Bad Beat - Chapter 63 - Step (Patreon)

After processing, or at least deciding that he didn’t really want to deal with thinking about the crazy superhero, Gabriel decided to put together some kind of plan for the foreseeable future.

Cooking a bowl of fresh Spiritual Rice, which had long since stopped affecting him, he sat down with the warm bowl in his hand, a bunch of upgraded ingredients, like pickled ginger, seaweed sprinkles, and thinly sliced carrots, next to the rice. Eating it slowly, he stared at nothing as he tried to put together something actionable in his mind.

Mia and Nate were currently working on their next heist. Observing the location, working out the weaknesses, and trying to find the best way to enter and exit without being noticed. And despite everything, Gabriel was actually looking forward to the heist.

‘Maybe I’m actually a kleptomaniac?’ he mused humorously, chuckling around the rice he was chewing.

Shelving his mental issues for a bit, he refocused on the task at hand.

He had several powers that would probably… hopefully… help him survive what was about to come. There was, of course, the ever-trusty Deck of Infinity. However, while powerful beyond anything, it wasn’t exactly a combat power.

His body was augmented to barely above-average qualities, and even then it was mostly enough to rectify the long years of unhealthy living the body’s previous owner had left him with. His memory was similarly upgraded, but once again, it was nothing outstanding. There were unpowered people out there with much better memory.

His two major powers were the movement power that took everything and refined it, allowing Gabriel to continuously improve. Yet even that power didn’t give him anything he didn’t have. It didn’t make him stronger, faster, or more importantly, more durable. It just took what he already had and made it better. An extremely good power, but not in the short term.

Then there was his power absorption power. It allowed him to absorb energy in all its forms, be it light, electricity, or even kinetic. The major issue with that was that the power didn’t make him immune to those energies. Light, in sufficiently high-powered states, could still burn him. Getting hit by a fist still hurt, especially by someone who had enough control of their powers not to let it leak out. The absorption started the moment the energy touched his skin, not before. A big weakness he would need to work on…

‘What card could expand my power to absorb things?’ he wondered, trying very hard to figure out how to mix conceptual cards for that. Sadly, he came up with nothing.

For now, he would need to switch between wearing his armor and not wearing it, depending on what he was doing and who he was fighting.

Shrugging, he instead focused on the last ability.

Granted, it was part of the absorption power, but he still considered it a separate power. The power to release the absorbed energy in blasts of light. Blasts of light that he could more or less control.

While thinking, he raised his hand, letting the half-finished bowl rest on his lap, and let a small trickle of energy escape, consolidating into a plane of light, before shattering like glass and vanishing.

‘My summoning time is still too slow…’ he grimaced inwardly.

He would need to practice more. Much more… Or make a card that increased his control. Probably what he would end up doing in the end, but Gabriel liked to think that he would be able to put in the hard work necessary to master the power, but he also knew that if there was a shortcut, he would most definitely use it.

Then there was his situation with Bombshell.

The woman was certifiably crazy. And also incredibly powerful, with enough backing that even if he managed to take her out, there would certainly be an investigation. An investigation that would certainly find him.

For now, he needed just to contend with one crazy super. If the above were to happen, he would have to face all of them.

The big question was: how to deal with Bombshell? Sparky was doing her best to infiltrate her communication device, but that would take time. Even then, with how brazen she had been, Gabriel didn’t think they would find anything useful on that. If she was ‘brave’ enough to do that to him in broad daylight, even if they were on a rooftop, he had no doubt she had done worse.

‘Probably one of those open secrets everyone knows, just not the new people…’ he complained.

Shaking his head a little, he looked at his phone that was lying on the table, unlocked with Sparky visibly working on something. Thankfully, that didn’t prevent him from seeing the date on the top row.

It was Tuesday now, and according to Bombshell’s instructions (demands), he would need to show up on Friday at the coordinates she had provided. Putting down the empty bowl, he pulled his laptop closer and typed in the coordinates.

The map application began to zoom in, and Gabriel couldn’t help but frown. The coordinates showed a mall. An actual mall. Just like in his previous dimension, malls were also in decline here, though they survived because, in many areas, there was nothing better to replace them.

Based on how their meetings so far had gone, he suspected that Bombshell wanted him to get to the roof. Not a big problem, but he still didn’t know why there? What was so important about that mall? The Inland Center Mall was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, malls in San Bernardino. Getting there would take him maybe an hour with public transport and half an hour with a car.

Pulling out the card that held the car they had stolen with Mia, Gabriel stared at it for a moment before putting it back into the deck. He would need to handle that sometime. Naturally, he could easily destroy it with the card, but why waste a perfectly functional car?

He quickly sent a message to Bombshell, as she hadn’t deigned to send a time for the meeting, before closing the laptop, grabbing his phone, and heading out.

A small adventure before the big one would let his restless soul rest a little.

As he was getting his shoes on, he received several messages. Pausing a little, he took out his phone and saw that Bombshell had actually sent him the time.

Seven in the evening.

Weird time. Not late enough for a true clandestine meeting, nor was it early for anything. He had checked the mall’s website, and the only event that day that was going to happen was the reopening of one of the restaurants early in the morning after some refurbishments.

Still, he answered with an affirmative and checked the other message.

It was from Mia, telling him that they had something and needed to sit down to discuss the plan further. Sadly, even with the upgraded phones, they didn’t dare to risk someone intercepting or even hacking their messages.

By now they were using a completely isolated messaging app that Sparky had built, running on her own hardware without any access to anyone outside of their small circle, but even then they didn’t dare to be careless.

Gabriel stared at his phone for a long minute, then slowly and carefully typed in a message.

ToInfinity: Heading out for a small walk. Want to check out the Yellow Cloud.

LemonSqueezy: Lol. Good luck. It must be swarming with collectors now that they cleaned it up.

ToInfinity: Worth a chance…

LemonSqueezy: good luck

Nodding to himself, he put away his phone, finished putting on his shoes, and left the apartment, his steps almost completely silent while his gait radiated elegance and efficiency.

The nearest used car dealership was half an hour away in any direction.

It didn’t really surprise Gabriel that there were so many of them. Honestly, it was harder to find new car dealerships in San Bernardino due to the economic status of most people in the district.

Stepping out onto the street, he put his hand into his pocket and began ambling generally toward the place where the Yellow Cloud incident happened. They had cleaned it up very quickly after they realized it was basically just an enhanced smoke grenade, but that didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists from swarming the area. Then there were those who wanted to see if they could find something related to supers that they could find and then sell. Plus, there were also people sniffing around from all the groups around it to see what really happened. It wouldn’t be too surprising if anyone asked why he was also heading there.

However, on his way there, he simply ducked into an alley and began making his way toward Duke Silver’s Used Car Dealership (“Prices worth duking it out for!”), directed by Sparky, using the GPS map to give him directions.

Why she refused to make herself a proper voice, he didn’t know.

He asked a few times, but she just said it wasn’t time, or she was thinking about what kind of voice she wanted, so he let it go. The sassy little AI was already a bit more trouble than he could handle. Stepping into the shadows of several buildings, his ring unfolded around him in an eye-searing fractal, covering his entire body with his new armor, which, in turn, the moment it fully settled over him, vanished from sight, leaving the entire alley empty.

He sped up, knowing he only had a few minutes.

Jumping the fence, his new power directing his movement with superhuman efficiency and elegance, he landed in the backlot of the dealership, where he could see dozens of cars, some on top of each other, looking like they were simply thrown there.

Within moments, he was maneuvering between them like a very rusty obstacle course, reaching for the back door of the dealership.

The lights were out, and he couldn’t hear any movement, but that didn’t mean a lot. Raising his hand, he summoned his Multi-Tool to his hand and activated it, which opened the electronic lock on the door. Though Gabriel felt that if he had to push the door in, even without it, a slightly stronger-than-average shove would have opened the door. Duke Silver wasn’t really up-to-date on his maintenance and security.

Which was exactly the reason he was here.

The guy was a well-known lemon-seller (according to Sparky’s research), so he wasn’t that broken up about stealing from the man.

He quickly slid into the office, found the ancient computer, even by this world’s standards, turned it on, and, with a small cable connecting his phone and the computer, had Sparky quickly turn off all cameras and any other security measures.

A few seconds later, there was a line on his HUD.

[Security measures disabled.]

[Parental unit may commence crime.]

[Estimated time until organic security arrives is five minutes.]

“Organic security?” he asked quietly, already walking back toward the backlot.

[Correct.]

[Duke Silver pays a local man to keep an eye on the lot and report to him if anything happens.]

[Based on the notes on the computer, organic security needs to check every fifteen minutes on the dot.]

“And how do you know he would check exactly then?” he asked as he reached for the busted door.

[Many exchanges about stolen cars.]

[Duke Silver had organic security set up an alarm that goes off every fifteen minutes.]

“Five minutes?” he murmured. “Then let’s wait for it; then I’ll have fifteen minutes.”

Sparky didn’t reply, but a countdown did appear on his HUD.

He spent the time waiting for the countdown to reach zero checking the news for anything interesting.

Thankfully, nothing happened that would have required his attention by the time the countdown reached zero. They waited a full minute before he opened the door, stepped out into the darkness of the Los Angeles night, and took a moment to survey the backlot.

Then he pulled out his deck, separated the full cards, and kept the empty ones in his hand. He took a deep breath, braced himself, and touched the first one, absorbing it.

Then from then on he was off, running between every wreck, every car that could barely move, or was standing on bricks. He didn’t care. He took all of them. When he ran out of empty cards, he quickly began to fuse them. It took maybe five minutes to tag every car in the backlot, leaving it empty.

Not even stopping to check the card, he ran toward the fence, vaulted over it, and vanished into the darkness.

Five minutes later, he emerged from a different alley, wearing his street clothes and looking at his phone.

Just like everyone else around him…

A/N: Apologies for the late posting. This wasn't finished yesterday, but while I wasn't sick, every blink was like five seconds, and I felt like I was moving through molasses. Have no idea what was going on, but it was weird...

So I had to finish it today. Sorry again :)