Mercantile Violence 1.07

I wasn't a psychopath.

Truly, I wasn't.

It was just that during my earlier scuffles with those junkies, I’d picked up on a distinct pattern: holding back diminished my gains.

Kicking them while they were already broken and down barely moved the needle, so I didn't bother. I considered myself a moral person. I didn't go out of my way to hurt people purely for the sake of hurting them.

It was just that...

[Novice Blunt Weapon Mastery]|Common Skill (1.5)|You are reasonably talented in handling blunt weapons such as hammers or clubs. You know how to move your body to do damage with the instrument you are holding, but there is only so much finesse to handling a large stick.

"Oh God, please—someone—!"

"Shoot him! Shoot the motherfucke—!"

[Cloak of Billowing]|Trash Item (0.8)|DnD - A fancy embroidered red cloak that can billow majestically even in the absence of wind.

"Andrew! Oh fuck, your head... blergh—"

"How is he so fast?! Damned capes!"

[Stack of Gold Bars]|Common Item (1.5)|A stack of ordinary gold bars weighing a total of 33 kilograms.

My power really preferred it when I took the kid gloves off.

Grenades soared, lead tore through the air, and I kept running. I might have had a manic grin plastered across my face the entire time, but that didn't make me a psychopath. The Slaughterhouse Nine were psychopaths. Me? If anything, I was... an hero with a slightly broader moral framework. Pretty sure there was a specific term for that, but it wasn't coming to mind.

"Wait, wait—pleas—"

I waited. Or rather, I just ignored the guy. Like I said, dealing with fallen foes who had already given up the fight didn't amount to much in terms of Grind progression. I suppose that while I thoroughly enjoyed Violence itself, my power was tuned specifically for active Conflict.

Besides, looking at the ragged holes in his chest, he was probably going to bleed out in a couple of minutes anyway. Putting another bullet in him wouldn't accomplish much—except maybe ending his misery a bit faster.

Hm. Would it technically be more moral to shoot him, then?

Food for thought.

My hand instinctively patted down my chest bandolier and came up empty.

"Ah, shit. Out of 'nades."

Oh well.

I checked the status timer on the Item I'd chugged right before I began blasting.

6 minutes, 19 seconds remaining on [Horse Electrolytes]'s 10-minute Burn.

It was the longest-duration Burn I'd committed to so far. As expected of an Item with a remarkably short restock cooldown, the resulting boost was slightly punchier than what I would've gotten from a standard one. When setting the parameters, I'd been given the choice between either temporarily transforming into a massive, roided-out stallion or simply inheriting a suite of equine traits—enhanced sprint speed, explosive leg power, and such.

As hilarious as turning into an actual horse might have been, the complete lack of opposable thumbs—or fingers in general—made that a tactical dead end.

My jeans also felt noticeably tighter in the front, but seeing as I had no intention of making use of that particular attribute in the middle of a gunfight, I did my absolute best to ignore said side effect.

I inhaled deeply, feeling the raw, unfiltered adrenaline rushing through my veins. Saint Peter himself seemed to be waving at me from the pearly gates of Heaven.

I was close. I could feel it in my bones. So very close.

A frantic scream tore through the air from my left. Normally, I would’ve ignored it—the place was already a cacophony of shrieking junkies—but this particular scream was instantly followed by three glowing, beachball-sized white spheres hurtling straight toward me.

A sudden, sharp instinct screamed inside my skull:

Dangerous!

"BURN: TAX EVASION! BURN: CLOAK OF BILLOWING!" Thirty seconds!

As always, I felt the Pages tear from their mental binder, igniting into brilliant, burning light. And as always, an instinctual surge of knowledge flooded into my mind, laying out what the newly upgraded abilities could do. Thirty seconds was on the lower end of the Burn spectrum, so the innate knowledge, like the Control I had over the resulting Power, wasn't as high as if the Burn timer had been longer. However, the Power increased proportionally to said lack of Control and Knowledge, and I did feel like I needed all the power I had to deal with this spheres.

Still, why the review of my power's workings, one may ask? Simple. It's so my immediate next actions make at least a scrap of logical sense.

"Fufufufufu," I chuckled, casually batting one of the incoming spheres aside with the back of my hand, watching with detached fascination as it completely erased a chunk of concrete wall without leaving a trace of debris. "Were I anyone else, that might have been dangerous."

I smoothed down the front of my shirt.

Tax Evasion had warped into what I could only describe as Consequence Evasion. The more directly an incoming danger was my own fault, the easier it became for me to dodge, block, or effortlessly parry it. Since this freshly triggered Merchant kid had undoubtedly unlocked his powers due to my rampage, his attacks were entirely my fault—meaning I could casually swat away almost anything he threw at me with flawless precision. It was a surprisingly natural progression; after all, taxes are just the direct consequence of making money.

I began strolling casually in his direction.

Pat.

Pat.

Pat.

Sphere after sphere of pure, matter-erasing energy was backhanded harmlessly to the side as the terrified young man scrambled backward in panic.

"Alexandria, the Siberian, perhaps even the Endbringers themselves..."

The Cloak of Billowing, on the other hand, hadn't been quite so direct. Or rather, there simply wasn't a straightforward way to upgrade it into a useful power. So... the upgrade improvised.

"None of them would stand a chance against an absolute power like that."

Why do people love a billowing cloak? Why would anyone want one in the first place? Because it looks cool. It lets a man project absolute, theatrical badassery while doing practically nothing. And the upgrade had latched onto that core concept—the sheer essence of Cool—with both hands.

It was actively feeding dramatic lines directly into my brain, adjusting my posture, choreographing my steps, all to ensure I looked as breathtakingly cinematic as humanly possible.

All the while, the crimson fabric billowed majestically behind my shoulders, despite the nearly dead air around us.

"Unfortunately for you..."

I lunged forward, my hand clamping down like a vice over the dude's face before he could stumble away.

"I!"

My torso wound back.

"AM!"

A wide, feral grin split my face as I brought all my momentum downward.

"THE EXCEPTION!"

His head burst like an overripe watermelon the instant it made contact with the filthy ground.

You've slain the host of Kindly Dimensional.

...Hm, weird name.

Possible Rewards:

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

Gain absolute control over the next 1-second Burning you perform, along with the ability to perceive time ten times slower for the Burning duration. Removes the chance of receiving Ashes.

Set your current Average equal to your current Maximum for the next Draw.

The choice was completely automatic. Only one of those options gave me the absolute best chance to pull off something undeniably cool.

Option two it was.

"Burn: Spray Water. One second."

The world instantly ground to an agonizing, syrup-thick crawl. Absolute Control meant I could manually dictate the exact evolutionary path the upgrade took. Right before I finalized the parameters, though—

Tax Evasion has finished Burning.Cloak of Billowing has finished Burning.

Without the physical time to curse out the atrocious timing—heh, get it? Time, timing. I’m fucking hilarious—I went with the classics. Everyone loves the classics, right?

Namely, the most brutally direct, straightforward upgrade possible, supercharged by the sheer hyper-concentrated boost of a one-second Burn.

Massive volumes of water materialized out of thin air around me, condensing under millions of pounds of artificial hydraulic pressure until the liquid took on the density and hardness of solid diamond. I aimed the localized deluges forward, targeting every screaming goon ahead of me and the souped-up monster truck roaring into the lot.

Neither Skidmark nor Squealer were inside the rig. It was just a generic, heavy-duty pickup. Squealer wouldn't be caught dead driving anything with fewer than three redundant turbine engines, spewing enough decibels to trigger city-wide noise complaints just by idling.

Behind me, I casually whipped a crescent blade of hyper-compressed water through the air. "Perceiving time ten times slower" unfortunately didn't grant my physical muscles the equivalent speed up required to look behind me, but that was fine. I didn't need to move an inch to let the water do the slaughtering.

From my slowed perspective, the water seemed to be drifting forward at a leisurely, graceful pace.

Until the one-second timer expired.

CRACK-BOOM!

BLAM!

Splat-splat-splat-splat-splat!

A violent shockwave of displaced air blew past my ears as normal speed violently reasserted itself.

The pressurized torrents slammed into the crowd like artillery shells. Human bodies simply vaporized upon impact, exploding into misty red showers of airborne gore. The oncoming monster truck met the main hydro-lance and crumpled inward on itself instantly, folding like a crushed soda can as if it had just hit an indestructible, time-locked bowling ball at two hundred miles an hour.

[Magical Girl Transformation]|Trash Trait (0.3)|All transformations have that overly dramatic Magical Girl Transformation flair to them.

[Dry]|Trash Ability (0.7)|Allows you to dry any object you are touching, note that does not evaporate all water particles inside but only gets rid of moisture the object should otherwise not have.

[Psycho]|Common Item (1.1)|Fallout - Psycho is an addictive combat drug made for soldiers, it works by flooding the body with chemicals and hormones specially designed to suppress the sensation of pain, induce a bloodthirsty haze, speed up reflexes, increase metabolism, and enhance concentration. But it is also incredibly addictive with a host of side effects, although a skilled enough Chemist may be able to improve upon the design. You get 8 doses in a bandoleer. Restock Timer: 24 hours.

I looked around, appreciating the sudden, heavy stillness that settled over the lot. The absolute silence.

I felt... pleased. Satisfied in the quiet, mundane way you felt getting an A on a high school exam after spending a solid week cramming for it. This felt right.

But it didn't feel like Heaven.

Something that was merely pleasant, merely satisfying, couldn't possibly be paradise. Not yet. In a way, I suppose I would’ve been disappointed if I’d managed to Reach Heaven this early in the grind. No, to truly get there, I needed another piece of the puzzle. I needed a specific presence. An old rival, an old partner in crime, an old...

Friend.

Because we really had been friends once, Adam and I. Bonded in that strange, dysfunctional way only two people with polar opposite personalities and coping mechanisms could manage.

I heard him approaching long before he came into view. It wasn't hard. Five minutes ago, amidst the gunfire and screaming, it would’ve been impossible, but right now the deafening silence was clear enough to let me hear a pin drop across the asphalt.

Adam Mustain stepped through the smoke, cast a look of pure disgust across the bloody carnage painted over every surface, and then turned his gaze toward me.

He let out a slow, weary sigh.

"Long time no see, Rex."

I smiled wide at him, spreading my arms out in a welcoming gesture.

"Hello, Stain."

His lips curled in irritation at the old moniker. I'd stopped calling him that the second he got powers. Back then, he claimed it was about protecting secret identities and cape opsec (well, he didn't say opsec, he probably didn't even know what the word meant, but it was something along those lines). However, I knew the dirty fucker simply thought he was far too important for petty street names once he became a parahuman. He thought he was above a lot of things, really.

Well, look how that turned out for him.

"Right, my bad. I forgot you asked me to stop using that name," I lied, badly.

I began strolling leisurely in his direction, stepping over a severed limb without breaking stride.

"How about we pop open a cold one and catch up, then... Skidmark?"

Draws

A single Page cannot be Drawn more than once. The Chaos is as vast as it is deep—and it is extraordinarily vast. The atoms in your hand aligning so perfectly with the surface of a desk that your hand phases clean through it is statistically more likely than Drawing the exact same Page twice.

Once a Page is Burnt, consider it gone forever.