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So I am going to post the end story, and then fill in the middle between my first few stories and this one, and then move ahead in time past this. It'll be fun, and I hope you all enjoy the ride as much as I do building it! ---- Twelve Steps - Twelve more steps. That is all I have to take. Twelve steps until I can finally rest in peace once more.- I am the Ringmaster. I run the largest crime ring on Wiki Nui. It was a masterpiece if I do say so myself. I once had rings within rings going, and wheels spinning within wheels. I was the center spike, the engine, the bottom line. I kept it all going, in order, and out of sight. Wiki Nui was my fiddle, and when I scraped my bow across its strings, my organization, the whole of it would sing to my tune.- My personal playing never happened often. To do so would cause far too much notice to be drawn to my quarter. A cog here or there lost to the impotent police of Wiki Nui was replaceable. A wheel taken out by the Toa Effigia or their legal counterparts, the self styled Detectives, was repairable, but if I was to be removed the whole mechanism would be shattered.- Eleven more steps.- I am the most powerful person in Wiki Nui. More powerful than Swert even, as some of the Sectra are on my payroll. Of course I didn't start out in this position. No, no. Faber est suae quisque fortunae. For those of you who don't pay attention to dimensional science, that's Latin, the dead language of some dimension an associate of mine discovered in a freak accident. It means "Every man is the artisan of his own fortune".- Ten more steps, ten more until I can embrace my future.- I won't bore you with the details of my life before I turned to crime. I will only tell you that I made masks. I had an idea one day, and from that idea blossomed my first heist. The Mask of Travel, a Kanohi dedicated solely to my purposes and my genius. I contacted a partner of mine, and he placed special crystals I created into the doorframes of my apartment, a bank, and a bathroom at the bank. We bled that bank dry, took the crystals back, and slowly used our newfound funds to begin building our crime ring. A few thousand here, a few thousand there and suddenly I had my own gang going, though I didn't tell anyone besides my inner ring about my Masks.- Nine more, eternal steps.- One day we did a job for a bigger crime ring, but found I didn't like the pay. I am more brilliant than their boss ever was, so why should he have been ordering me around? I killed him, the Agori piece of slime. His own people don't know that he is dead, even today. I can do it because he was paranoid, and only I was able to figure out who he was. Hehe, he ran his operation from the dark and there he died. Even my closest partner doesn't know I did it, he just knows I took control of that ring, and that from there we have grown more and more.- Eight left. I have worked it all out. Eight more steps and I will be done. The beginning of the end starts in eight steps.- I killed my original partner, and blamed it on a street thief. Slowly, I got rid of the first inner ring I had carried with me. I was in charge, and they were baggage. I crafted a new group of cunning people like myself, but only two know the secret of my Masks.- Seven slow, soft, stealthy, sovereign steps.- And so I am now the protosteel spike holding the Wiki Nui underground together, the cog that turns the wheels of the machine that is crime in this city. I am the target of every crime-fighter in the city, the target without a face, without a name. It was the press that gave me my name, the Ringmaster. I like it. My rings within rings attached to rings and wheels turning wheels within wheels.- Six steps to destiny. My goal is not far away.- It was like conducting an orchestra. With a mere wave of my hand the screams of the murdered would chorus out as a delicate, haunting melody to my ears, the scrape of steel would ring the harmony, the Ringmaster's Requiem in D minor. The wheels turn, the rings spin, and so my plans fall into place in dissonant chords that work so well to the advantage of my ears. Bliss.- Five steps more.- Until that Agori Agram was caught. A mere spoke for a wheel on the outer rings of my criminal empire, but nonetheless the investigation into him was dangerous to me. I personally oversaw getting his appeals through, the result of my Toa Sectra allies, and by the time he was convicted and the evidence had to be handed over, I had my plan in place, but bringing Tomana into my web did not suit in the end. The Agram evidence has been burned; I had a pair of officers paid off. I thought I had been safe, but the famous Detective Toa Tomana never stopped sniffing.- Four final, fatal steps.- That Toa thought he could bring me down, and he nearly has. But he is not me. I will solve this problem tonight. I will end the nuisance. I am not far from being able to do so with ease.- Three steps to serenity.- I have a network of crystals in doorways throughout the city, and I can use my mask to travel between them all. My genius will prevail.- Two steps.- And now I am here, in Tomana's quarters, knife in hand. I shall sleep with in peace, his death on my hands.- One more step.- The Effigia after the Detectives. I can finally be free.- No more steps. I have arrived. The time is–- Pain. Exquisite pain. The feeling of ice penetrating my armor.- I have been tricked.- I am....- I....- ....- I hear the Detective Toa speaking. I am under arrest. I hear ambulance sirens, and police sirens.- I will not be captured. No. Faber est suae quisque fortunae. I will escape.- Morior invictus.