Bad Beat - Chapter 59 - Armor (Patreon)

As Gabriel and Sparky watched the movie, occasionally laughing at things they saw, he went through the remaining First-Aid kits and created three more of the Superior First-Aid Kit, leaving him with four of the packages and a few stragglers of lesser quality, as the boxes didn’t really contain the exact number they had promised.

“That’s what you get when you order cheap shit…” he said with a deep sigh.

As he held the four kits, he had a thought.

“You know… I still have a pill. Maybe I could make a regeneration power…” he said out loud.

[Regeneration power is extremely rare.]

[According to every online database this unit managed to scrape, supers with any level of regeneration are one in ten thousand.]

[Healers are even rarer.]

“So making a regen power is less attention-seeking than creating a healing power, right?” he asked idly as he reached for the pills and sprays.

[Parental unit is correct.]

[Healers are almost always “recruited” by one of the local organisations.]

[If they survive the first month of being a super.]

[Statistically, most healers die in their first month.]

[According to research, it is due to them being overconfident in their ability.]

“Is this your not-so-subtle way of pointing out that I’m reckless?” he asked with a raised eyebrow as he began fusing the anesthetic pills.

[Statistically speaking, the parental unit should be dead.]

[Statistically speaking, the parental unit has experienced an elevated frequency of encounters with other supers.]

[This unit was witness to almost all of these encounters.]

[Parental unit, despite great love for crime, did not initiate those encounters.]

[To quote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”]

It was nice to see that Fleming also existed in this world, and he was still a fascinating man. The most famous spy in the world also existed, though sadly, the movies were utter garbage. Bond was always a super, who got into drag-out cinematic fights with enemy supers, while some nubile actress swooned in the background. There were a few origin movies, but those were not really about spycraft, but about how Bond got his powers.

Pretty disappointing.

“Nice to see that my paranoia is supported by factual and mathematically significant evidence…” he told the young AI as he continued with the fusing process, his hands moving almost automatically. “Pity we have no idea who is doing it.”

[At this point, this unit thinks that whoever is behind it should just hire a sniper.]

[This unit checked the prices.]

[Affordable.]

“Makes you wonder, huh?” Gabriel chuckled, though a small shiver went down his spine. “Why haven’t they done that? If they know my routine well enough to set up those encounters, then they could have placed a bomb. Hired ruthless mercenaries. So many easier ways to kill me…”

[What if the purpose is not death?]

“What else could it be, Sparky?” he asked with a frustrated huff. “The only reason I didn’t die several times was that fate has a cruel sense of humor. It certainly wasn’t because of my talents and abilities.”

[Hypothesis: Could mysterious actor be testing parental unit?]

“An idea worth considering,” Gabriel nodded. “But testing usually involves both parties. They should have at least dropped a hint or two about why they’re doing this…”

[Hypothesis #2: Parental unit is too stupid to notice hints.]

Gabriel opened his mouth to rebuke the sassy little robot, but then closed it and nodded, somewhat shamefully. “Fair.” He let out a sigh as he reached for another item. “But I think I’ll go with Occam’s razor. The whole testing thing is too convoluted. Somebody wants me dead, but doesn’t want to pull the trigger.”

One of the drones flew up in the air and hovered in front of Gabriel.

[Question #1: Why?]

[Question #2: Who?]

“Ain’t that the mystery…”

Half an hour later, he was finished with the pills and sprays, during which the two of them tried to come up with something that could explain why someone would want Gabriel dead (aside from the fact that he had robbed a gang and other unimportant things like that), but they couldn’t really agree on anything. Sparky maintained that a secret organisation was clearly testing Gabriel for candidacy, and telling him would ruin the test, but Gabriel felt that was unlikely.

According to Nate, the resident precog, Gabriel’s power, or rather the Deck of Infinity, was actively messing with his ability to successfully see Gabriel’s future. Either it was very specifically only affecting Nate, which would be super weird, or it had the power to disrupt all precog and similar powers.

Which would, technically, mean that those secret organisations could have a reason to hunt him down. At the same time, if those secret organisations wanted to hunt him down, Gabriel was sure he would have been dead weeks ago.

“Hey, Sparky… do you think the deck also affects the oracles in Delphi?” he asked idly as he began putting the ingredients for the next power on the table. One blue-bordered card displaying the pills: 1 x Box of Superior Water-Soluble Anesthetic Pills. Then came the First-Aid kits. After a bit of thought, he fused those. Two of the superiors made a Perfect one, and two of those made one Evolved First-Aid Kit. It looked sleek, modern, and somehow, as Gabriel looked at the package, it radiated health and life. It was a bit bizarre.

The spray also became a blue-bordered card: 1 x Superior Topical Spray-On Regenerative Spray. Just to be sure that it worked, he also put down a bottle of Spiritual Water, the element he usually associated with healing.

Frowning at the pile, he felt that he could add a few things…

Looking through the pile, he didn’t see anything that jumped out at him as worth adding. “Maybe armor plates?” He thought about it for a moment, but he didn’t want to alter his body that much… “I should have bought some aloe vera…”

Sighing slightly and praying this would work, he brought out another Pill of Everlasting Life and began fusing all the materials together.

The end result was another card with a border shining bronze, while the face of the card contained the image of a man’s body, half covered in skin, the other showing the organs and circulatory system like the diagrams in biology textbooks. The name of the card was a bit weird, though: Pill of Inner Rebirth.

Gabriel shrugged, sat down on the worn couch, and popped the pill into his mouth. “Can’t be worse than the other ones.”

He was wrong.

It was much worse.

His body felt like it was on fire, with melted metal being poured individually into every pore on his skin, while his blood boiled, turned into steam, then recondensed into liquid, only to repeat the same cycle faster than his heart could beat.

And his heart?

It was beating so hard that it became impossible to discern the individual beats, while he lay there, his body locked up, and the only coherent thought going through his head was that it was lucky it did that, because he so didn’t want to explain why he was screaming his throat raw.

Gabriel came to his senses, lying on his side, the couch cushion wet from his drool and a drone standing over his face while holding a marker.

He smacked his lips, feeling the dryness, and pushed himself into a half-lying, half-sitting position while he also tried to determine if he was still in one piece.

“A-ny…” he coughed as his scratchy throat almost refused to form sounds. “A-ny vis-ible changes?”

[Negative.]

[This unit was too slow.]

Letting out a sigh, he spent a few moments just touching himself all over to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, or hadn’t suddenly gained a new appendage (or worse), before letting out a relieved sigh.

“So it worked…”

Looking around, he saw that Sparky was nice enough to pause the movie, but then his eyes fell on the small drone on the table, looking up at him while actually fidgeting like a small kid who did something bad.

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”

The small robot fidgeted a little, and the projected screen shrank slightly, as if Sparky was afraid of his reaction.

[This unit did nothing.]

“Then why are you afraid?”

[Parental unit received an email.]

“So?” he asked, continuing to get into a more comfortable position. His body was still pulsing with phantom pain from the process he just went through, muscles spasming randomly or feeling like some air had gotten trapped somewhere for a brief moment before going away. “So,” he repeated. “What did it say?”

[It’s better if parental unit reads it.]

The screen changed, and it revealed a simple email that had arrived at his personal email address. The sender’s email address was weird: wecankindaseeyou@oracle.gr

The text of the email was even weirder.

Hi!

We can kinda see you, but it’s blurry. Usually, just some freeze frames or short snippets.

Also, super hilarious, one of our favorite TV shows currently. Good luck with the whole thing.

If you survive, you can visit for free.

Amused regards,

Oracle of Delphi

P.S.: Sparky is super cute. Already made a plush!

P.P.S.: We’re not going to help. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole!

Gabriel stared at the email. Then blinked. Then blinked again.

[This unit did a check: the email leads to a dead end.]

[It was registered ten minutes before the email was sent, then deleted almost instantly.]

Gabriel closed his eyes and took a few fortifying breaths. “Just delete it, and let’s forget about it…”

[Roger. Roger.]

Moving forward, and putting aside the unpleasant fact that he was actually being watched by precogs, Gabriel refocused on his self-improvement project. He thought about trying to see if he had acquired regeneration, but he was not into cutting himself, so it would need to wait until he got hurt, or he accepted Sparky’s offer to have one of the drones cut him.

Unfortunately, he didn’t want the AI to do the hurting, as he didn’t know what kind of effect it would have on the silicon intelligence.

Instead, Gabriel decided to take care of his defense problem. The next time somebody tried to kill him, there would be more than cloth between him and the enemy.

He pulled the ring from his finger and absorbed it into a card, recreating the bronze-bordered card with the armor visible on it.

1 x Shifting Shadow Stalker Set

Then he began pulling out the cooling gel packets, heating packets, plate inserts, and motorcycle gear. He also took more soil and created a few Earth cards while also having Sparky let loose a bunch of electricity into cards, creating Electricity cards. He hoped those two would reinforce the whole armor.

He started with the armor plates, and wasn’t surprised when he absorbed the first one into a card, and it had white borders and a pretty clear name: 1 x Fake Plate Insert.

“Turn the movie back on…” he told Sparky as he started once again the tedious process of absorbing, fusing, and ejecting until he ran out of material.

After finishing with the plates, he did the heating packets and cooling gels, turning them into one green-bordered card: 1 x Perfected Temperature Controlling Bundle.

The motorcycle gear consisted of several reinforced pants, jackets, gloves, and boots. While he was doing that, he had Sparky print a few things on the 3D printer. After adding all of those together, he held a nice blue-colored card: 1 x Reinforced Armored Suit Base. Even his power acknowledged that this was just about making part of something.

Then, he collected the other components: the mounts printed by Sparky, a few upgraded burner phones for the computer parts, the Perfected Temperature Controlling Bundle, the Reinforced Armored Suit Base, the Earth and Electricity cards, before taking out the card with the Shifting Shadow Stalker Set and adding to the pile.

The last thing he did was take the box full of mood rings and quickly fuse them until he had an Evolved Chameleon Mood Ring.

Taking a big breath, he began quickly fusing them before he could change his mind. He tried to focus on changing the style, but he didn’t know how much it would work. Usually, the deck was pretty good at reading his intention, making him glad it wasn’t some kind of Monkey’s Paw kind of power.

Five minutes later, there was only one card in his hand. A card with a silver border and a full-body, dark armor that occasionally flashed with all the colors of the rainbow, as if it was foiled: 1 x Reinforced Shifting Shadow Stalker Armor.

He removed it from the armor and the ring, which was still looking the same, with a few additions. The original one was made out of a dark black metal, but now it had a few geometric engravings. Subtle enough that they could be seen when looking closer, but they could also be felt if one ran their fingers over it.

Putting it on, he stood from the couch and went to the middle of the living room and took a deep breath. Once more, a mental switch activated, and the ring unfolded like a fractal tree of darkness and covered his body in less than a second with black armor.

Following lines, subtle geometric trims and embellishments, and a bit lighter accents here and there, Gabriel looked into the screen Sparky was projecting, which showed the feed from all drones, showcasing him from all angles (the feed occasionally glitching as he moved). The Deck had listened, and the design had changed.

The old set was all curves and blending in with the shadows. This was much more angular and looked more like something a professional had made.

No amount of skin was showing, and his full-face mask was changed into a mask that only had “glass” where his eyes were, the rest covered in angular armor. He still had the hood attached to the top, making him look very cool and also the dream of every edgy fourteen-year-old.

On his shoulders and forearms, there were several bumps that, after a small twitch of his eyes, unfolded into small metallic mounts. Perfect for the drones to land and merge with his armor.

With another twitch, the mounts retracted and blended into the armor perfectly. Despite being in the beginning of summer, the armor felt perfectly comfortable.

“Nice!” he exclaimed, striking a few poses. “How do I look?”

The drones flew around him in a spiral for a few seconds before Sparky began to be sassy.

[Found 45 224 pieces of fanfiction with the exact same style of armor.]

[Parental unit is very original.]

[This unit is very impressed.]

[Very.]

“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Gabriel muttered. But then he reached out and moved a mental slider. The suit immediately followed along, and the accents changed to red, while the main color turned green. Then blue, then yellow, then a mishmash that would make Pollack jealous.

He settled on a combination of dark blue and matte silver accents.

“What about this?”

[Found 1 324 pieces of fanfiction.]

[One of them was written by Mia.]