Bad Beat - Chapter 62 - Unboxing (Patreon)

Gabriel looked around the living room, seeing the last remnants of his binge, and couldn’t help but feel satisfied. He had new armor, new weapons, and even a new power. His body felt a bit weird as his mind tried to adjust to the way his muscles moved differently, as his flow got streamlined every second.

It was at the same time a profoundly weird feeling, as his body microadjusted itself every second, every breath, and every twitch of his muscles without his conscious direction, and also incredibly comfortable. Every step he took after acquiring his power showed him that his entire life he had been walking, stepping, and even moving wrong.

But now that his new power was in effect, it felt like an invisible health professional was following him and adjusting his body to eliminate every last bit of discomfort. Honestly, he didn’t really have the words to describe how it truly felt.

The closest thing he could compare it to was coming home from a long day, taking off all your clothes, including your socks, dressing in light, airy pajamas, and, after a warm shower, lying in a freshly made bed.

Like being home in your own body…

Shaking himself out of his reverie, he walked around the living room, picked up the rest of the trash he couldn’t find any use for, put it together in a ball, absorbed it with a card, then destroyed it, removing the trash from existence.

He was left with a small pile of equipment. A small pile of burner phones, plate inserts, even packs of magnets, mixed with a few odds and ends left behind by his experiments. Piling them high on his table, Gabriel stared at them for a long moment, trying to decide what to do with them while he nervously rolled his newly upgraded ring around his finger.

Finally, he started absorbing them. First the plate inserts, then everything else, including the electronics and the magnets, followed, and by the time he finished going through the miscellaneous pile and added a large amount of Electricity cards, Sparky was also finished with a small print job. An almost wire-thin wireframe of a small globe. Gabriel merged it into the Frankenstein amalgamation of items and watched as the card transformed.

It had a green border, and there was a metallic ball on the card’s face, segmented, with blue electricity running between the segments as it hovered in mid-air: 1 x Subpar Armored Computer Core.

Summoning it into his hand, it was the size of a large apple, maybe a small honeydew melon, and constantly buzzed with energy, while feeling slightly as if it would fall apart in his hand if he just squeezed a bit stronger than necessary, living up to the subpar label.

Still, it was good enough for now. He would have time to upgrade it. Taking off his ring, hopefully for the last time, he inserted the ring into it, and did the same with the Computer Core.

Once again, the card holding the armor didn’t change, the Core not being strong or important enough to supersede anything, but the moment the ring came out of the card and he put it on, Gabriel summoned the armor and could see the changes.

The HUD had improved. It was much higher resolution, and more information was displayed, including the processor usage of the Computer Core, which [immediately] spiked as Sparky discovered it and simply moved into it.

Part of the HUD’s screen real estate was instantly taken over by the sassy AI’s communication.

[Checking hard drive integrity…]

[Checking file system…]

[Upgrading software components…]

[Hardcoding CUTE protocols…]

[Eliminating inefficiencies…]

[Supercharging firewalls…]

[Installing MEME database…]

Gabriel watched, deadpan, as messages scrolled down before they cleared out and a new message appeared.

[This unit has checked the new computer core.]

[Possible to use for backup.]

[Permission to upload backup?]

Gabriel nodded. “Sure, go ahead…”

[Uploading backup…]

[Backup uploaded.]

[Checking integrity…]

[Integrity…100%]

[Task successfully completed.]

[Without any other super interfering or getting caught by a superhero.]

[This unit is much better at doing things than the parental unit.]

[This unit is smug.]

“Aaand there is the sass…” Gabriel muttered, almost surprised that Sparky barely commented on the whole upload thing. Ignoring the comments on his universally bad luck, he continued as Sparky explored the new space.

“We need to quickly test if you can maintain contact with the armor if it is in ring form.”

The idle chatter stopped, and for a moment, Sparky stayed silent. Then the text began to scroll again.

[This unit is interested.]

[Would parental unit merge current housing with armor if it works?]

[Ready for test!]

Gabriel nodded and willed the armor to return to the ring form. “Maybe. Probably a good idea just in case we need to flee fast…”

The ring felt a bit heavier on his finger at that thought, but he didn’t voice it. With Bombshell looming over him, he needed to be ready for anything.

He waited for a moment before facing one of the drones. “Well? Can you connect to it?”

A new projected screen appeared.

[Running tests…]

[Connection degraded…]

[Lowered data transfer volume…]

[Connection established…]

[Quality poor…]

“Can you do something about that? Write some new code to accommodate the changes?” he asked as he began putting the living room back together, just so that he could do something with himself instead of standing around and waiting for Sparky.

[Parental unit is correct.]

[This unit is capable of upgrading current code.]

[Starting process…]

“How long do you think it will take you?” he asked, pushing the table back into its usual place while marveling at how his new power was taking these seemingly everyday movements and refining them.

[Estimated time… Twenty-four hours…]

Gabriel nodded. “That’s good. Work on it in the background, please. And if you can clear up the connection issues, we can merge your housing with the ring.”

[Understood.]

[This unit is going to work on it, while the parental unit probably commits three dozen crimes and gets attacked by at least one super.]

[Statistically, this unit is correct.]

[Which is one of the best types of correct.]

On the projected screen, the text vanished, and a meme of Bombshell appeared, the bombastic woman looking smug. On it were two small lines. The first, “This unit,” at the top, and the second, “when right,” at the bottom.

Gabriel stared at the screen, then swiped his hand through it, partly out of frustration and partly because he didn’t want to tell the sassy little AI that he actually found it somewhat funny. There was no need to further encourage the sassiness.

Instead, he took out one of those magnets that were in every school experiment packet. A small slab of magnetized metal, one part red, the other blue. He held it up with one hand and held one empty card in the other hand, focusing his attention on the magnet.

A minute later, he turned the card toward him and grinned. Green border and a simple label: 1 x Weak Magnetic Force. He repeated the process until he had another card with the same label. Then, just as always, he fused them together, resulting in a still green-bordered card: 1 x Magnetic Force.

Then, after cajoling Sparky a little, he had one Electricity card in his hand.

Then he put two of them together, the card’s border upgrading to green: 1 x Electromagnetic Force. Staring at it for a moment, he put aside the card and repeated the process that created it. Then did it again and again. And again.

And again.

He did it until the light from outside went dark, and Sparky had to turn on the overhead lights. Maybe an hour or two of constant absorption and fusing passed until he held an extremely dangerous card in his hand.

Gabriel stared at it.

Silver border.

The face of the card only held an invisible force that was only visible because it was darker black than the background. Even though the card itself wasn’t radiating anything physically, Gabriel could still feel the sheer power contained in it.

The name was weird: 1 x High-Energy Electromagnetic Corona Flare.

Gabriel had a feeling that if he were to release it, it would first fry his own body, then fry every non-hardened electronic device in the city.

Knowing that precogs were watching him, including Nate, he wanted something powerful to hopefully deter them from taking action. Granted, a sufficiently powerful precog could circumvent him activating it, but hopefully his Deck’s ability to mess with precogs would prevent that.

Carefully taking out a small snap pop, he absorbed it, then fused it with his last resort card. The border stayed silver, and the name only changed a little: 1 x High-Energy Electromagnetic Corona Flare Pop. In the middle of the face of the card, there was now a small cartoonish spark, contrasting with the highly dangerous-looking invisible energy swirling around it.

He didn’t even dare to remove it from the card to observe it. He had a feeling that, with the usual structural integrity of a snap pop, he would simply accidentally activate it.

For now, it became one of his cards that would remain occupied until it was needed.

Gabriel stared at it for a long time before letting out a long sigh.

“I need sleep.”

Gabriel woke the next day, early.

He took a small trip to his usual bakery, listened to the old lady bitch about the Yellow Cloud, and tried to ignore how aware his new power made him of how everyone around him walked differently.

Wrongly.

After paying, he returned home, dodging Electric Jackal members who were still aggressively patrolling the building. Based on how agitated they seemed, Gabriel had a feeling that their inability to find who had robbed them was still weighing heavily on them.

He expected that there would be something happening in the near future based just on how angry they looked. Even Carlos, who usually pretended to be happy to see him, only grunted when he met him on his way up with his bounty of freshly baked goods.

Gabriel felt kinda bad; after all, he was the reason behind their troubles, so he offered one warm croissant to the gang member.

Carlos blinked at the offered baked good, then back at him. For a moment, Gabriel could see the sheer exhaustion behind the anger radiating from every pore of the poor man.

“W-what?” Carlos asked in disbelief.

Gabriel just held out the small container containing one of the croissants. “Take it. You look like you need a pickup, dude,” he said with an awkward smile.

As he stared at Carlos, the gang member reached out with slightly trembling hands and took the baked goodness. As Carlos stared down at the bag in his hand, Gabriel could have sworn there was a small teardrop running down Carlos’s cheek.

Carlos looked up. “T-thank you…” he whispered, clearly touched by Gabriel’s gesture.

Gabriel smiled at the man, nodded, and left awkwardly toward the elevator, leaving behind a very confused and oddly touched member of the Electric Jackals.

Trying to shake off his odd meeting and ignoring whatever made him share his bounty of baked products, he consumed his breakfast, washed the dishes, booted the drones off the couch, where one of them was watching some kind of cartoon about a rabbit that gained superpowers, scrolling some kind of forum, and browsing celebrity news.

Apparently, the internet was ablaze with the news of Bombshell having a new photo shoot with the collection of some famous designer.

“Scoot away, I need some space…” he muttered as he sat down, feeling a bit heavy after breakfast, and pulled his laptop into his lap.

He spent a few minutes, alright, maybe an hour, just browsing the usual sites, checking news and whatnot. Apparently, the cleanup of the Yellow Cloud was fully underway, and there was a bevy of ‘savy’ investors ready to take over the old warehouse area. Before he could sink into the doubtlessly fascinating topic of investment funds and development portfolios, he managed to redirect himself to the task at hand.

Bombshell was waiting for a report on Enchanter, and Gabriel had a feeling that if it wasn’t satisfactory enough, then there would be hell to pay. Probably by him.

He opened the document they had put together and stared at the pictures.

He would need to decide what to do. Make up some completely new information based on the fractured information from all around the net, or simply throw the fake Enchanter he had a run-in with under the bus.

She was already a target because of the Yellow Cloud, so he felt a bit guilty.

He leaned back on the couch, covering his eyes with his forearm and letting out a deep sigh.

“What the hell should I do?”

Apparently, Fate, Luck, and every other deity heard his despondent sigh, because his phone buzzed. Once. Twice, and after three heartbeats of a pause, two more times.

Removing his arm from his face, he blindly groped around until one of the drones pushed the accursed device into his hand, and then he raised it, unlocking it before letting out a soft curse.

BestShellRack: Get your info to this place: XXX XXX XXX

BestShellRack: If you are late Im hunting you down

The next two messages were just pictures. One of them was a screenshot of a map app with the meeting location, including coordinates, marked, while the other was Bombshell in a pretty revealing dress, standing in front of a mirror, looking directly into it, as if looking Gabriel in the eyes, and smirking.

“Is she flirting with me or threatening me? Why can’t she just tell me what she wants?” Gabriel exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “I’m so confused!”