Rejects Beat TENI Meat

Yes. I wrote it. Heh. No. I am not especially proud, but when has that stopped me with inappropriate headlines? It hasn’t, dear reader, long may they continue if they cause you a flicker of a smile as you imagine Hektor’s thick slabs of meat being beaten. Yes. That Hektor. The one that spent most of the year on Bluesky defending himself and his significant other against cradle snatching claims. Ahem.

The early stages witnessed by the Observer looked initially like the aftermath of an especially aggressive smash-and-grab. People were moving in and out of the shop while damage continued inside, with Hektor facing down members of a group which has spent enough time causing Hathian problems that few readers will require a family tree, although as leadership has changed over time and faces old like Piper have moved away, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Rejects are the OG Hathian dynasty left standing. Certainly them and the Hoppers and I don’t think the Hoppers beat meat. They just eat you. It. Meat. Whatever…

Anyway, the scene changed when Katya Petrova arrived. Katya, who leads TENI, approached with others responding to what was clearly becoming more than vandalism against a local business. By then, the confrontation had begun attracting exactly the kind of audience Hathian produces whenever somebody places broken glass, gang members and a police vehicle within fifty feet of one another.

Until that point, there was still a possibility this was simply another local feud whose origins would later be explained to me through six contradictory accounts and an anonymous text containing a dick pic, but also a ‘IT WAS ALL THE FAULT OF KRYSTAL’ or something.

But no, some in the crowd had spotted me and my wife, and more importantly our camera. Someone in the Rejects decided he wanted the cameras and wanted to own a message to all of you. I considered whether to include it, but kinda felt, why not. Let the Rejects have their say as I’m sure TENI will do the same later. Lex, looking rather like how I ‘imagine’ a German porn actor to look, emerged from the butcher with a crowbar and as he pointed toward the building announced what appeared to be the political manifesto for the afternoon.

He followed this by alleging that a “BIG RUSSIAN CORPORATION” was buying Hathian “PIECE BY FUCKIN PIECE,” before declaring that “THEY GOT THE SLAB.”

For those readers wondering whether I had somehow wandered from a gang fight into a municipal election campaign, I briefly wondered the same thing. Then, noting that the Mexican Dictator was not hovering to make her own speech, it was more theatre than candidacy.

There was only one slight inconvenience… The people supposedly being bought disagreed…

Katya answered Lex almost immediately.

Her Russian accent perhaps made the rebuttal more aesthetically pleasing than politically useful, but the point was fairly straightforward. Whatever Lex intended by presenting the dispute as foreign money against Hathian, Katya was not accepting the role allocated to her.

Nor was Hektor.

As the argument increasingly became something resembling competing campaign broadcasts delivered beside pumpkins and armed gang members, Hektor struck his chest and shouted toward the Observer camera:

The Observer has not yet been shown paperwork establishing who owns what beyond Hektor publicly identifying the butcher shop as his operation, nor have we been given the name of the corporation the Rejects claim is quietly consuming Hathian from underneath us. That would, as you’ll see, become relevant later.

Meat, Money and Mother Russia

It would be easy to dismiss the whole argument because of the people making it, the circumstances in which they chose to make it and the unfortunate quantity of meat involved but perhaps that would be a mistake… Hathian has always been a place where legitimate property, criminal influence and practical control do not necessarily belong to the same person. Buying a building does not automatically mean owning the street around it. A deed does not make people loyal to you. Equally, generations of reputation do not pay property taxes, repair broken windows or magically prevent somebody wealthier from purchasing the building your grandfather once bled in.

There is plenty of money moving through this city that did not originate here, and anyone pretending otherwise probably has an invoice somewhere they would prefer I did not read. Drugs, extortion, trafficking and the less criminal but equally influential business of property acquisition all create reasons for outside money to notice Hathian.

What I am considerably less willing to do is leap from that rather obvious reality to therefore mysterious Russians are buying the city simply because somebody with a crowbar shouted it at my wife.

This was approximately the moment the Observer’s coverage strategy changed from get a better angle to perhaps use the large solid object as cover.

Katya drew her own weapon after the shot startled her. Others around both groups were already visibly armed with bats and similar equipment. Hektor, given an opening when Fenna’s gun was no longer trained directly on him, moved to try to disarm her. Lex responded by swinging his crowbar toward the intervention.

Clivia, demonstrating considerably more survival instinct than her editor and wife, pointed out that neither of us had arranged to be shot that afternoon. She had a point!

By the time Clivia and I left, the confrontation was still unresolved. Rejects were beginning to move away, weapons remained visible, Hektor was physically engaged in trying to get Fenna’s gun out of play and the police presence which had hovered over proceedings was still very much part of the equation.

We had enough footage to establish what we had personally witnessed and not enough body armour to justify waiting for everybody else to finish making their point.

Nobody had been killed while we were present and that, dear reader, is a depressingly relevant sentence to be able to write.

The Corporation Nobody Will Name

Two days later I returned to the damaged butcher shop to record follow-up material.

I still had no interview with Bryce who had turned up late. I had not yet managed a proper sit-down with Hektor. Katya has since indicated that she is willing to speak with me, which I will take up, but yes, I was missing quite a bit of context and wanted to find out more.

A woman named Scarlet, who had been present on the Rejects side during the confrontation, approached once I had finished recording and packed the camera away. Scarlet told me there had been no deaths and characterised the injuries as little more than scratches.

Then she returned to the reason for the attack.

According to Scarlet, there is talk of a “shadowy corporation” buying businesses across Hathian, with Russians supposedly involved. Her version closely echoed what the Rejects had shouted during the attack: allow this to continue, she suggested, and eventually the whole city could belong to somebody else.

This time there were no crowbars being waved at the camera, so I asked the obvious question.

What is the corporation called… Scarlet did not tell me.

She advised me to trust my instincts because I was apparently “already asking the right questions.” Which is flattering, certainly, but company registration records generally prefer names.