Ink-stained Pages
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Chapter 5
🕑 Added 2024-01-19 13:48:55 +0000 UTCThings actually did go pretty smoothly for a while. I’d regretted mentally challenging Lady Karma mere seconds after thinking it, but maybe she was giving me a break today.
“I wish she would’ve done something about this fuckin’ scent too, damn…”
I covered my lower face with the sleeve of my hoodie, trying not to inhale the fumes permeating the old, decrepit warehouse Cassie had pointed me in the direction of. It had been child’s play to slip in through a broken window, but the darkness in the messy corridor proved annoying. Why the CCTV camera in the old facility worked was anyone’s guess.
Apparently we were closer to the more rundown side of the Docks than I’d originally thought - things got better and more lived in the closer you either went to the Southwest, towards the South Docks, or East, towards the Market and the Boardwalk. Cassie, in all of her - admittedly smart - wisdom decided to hunker down in some shitty abandoned complex closer to the Trainyard, so the place where we were dumping the car was pretty much knee-deep in urban decay.
It was honestly pretty bleak, just how shitty some of the buildings I’d seen so far looked. It wasn’t even like we were in a completely abandoned area, either. There weren’t many cars out on the curb or streets, but that was because the owners were probably too fucking poor to afford ‘em. Or, they were too afraid of getting robbed. I’d already skirted past what felt like half a dozen starving people huddled around alleyways, and I was sticking only to Burgundy Street!
The less said about the random bouts of gunshots, crying, and yelling that echoed in the near distance the better. It made me nervous to leave my cripple hacker behind for any period of time.
‘All the more reason to hurry up,’ I grumbled internally, kicking open the corroded remains of what seemed like a former emergency access door. The rusted and decrepit hinges broke on impact, swinging the burgundy and brown scrap metal flaps wide open. The sound was loud and screeching, almost startling me even though I was the one who kicked the damn thing open. For a brief second, paranoia forced me to entertain the idea that there were people already here for some reason. We hadn’t seen anything on the CCTV cameras, but-
No, there was no way. Not even the homeliest of hobos would willingly sleep inside of what I was quickly beginning to think was an old gasoline and oil storage facility.
When I stepped through the sorry excuse for a doorway and my crocs immediately became sticky with a gross black residue, I knew that my theory was correct. Additionally, the overwhelming amount of scrap metal shelves lining the huge room was pretty solid proof too. Quite a few of the shelves - probably the majority, actually - were overturned or busted and corroded in some way, but there wasn’t too much that I could see with the lights busted and no sunlight coming from the roof. Hell, there weren’t any windows inside this main area either, so I was practically going in blind!
Thankfully, human eyes adapted decently well to darkness, so there were things I could still see - the shelves not included. Large drums littered the floor in all directions, some spilled over and leaking what I assumed to be gas and oil everywhere. I was sure that most of it was no good, obviously, but with such a heavy fucking smog in the air there had to be something worth taking back.
I moved further inside, cringing at the loud suction cup sounds of my crocs sticking and unsticking to the oil-slicked concrete. “Definitely gonna have to ditch you two after this,” I sighed dramatically, my voice muffled through the cloth of my hoodie sleeve. There was a second floor to the warehouse, although I couldn’t see much more through the heavy shadows, but time was of the essence and I had no intentions of sightseeing.
‘Alright, let’s see…’
Approaching a random drum, I leaned down to examine it further. It seemed about average - large, burnt-red, and half empty judging by the slosh it made when I experimentally leaned it to the side. It was also fuck-off heavy, because even getting it to tip over a little bit almost had me releasing it fully and allowing it to crash onto the ground.
“Damn!” I swore, letting it wobble back into equilibrium. I wasn’t sure how much we needed to set the whole car on fire, but I didn’t care much for making a return trip with a BOLA still out on my head. I’d risk a half-empty drum, but anything less than that was probably no good.
Hm…maybe teleporting with it would work? I hadn’t tried the spell yet, not wanting to attract too much attention if it turned out to be loud and ostentatious, but considering there didn’t seem to be no one inside with me…
A grin pulled at my lips and grasped the edge of the gas barrel with my left hand, enduring the scent of stale gasoline and oil. From what instinctive understanding I could grasp purely off of gaining the ability, there was no foci needed like with my Weapon Magic. World of Darkness’ Sorcery was more…streamlined than it was versatile, and its magic was less about casting spells and more about activating magical abilities that lied upon a certain Path. Conveyance was the Path of Traversal, and reaching deep within my mana core, I grabbed a hold of that same innate feeling of familiarity that came with all of my magic, and channeled my ability to move.
There was no loud ‘boom’ or ‘crack’ that signified my teleportation. It was very simple, actually - one second, I was standing beside the red drum, and the next I was stumbling across the oil-slicked concrete roughly ten feet away from where I started channeling my mana.
“Oh, shit-”
For a few seconds I was the wackiest and most unique dancer in all of Earth Bet…until finally, I ate complete shit. Again. Third time today, actually.
“Oof!”
My hands landed in a sticky black mess, splattering oil over my hoodie and sweatpants, but holy shit…I had teleported! It was virtually silent, other than the slight ‘woosh’ of air being displaced. It didn’t feel any further than ten feet, but it wasn’t like I had a masterful inner sense of measurements. Whether or not Spellcaster affected my Sorcery was unimportant, though! Teleporting was trippy, but so fucking cool. I felt like a kid again- er, I was a kid again, but I felt a childlike giddiness fill my chest.
It took a fair amount of mana, but with the doubled size it wasn’t too big of a loss. I felt like I could teleport quite a few times without getting too low. If I didn’t go crazy and chain cast it, the slow regeneration of my mana should be able to recoup the loss over the course of a minute or so. “But…it didn’t bring the gas drum,” I muttered, pushing myself back to my feet and glaring at the red barrel.
One churn and pulse of my mana later and I was gripping the lid of the gas drum to steady myself. Using Convoyence Sorcery to teleport was sorta like riding an intense rollercoaster for all of one second - hella vertigo and dizziness, but I would get used to it over time. Crouching down, I wrapped my arms around the entirety of the gas drum and willed my magic to transport me backwards.
WOOSH.
I slipped backwards on the balls of my feet, still crouching with my arms extending outwards. Reflexes I barely even knew I had kicked in just in time to keep me from toppling backwards and falling flat on my ass. “Whew. ‘Ight, I get it…no teleporting nukes into enemy bases at my level. Fair play, Celestial Grimoire.”
With a sigh, I stood to my feet once again and looked around the dark warehouse. If I couldn’t teleport with the goods or carry ‘em on my back, how the Hell was I going to bring the gas back to Cassie and the car? What a stupid fucking dilemma!
There had to be something here…
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“And that’s when I found this dollie! Almost forgot these things existed.” I said to Cassie as I poured the noxious gasoline inside the back of the car. It reeked, but it sank into the leather and floor mats much easier than oil would have. Plus, oil wasn’t even that flammable in the first place - gas for the win.
“Mhm. So it took you that long to find a dollie? I know you said it was dark, but c’mon.” Cassie smirked from her seated position on top of the dumpster. She’d taken off her right shoe and stowed it…somewhere, so her massively swollen and purple foot was on clear display. It was pretty grotesque, but I was just happy that it wasn’t broken. Toughing it out was cool with a sprained ankle, but without a hospital a broken ankle was just asking for permanent damage.
Tensing my arms and lifting with my legs, I manhandled the last remnants of the gasoline barrel and grunted as I drizzled it over the already soaked roof. “I don’t have my glasses,” I breathed, successfully managing to sound dry even as I strained to carefully place the drum down. “And I was practicing a lil’ bit.”
That was also something I’d thought about. Explaining my magic.
Cassie’s eyes widened in interest and she leaned forward over her knee. “Ooh, your powers, right? Nice form, by the way - the energy projection stuff you showed before gives you a Brute rating or something?”
I rose an eyebrow in bemusement. “What? No, I’m just built different. My power is actually a lil’ bit weird. Definitely not ” I rolled the gas drum over to the side of the dumpster, hidden amongst the ridiculous amount of stinking refuse and boxes. Cassie’s eyes followed me the entire way.
“Weird how? And don’t even think of trying to wiggle outta this one. My interest is fully piqued now, Jay, and I’ve read about some really weird shit on PHO.”
Taking a second to catch my breath, I sighed and squatted down beside the dumpster, taking the Zippo lighter out of my pocket. It was pretty funny, actually - how I hadn’t gotten a simple firebolt spell out of the Grimoire, despite fire magic being one of the most basic bitch staples of fictional fantasy.
“Good, then maybe my situation isn’t too weird. I don’t know ‘bout any kind of brute rating, but uh…I can teleport now. Only short distances, though.”
Cassie’s eyebrows practically disappeared. “Like with that golden energy? So it’s a…Mover-Striker combo? Make weapons and teleport to them…?” Her previous bravado slowly disappearing, Cassie crossed her arms beneath her small chest and eyed me confusedly. At least she was being patient.
“Nah, just straight up teleportation. I also learn skills faster the more danger I’m i-”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Cassie gaped, raising her hands and making a ‘time-out’ gesture. “Let me make sense of this, Jason. So you’re, what, a Trump? But those powers don’t sound like they have much connection or synergy to them, unless you’re some sort of power copier or-”
I could feel the Grimoire, as if it was destined, began to send out its feelers once again. Raising a hand to silence the rambling Cass, I gave her an amused smirk and stood back up. Resting time was over, and even though she shut off any camera that could possibly catch sight of us, I wasn’t very enthused at the idea of sitting beside a gasoline-covered car in broad daylight for any longer than was necessary.
“We can finish this conversation later, in a much safer locale. For now, just believe me when I say this: I don’t know too much about my powers, all I know is that every once and a while I get a new ability, though they’re usually pretty minor. The teleportation was the most recent.”
Telling her this much wasn’t a horrible idea. I planned to stick around Cassie for the foreseeable future, she planned to show me her hidden base, and I genuinely felt like I could trust the girl. Trying to keep everything secret sounded like the biggest pain in the fucking ass, and I wasn’t one to play the whole ‘secrecy’ thing anyway.
Eventually, I wouldn’t need to hide anything about myself.
Cassie, in her defense, didn’t freak out or panic - her eyes were just wide as she stared at me like I just farted out a gold brick or something. From what I remembered, having multiple powers or gaining them wasn’t…unheard of, right? That Eidolon dude, part of the grimdark Justice League, had something similar. I could just say I was like him if anyone really tried to dig into my secrets deeply, right?
“We’re definitely revisiting this, bucko. I know I seem calm right now, but there’s nothing normal about being a-” Cassie’s voice dropped down to a hiss, “Trump that can just spawn powers ‘every once and a while’!” Her shitty rendition of my voice caused me to cringe.
“Fuck off, I don’t sound like that. Now get ready to run.” I scowled, flicking the Zippo lighter on.
“Huh?!”
I paused. “Shit. Right. Here-” Turning around, I teleported the scant few feet over to Cassie - ignoring her started and surprisingly high-pitched yelp - and tossed the lighter behind me. I wasn’t too worried about missing since the gas covered quite a bit of distance around the car, but I was worried about it exploding in spite of my previous half-ignorant declaration. Putting one arm beneath her knees and the other right above her ass, I hefted Cassie into my arms with a grunt and immediately began sprinting down the opposite lip of the alley.
I wasn’t looking - because cool guys obviously didn’t look at explosions - but I could both hear and feel the immediate eruption of flames that consumed the gas like a whirlpool. Cassie gasped, stretching her head up to stare over my shoulders at the fiery mess but I was too busy focusing on placing one foot after the other to pay proper attention. She couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds and I was in pretty good shape, but moving around that drum and fighting for my life had a way of tiring a man.
Eyes See All or None(Wonderland No More - 200 CP): You get two related abilities with this perk. First, by saying, “I can see what you’re doing there, young man,” you gain literal (illusory) eyes on the back of your head (or an equivalent position) that not only have your normal eyes’ level of vision but will also detect and see all supernatural things within your normal range of vision, even if they are invisible. On the flipside, if you cover your eyes and say, “I can’t see you, so you can’t see this,” you stop all magical/supernatural attempts to see you for as long as you keep your eyes covered.
“Jay,” Cassie suddenly gasped as I jay-sprinted across a crack-laden street.
“What?”
“It ignited the dumpster.”
“Oh.” I blinked, breathing evenly through my nose as I ran. “I can see what you’re doing there, young man.”
“...The fu-”
“You’re right! Poor…raccoons?”
“Pfft, you fucking dick. Take a right through that alley.”
Arms sore and legs pumping, I followed her directions, inwardly quite satisfied with my latest ability. It was sorta…discombobulating, but useful. Plus, I was getting used to this whole multitasking thin-
A rock almost made me eat shit, and I stumbled, jostling my passenger.
“Ow, Jason, be careful!”
“Sorry.”
_________________________________________
I wish I could say that I fearlessly and tirelessly sprinted through streets and alleyways for two whole miles, but that would be a bold faced lie. After ducking through a couple of apartments and warehouses - just in case we needed to lose a trail, Cassie insisted - we finally managed to make it to the infamous ‘Chateau de Hacker’. I had to deactivate my newest ability halfway there, despite the confidence and peace of mind it gave me to be aware of any threats coming from behind.
Although they were near-sighted just like my plain ‘ol human eyes, if the description proved to be right - and it always was - then I’d be able to pierce through both Stranger powers that hid or cloaked their owners away from normal sight. That wasn’t even getting into the second ability, which I hadn’t had time to test out just yet. The unfortunate side-effect was the severe fucking headache looking from two different sets of eyes smacked me with.
At this point, I had a dinosaur treating the inside of my skull like Jurassic World and I honestly wasn’t the biggest fan - of the headache or the movie.
“You can put me down now, Jason. We’re safe here.” Cassie brought me out of my thoughts, lightly tapping a chewed-on fingernail against my chin. True to her words, the area around us seemed safe; her warehouse was fringing on the outskirts of the Docks, more in the Trainyard than anything else, and other than a few abandoned boxcars and a half-destroyed building I had to skirt around in order to even find the damn hideout, there wasn’t much in the way of easy places to wait in ambush. She chose well.
“I can,” I said casually, making the motion to lower her to the ground. I tried my hardest to not smirk at the subtle, almost too fast to notice tightening of her arms around my neck. Try as she might to deny it, I knew the touch-starved girl enjoyed lying defenseless in my arms for so long. Talk about a pillow princess. “You sure you want that?”
“Ugh,” Cassie groaned, but made no comment to deny the hinted allegation, “Just do it so I can put the code in. The door won’t open otherwise.”
“Fine,” I chuckled, gingerly lowering the much smaller girl onto the ground. Huffing, she hobbled over to the large, metal gray door bringing her phone out and scrolling to another app. There was some sort of small plastic screen embedded at around face-level on the door, and as she typed on her phone the screen suddenly turned black. Moments later, green code started piling up.
‘Ooookay, stereotypical hackerman shit.’ I rose an eyebrow, turning my attention away from the crazy girl and her fancy door and observing the outside of the warehouse. Warehouse was…an incorrect term, however. It looked more like a concrete dungeon - small, compact, and the only noteworthy features seemed to be the metal door placed directly in the front.
“It’s a bunker,” Cassie suddenly spoke up, pocketing her phone and pushing open the door. “Probably for some poor family who wanted an escape for the Endbringer attacks. Don’t know, don’t really care - it was a bitch to hack into and it was empty when I found it, so finder’s keepers.”
I shrugged my shoulders, moving to walk inside. “You won’t find me complaining. What’s yours is mine and what’s everyone else’s is mine too, ya dig?”
She snickered. “Don’t ever say ‘ya dig’ again, grandpa.” Turning around, she shut the door and fiddled with another screen.
I waved her off. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, this place doesn’t look half bad. A bit small, but…” ‘Small’ was a bit of an understatement - it was probably around the size of a poor girl’s bedroom, but it was…clean, at least. And it had electricity - I wonder how she got that set up. A single fluorescent light bulb hung from the concrete ceiling, a dark green hatch was installed on the floor beneath said bulb, and…there was nothing else.
Huh, the hatch probably led down into-
“Do you even know what a bunker is?” Cassie sighed, limping towards the hatch. I followed after, because Lord knew she wasn’t lifting it by herself with no core leverage.
“I do…I just never saw the inside of one before. Or, if I did, it was a long time ago. Who the fuck regularly observes the inside of bunkers?”
“Uh, normal-”
“Nah, crazy people - that’s who.”
“And people who enjoy surviving the crazy monsters that threaten our cities once every second Sunday.” Cassie snarked, stepping back and letting me muscle up the hatch. I was honestly a bit surprised that she hadn’t found a way to put some ridiculously complicated hydraulic locking mechanism accessible only by her Nokia on the hatch as well.
“Point.” I conceded, watching as the metal ladder folded down out of the hatch and fell the 13 or so feet down into the inky darkness. There was a small beat of silence, before: “So, I guess I’m gonna go down first and then catch you-”
“I can climb down slowly on one foot, genius.” Cassie’s voice was amused.
“Yeah, but then you miss out on another ride on the muscle wagon,” I replied with a rakish grin and a wiggle of my eyebrows.
“Haha! You’re actually insufferable.” Cassie snorted, shaking her head and fixing me with a glare that lacked heat. “Go down first, just in case I fall or something.”
“Yup.”
Still grinning, I tossed my lower body over the side of the hole and gripped the metal rungs of the ladder. Even though the inside of the bunker proper was pretty much pitch black, the events of the day did a lot to help me with my blind confidence. Or maybe that was just Heroic Aptitude doing it’s job. Fake it ‘till you make it, right?
Without hesitating, I slid straight down into the darkness. It was only a few seconds before my completely fucked up crocs hit solid concrete, and as soon as I did an array of lights flickered on directly overhead, momentarily blinding me.
“Shit!” I swore, closing my eyes and covering them with my forearm. That damned dinosaur started doing flips again, this time with aplomb.
“It’s better than the dark at least. Don’t worry, they’re voice activated,” Cassie said as she slowly clambered down the ladder after me. “Lights, dim.” There was the sound of something flickering and buzzing, before all went silent once again.
Opening my eyes, I watched as the previously bright fluorescent bulbs dimmed to a much more relaxing level. I blinked the spots out of my eyes. “I’d be more impressed if your lighting system didn’t just flashbang the Hell outta me.” I grumbled.
Cassie grunted as she made it past the final rung, slightly out of breath and looking paler than usual. “You’ll be alright, Mister Trump. I’m sure there’s a power somewhere in that noggin that can heal you right up.”
I shivered in disgust, shooting her a glare. “First off, don’t ever call me that again. Secondly…” I trailed off, slowly turning around in a 360 as I took in her base of operations. “...Holy shit.”
Cass limped forward to stand by my side, a nervous look overtaking her face. “I know it’s pretty shitty, but I did what I could to make it home.”
I shook my head, absently plopping my hand on top of her head.
“Hey!”
Laughter, free of stress and worry - at least for now, bubbled out of my chest. I turned to give my newest roomie a big, genuine grin. Tentatively, but with growing elation at the realization that we were safe and free, Cassie met my smile with her own. Somehow, in the shitty lighting of the underground bunker, it looked more beautiful than any other woman's I've ever met. “Homeless my ass. If this ain’t paradise, I don’t know what is.”
Sure, it wasn’t my apartment in East Harlem, but…
For now, right in this moment, it was perfect.
_________________________________________
Perks Received:
Eyes See All or None(Wonderland No More - 200 CP): You get two related abilities with this perk. First, by saying, “I can see what you’re doing there, young man,” you gain literal (illusory) eyes on the back of your head (or an equivalent position) that not only have your normal eyes’ level of vision but will also detect and see all supernatural things within your normal range of vision, even if they are invisible. On the flipside, if you cover your eyes and say, “I can’t see you, so you can’t see this,” you stop all magical/supernatural attempts to see you for as long as you keep your eyes covered.
900 CP Remaining.
