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Chapter 19 - Archer Bridge Block Party
🕑 Added 2024-01-31 12:32:27 +0000 UTCTwo Days Later...
The dingy, trash-strewn, and vaguely sewer-scented paradise beneath Archer Bridge practically seemed to shake, shudder, and vibrate to the obnoxiously loud music blaring through the hazy, smoke-tinted air. The music came from a pair of oversized black speakers, shaking and bumping on top of a bulky, kitted out Cadillac that was lifted at least three feet too high off the ground.
With the dim cloudiness of Brockton Bay’s evening sky bearing down from above, the only sources of light outside of the sparks of cigarette lighters and the blaring headlights of the Cadillac were the assortment of burning metal barrels that kept the brisk January chill away… and kept the mishmash strains of cannabis burning high and loud beneath the bridge. Gathered and pressed together in a mob of dirty, roiling bodies, a large group of stoned and sweaty bottom feeders danced alongside the obnoxious and funky beat, laughing, talking, and jabbing their bodies with dirty needles.
In a few special cases, ratty mattresses and stained couches were pulled from nearby abandoned buildings to lie back on and partake in more disgusting and salacious activities.
All in all, Adam Mustain - or Skidmark, as the rectal rimming sheep of the Bay knew him by - was rather fucking proud of how his first official block party was going! It was a block party without the block, sure, but who gave a flying rat’s ass when the music and drugs were this fucking good?!
Skidmark was a smart and resourceful man, no one could ever deny that, and if they did he’d bitch slap the fuck outta them.
With his overwhelming intellect came the self-realization that, in order to grow past the shitty rep him and the rest of his hodgepodge group of Merchants were forced to bear, he needed more members. That was what it all came down to, right? More drugs, more sheep addicted and dependent, and more money coming in when they went out and worked the streets to make him more money! All he had to do was bolster his recruitment drives, truly make the downtrodden and absconded gather and rally beneath one flag.
His flag.
Through the power of easy pussy, desperate dick, and dirty needles.
It was an amazing fucking business model, one that he felt more comfortable putting more focus on with the Empire Chuckle-Fucks distracted by that prissy new hero, Avalon - the same one that had been fucking with his own operations a few days ago. Serves those racist nazi sister fuckers right, anyway.
Fuck them, fuck Kaiser, and fuck Lung too! It was the Merchant’s time to shine, baby, and Skidmark was on the grind!
Hence, once again, the Archer Bridge Block Party.
Skidmark leaned back in the passenger seat of the souped-up Caddilac, bumping his head to the teeth-chattering beats blaring from the speakers. His reddening, jaundiced eyes caught the slinking sight of Mush, soaking up debris and dust as he ‘danced’ noisily in front of the bouncing car. Just in time, too, because the crack pipe he’d been smoking on for the past hour was already running out.
“Mush, you ugly little cunt, go roll me a fat ass joint! Dip it in some angel dust too, ‘cuz sonuvabitch I’m tryna fly!”
The sad excuse of a man slowly stopped his retarded looking shuffle. “Uhhh, you got it boss!”
He sloughed across the muck-stained concrete, a blubbery mass of broken beer bottles, stinking refuse, and cracked syringes. As he came to a stop and lowered his exposed, bony upper body closer to the ground, a dirty plastic baggie of bud tumbled out of his folds of garbage.
Immediately, Mush’s bulky fingertips, consisting of crunched soda cans and discarded needles, began tearing into the bag of weed. The joints he rolled were never neat or tight, but half the time he managed to overpack and soak it in some random substance that only heightened the high… so he usually let the clumsy trash heap do the honors.
Satisfied that he would be getting another hit soon, Skidmark cackled and finished off his pipe, his brain beginning to slow and teeter as the fading pot-pourri of drugs in his system sparked yet another wave of euphoria - this one lesser, more middling. Before him, underneath the rumbling of vehicles speeding on the bridge overhead, were his people, his army, and they would only grow more and more over the coming days ahead. It wasn’t uncommon for him to feel elated at the thought of the future, leading his own drug trade that spanned the entire East Coast, but this time, he actually felt it!
The potential!
The power!
Or maybe it was the coke.
Fuck it!
“Sherr, com’ gimme some head bitch!” He crooned shrilly, blinking his bleary eyes and forcing his head to loll over towards the driver’s seat.
Every time the car bounced with its cranked-up hydraulics, it threw his brain back against his skull and made everything even more dizzy, but that was just part of the high! Still, now his brain was so scrambled by the blaring music and constant rocking that things were practically turning into doubles and triples, and for some reason his Squealer was no longer in the Cadillac. The driver side door was wide open. When the fuck did she leave? Maybe she had to piss?
Needing to piss never stopped her from giving him head before, so what the fuck?
“Sherr! SHERR! God fucking damn it you tiny bladdered cunt…”
Skidmark couldn’t even hear himself over that brain fucking music. Annoyance and drug-infused horniness started to push back against his high, and he grumbled loudly to himself as he began fiddling with the dials and switches on the car’s middle console. He was never the one in charge of actually driving his girlfriend’s ‘babies’, as she called ‘em - good thing too, because there was no way he was knocking that bitch up. Nothing made sense to him; there were like five different fucking buttons all on just one side of the damn thing, and three dials below those.
He started mashing buttons, and the hydraulics sent him flying forward into the dashboard. A scream of pain and frustration escaped his now bleeding lips when his face slammed into the hard, stained leather.
“BLEEDIN’ FUCKING ANUS! How the FUCK do I TURN THIS SHIT DOWN?!”
“I think you twist this dial, right here. See how it has a green bar above it, on the screen?”
The sudden voice that spoke up from beside him, in the driver’s seat that had previously been devoid of fat, juicy Squealer ass, was youthful, but deep and smooth. It also sounded familiar, like he heard it once before. Probably on TV or something? The radio? But they were here, at his block party, so it was probably just some overly ambitious fucknut trying to kiss ass and sound cool doing it.
Skidmark, eyes still blurry and watering in pain, nodded his head impatiently. “Bloody fucking hell, yeah I see it.”
He wrenched the dial to the left, watching as the blurred green bar that he could only vaguely see immediately shifted down to red. Instantly, the pounding beats and blaring music became slightly quieter - still loud enough for the sheep outside to enjoy, but dulled enough to stop his brain from trying to escape out his ears at ground zero. Already, his headache was beginning to clear… which was both good and bad. His fucking high was leaving.
Skidmark breathed out an annoyed sigh. He needed that joint, right now.
“Fucking finally. Now where the hell is Sherr?”
Turning to the driver’s seat again, Skidmark’s heart almost leaped out of his chest. Relaxing back in the space usually reserved for Squealer was a tall, dashing figure in loose, silky-looking clothes and a gilded, black and gold mask that left most of his face exposed. Even then, as he stared in shock and surprise at the man’s sudden appearance, Skidmark… couldn’t place his finger on where he knew him from. He was some sort of cape, for sure - that much was obvious by the mask and gauntlets, but who…?
“Who… who the fuck are you?!”
His vision was starting to get blurry again. Skidmark blinked rapidly, head swimming, and jumped in shock. Sitting in the spot where Squealer usually sat was a figure clad in black and gold, wearing a mask and leaning back against the seat. He had to have been some sort of cape-
“Yeah, that’s probably gonna keep happenin’ for the next twenty seconds. Focus real quick, dickhead. Listen to me.” The man snapped his clawed gauntlets in front of Skidmark’s face, the flinty ‘crack’ of metal sparking against metal jerking the druggie back to attention.
Skidmark jumped, and his heart lurched painfully in his chest. He began hyperventilating at the sudden appearance of a masked man, watching him silently from the driver’s seat.
“Who-who the fuck? WHO THE FUCK-”
A fist blurred through the air.
CRACK.
“AGHHH!”
Shock. The taste of iron. Skidmark could feel something hard and brittle sliding down his throat, and a swipe of his bleeding tongue revealed that he was missing his motherfucking teeth.
That was when the pain made itself known, and Skidmark’s bulging, bloodshot eyes widened at the pure agony ripping fire through his torn and flayed lips. He gagged on blood, jerking back to open the door and get someone, anyone, between him and the dark figure, but as his hands scrambled desperately for the door handle, he realized…
The windows were raised, and the child safety lock was on. Why the fuck did Squealer install a child safety lock? “God motherfuckin’ damn baby cocked cum slitted-”
“Chill,” the mysterious man soothed, a smirk appearing on his face. Skidmark hated that fucking smirk, and he hated the fact that he had almost forgotten that the man even existed for that brief moment he had glanced away. What the fuck was happening to his brain?!
“I just wanted to know if you could pass the aux. This mix is trash.” The question came out of nowhere, as apathetic and smooth as all the other words he’d spoken so far. The man rubbed at the fresh blood staining his gold-covered fist.
“What?!” Skidmark spat out a rotting, browned tooth, blood dribbling down his chin and soaking into his dirty blue jacket. “Th’ fuck do you want, really?! Money? Pussy? Drugs?! I got so many motherfucking drugs-”
“The aux,” he repeated, eyebrows lowering into a bemused stare.
Something began to click in his drug-addled brain. Memories, images, deja-vu; he knew who this shitbag was. The black coat, the gold mask, that annoying fucking face… this was Avalon, that new milksop bitch! Skidmark didn’t know why it took him so long to recognize him, or why the hell his mind kept blanking out whenever he looked away, but this was bad fucking news. Only Squealer really knew how to work her complicated ass cars, and although he was pretty confident in his ability to drive away at the very least, the thought of fleeing from some upstart asshole kid almost made him want to tear out his own fucking testicles.
The unknown was scary, but recognition bred confidence. Skidmark sneered through the pain of his torn up mouth, bulging eyes widening in manic rage. “Fuck you and fuck whatever the fuck an ‘aux’ is, faggot ass bitch!”
He turned around, slamming his face against the window and clawing at the glass. Outside, unaware of the chaos happening in the tinted-out Cadillac, a man-shaped mound of trash was gingerly rolling a fat ass joint on the ground. All around, drug fiends danced and sucked and fucked in an endless whirlwind of debauchery and addiction. They were all blissfully ignorant, and he fucking hated them for it.
“MUSH YOU DEAF PIECE OF-!”
“Hah! Pussy.”
There was the heavy sound of a grunt and then leather creaking, before an explosion of very sharp things and lancing, stabbing waves of burning pain completely took over his mind. Skidmark hadn’t even felt the cape’s boot slam against his body - all he knew was that his face was not made for breaking through glass windows, nor was it prepared to handle the sensation of skidding across glass shards and rough, unyielding concrete. He came to a stop against what felt like a barrel, but he couldn’t tell for sure because he was pretty sure that glass was poking through his eyelids.
The music had already stopped. Avalon’s voice drifted from the Cadillac, a cocky edge coating his stoic tone. “Yo, found the aux. Let’s play some good shit, shall we? Real party music.”
“....!”
He wanted to scream. He wanted to roar. He wanted to rage against the unfairness of it all, against that fucking menstruated sack of assflesh who decided to rain on his parade and fuck up his rise before it even truly began.
All that came out, amidst the sudden shocked and horrified silence of the crashed block party, was a screeching, blood-soaked command. “K-kill hiiiim!”
No one moved.
Skidmark forced his eyes open, blood streaming from his torn eyelids, and screamed so loud that his vocal chords cried. “F-FUCKING KILL HIMMM!”
Chaos erupted, just as music began blaring loudly from the still speakers.
________________________________
With Take no Heed fading away, forcing Ulgu to dissipate silently into the hazy air, I'd made the executive decision to jumpstart the real fun of the evening.
Did I feel bad for kicking Skidmark’s bony ass through two inches of solid glass?
Not at all. Dude sold drugs to kids and contributed to one of Brockton Bay’s biggest fucking societal problems. I’d kick him through shittier things if someone offered me the easy opportunity.
Did I feel bad about fucking up the rest of the Merchants?
Maybe a little bit… but the fact that they were blasting at me with varying levels of lethal ordnance significantly tempered that small amount of empathy.
“AAAAH, GET FUUUUCKED!”
GRATATATATATA-
I was moving out of the vehicle before the first round of automatic gunfire lit up the dark evening sky. The Cadillac was clearly made for show and tell rather than active combat, and it showed that rather well with how the 7.62 rounds of what sounded like an AKM ripped through its bright orange paint job with startling ease. How the fuck a bunch of druggies got their hands on fully automatic firearms was a dumb question I almost asked myself before realizing that they were gang bangers, and I was in America.
How wouldn’t they get AKs?
Conveyance Sorcery took me from the front seat to the concrete, and not even a heartbeat later that same magic took me from the concrete to the air.
The thing about going up during a fight? It was usually a stupid fucking idea.
For pussy ass muggles, that is.
The Gaster Blaster appeared below my feet like the world’s edgiest hoverboard, its glowing eyes searching the crowd of drugged out Merchants before honing in on the druggie tweaking out with the AK. He’d already fired the full magazine into Squealer’s Cadillac, all the while screaming like Rambo, and ‘swift reloads’ were apparently not part of the Skidmark Crackhead Training Program. I gathered ambient Aethyr into my body and leaped from the skull, soaring even higher into the air as I began chanting beneath my breath.
The alien-like roar of my goat skull beaming the AK-wielding thug with a laser as wide as he was tall did nothing to distract me from my casting. His body was immediately launched back across the ground, skipping and sliding against the concrete like the biggest human pebble.
“Y-yo, he’s the nigga that fought Hookwolf! The fuck we do against that?!”
“I don’t fuckin’ know!”
“Shoot the skull, man! Shoot it before it fucking-”
vrrrr…BOOM!
There was another explosion of light and heat, and then another, but I was already focused on my next target.
At least I didn’t have to watch my back.
“RAAAGH!” Mush roared loudly, his extremely shrill voice sounding more like a baby’s first cry than a proper call to action. I was falling down towards him from a height of about forty or so feet, and I was falling fast. Clearly, the drugged out slob of a man was thinking to splatter my ‘squishy’ body against the shell of fragmented concrete and trash that he’d managed to absorb in and over his skin like segmented armor - a good idea in normal circumstances, but an incredibly stupid one when you didn’t know anything about your opponent.
At this point, my body was naturally agile and strong enough to survive and brush off a forty foot drop easily - the Winds would never let me suffer from a death so pitiful, and Heroic Aptitude made sure that I knew exactly how to land in order to maximize efficiency and momentum.
And that wasn’t even taking into account my spells.
“-tzœn qeyos mär!”
Chamon and I have become intimately familiar with each other ever since the battle with Hookwolf, and the rustic taste of copper and gold was like smelling the scent of an old friend when it brushed past my cheek and took hold of my costume. Feather of Lead soaked deep within the silky lightness of my clothes, taking me from a relatively average 170 pounds straight up into the lower 400s. I stubbornly set my jaw against the sudden weight, glaring and clenching my muscles tightly.
Mush didn’t even have time to gawk up at me.
CRUNCH.
One instant I was falling gracefully towards the roaring Merchant, and the next my leather boots were splintering through inches of tough, stubborn concrete. Light gray mist exploded upwards as I broke through Mush’s makeshift football helmet of stone, continuing through to his hideous, pug-like face and breaking multiple somethings if the disgusting crack that split the air was any proof.
I quickly pushed away the Yellow Winds as soon as my feet found purchase against the criminal’s skull, untensing my clenched jaw and casually backflipping off of his broken and bleeding face.
“Guuuh…”
He teetered, eyes wide and unseeing as trash and filth began falling off of his pudgy body like Christmas ornaments.
A stroke of Azyr’s stiff winds, almost a consolation for not utilizing it as often as the others, and Mush toppled over, unconscious and bleeding. ‘Two down, let’s finish with-’
BANG!
“Hn!”
I grunted, staggering forward half a step as something hot and angry slammed into my upper back. Whatever gun was used, the bullet had to have been low caliber - I’d enchanted my clothes with Chamon before crashing the party, and the round hadn’t pierced completely through, but fuck it hurt like a bitch. I regained my footing, a hot, frustrated breath blasting from my nostrils as I called upon my special brand of ‘Divine Retribution’.
High above, half-concealed by smoke and darkness, over a dozen spears of burnished, mottled gold formed, as if from thin air.
A low, slurring voice began stuttering in panic. “T-the fuck, shoot him again retard!”
“Alright, fuck man-” The shooter hissed.
CLICK.
“What-”
“It’s fucking jammed!”
I twisted, and my eyes took in everything in those brief couple seconds the druggies were staring at me in horror.
The Gaster Blaster was semi-autonomous in the way that it could follow a single, straightforward mental command on its own, but forward thinking and complicated tactics slid cleanly off of its skull. Me summoning it in the heat of the moment to attack the druggie with the AK seemed to have focused its ire on other gun-wielding enemies, and even now it was firing short bursts of golden, soul-burning light at screaming, fleeing men - men who were throwing their guns away once they realized that the weapons were like a beacon for the creepy skull. As preoccupied as it was, I couldn’t exactly blame it for not watching my six.
I’d gotten sloppy for a second, and had an apple-sized bruise to show for it. Stupid.
Oddly enough, though, the Blaster seemed to be having… fun, tormenting the druggies? I coulda sworn I heard a low, disembodied ‘huhuhuhu’ as it floated through the air, but maybe the amalgamation of drugs burning was fucking me up. God, I needed to get detoxed. Squealer, too, now that I thought about it. But I could worry about that after I dealt with these two assholes.
Skidmark and Mush were practically out of commission, Squealer was unconscious and tied up in a nearby alleyway, and the remnants of the Merchants who weren’t singed and knocked out beneath the bridge or in a ditch were fleeing deeper into the city.
It was about time to wrap this up.
“Aye, we- we’re talkin’ to you!” It was the slurring guy from before. I looked him over, tilting my head curiously. Tall, lanky, white and pock-marked, wearing a beanie… he was practically the tonal opposite to the short and stocky Hispanic guy holding the pistol in a steady grip. Hidden Intuition recognized the training in his stance - nothing military, but he clearly went to the shooting range.
I frowned, and they shivered. “Yo, you shot me.”
The Hispanic guy jerked his head up and down, but he didn’t falter. “Yeah, I did…’cuz you were gonna kill us, puta!”
“Not ‘till you decided to put a hole in my coat, dumbass.”
I glanced up, not even trying to hide the movement. When they went to follow my gaze, mouths opening in shock and fear at the sight of my potential magical bombardment, I flicked my hand casually to the side and watched as another golden spear shot from the ground, piercing through the guy’s hand and sending the pistol clattering across the concrete.
“Shit, wait-!”
I teleported, clearing the distance between us in two blinks; for certain capes, that was enough time to react. For normal humans suffering from a chronic case of the weeds, it was a fucking death sentence.
A lightning quick jab to the diaphragm robbed beanie-boy of his breath, and I planted my feet and put the full rotary force into the follow-up hook that sent him blasting straight into dreamland, skinning his chin against the asphalt. Instincts not necessarily my own, but appreciated nonetheless, had me moving with the hit, twisting to the right and leaning back in order to raise my-
“WAIT, MAN, FUCK!”
Foot…
“What?”
“Fuck you mean ‘what’? I surrender! Shit, this ain’t- I ain’t… I’m just tryna make some quick cash amigo…” Holding his limp hand, the Merchant fell to his knees. A second later, he fell back onto his ass, staring up at me like I was an executioner holding an axe over his neck. “I got a lil’ sister, man. My abuela can’t afford rent and school!”
I lowered my leg. “So you chose the Merchants?” I asked rhetorically, taking a half-step back and gesturing out to the groaning and unconscious bodies of dirty, homeless-looking fiends laying out amongst a throng of dirty needles, broken bottles, and filth.
The scent of weed and something more acrid was still lingering in the air, despite most of the barrels having been knocked over and extinguished in the chaos.
“I delivered three packages and made thirty two hundred bucks,” the man - no, boy, said quietly. “I ain’t say I was proud of it! Just, I don’t know man…”
I just watched him.
The Gaster Blaster had already gone back to whatever hellish dimension it stayed at whenever I didn’t have it summoned, and judging by the sudden silence and stillness in the air and the lack of cars driving along Archer Bridge, the rest of the gangsters were long gone, soon to be replaced by either the PRT or the Brockton Bay Police Department. Considering I was definitely committing some sort of crime by straight up kidnapping Squealer, I did not want to be in the area when they came by.
“Whatever,” I grunted, turning around and heading over to the torn and absolutely fucked up form of Skidmark. He was in pretty critical condition, to the point of possible blindness and organ damage, and I didn’t want to deal with the PRT getting on my ass just yet. I still needed their relative goodwill in order for the Empire Culling plan to go well. ‘Sear Wounds it is.’
I grunted and channeled Aqshy into a searing orange glow on my palm.
The Hispanic guy watched me with wide-eyes. “What do you mean whatev-”
Flesh sizzled beneath my hand.
“AGHHHHH!”
One of the golden spears floating overhead dove down like an eagle, skewering through Skidmark’s back and pinning his flailing body to the ground. His scream was cut off like a puppet with its strings cut, flopping painlessly back against the concrete in blissful silence.
“... W-what the fuck?”
I was an empathetic puker, so I doggedly ignored the retching coming from the one-man peanut gallery.
“Dude needed healing, so I healed him.”
Standing, I willed all of my conjured spears to dissipate into mana that flowed back into my body, refilling the roaring waterfall that was my manapool. Funny, since it had barely dipped during the battle.
“You- you’re the one who did that to him, though. You kicked him through a car window!” The former(?) Merchant spat to the side and gagged.
“Potato, potato. Look, are you getting the fuck outta here or not? I know your face now, so if I stop by and find out you’re lyin’ about your sister and grandma…”
I knew his face, but I sure as fuck didn’t plan on stopping by. He didn’t know that, though.
His lips tightened into a stubborn, if still fearful scowl. It made the peach fuzz on his upper lip jut out like whiskers. “On my dead mama I ain’t lying. I swear man, I’m not doing this shit again.”
I narrowed my eyes.
As far as I could tell, he was being truthful - the frustration in his eyes were genuine, the fear was stronger than anything else but he fought it back with his desperation to survive and provide. It could’ve been a selfish desperation, not one born from being an older brother, but I liked to believe that it was the former. The light in his eyes were familiar - a mirror to years long gone by, when I was in a similar situation. Not necessarily selling drugs, but a struggle was a struggle regardless of the specifics involved.
Fuck it. There was no reason to go full Batman and cripple every morally gray person I met. That was the quickest route to becoming a hypocritical nutjob, and I hated motherfuckers like that. I wasn’t a hero because I believed in the pursuit of justice above all else. I was a hero because I wanted to protect what was mine, and the villains of Earth Bet were in the way of that.
I attacked this block party because Squealer was useful, and I needed a specialized vehicle for the Plan. Not to mention she’d make a good asset in general once I moved past the Empire and Coil.
I knocked out the beanie dude because he pissed me off.
I was sparing this dude because he reminded me of myself.
As long as I stayed on my path for reasons like those, I’d be alright. I think.
"Babe," Cassie's voice suddenly rang through my earpiece, a concerned tint to her sweet voice. "PRT inbound, ETA three minutes. It's Armsmaster and Triumph this time. They're-"
Pod 084's tinny voice interrupted her, "Proposal: Permanently silence the Merchant drug addict and return swiftly with the spoils of battle."
"The fuck- Pod, it's my turn to be on comms! Stop interru-"
I clicked the earpiece, temporarily muting the correspondence. As much as I lo-... appreciated my people in the chair, I always did my best work alone. Maybe that would change, and soon, but hearing my media-influenced AI harp about the efficiency of 'quick kills' wouldn't be helping me with my tasks tonight.
“You do you - just split before the PRT shows up.” I said after a few more seconds of silence, mainly because it was vaguely amusing watching the guy shift nervously beneath the intensity of my stare. I turned and began making my way back towards the buildings in the distance.
“Yeah,” he swallowed, slowly climbing back to his feet. “Thank you.”
And we parted ways, as sirens began to draw closer in the distance.
I just hoped that Squealer’s unconscious body was still in the same spot I left it in. After all, there was still one last stop to make before the night was over.
Hopefully Panacea was capable of curing STDs, addictions, and health maladies built from years of long-term drug abuse. If she couldn’t, well…
I was pretty sure I could figure something out.
Perks Accepted:
Master of Disguise (Legend of Zelda - 100 CP): During the beginning of the war, Princess Zelda was forced away from her armies. To distract her enemies, she disguised herself before returning to her army. With this perk, you are able to put together extensive disguises before storing them away, just like magic, probably because it is. To put them away is as simple as putting them on. By focusing on which disguise you want and doing a little spin, you can immediately put on the outfit, accessories, makeup and whatever else was on you at the time while storing what you currently have.
550 CP remaining.
Comments
Stanley Seymour
Nice! Thank you for the chapter and sweet more growth and development for Jason's character. Love to see it and him being honest about being a hero, simply to protect those under his charge. Rather than for an ideal like Justice, because ways leads to being like Shiro/Emiya or Batman. Keep up the good work and again thank you for the update. Its interesting that he wishes to add Squealer to his team due to her specialty. Also nice since her tech tree can be vast, extensive and extremely useful. Not on something wasteful such as an invisible monster truck? Hopefully Jay can turn her attention towards more useful vehicles, crafts and some growth and development, aside from being Skidmark's tinker side piece.
Wasted Ink
Take no Heed, the spell he used to sneak attack Squealer and fuck with Skidmark’s mind, would comfortably be labeled Stranger. It’s basically Aisha’s power but on a time limit. Master of Disguises I’m less sure about. It lets him use ‘outfit loadouts’ basically, but doesn’t give him a supernatural disguise skill. He can basically just hotkey different outfits to switch into with a flourish. Good for going between Avalon and Jason, and if he gets better at deception it can definitely be a useful ability to infiltrate places. Squealer won’t be taken out of the alleyway either, don’t worry. No idea how I’d even spin that without it sounding dumb as fuck lol. Avalon handled her kidnapping pretty well.
fireball77
Would "master of disguise" count as a stranger ability? If someone kidnaps squealer before he gets to her it'd just feel like plot contrivance tbh, an unnecessary string of drama that he just doesn't need rn
