Bad Beat - Chapter 64 - Drive (Patreon)

On the way back, Gabriel dipped into a grocery shop, picked up a few things for his kitchen, and went into one of those corner shops that seemed to be selling everything and anything, including very cheap pendrives with dubious origins. He bought a five-pack for five credits, which was suspiciously cheap, but he didn’t need quality for what he would be using them for.

Then, for once, without being bothered by random super fights, he arrived back home.

He quickly put away the groceries, then took the pendrives and handed them over to Sparky for the AI to work on them.

While she was doing that, he turned on the TV and began folding origami for his new car.

After finishing the movie, a comedy about a series of comedic errors where a powerless person takes over a superhero agency and the shenanigans that came with it, he faced the pile of origami swans and smiled.

“I’m getting pretty good with this…” he muttered before beginning the process of absorbing and fusing them. Then, after finishing, he created a few more Electromagnetic Force, Nothingness, Air, and simple Electricity cards. Then he took the card that contained the fused card he had stolen from the dealership with all of the previous ones.

Then, as a final touch, he added the car he had used with Mia, plus a few burner phones and whatever miscellaneous electronics he could find to improve the onboard computer so that Sparky could take control of it.

At least Gabriel hoped it would work like that.

Finally, holding the finished card in his hand, he turned it over. The card had a green border, and there was a car on it, but every few seconds it would ripple and transform both in color and shape. Not majorly, but it always looked like a sedan, albeit with minor cosmetic changes.

1 x Stealth Electric Personal Vehicle

Satisfied with the results, Gabriel very smartly didn’t summon the car in his apartment. He would do it later. Maybe go for a night drive in the darkness when the moon was covered by the clouds. Instead, he cleaned up, turned off the TV, and fired off a message.

Within a minute, there was insistent knocking on the door.                                               

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose in confusion. Mia was usually much more casual. Signaling Sparky to be careful, he waited as the bedroom door closed behind him after one of the drones pulled it inside, then stepped over to the door and slowly opened it.

However, the moment the lock was turned, the door slammed open, and Mia stormed inside in all her goth glory, eyes locked onto Gabriel, worry written on her face. She began to inspect him, seeing if he had any wounds or the like.

“Gabriel! You’re alright! Is anything hurting? How did you get away?” she asked rapidly while Nate sedately walked in after her and closed the door with a quiet click, offering a silent and apologetic shrug to Gabriel.

Gabriel blinked, then caught Mia by her shoulders and stopped her frantic search. “Mia. I’m good. Nothing happened. What are you talking about?”

It was Nate who provided the answer. He simply raised his hand, showing the screen of his phone.

On it was a picture of the area where the Yellow Cloud appeared, but now it had transformed into a crater that led all the way down to the sewers.

The title spoke for itself: “SUPER FIGHT LEADS TO SUPER DAMAGES.”

He blinked again. “What?”

Mia frowned and took a step away from him and looked him over again with a critical eye. “You don’t look like you were in a fight.”

“Because… I wasn’t?” he said, ideas racing through his head. He eyed the two people in the room with him while trying to keep suspicion off his face.

“Didn’t you head there?” Nate asked idly as he took his phone back and began scrolling down.

Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, but I got hungry, so I stopped by to get a bite. You know that sandwich shop near the fake shoe shop? They had freshly made ciabatta…” They really had, but Gabriel wasn’t that hungry, and it was a good excuse. Everyone in the area lusted after those sandwiches. Not buying one when they were fresh was tantamount to blasphemy in most people’s eyes.

Nate’s eyes widened and his mouth visibly watered. “Fresh? Damn… you lucky son of a bitch!”

Mia snorted. “So you weren’t there?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Nah, after finishing with the sandwich, I did a little grocery shopping, then came back. I have been watching TV in a food coma since then…” he explained, motioning toward the couch.

Mia let out a relieved breath and smiled at him. “Good. I’m glad…” Then she turned around. “I’m going to get my laptop, and we can go over the details of the operation.”

She left the apartment in short order, leaving Nate and Gabriel standing in the middle of it, staring at each other.

After a few seconds, Gabriel spoke up. “Want something to drink?”

“I’ll take a Coke if you have it…” the precog said.

“That’s my last one, you asshole.”

“I know,” he replied with a smug smirk.

“Talk to you later, guys!” Gabriel waved his friends goodbye. Well, one friend and Nate. He still hadn’t warmed up to the precog. There was just something about the smug blonde that set his teeth on edge. Maybe the things he had read about precogs had colored his opinion, but he simply refused to fully trust him.

During their meeting, Mia showed him what she had managed to gather about the location, the buildings around it, and even the sewage system under it. There were well-designed escape routes showcased, both on foot and with different vehicles.

Then there were the half-built profiles of the people working there, but even with Nate’s help, nothing incriminating came up with ninety percent of them. They were just ordinary workers. The last ten percent were the important ones. But as they were proper gang members, there to keep an eye on the front, after Mia and Nate found their fake information, finding the real information was a bit harder.

However, Mia promised that by the end of the week they should be done with that part, and they could probably chance the break-in during the weekend.

They spent the last part of the small get-together talking about what they could expect there. Sadly, Nate was once again proved supremely useless. According to the precog, because Gabriel himself was personally participating, the entire sequence of events was a jumbled mess of timelines and fractured images.

“Look, it’s all a mess,” Nate said exasperatedly, as if he was completely done with and tired of not seeing the future when Gabriel was present. “All I saw were pictures. Distorted, fragmented pictures of some kind of manufacturing site. Chemicals everywhere, sometimes even on the ceiling.”

“What about the enemy?” Mia asked curiously. “Did you see who we have a chance to fight?”

“What is this mythical we?” Gabriel muttered, crossing his arms. “To my knowledge, I’ll be the only one there physically…”

Mia at least had the decency to blush. “You know what I mean…”

“Sure, sure… as long as we all know who is actually busting his ass to do the actual heavy lifting,” Gabriel replied.

Mia reached over and patted him on the biceps. “There, there…”

Nate snorted, but continued with his explanation. “Anyway, for the enemies, sadly, it varies. Sometimes, it’s one of the supers you had fought with coming back for revenge. Sometimes it's one of the other supers that work for the Jackals. Sometimes, it's some out-of-towner hired hand. And sometimes, it’s a killer clown from outer space…” He shook his head. “As I said, the images I get are rather fragmented and sometimes nonsensical…”

Gabriel nodded with a frown. “Just playing the devil’s advocate, but is there a chance that they have defenses against precognition?”

“Like yours?” Nate asked with a thoughtful look. “Possible, but doubtful. I have tried looking into things that people claim to be protected from precogs, and only a handful of them are really, truly protected from me. Even then, the presence of such protection is very visible. For example, yours shatters the images I would see. Or for one specific Swiss bank that I cannot name because I got a very threatening letter, their defenses blanked everything out with a grey fog when I looked toward them.” Nate ignored how Mia and Gabriel rolled their eyes and smirked. “Full protection, but very noticeable.”

He took a brief pause before smiling. “And I doubt a small Los Angeles gang could get their hands on better defenses against precogs than one of the biggest banks in the world.”

To that, Gabriel didn’t really have any answer. He just shook his head and asked Nate if he and Mia had looked up those out-of-towners that showed up in the few images he could make out. They did, thankfully, handing over a list for Gabriel to peruse.

There was a Mexican gang enforcer, someone from Germany with ties to paramilitary outfits, a French mime, someone who claimed to have worked for African warlords, and a guy who looked like every standard Japanese salaryman.

Finished with the after-meeting cleanup, Gabriel looked around and frowned.

His head was buzzing with thoughts, both about the fight that happened where he had experimented with his powers, what it meant for Mia, and the contents of the meeting about the heist.

“I need to clear my head…” he muttered.

One of the drones flew up to him, like an eager puppy.

[This unit thinks that the parental unit would be happy to try out his new vehicle.]

Gabriel rolled his eyes fondly. “You just want to try driving it…”

[Tehe~~]

Half an hour later, Gabriel was standing in a dark alley where the light from the old bulbs lining the main street wouldn’t reach, hidden from the light of the moon thanks to a few shoddily constructed roof extensions.

All in all, only the barest ambient light reached him, casting the entire area in gloomy shadows.

But, importantly, there was enough space for his new car to appear. With the drones keeping an eye out, he slowly pulled the card containing the car from his deck, raised it into the air, and, with a deep breath, released it, willing it to appear directly on the ground, not wanting to make any suspicious sounds.

One moment the alley was empty aside from him, heaps of trash, and the occasional pest. The next, there was the most generic American sedan sitting in the middle, looking like it had spent the last fifteen years on the road, complete with scuff marks and slightly worn paint in several places.

All in all, it looked like every car on the road.

That’s where the differences stopped. The door opened automatically, or under Sparky’s command, revealing the spotless interior, where the seat looked like it was taken from a car show floor and, to Gabriel’s eyes, looked as ergonomic as possible. Getting into the driver’s seat, he let his body settle in for a moment before letting out a pleasurable sigh.

“So comfy…”

The door closed behind him, and he pulled the safety belt on. Superpower-made car or not, the safety belt would always be on for him.

Next, he ran his hands over the wheel, feeling the anti-slip surface, before his eyes wandered over the dashboard and control board. As he was doing so, the car’s motor hummed to life, an almost imperceptible vibration running through the car while remaining almost absolutely silent. The dashboard also came alive with a lot of different lights turning on and off, and even the windshield changed, as a very basic HUD was projected onto it. It contained the speed (currently zero), an arrow pointing forward, and a small text box for Sparky.

[This is awesome!]

“What can you tell me about it?” Gabriel asked, gripping the wheel a little.

[Nearly 1000 horsepower, dual-motor AWD, gets to 60 in 3.2 seconds, with a top speed of 152 mph.]

“Sounds good. How long does the battery last?”

[Battery efficiency, with brake regeneration and other ways to charge, lasts anywhere between 700 and 900 miles.]

[Charging time: 1 hour]

Gabriel whistled in appreciation. “That sounds great… how about anything extra?”

[Chameleon Chassis: capable of color change, including gradients and simple artwork. Also capable of limited self-configuration of the chassis.]

[Stealth-Mode: Zero emissions, zero sound.]

[Computer Core: Capable of being controlled by the best girl ever.]

[That is this unit.]

[This unit is the best girl.]

“What about radar and police scanners?”

[Passive Stealth-Mode.]

“No further question, judge,” Gabriel grinned. “How about a drive?”

He didn’t even have time to put his foot on the gas pedal; the car slowly began to roll forward, turning onto the road with an elegant arc, joining the sparse late-night traffic, with nobody even paying attention to them.

Gabriel pulled down the window, put out his elbow, and began to enjoy the breeze, his thoughts fleeing in the face of simple pleasure.