amount was “donated” in full. And then came other reports of similar “donations”. Which led her to launch a hunt for the rouge thief for an invitation to the guild. Big Bertha then took Andre to various people whom Andre recognized and the ones he gave the money to.
She then offered Andre membership to the guild and emphasized that if he would not accept, Andre would be forced to stop his freelancing activities. Andre was having doubts and Big Bertha added that he would be a valuable addition to the group because of the way he escaped from her men when they cornered Andre in a dead end and yet still escaped.
Andre then counter offered to remain not a full time member of the guild but instead teach the guild members Andre’s “moves”. Big Bertha agreed to the arrangement that Andre teach the guild members how to do freerunning and parkour and will receive compensation as a consultant. Andre further added that he would select a few people to form a core group whom he would train so that they would train the others themselves.
Thus Andre was introduced as a skills consultation and honorary member of the guild and was called by those he gave help as “Marquis of the Hoods”. An old woman whom Andre help thanked Andre and called him “Macky” as she misheard the word marquis thinking Andre’s name was Macky. Thus the name stuck and Andre became Macky, the Marquis of the Hoods.