Bad Beat - Chapter 55 - Run (Patreon)

Gabriel reached the vents after taking a breather for a minute, as his body came down from the adrenaline high created by the strain he had put it through. Or something like that. Gabriel wasn’t a biologist or a medical professional, but his body was shaking, and he felt like he had just run a marathon. Or maybe a very long hundred-meter dash.

Either way, his body felt exhausted, and he had to take a minute to get it under control.

Letting out a few deep breaths as he leaned against the cold walls of the warehouse, he softly called out to Sparky.

“Hey, Sparky, any news from the outside?”

[Negative.]

[No one has noticed parental unit’s actions.]

[Granted, this unit doesn’t have access to seismic sensors.]

“Very funny…” he muttered, feeling his body return to somewhat normal. His internal battery, which just a few hours ago was bursting with excess energy, was now painfully hurting for that energy. It wasn’t empty, as he had made sure to leave behind at least thirty percent, but compared to what it had been before, it was practically empty.

‘Firing that ten percent was a bit too much…’ he mused as he finally felt his knees stop knocking together.

However, it had taught him much about his power. He couldn’t just endlessly spam those blasts. He had a definite limit, which seemed like it could be raised, but without a reliable source of something to refill his energy reserves, it wasn’t a reliable training method.

Still, he had proved that his ability could be trained, so eventually he would be able to use it for fighting. Now, at best, it was a passive defense, or at worst, a surprise attack that worked maybe once.

After all, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t dim the light or change the color of the blast. It was always a radiant white, though thankfully it was also absolutely silent.

As his body finally stabilized, Gabriel watched on his HUD as Sparky cycled through the available drone streams, showing him the surroundings while also calculating the most efficient route home.

[If parental unit starts now, the trip will take around an hour.]

Gabriel nodded and, with a deep breath, pushed away from the wall, scanned the room to see if he had left behind anything aside from the humongous hole bored into the ground that reached the sewers, then began climbing up the metal stairs, once again listening to the construct groan and creak around him.

After a much slower ascent than the descent, he reached the vent and entered, heading toward the exit.

By the time he was halfway through, Gabriel could feel his body calming down, and the jitters had reduced to a minimum, and he could finally concentrate fully on his plans for the future.

He would definitely need to set up a training regimen. This power was unlike the static Deck. It needed constant attention and focus to improve until it became usable by any metric. He would also need to find a way to measure the growth of his energy reserves to see if he could figure it out.

Maybe it was linear, meaning it grew a set amount every time it was strained, regardless of how much it was strained. Or maybe it was variable, where the growth depended on the way it was strained and the situation.

However, with the very conspicuous hole he had left, he was sure that someone would sooner or later come to investigate, so experimentation on that would be left for a later day.

For now, his only thought was heading home, eating something tasty – maybe he would try to make some kind of super soy sauce – and then taking a nap.

He slowly opened the grate hiding the vent and glanced outside.

The coast was clear.

Even Sparky confirmed that she couldn’t see any movement.

For a moment, Gabriel debated turning on his invisibility, but with the way the vent worked, he doubted it would be useful. While yes, he would be invisible, that wouldn’t help with the movement and sounds he would make clambering down from the vent opening, then landing on the trash covering the ground.

Slowly but surely, he soon found himself standing on the ground in the shadow of the warehouse, looking at it with a frown. The giant hole he had left behind was mighty suspicious. Anyone who found it would think it had been made by a super…

“Sparky…” he called out softly. “Leave one of the drones behind, and start weakening the warehouse supports. Let it collapse into the hole.”

[Would that not be more suspicious?]

“Warehouses collapse all the time around here…” he said. “Nobody will even care…”

[This unit doubts that, but this unit wants to destroy the building so this unit will ignore empirical evidence.]

Gabriel chuckled a little, then looked around and, still in the shadows of the warehouse he had just condemned to destruction, began following the path Sparky had set out for him. It would avoid almost all the cameras aimed at the area, and where there were cameras he couldn’t avoid, he would use the invisibility feature built into his hoodie.

He was about to call it a good day when a warning blared across his HUD.

However, he completely ignored it, because even without it, he could hear the creak of metal as a door opened.

Like a frightened rabbit, his head whipped around, seeking the source of the noise.

He was halfway to the ground when he spotted them. Across the space between the warehouses, wide enough for trucks, a small side door, rusty with age, opened, and a new person emerged.

Unfortunately, given their position, the way they exited the building gave them a perfect view of Gabriel.

What they saw was a guy dressed in a weird hoodie, covered from head to toe in black, squatting in front of a pile of trash, frozen mid-motion.

What Gabriel saw was a person – though, upon closer inspection, he spotted the gentle swell of their chest – hidden under a black hoodie and mask, also frozen in mid-motion, one hand on the handle of the open door and the other holding the strap of a backpack.

Gabriel recognized the outfit.

It was his outfit.

Well, a very low-quality facsimile.

Like if someone tried to cosplay him but only had access to one picture…

‘Oh wait…’

For a very long moment, the two of them stared at each other before the unknown woman let go of the handle and pointed at him.

“You!” she squeaked out.

Gabriel just stared back at her.

“I thought they made you up!” she exclaimed. While her head was fully hidden, not even a stray hair was visible, Gabriel could see the surprise radiating off her body. She was strangely expressive.

Then, as if recoiling, and before Gabriel could even react, she reached into the pocket of her hoodie with a speed that looked unnatural and lobbed something shiny toward him.

Gabriel’s eyes widened, and still squatting on the ground, he brought up his hand as though to protect his face. The motion was enough to throw off his balance, sending him to the ground. Thankfully, he didn’t fall far.

Then, as the shiny ball flew toward him, he realized that his hand wouldn’t be enough and reached deep inside, pulling on his energy.

White light gathered atop his palm, stuttering and fizzing as his scattered mind tried to form it into a coherent shape. For a short fraction of a second, it seemed as if it would work…

TINK

PLAPP

The shiny yellow ball struck him squarely in the chest, then fell to the ground, rolling for a second before coming to a wobbly stop, leaving Gabriel on the ground, hands raised and blood racing. From this close, Gabriel could see that it looked like one of those squish toys, filled with a thick liquid that reminded him of glow-in-the-dark stickers.

The two of them stared at the ball as it sat on the ground.

“Strange, I could have sworn I set the timer to–” she muttered loud enough for Gabriel to hear. Then, before he could move, the ball let loose a whistling sound.

PSSSSSS

BAAAAAFFF

Then it exploded right in his face.

Light, smoke, and a bit of force hit him instantly. Blind, Gabriel almost imagined that he could hear hurried footsteps, but due to the disorientation, he focused instead on scuttling backward until his back hit the wall.

Thankfully, his mask filtered out most of the flash, so he only had to deal with the smoke and the sheer confusion.

Standing up, he watched as Sparky projected a path on his HUD.

He staggered forward for a few steps before regaining his balance and stability, and then he was running. Due to the smoke, he didn’t know where he was running, but he trusted Sparky enough to follow the route laid out for him.

The smoke was yellowish-gray, the same color as the ball that had been thrown, but without the glow. As he ran, following the arrows on his HUD, he was surprised to see the smoke continue billowing out, staying near the ground and filling the alleys.

It took him almost two minutes of constant running to escape the yellow cloud, leaving behind swirling remnants trying to cling to him, as if the cloud didn’t want to let him go.

Looking around, breathing a bit heavily, he scanned the surroundings.

He was at the edge of the warehouse area. Behind him, the yellow smoke was slowly swallowing the derelict warehouses.

CRASH

The sound of metal and concrete collapsing echoed from within, but he couldn’t see anything.

[Timing was good for warehouse destruction.]

[This unit likes to destroy.]

[Drone energy levels low.]

[Returning to charging station.]

Instantly, the three symbols representing the three drones on his HUD lost one of their number, leaving him with two to help guide his escape.

In the distance, he could already hear the sirens.

“Give me an escape route,” he told Sparky.

[Roger.]

[Escape route calculated.]

The arrows on his HUD once again reappeared, and he began to move.

Gabriel rushed through the alleys between the warehouses, practically blindly following Sparky’s instructions. He had no time to stop and consider them. Releasing strange yellow smoke in the middle of a city would surely get everyone’s attention.

And he definitely didn’t want to be present when the heroes and authorities descended on the scene. As he tried to regulate his breathing, he made a vow to himself.

‘I’m either making a super-speed power or a teleporter because this is just stupid…’

The sound of approaching sirens began to grow, and the panic growing inside him grew with it. The ‘fight’ had previously proved that he wasn’t ready. It was getting tiring being so useless.

[Turn left at the corner.]

Following the direction, Gabriel headed for the corner. The buildings were slowly changing from the old abandoned warehouses to the slightly newer and slightly less abandoned old worker housing now used by people who kept Los Angeles alive with their daily grind.

[Turn left.]

Turning sharply, he took the corner.

UFF

Gabriel slammed into a soft body, sending both of them to the ground in a great tangle of limbs. Cursing without abandon at being slowed down, it took him a moment to realize who he had collided with.

The other person also cursed, her familiar feminine voice unmistakable.

On his HUD, there was one line.

[Oh my. What a coincidence…]

‘For fuck’s sake, Sparky…’ he cursed in his mind. With reckless speed, he wrenched his hand out of the crook of her leg and shuffled backward before getting back to his feet.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, his head constantly turning as he watched the environment to see if there was anything else around.

She also scrambled to her feet and reached for him.

Gabriel stepped backward, out of her reach. “Hey!”

“Shut the fuck up!” she yelled. “We need to get out of here!”

“Because of your stupid bomb!” he replied, raising his hand to lash out. He wouldn’t be caught unaware again.

“¡Chingada madre!” she cursed before turning on her heel. “Follow me or not, I’m getting out of here!”

Gabriel looked around once more and watched as the crazy super ran away from him.

Watching the back of the super, he had the sudden urge to lash out. All it would take was one blast, and she would be taken out. He even raised his hand.

But in the end, he shook his head.

Ultimately, he was much more curious about why she would dress up as him.

Cursing his curiosity, he started running, catching up to the woman as she headed for a door on one of the nearby buildings.

“Don’t think we aren’t going to talk about this, young lady,” he muttered to Sparky.

[Hehehe~~]

[This unit is in trouble.]

A/N: Please be amazed by my basic Spanish.