The non-capes—powered people whom I didn't recognize—were right out. I had stronger capes that I wanted to not kill and also take the powers of. The Triumvirate came to mind. As did Amy Dallon.
Right now, though? I had to focus on perm slots.
That meant that Cricket would be next on my list. Cricket, to firm up my body with heightened reflexes.
I walked through the street, asking question after question, gradually making out the shadows of an ideal future.
I had twenty-four hours. Potentially, if Jingyi's words had been literal, even less. The power stealing ability might refresh after midnight. I should check that out.
Until then, I needed to think of shelter. Again.
000
I stole some fake contacts in a store while no one was looking, making out like a thief in the night, before heading to another store to get some food in me. Stealing was, unfortunately, a rather old skill of mine.
Something about my inability to respect the blatant profiteering of big companies had given me cause, in recent years, to put belief into practice. Risking freedom and a good reputation just to stick it to the man in any way that I felt I could get away with it. Big chains were my target, of course. Any business that would never feel the loss of a few overpriced bottles of barbecue sauce smaller than my fucking dick—they were my targets.
The end result was a reliable source of discounts when money was low, and an increased practice in breaking societal conventions that would be useful to me for once civilization finally collapsed.
Civilization had not collapsed, but this was about the same thing, really. I was on my own in a world that sought to hurt me, and violence was a factor that weighed heavily into my life. Those were the precise conditions of societal collapse.
I didn't feel any pangs of hunger, but I doubted it would hurt to get some sandwiches in me.
Once done, I made my way through the streets—my vivid hazel orbs (the darkest lenses I could find) contrasting drastically with my whiter-than-white sclera—I enjoyed the flat-tasting bacon egg and cheese.
Baconeggandcheese.
Gimme some of that baconeggandcheese.
Speaking of, I'd have to head to New York at some point.
Grab me Sting. Flechette, and March, maybe. I could temp-slot Flechette, and hopefully, March would give me cause to perm-slot her. Doubtful. She was young. Too young. Worst came to worst, I would just temp-slot both of them. Double up on Sting-related powers. Maybe even grab the other clustermates, if there were any. I had no idea.
All the while as I thought, I kept playing twenty-one thousand questions with Dinah's power.
"Chance I have a stable place to sleep for the next 30 days if I take no action."
"Chance I have a stable place to sleep for the next 30 days if I seek help from public institutions."
"…from private individuals."
"…from criminal organizations."
"…from cape-affiliated groups."
Criminal orgs had high-shelter probability, and catastrophic downsides.
Capes were unstable, and the downsides were plenty there as well.
Institutions and civilians? Paydirt.
Unfortunately, I looked fucking weird. That was going to cause problems. And the more I got entangled with people, the less freedom I'd have. Better keep my signature as lowkey as possible.
"…Faultline's Crew?"
96.56%
"…getting pressganged?"
1.54%
"…getting in for free?"
2.35%
"…in return for some future-seeing?"
96.65%
"…I get pressganged for showing them that?"
12.23%
Of course the shot of that would increase drastically, given the utility I would have demonstrated.
Evidently, as long as I worked, I'd get paid. Didn't have to be at a permanent basis, either. Faultline maintained group cohesion by using willing participants, and punished the breaking of faith freely given. She didn't force relations, it seemed. Not… often.
I was honestly considering her.
And I hated that I was.
I had to get one cape every day and I was considering tying myself down and sitting on my ass, or riling the city up while Faultline would have a direct line to me to ask me about whatever the hell was going on with all the dead Nazis. Then I'd be out on my ass. The numbers said so.
It wasn't even like I would be safer, even if I hid my cape activities from them. I could kite the Nazi aggro to her people, but that didn't really decrease my shot of dying. I was, according to future predictions, rather magnificently unkillable. For the time being, and unless I did something monumentally foolhardy.
Hookwolf could actually kill me. He had a 76.56% shot of killing me in the first five minutes of a fight. After ten minutes, the likelihood climbed up to 96.54% and stabilized around there.
Lung, too, could kill me at sufficient levels of growth. 97.54% after ten minutes, and 99.999% after thirty minutes. The number grew larger and larger as time went on.
Kaiser could kill me, too. Stab me a bunch with the big metal spires until he hit something he shouldn't hit. Kaiser's impaling implements would disappear inside my body upon each of my resets, but that didn't matter to him. He could stab me faster than I could regenerate. Shame that Lung's hands and claws impaling me would not suffer the same. Manton limit. Sucked to suck.
In all the timelines, it seemed that other than durability, what I lacked the most was combat sense. I couldn't get in close enough to take a power without getting tagged. And I likely couldn't predict my future uses of Dinah's power either. Accounting for that, things should look less bleak, but I wasn't going to count on magic numbers to help me stay alive when I had the constitution of a peak human and nothing else. Not even the fighting skills of one.
No fraternizing with the B-Bay capes. Not yet.
Instead, I looked for some derelict houses that I could break into and call my home for the time being.
Chapter 4
Everything sucked about this place. It smelled weird. It was cold. There was dust everywhere, and it was difficult to breathe. There weren't even any windows, just boarded up holes in the wall. And rats scurrying about.
And no one was inside. No one was going to come inside. It was perfect.
Alabaster's power let me ignore the most physically trying parts of the situation, and over time, I grew used to the smell, too.
I didn't need to sleep. Or even eat, really. My body felt fresh beyond fresh every 4.3 seconds, like I was at the very top of my game. All caffeinated up and ready to take on anything. More than that, there was an emotional aspect to my attitude. I felt… pretty good.
Was this joy?
No. What was joyous about this fucked up circumstance, anyway?
This was something else. Drive. Willpower.
Everything felt fresh all the time. I didn't have the opportunity to get tired. The power reversed it all. I was at the peak of my condition, physically yes, but mentally as well.
Perhaps I had underestimated the potency of loading up on Thinker powers.
Were there even that many Thinkers that deserved to die, though? Well, excluding Contessa and The Number Man—both of whom would likely get in my way soon—I struggled to picture many. There was Accord, Mama Mathers, Jack Slash, Victor… Squealer could drive cars really well, but I wasn't really clear on how deserving she was of death just yet. I didn't quite like her yet.
I liked Crane the Harmonious for this, given that she was a child-molesting piece of shit. Unfortunately for me, she was also in mega-prison. I couldn't reach her very easily, much less kill her.
My list was… pretty barebones.
Cricket, Victor, Circus.
The first two for perm-slots, and the latter for one of my precious temp-slots. There was a lot of utility I could gain from an extradimensional storage space.
I'd think about filling up on temp slots after I was satisfied with my ensuing murder spree.
Murder spree. What the fuck have I become?
Less concerned.
This was bound to happen, honestly. I had distantly thought that maybe it would happen once I had exhausted my number of temp slots. Time had made a liar of my expectations. I was a lot more fucked up, it seemed, than I was ever ready to admit.
How would I face my parents if I were to return?
My younger siblings?
I shut my eyes. Without sight, I made out the capes in my range much more clearly, for all the good it would do me to go after one right now.
I had done… an unconscionable thing, according to most religious beliefs and legal systems. I had committed a premeditated murder. It didn't matter that Alabaster had hit me first, the son of a bitch had been in my cross-hairs since I found him. He had been the hunted. All this had been my fault.
Thankfully, my power stopped me from dwelling on the act too much, emotionally. All that was left was a quiet guilt—the guilt of the knowledge of what I now was: a murderer.
I had to make it count. That was the only way that I could justify this to myself.
Kill the Endbringers, kill Scion and then… the real work would begin.
000
"Do the powers stack? If I have one power that gives me fifty kilometers an hour flight, and one that gives me eighty, do I get a hundred and thirty in total?"
"Yes."
"Same for Brute powers?"
He sighed. "Yes."
"Can I… give up any of the powers?"
"Only if the parahuman that you stole from still lives. If you do this, then you may not steal their power again."
"What if they got Echidna-cloned?"
"You have one question left. Use it wisely."
I sighed. Figured. He'd been good to me so far, but I guess it was finally time to surrender myself to the trials of experimenting.
I thought of a question then. A good question.
000
I couldn't sense normal human beings in my range. All I had was a cape sense. For all unknown factors, I cheesed Dinah's power for every answer.
I needed Cricket and myself in a relatively quiet place, alone. I needed to be in a position to touch her. And then kill her.
I had stolen myself a shitty watch from a homeless person that hawked stolen ones. He had more than enough watches to sell, and I'd track him down and reimburse him the thirty bucks that he needed. Eventually.
Using that watch, I had plotted out the exact timeline for when I needed to see Cricket.
Melody Jurist, if my memory didn't fail me, though it often did after I'd gotten a taste for drinking in my early twenties. Her name was nice enough that it was difficult to forget.
A pretty name for a really fucking ugly human being.
You'd think being called Melody of all things would take you down more wholesome straits in life. Like having music be a part of your name would allow you to see the more beautiful side of things.
But no. She just had to be a fucking Neo-Nazi cage fighter that likely killed black people for fun. Didn't even matter if she didn't, she was still a part of the 'kills black people for fun' club. And it wasn't just black people, of course. Jews, Muslims, Asians, Latinos. There were a lot of people getting killed for fun in her club.
I'd lifted a pack of cigarettes from a table on the outside of a coffee shop, from a person that had left their pack and the lighter unattended. There was a 0.34% chance that the person would feel especially wronged about their loss enough to bring it up with anyone. I had disliked having to steal from someone I had no knowledge of, but given the low percentage, I was guessing that they had already left the table and were long gone.
In any case, I smoked the cigarettes in that pack, feeling a momentary surge of euphoria with each inhale and exhale. The resets didn't remove smoke from my body, either. Instead, it got rid of the irritation, letting me smoke with all the upsides and none of the downsides. Fuckin' A.
I did so on the steps of a fighting gym that was currently closed. There wasn't a soul in sight.
I smoked in the dark, too, just waiting. I sat on a staircase inside the gym, that led to a second floor with more varied training equipment.
The lights turned on.
From my perch, I overlooked the entire floor, a bunch of boxing rings, and punching bags on the way between myself and the hallway from which Cricket had entered, for whatever reason. Maybe some late-night training, not having to worry about people ogling her body while she worked.
She wasn't even masked. Short blonde hair, scars criss-crossing her throat, and a pretty good build. Strong.
She walked up while I kept completely still, avoiding her notice until—
I moved my cigarette hand up for a drag.
She froze and stared at me in shock.
I stood up and flicked the cigarette in front of me as I walked down the steps. "You killed my parents. Time to die," I said. Revenge was easy to wrap one's head around. She wouldn't even suspect anything. I wondered if Alabaster's death had reached her yet. The numbers said no, but the chances that they would find him tomorrow were quite high.
She narrowed her eyes and scoffed.
Then she put the duffel bag she wore on the ground and raised her fists.
I walked up to her. And she punched me.
"Don't fucking move, you fucking bitch!"
"No, stop, please! Stop! You need to stop!"
"Don't you fucking move or I'll fucking slit your throat you piece of shit!"
He was on top of me, straddling me by my waist. There were people around, shouting, screaming, trying to get him to get off me.
But they wouldn't move.
No, there were too many gangsters holding them back, all with guns or bats, keeping their guy, a gang initiate, on task.
Like a TV turning off, I snapped back to reality.
Oh, there goes gravity.
I fell, and rolled on the ground. The rest of the trigger event, I could recall. Not experience, but recall. I had already lived through it all, but the feelings had left me already. As well as the racism. The gangsters had been Latino, it seemed.
Was it Alabaster's power that had knocked me out from my reverie? That had potential.
I started generating staccato pulses of subsonic noise, and immediately learned where everything in the room was. I rolled to my feet and took off at a sprint near to a rack of dumb-bells, the lightest ones I could find. I felt Cricket chase me from behind, and immediately swung my arm as hard as I could.
The dumb-bell smashed into her skull and caved it in.
She dropped in an instant.
She was dead seconds later.
"Fuck," I sighed. "I expected more fun."
Perfect.
Superhuman reflexes and spatial awareness.
And the ability to hear a rather irritating spectrum of sound as well. There was a lot of it. Everywhere. Not too much, but enough to put into perspective my reality for the foreseeable future. Dog-ears. Great.
000
Just to test out a theory, I walked by Victor in the streets at night while he was in his civilian guise, brushing my hand against his.
It was after midnight, the same night.
And I saw… a trigger event, only going by the most technical of senses. He had triggered from the crushing rejection of not being able to attain the status of a cape. All his life, he had gotten everything he had wanted. Once he'd learned that there was one echelon of respect that he would never attain, it had overwhelmed him.
So he had gone and dragged a black woman into an alley in the middle of the night.
There, he had raped her. While choking her to death.
He triggered out of self-shame once he… finished. With himself, and with her as well.
He turned to me with an intense frown. "Watch it, motherfucker," he growled, but he continued on ahead.
I stopped in the street, standing there. He hadn't noticed anything amiss, still walking like the world still owed him a favor.
Chance of being interrupted if I take him right here, right now?
Chance that he'll beat me if we fight?
What if I hit him first?
Back of the head?
Drag his ass into that alley?
That alley?
That alley?
What about that cunt up ahead, is he gonna do something?
What if I threaten him?
What about the others?
What if I—
I shot out several more questions in rapid fire, confirming every little detail about the situation. I needed him gone now. Right now. I wouldn't wait for this.
Once I had gotten my ducks in a row, I ran up to him with a punch to the back of his head.
He rag-dolled, and I grabbed him quickly before pulling him towards a wall where I smashed him by his head.
Then I looked up at a passer-by fifteen meters away. "Stay out of this or I'll fucking kill you!"
He ran away.
I pulled Victor with me into a specific alley, thanking Jingyi that this city was so lousy with them.
The man I had threatened would not call for help. He was more interested in saving himself. The passers-by were largely the same.
Deep in the alley, where we would not be disturbed for days if it came to it, I propped him in front of me and started sucking.
Suck, suck, suck.
I held his hands, looked into his insensate eyes, and dragged out from him every skill I thought he might have.
First, I took away his ability to speak. Then, when he started struggling, trying to break away from my hands and get up groggily, I stole his ability to make noise with his mouth.
He tried to fight me off with all his strength, but my reflexes were too good to let him have the drop on me.
I took his coordination, his physical skills, his combat sense.
I let him go after that, and watched as he clumsily tried to run out of the alley, unable to speak. He fell on his face, barely even catching himself with his hands. Then he tried to crawl away, putting one hand in front of the other.
He splatted on his stomach, mis-timing the movements of his hands and legs. He was like a baby.
I dragged him by his foot back to our spot, and watched as he twisted his head to look at me in absolute terror.
"Don't go now," I said. "We were just getting started, pretty boy."
He never stopped struggling ineffectually, trying his damndest to pull himself away from the connection I was establishing with him via his power—holding his hands and looking him in the eyes—but that was okay. My Alabaster powers let me continuously handle him until he grew too exhausted to even move. Once that had happened, I propped him up like before once again, seating him cross-legged on the ground before me, took his hands, and stared into those usually blue eyes of his.
They were tear-stricken. I wondered how little that had affected him when he had done this to so many others.
He was a wellspring of skills. Everything that he had incorporated had turned this man into a jack of all trades that was truly better than a master of one, due to his breadth of experience.
He had something that I did not have at all, and that was pure fucking skill. So much skill that it boggled my mind why he wasn't higher up on the ladder, why he wasn't running the show.
Because he still had a lot further to go, of course.
The sun started rising by the time I finished tapping him for all the skills he had left. Without thinking much deeply on it, I snapped his neck—using a combat form that I had stolen from him—and let him loll to the side. He had already been practically braindead for most of the time, though I knew that he had retained some level of conscious experience all the while. It was a shame that consciousness wasn't a skill that I could just take from him. I took his heightened consciousness, the skill he had stolen from a couple of Buddhist monks, but his actual baseline consciousness was a pretty intrinsic part of him. Didn't count as a skill.
Unfortunately for him, that had allowed him to feel every bit of the awfulness that his victims had gone through.
After I ran his pockets, I made my way out of the alley, a new man.
000
First thing first, new clothes. The numbers told me that I was likely to be made now if I didn't get my shit together and start looking like a non-homeless person. Due to my reduction in weight, everything hung far too loosely on me, even the jacket. None of my clothes looked like they were mine, even if they were all clean.
I got myself a white shirt, a blue blazer, a pair of nicely fitting brown khakis, leather shoes, and a cap, to cover my stark white hair.
Only a portion of the physical mutations my ass.
The cashier at the clothes shop seemed strangely nice to me. The numbers told me that she was flirting. I started flirting back. The numbers told me that her attraction had died down very quickly.
Sheesh.
Why did I even bother?
I bought some other clothes besides. Victor was really loaded with fat stacks—he'd probably been on his way to or from an ATM when I had caught him—, and I did need more cash for what I was about to do, which was to get myself a car.
A mobile home, really. A car would quite literally solve all my shelter problems, and introduce a whole new dimension of mobility that I was lacking. I knew how to drive now. At twenty-five, I should have known how to drive, but given that I was a Norwegian citizen living in Oslo, that need had fallen in the wayside compared to easier routes, like taking the bus or the metro.
I took myself and my bags to a shitty used car shop in a slummier part of town in the north. I paid five thousand in cash for a really shitty car, only because I couldn't afford to actually present an ID or a driver's license or anything like that.
It was a fixer-upper, but between Victor and Alabaster's powers, I could tell that it would only require a couple hundred more dollars to get to pristine condition.
It was a 1999 Ford Taurus Wagon. Bad suspension, worn belts, rusted exhaust, cosmetic damage, the nine yards. It was terrible for the price. But it drove. And it could be fixed, too.
I put all my crap inside the backseats and took off driving to spend the rest of my winnings with Victor on gas.
Then? Cape shit.
000
Cape shit had been driving around town, asking myself questions about where I could get the most amount of money for the least amount of effort. My ceaseless self-questioning had led me to an empty drug den with a waiting safe inside.
I kicked the doors in, walked into the empty house, reached the safe in the basement, and started asking my power about the digits.
After a few minutes, I was out with paper bags of dirty cash in mostly tens and twenties.
Drug money, probably, but it would do for what I needed.
After making sure that I wouldn't be tracked from this using my powers, I took my car to a mechanic's shop, paid a portion of the money, and told the guys that I would be sleeping inside the car while they fixed it. They didn't care at all.
Only when they started applying the cosmetic changes to the shitty Wagon was I asked to get out and let them do their work.
Due to my presence, and my hefty tips, it only took them twelve hours before they were done, and I was back on the road.
And it was approaching night.
I drove towards a parking lot overlooking the bay, slid my backrest behind, and took a deep breath of satisfaction.
Distantly, a repurposed oil rig shimmered with an opalescent spherical light, and I smiled slightly.
I asked questions about my imminent safety, and received reassuring answers. There was never too much of using Dinah's power. I could only use it too little.
Three bodies in almost forty-eight hours. And thanks to the first body, I was better able to get over it all, and keep my eyes on the prize.
A new world. Like ReplyReport Reactions:Sassy Snake, GreaterDolphin, aymdrim and 40 othersTheEpicLotfiYesterday at 3:58 AMAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 5 View contentTheEpicLotfiMaking the rounds.Yesterday at 3:58 AMAdd bookmark#6Chapter 5
The radio was a fun way to spend my time in the wake of my utter need to sleep. The news was especially interesting. Every tidbit of Earth Bet news was just too damn interesting for me to pass up on.
"Economic analysts warn that insurance premiums across the East Coast may rise again, citing 'increased actuarial uncertainty.' When pressed, representatives declined to clarify what exactly that meant."
"Hmmm!" I hummed. "Might be the fact that there's a motherfucking dragon running around! And Mr. Gay Pride of the Upper West Side himself could do fuck-all to fix the problem!"
The fuck was so important to him in Baconeggandcheese-land for him to give that more precedent over Lung? The possibility that the wannabe-Yakuza fuck might be able to wrestle another Endbringer towards inevitable retreat should it hit Brockton? Surely not.
I stopped myself from letting this distract me from what was going on.
It was five AM in the morning. A new day was approaching. A new day, and a new power slot open and ready to be used.
Yet, I was at a quandary. My power was bad at predicting what new powers would add to my unkillability. I was a sort of a blindspot to Dinah's power, it seemed. Shame, given how little her powers were worth in obscuring someone like Contessa. Or Number Man. Or perhaps even Accord.
Hmmm.
Fuck it.
More maneuverability wouldn't hurt.
Time to pay Purity a good morning.
000
After buying a scarf, a pair of shades, and an even wider hat to cover all of my hair, alongside a thick black jacket and pants combo, I made my way to where Kayden likely worked, using my power to make my way there, and make sure that I wasn't being followed or made all the while.
I couldn't account for how the numbers might lurch once I finally killed Kayden, but it was all I could do at the moment. I needed flight, and she needed fucking dead.
Nazi bitch wanted to leave the Empire 88 because it wasn't focused enough on the Nazi-aspect of the group and was too focused on selling drugs? Not on my fucking watch.
She would be judged. And it wasn't a temp slot that she would be sitting on, either.
I pulled up on my car next to the sidewalk as she walked to work. She looked at me, the driver, grimaced, and kept walking a little faster. Excellent judgment. A black guy was eyeing her.
Well, this one really was out to get her.
I burst out of the car and ran at her too fast for her to react before tackling her, smashing her face into the sidewalk.
Starvation in a wrecked car because a dumb bitch wanted to drive without knowing how to, at a tender young age at that.
After I endured that, I blasted her full of hardlight. Her skull exploded against the sidewalk. Real The Boys stuff, too. I had saved fifty to a hundred lives with that one alone. God bless.
My body reset and all the blood that was splattered all over me disappeared, returning myself and my clothing to a pristine state.
I ran back into the car afterwards, burning rubber as I peeled off. "That's how you take out the trash!" I roared, slapping the wheel. It didn't matter how jubilant or distracted I was. I had the driving skills of a God thanks to Victor.
"Hahahahahahahahahaha!" I laughed so, so fucking hard.
Life was good. Now I had flight. Solar-powered flight, but flight nonetheless. And blaster powers. A double helix of hard light ejecting from my hands. Racist DNA blasts. Heh.
The numbers did change due to my shenanigans. Not by too much, but enough that I had to shake up my pattern and move well outside of Brockton City, and into the outskirts, well away from dodge.
There, I went into some shitty burger joint slash arcade known as Funny Sam's, and had my fun for the evening. Hopefully, I'd never get to meet the forebodingly named Sam. Funny Sam's, Jesus. No wonder this place is abandoned.
000
I heard of myself on the news finally. A couple of people were being found dead across town. Four murders in as low as three days. Three days.
The news wasn't identifying any of them as capes yet, despite the fact that I had Alabaster had been in his costume.
Kaiser had high odds of knowing exactly what the fuck was going on. God bless him and his big Nazi brain. Mashallah.
The PRT, Protectorate and the police knew as much, too. There was a psycho killer—qu'est ce c'est—on the loose. And he was hunting Nazis.
Oh. If only they knew.
After Kayden, I had to think about other people to catch.
As I got back into my car, all played out from Funny Sam's arcade, I sang the song by the Talking Heads. "Don't touch me, I'm a real live-wire."
Psycho killer. Qu'est ce c'est. Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, far better.
Run run run run, run run run awaaaaaay!
Now, with a hand-gun—in the form of an actual hand that could eject so much firepower that it might as well be a gun—I had so many fuckin' options!
I appreciated how quick I was to learn, too. Killing was quick and easy when you had a person in mind that needed killing quickly, and easily.
The numbers had given me an exhaustive report on how much the city would be in uproar due to Kaiser's reaction to his ex's murder. He would use her death and the testimonies of some of the eyeball witnesses as fuel to drum up support and go out in force.
Was I ready to face him just yet?
If I stayed in the air and took potshots at him, I'd have a good chance of killing him. If I tried assassinating him now, I'd have similarly good odds. Unfortunately, I did need to make sure that I kept things quiet, or complexifiers like the Protectorate would enter the equation, and I still wasn't quite powerful enough to escape being held. I'd need to see about snatching up Trickster's power for that.
As for tomorrow…
Who was next?
…Shadow Stalker?!
I chuckled into my hand. As far as my code went, she was a valid pick. And she had the 'get out of being stuck' power that I needed. It wouldn't help me if I was Gray Boy looped. Hell, the electricity weakness alone was a substantial downside. Still, it would be a start.
And it would make breaking and entering a lot simpler.
Still, for all that she had done, she wasn't perm-slot material. Too young, and too heroically predisposed, even if it was all a ruse to act out her more violent fantasies.
I only had eight slots that I needed to use on powerful capes that deserved losing their powers and that I also did not want to kill. Dinah losing her powers had been for her own good. Shadow Stalker fit the second and third criteria, but not the first. She wasn't powerful.
I could lockpick like a motherfucker now, thanks to Victor. I could use that for breaking and entering.
As for flight…
I took my car somewhere really out of the way, approaching the city limits of Brockton Bay. There, I drove it into an underground garage for a shitty strip mall, paid for overnight parking, and walked down several blocks. This area was all suburbia, so there was a lot of walking, until I got far enough away from the mall.
Damn, America's too fucking big.
Finally, once I was far enough away that anyone watching me right now was unable to make the connection with the car I had driven to the mall, I grinned. "Flame on."
Flames didn't turn on. Instead, only lights did. The world itself seemed to light up too despite it being after dark. My entire body became covered in a shine of white light, so intense that no one would be able to make me out as anything but a glowing white silhouette.
It seemed like every other power that these Nazis had given me seemed to conspire to make me whiter and whiter.
And brighter and brighter.
There was a flock of birds atop a tree.
I flew towards them.
I flew so quickly that, hadn't it been for Cricket's reflexes, I would have into the foliage.
I swung hard and flew up into the sky alongside the birds scattering in the air.
Fast, too fast, too damn fast—
No. It was fine. I could keep up. I didn't know how I was able to keep up, but I just could. Victor's skills, Cricket's reflexes, and now Purity's speed.
I flew across the sky, away from the city, going faster, faster—
I could go so fast that my reflexes could barely keep up.
So fast as to make my speed impractical for anything but long-distance travel.
Then… what would more reflexes do? Like ReplyReport Reactions:Sassy Snake, aymdrim, Quasar and 33 othersTheEpicLotfiYesterday at 3:58 AMAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 6 View contentTheEpicLotfiMaking the rounds.Yesterday at 3:58 AMAdd bookmark#7Chapter 6
Floating mid-air felt more cumbersome than I expected it ever would. There was a mental switch that was on, like a muscle being tensed. I couldn't just relax while flying. Rather, it was more like floating back-first on water, in which you had to constantly minutely adjust your body so that it wouldn't cause you to sink or have the water splash your face.
It was difficult, the same way every new skill was.
After my round-trip around Brockton's suburb, I flew back towards the city. Midnight had just struck, and I was itching for a new entrant into my catalogue.
No. I furrowed my eyebrows.
I had Purity's firepower, Alabaster's regeneration, and Cricket's reflexes, not to mention all of Victor's accumulated skills.
Wasn't it high time I finally did some cape shit?
My clothes didn't get obscured by the light. Apparently, Purity must have been using a white outfit as well, because mine only looked brighter and more saturated than normal. Still, as far as costumes went, I was good enough to go as it was.
I held myself back at the last second, and thought things over.
I had been active enough as it was. I had been doing a major difference as well. I didn't need to go out and make a name for myself just yet.
I wanted to. Because I was strong now, and with strength came confidence. Victor's confidence. I was so ready to take on the entire city, and for some reason, I didn't mind the risk of it all, of going out half-cocked.
I thought back to the last question I had asked Jingyi.
000
"Will the powers change my brain?"
Jingyi hummed in thought. "It depends heavily on what you mean by change. The powers you accrue may only affect your brain in purely beneficial ways: making you resistant towards pain and misery, keeping you alert, boosting your mood. What they will not do is change who you are. Not in the way that they have changed the minds of the parahumans who you will steal from."
"Like Rachel becoming more dog-brained, or Black Kaze's shard brainwashing her into becoming a mass murderer."
"All your actions will be your own," Jingyi said. "For better or for worse. If you end up doing something that surprises you, know that it had nothing to do with your powers changing your fundamental self. Rather, they gave you the means to do whatever you wanted in the first place."
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"If you let it."
I frowned. "Well, I won't."
"Whatever you wish. It is your journey. Now. Are you ready?"
I nodded. "I'm ready now."
000
Just gaining a couple of extra powers had made me cocky. Stealing everything that made Victor such a Chad had done much the same.
Thankfully, I had also stolen Victor's heightened consciousness skills. And unlike him, I was far better able to put those skills into practice, given that I wasn't suffering from the same mind-worm as he was. In that regard, we were more different than night and day.
I calmed down, and made my way back to the underground garage to get my car, avoiding the notice of as many people as possible using Dinah's power. Purity's flight hardly lent itself towards stealth, unfortunately. I left trails of light across the sky as I flew. I wonder how she had done it.
Maybe I should have Victor'd her after taking her powers. There had hardly been much time to do that, but that was only because I had chosen a window of opportunity too early.
Next time, I'd take my time.
Tomorrow. Eleven PM or even later, at the very edge of midnight. If I played my cards right, then I could do the same thing I had done to Cricket and Victor: take two powers on the 'same day' so to speak. Rapid-fire power-stealing.
I had a long night ahead of me. Dinah's power, as always, would lead the exact way.
000
After eight hours of non-stop planning inside of my car until dawn broke, I spent the rest of my day fixing up a costume.
Since I was very pointedly not abiding by cape conventions, that meant that I shouldn't look like a cape. That being said, I should still have a cape name. Jack-senpai's philosophy on cape names were to sound harmlessly simple or absurd. He, too, was more of a half-cape than a full cape as well, because he broke the rules rather liberally.
I preferred to take things one step further. My name took itself seriously: Judgment Day. As far as costumes went, regular clothes would do for my purposes.
A pair of fitted black dress pants, black leather shoes, a black belt with a brass buckle, and a white and blue striped long-sleeved button-up with a red tie would make for the base.
On top of that?
Well. Only the coolest thing that One Piece ever came up with.
A coat attached to the shoulders of the shirt. It was a black trench coat, formal and fitting well with the rest of the ensemble, only my arms weren't in any of the sleeves. They too would billow behind me.
I had set up in an abandoned apartment in a condemned building—brute-forcing Dinah's power in order to find the place in the first place—and I had gotten to sewing the shirt and cloak together using one of Victor's plundered skills. Man had really covered all bases, it seemed. Cape costume tailoring happened to be one of his better-developed skills, even.
As for my mask, I picked a blank white art-mask that would cover my entire face. The eyeholes provided an irritatingly limited degree of vision, but it was nothing my sonar wouldn't take care of in short distances, or my power sense in longer distances.
I was still waiting for inspiration to strike with the mask, but for now, I'd only wear it in case I wanted to turn Purity's power off for some reason, and also because I wasn't confident that Purity's light projection would prove a perfect concealment of my features for anyone dedicated enough to finding out how I looked like.
As a breaker of the unwritten rules, I was very probably a persona non grata for every rule-abiding cape out there. I was pretty sure that the rules had been the only thing that had prevented Armsmaster from using some kind of Tinker-camera to make out Kayden's face in the past.
Once I was done sewing, I looked myself in the mirror, swishing around the cape by twirling on my feet.
I struck some anime-esque poses. Mostly Jojo and One Piece.
Then, for fun, I lifted up my shirt, flashing my stupidly detailed muscles, just to get a good laugh. "I can't get over the fucking cum-gutters," I giggled to myself. The V-lines looked over-the-top, seeming like they belonged on a modelling poster and not an actual person.
I let go of my shirt soon after. Then I looked myself over and hummed.
I needed a nicer watch. Didn't have to be 'real', just nicer-looking than the digital one I had gotten. Something analog and classy-looking.
Maybe I should get a waistcoat and a pocket watch dangling from it somewhere?
Meh.
The clock was approaching ten now, and I began packing up my belongings.
Time to start the plan.
I didn't consider myself to be a particularly cunning person. I'd never prided myself on the ability to carefully craft a plan and execute it flawlessly. In fact, I had always believed such a skill to be beyond me.
I much preferred getting what you could in the middle of chaos. Waiting for an opportunity and striking with all your power at once. Patience and observation were skills that I preferred, to self-mastery and holding myself to a master plan.
Likewise, I had approached Dinah's power with this philosophy.
I had asked an excess of ten thousand questions to Dinah's power, all to get the clearest understanding of exactly how I should accomplish this thing of mine. It had given me everything: enemy intel, windows of opportunity, the steps that I needed to take to get away and to optimize my position.
I was pretty much brute-forcing myself my own janky Path to Victory, and the better I got, the more coordinated I became, the more skillful as well, the more I could bridge the gaps between myself and my plans that Contessa's power naturally did.
I drove my Ford Taurus and parked it next to the road, a couple of city blocks away from a particular apartment block. I checked the time on my watch, carefully keeping to what Dinah's power had told me.
The clock struck eleven thirty.
I exited the car and made my way towards the block.
After I got to the front door, I used my powers to intuit the right apartment to buzz, that would result in the least amount of consequences.
One of the apartments would let me in, provided I stated my business. I cleared my throat and buzzed.
Moments later, something clicked and the line went on. "Hello? Who is this?"
"Maintenance, ma'am. Just forgot my keycard inside," I said, eyeing the magnetic lock on the door. "I'd appreciate it if you buzzed me in." I spoke in perfect American. Another skill I had gotten from Victor.
"Ah, of course."
She buzzed me in. Three percent odds that she'd Karen out and investigate what was going on.
I made my way up to the apartment by taking the stairs.
After a minute, I was up, and quickly picking the lock to the door.
I heard someone approach me from the other side.
Evidently, my skill check had failed. "Who is this?" I heard a feminine voice ask on the other side of the opening door. A pretty blonde stood there. She saw me, then her eyes widened, and I slapped her face.
Apparently, her foster mother had been pretty intent on getting the blonde and her twin sister to trigger.
To the point, even, that she would subject them to a beat-down from a bunch of minorities three times their size.
And now, I had the power to grow six times taller than before, which in volume terms made me grow a lot bigger. There was a lot of math involved that I didn't care about. I'd figure it out later, of course.
She reeled from the slap as I made my way into her house and locked the door behind her.
Then I started stealing away what little brains she had.
"What do you want?!" she asked, walking up to me as if to sucker-punch me.
I kneed her on her stomach. I didn't want to mar her face too much, since we were going to have dinner very soon.
She doubled over and fell on the floor, clutching her stomach. I tilted her chin up so that we kept maintaining eye-contact, and I continued taking from her.
Skills were such an interesting thing. They weren't just karate or fishing. Especially the mental ones. They were things like manipulation resistance. Inhibition. Confidence in one's world view. These things were skills.
So was a predilection towards violence.
My skill-stealing was slow to work, which necessitated that I grapple this one—Nessa, apparently—silencing her so that I could finish the process.
It was unbecoming to take pleasure in these tasks, to play with one's food so to speak—but I really was very curious to learn more about the mind of a Nazi, and new skills were always welcome, even if they seemed useless at a glance.
Jessica would come at any moment. Likely after twelve. They would get ready for a cape meeting with Kaiser at one AM. All hands on deck, apparently, and the subject of discussion would be none other than me.
And I would get to speak with the CEO of racism himself.