Mercantile Violence 1.02

Mush was the trash guy.

It felt poetically correct, in my head at least, that my Trash Tier Pages should be tested against a guy whose entire gimmick was literal trash. Unfortunately, his garbage seemed to be of a much higher caliber than mine.

"You inshane, brat?" he slurred, his words thick from the punch I'd landed on his jaw earlier, and probably from a severe lack of whatever dust he usually snorted.

I casually twirled the flaming sword in my hand, keeping my distance. I’d been testing my power's limits, gauging its potential. Normally, the Fake Weapon's Page could conjure any kind of illusionary arm—swords, clubs, guns, you name it. But a flaming sword? That wasn't in the standard manual. The direct, boring upgrade would have been to simply make the weapons real, with their sharpness or piercing power scaling with how short I set the Burn timer. But by sacrificing that variety and laser-focusing purely on my desire for fire, the power to call forth flaming beauty was what I got for a hundred-second Burn.

Mush’s bulky trash-carapace was riddled with shallow, smoldering gashes. None of them were deeply damaging to him, nor did they give me a decisive advantage, but judging by his grimace, they clearly hurt like a motherfucker.

Fake Weapon (0.7) Burn Time has ended!

Average has been incremented by 0.025.

Maximum has been incremented by 0.05.

The flames on my blade flickered and died, the sword dissolving back into nothingness.

I called forth my inner Library—my five Books (though three stood empty for now)—and mentally flipped through the new Pages I’d scraped together since the fight began, and they flowed smoothly to the forefront of my mind. I didn’t keep them all active or even memorized—I didn't have a perfect memory, unfortunately. If my hoard of Pages ballooned into the hundreds, or even just a few dozen, I'd probably lose track of what I actually had.

[One Day Blinding Stew]

|Trash Item (0.5)|

A good and reasonable punishment for those who misbehave. This is an unusually hot and spicy but still nutritious stew that renders whoever drinks it blind for 24 hours. Restock Timer: 12 Hours

[Gold Ring Gift]

|Common Item (1.0)|

A gold ring that you can give as a gift to a loved one. The patterns of the ring customize themselves according to whoever you give them to. Restock Timer: 48 Hours

[Roentgenium Manipulation]

|Trash Ability (0.1)|

Allows you to sense and telekinetically control Roentgenium in a radius around you. The range and power can be increased by training, scaling with your energy reserves.

Fortunately, that was not a problem future me would have to worry about.

"Burn Page: Pocket Sand. 30 seconds."

[Pocket Sand] {BURNING: 29 seconds left}

|Trash Ability (0.4)|

Conjure and launch a handful of sand from your hands. Shouting "pocket sand!" as you do so might make it stronger.

The Page lit ablaze, and a sudden, granular warmth flooded my jeans. I could feel sand—hundreds of pounds of it—spawning directly inside my pockets, ready to obey my telekinetic commands.

Mush roared, shifting his massive weight. As a mere grunt I had no idea what Mush's powers were beyond some hearsay, but from what I could see, his 'real' body was a relatively small core of gross, stretching tendrils. He used them to latch onto loose garbage, dirt, compost, and mud, dragging the filth together to construct a massive, armored outer shell.

I stared at the towering pile of sentient trash and remembered a cartoon I’d watched ages ago. There was this creepy, red-haired kid with a massive jar on his back who could control sand. One of his moves was to trap people in a wave of the stuff and crush them into a red paste.

Trying to crush Mush from the outside would likely prove to be a major pain in the ass; his trash-armor was too thick, which would likely cushion him and force me to exert more force, more control.

I did not have time for that. But I also didn't have to crush him from the outside.

With a smirk, I thrust my hands forward, unleashing a massive, high-pressure torrent of sand straight from my pockets. It blasted through the gaps in Mush's garbage plating, bypassing his armored exterior entirely. Instead of trying to squeeze him, I flooded him.

"What the—gah! Glub!" Mush choked as the sand poured down his throat, filling his mouth, his nose, and the hollow cavities of his shifting, trash-bound form.

I focused my mind, commanding the sand inside him to rapidly expand, packing it tight. The sheer, relentless volume of the grit bloated his composite body, stretching his connective tendrils to their absolute limit.

With a wet, tearing sound, Mush burst from the inside out. Trash, mud, and bloody tendrils scattered across the alley floor as his containment failed completely, leaving him a groaning, ruined mess in the middle of a massive pile of sand.

It was a testament to his power that he was somehow still alive.

Just at the edge of my field of vision, the Grind bar was pulsing, hovering mere millimeters away from being completely full.

"Burn Page: Gold Ring Gift." One second.

A system prompt flickered to life, buzzing with text about the item's restock timer and how its existence affected some other conditions. I didn't care; I needed this thing Burnt now, so my Average and Maximum would improve before the bar topped off and forced a Draw. I hurriedly slammed my way through the prompt, choosing one whose title was Give and Forget, which had something to do with how the pattern on the ring was selected, what it did and other such stuff.

In my head, I just wished the damn thing good luck in actually finding a "loved one" to receive it. Given my current lack of social prospects, it would probably just float around in the void somewhere or dissolve into useless motes of light. Either way, not my problem.

By the time the screen vanished, I couldn't even remember the details of what I had chosen.

Gold Ring Gift (1.0) Burn Time has ended!

Average has been incremented by 0.045.

Maximum has been incremented by 0.09.

And then, another notification popped up, overlapping the last.

You've slain the host of Hunter Gatherer.

...Hm. The host of what, now?

Possible Rewards:

Increase Average by 0.75 and Maximum by 1.5 only for the next Draw.

Gain Control over the resulting power of a sub-10 second Page Burning as if it was a 10 minute Page Burning once. (Duration remains at 10 seconds; only the control over the resulting power how it manifests is increased).

Become able to further diverge the domain of an above 10 minute Burning without losing out on Potency.

"Ooh-la-la... now that's what I'm talking about." I whistled appreciatively, my fleeting discomfort at the realization that I had just killed a man evaporating instantly. "Can I save this choice for later?"

The screen didn't fade or offer a close button, so I took that as a resounding no.

"Hmm... ah, fuck it. Eeny-meeny-miny-moe..."

Option two was a go.

Conflict Grind filled!

Parameters: Average - 0.625; Maximum - 1.25

Drawing…

[Metal Gear]

|Trash Item (0.3)|

A rather ordinary, if not extraordinarily solid, gear made of iron.

Bruh. This is what I sacrificed my goddamn Gold Ring for?

The Archer Bridge Merchants were, in essence, a criminal organization that would only truly rise to prominence in the wake of the Leviathan attack. Their membership would soar alongside the sudden spike in homelessness and desperation left behind by the Endbringer—driven by the basic human urge to escape what could only be described as Hell. They chased a temporary Heaven, even if that fleeting paradise only served to make the reality they returned to that much harder to bear.

But those future details were, for now, irrelevant.

Even before the Endbringer's arrival, the Merchants maintained a minor presence in the city. It was just enough to secure them an invitation—if not an actual sit—to the meeting deciding how Brockton Bay's underworld would respond to the blatant insanity being perpetrated by the Azn Bad Boys.

At the moment, their numbers didn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things, but they were established. Mush had been the latest parahuman to join their ranks, bringing their total cape count to three—a milestone that would finally put the Merchants on the local radar.

Adam Mustain—back when he was not yet beyond human, not yet Skidmark—would likely have found the irony amusing. That the Archer Bridge Merchants would not fall to a hero's righteous crusade, nor would they be wiped out by crossing paths with the wrong villains.

Instead, they would fall to his old friend. To someone who was, just like them, simply searching for his own version of Heaven.

"FUCK YEAH! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT BABY—KEEP 'EM COMING!"

[A Skeleton]

|Trash Item (0.3)|

An ordinary human skeleton from a completely ordinary person.

[Cool]

|Trash Ability (0.6)|

Allows you to decrease the temperature of objects through touch. It doesn't decrease it particularly fast and it's certainly not enough to freeze them, but it will keep your drink or ice cream cool.

I was, of course, not talking solely about the shitty powers I was Drawing, but rather the wonderful, generous local drug users who were making this entire grind session possible.

I had gone to a known gathering spot (for the grunts at least), and they had immediately drawn whatever weapons they had on hand—knives, metal pipes, and a couple of cheap handguns.

To kick things off, I decided to test my Control over a 10 second Burn.

"Burn Page: Metal Gear."

The result was beautiful, if mostly out of my hands. Before the thugs could even register what was happening, the metal in their hands began to violently warp. Screws, barrels, and pipes groaned before solid, heavy iron gears literally burst outward from the metal parts of the weapons they held, shredding the frames of their guns and shattering their blades into useless junk.

Well, all of them except for one guy standing just behind me, who was too close for the power to take effect, or so my Burning Page said.

I spun around, snatched the gun right out of his startled grip, and pointed it at the crowd. I squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Ah, motherfucker!" I hissed, rubbing my wrists. "This shit is way harder to aim than they make it look!"

Even with the terrible recoil, the sheer volume of lead in a tight alley meant I still managed to clip two of them—one in the thigh and another in the shoulder.

Before I could fire again, a wooden baseball bat came down hard across my back.

Crack!

The impact sent a white-hot shockwave of pain straight up my spine, nearly dropping me to my knees. Adrenaline surged through my system, instantly dulling the ache into a throbbing, angry roar.

I whipped around to face the guy with the bat.

"Burn Page: Cool." Heh, ironic. "Thirty seconds."

The mild, ice-cream-chilling ability instantly warped into something far more violent. I reached out and slammed my hand flat against the guy's chest. A massive, jagged wave of solid ice erupted from my palm, freezing him instantly from the waist up and pinning him to the brick wall behind him like a grotesque winter display.

The remaining Merchants stared at their frozen buddy, the sheer absurdity of the situation finally knocking some sober, survival-instinct-driven sense into their drug-addled brains. They began to step back, eyes wide with terror.

But it was way too late for that.

I offered them a wide, manic grin and swept my arm out, unleashing a blinding, freezing gale that coated the rest of the alley in a thick sheet of frost, leaving them shivering, half-frozen, and completely incapacitated on the ground.

Cool (0.6) Burn Time has ended!

Average has been incremented by 0.017.

Maximum has been incremented by 0.034.

Conflict Grind filled!

Parameters: Average - 0.655; Maximum - 1.31

Drawing…

[Drunk Driver]

|Trash Trait (0.9)|

"It's the drunk crashers that give drunk drivers a bad name." The more inebriated you are, the more skilled you are at driving and operating vehicles.

I approached the shivering wreck who was most likely the leader of these chucklefucks. The pain in my back was constant, but it was easily ignorable under the massive wave of adrenaline still pumping through my veins.

"Alright then," I said, crouching down in front of him. "Where can I find Skidmark?"

Before he could answer, my stomach let out a loud, pathetic rumble.

"Right," I muttered, shaking my head. "And before that..."

Burning Items

When an Item Page is Burnt, a brighter flame (i.e., a shorter Burn Time) increases the likelihood that it will gain a fleeting form of consciousness, acting directly upon the user's subconscious desires. This brief awareness is heavily colored by the nature of the Item itself. For example, a terrifying helmet will likely interpret the user's subconscious desires through a dark, aggressive lens, whereas a healing ring will view those same desires through a positive, protective light, acting accordingly for the brief duration of its existence. It is highly improbable for an Item to act in a way that does not—at least through its own unique perception—align with the user's desires or benefit them in some way.

If an Equippable Item Page leaves behind Ashes, these lingering effects will typically manifest on or around the specific area of the body where the item was equipped.

Consumable Item Pages (such as Food Items or Potion-type Items) are treated on a case-by-case basis. Typically, if the product of a Burning Consumable Item Page is… consumed, any changes made to the user that he would not be able to achieve naturally without the Item are not preserved once the Item has finished Burning. This means that, for example, the healing effects of a Vitality Potion won't be taken back once the effect ends, but that any supernatural stamina acquired through it (unless said enhancement itself has an expiration time) will disappear.

Items that possess a Restock Timer or Cooldown generally offer assistance in guiding and shaping their power during a Burn.

The shorter the Restock Timer or Cooldown, the more potent and beneficial the resulting effects will be.

The shorter the Burn Time, the more mono-focused the assistance becomes, though the Control over the focused aspect of the resulting Item also increases. Conversely, a longer Burn Time offers broader, more general, though comparatively weaker, Control improvement (over the base Control given by default to long Burns).

Items explicitly intended to be given to, used on, or used by other people besides the User have a strong tendency to persist in the world, even after their Burning Time ends (possible Ashes effects notwithstanding).

Author's Note

Changed some names. Most important is just the Powers (Abilities, Items, Skills, etc.) have been renamed to Pages, because sometimes writing "the power of the Power increased" was killing me.