Time was not a friend to Ze and he knew it. 

Every minute that passed, the powers that be would become more and more alert to his presence and once properly awakened, they would no doubt respond in the only way that the Empire seemed to know how; with overwhelming, indiscriminate force. His plan had to be finished before that happened or all would be lost.

Thankfully things had been progressing relatively to plan. The goblin gangs had been brought under his thrall with a relatively small amount of bloodshed; The strongest and smartest rose to power as was proper, but few of them had ever inspired any real loyalty in their subordinates... At least not enough to make them throw their lives away going up against someone like Ze. 

Those leaders that refused his challenge for leadership of their gang via one on one combat (either because they were intelligent enough to know they had no chance or were simply to cowardly) were quickly dragged out of their holes and dealt with, often by their former supporters. A leader that refused to deal with a challenge of their leadership when they were challenged by another goblin was to weak to be worth following after all.

The silence that followed Ze's ascension as leader of all but one of the goblin gangs when it came to challengers to his new position further cemented his dominance in the eyes of his new subordinates. The appearance of Mr Nailbrain by his side once more was more then enough to tell Ze that he had been successful. 

Part one of the plan was finished. Now they had to start part two; Capture the smuggler routes. 

There were several gangs along the wall to the outside world that had taken advantage of their positioning to create methods to get in and out of the City without having to pass such horrible things as customs; Those tunnels were vital to his plans and in order to be able to use them fully he would need the smugglers themselves to be mostly alive and co-operative to his new regime. 

With Mr Nailbrain by his side, Ze marched towards the first of these smuggler gangs, four additional moblins by his side and a mixed swarm of bokoblins and bulbins following in his wake. This was a blatant show of force on his part; His first and preferred method of getting what he wanted here was going to have to be diplomatic; torturing and confirming the information that he desired out of them would take time that he didn't wish to waste. Any tactic that made them more ready to just surrender to him without a fight was going to have to be employed.

Meanwhile, true to form, the city guards scrambled around almost equally as much like rats-save in ordered rank and file, rather than braying assemblies. Several team units were occupied searching empty buildings and interrogating stragglers and '[i]helping[/i]' the wounded while prying for answers. The air of the local streets pulsed with tensed breaths carried on warm winds awash with the slums' stink of rot, sweat, blood and litany of other unclean things.

The tension only brewed, though, as no serious armed conflicts had yet broken out between the gangs and the guard. Where were the violent crackdowns, the arrests? Which were the streets filled with emblazoned tabards and stock halberds clashing with rugged iron and ruddy crests, blood oil-painting the cobble-brick and curses and shouts and screams lacerating the spice-laced air? Only the last in line of moving bandit and thief hordes saw the brief glimpse of a troop passing through the next lane over, missing them by a single street, although too close to pass by a certain route and forcing them down another to their destination...

Ze grunted to himself in annoyance as word was passed up the line how close the guard were to their position. He felt that he had three options; Continue on and engage the patrol, ambush the patrol and deal with it or go a different route to the same location. The choice sadly made itself; While killing the Hyrulian bastards would have been [i]deeply[/i] satisfying,  doing so now would simply draw attention to himself before he was ready to take it. Granted killing them wouldn't be [i]too[/i] difficult, the best of the best don't end up patroling a slum in the middle of an Empire with wars on several fronts after all.

With a grunt and a commanding hand sign, Ze took his mob down an alternative route.

Ze continued, harried by near-missed frequently for a time... although, oddly, they began to taper off in frequency as they went on. The shouts were quieter, the troops smaller. After a time they were naught save indiscernible noise in the distance, much as they might have been in any other part of the city. Perhaps because this territory had not been lit up with violence yet, just rumors?

In order to raise up in the underworld, one had to process a number of skills and traits not only to raise up to a new position but also to survive once you got there. Ze could feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising up, his somewhat paranoid mind aiding him in seeing that something was wrong... that a noose was trying to close in around his neck.

He had been banking on Hyrulian indifference to provide him with more time due to them not caring about goblin on goblin volience, but it would seem that they were acting much faster then they should have been... Something was up and it meant he was going to have to cut out a few steps in his plan in order to speed things up a lot.

Turning to look at Mr Nailbrain, Ze rather softly said "[color=f26522]Mr Nailbrain, I need ya to take some of the boys to the turf of one of the neighbouring gangs... We need to give the guard something to chew on to get them off our backs. Ya got some of those flashy bangers with ya?[/color]"

Mr Nailbrain turned his goggled gaze up to his boss and friend, nodding his head as he answered "[color=00aeef]Yeah, I gotz me a few of them all nice and ready.  I think I might go and throw the Rocks into the meatgrinder... Mind if I borrow some of the big guys?[/color]" 

Ze nodded his head. "[color=f26522]Once you're done setting up that little playdate, I want ya to get the rest of the boys to start packing up. We're going to have to cut our losses with the other gangs... Make sure they're ready to move by nightfall and I'll make sure we have somewhere to go.[/color]"

There was a brief stop as Ze quickly assigned two of his moblins and a mixed squad of the rest to Mr Nailbrain before sending him off; Ze himself would continue towards the meeting place for the first of the smugglers while Mr Nailbrain started to lead his own mob towards Goron turf...

(Collab between myself and Nevis))