Different Rules 3 (Patreon)

Different Rules

Chapter 3

-VB-

Last night had been … exciting.

Watching Annette swing her hips as she quickly washed and dressed for work was as equally appreciable, especially since she was better off in her ass than her tits.

She glanced over the shoulder and smirked at the way I was hopelessly entranced by her.

“I still have it, hmm?”

“Yes, you do, hun,” I replied as she waved me goodbye for the day.

I had a quick shower and was out in time to start making breakfast for my Little Owl.

Taylor yawned as she walked down the stairs in her pajamas, groggily fumbling for her fork and spoon as I prepared an actual meal for her breakfast instead of pancakes and cereal sin against all meals.

Unfortunately, the meal I could provide for her had to be within budget.

A plate of bacon, mashed potatoes, pinto beans, broccoli, diced and salted lettuce for salad, and a cup of milk.

She took one look at the full plate and then back up at me.

“Dad, did something happen?” she asked confusedly.

I gave her a beaming smile.

“Youth.”

Taylor grumbled as she picked up her fork and began muttering something about not understanding adults.

I sat down to eat from my breakfast plate as well, and noticed how Taylor’s actions matched Danny’s memories.

Taylor didn’t like beans, liked her salad but not with heavy dressing, and played with broccoli distastefully before eating it with a stubborn grimace.

I couldn’t help the chuckle that just seemed to flow out from deep inside me, and reached out to ruffle her hair. “Love you, kiddo.”

Danny loves you very much, Taylor.

Alan… he was more concerned about the fact that Danny and his entire family lived in a dying city.

And I intended to do something about that.

-VB-

I waved to Taylor, and she waved back with the vigor of a pre-teen before running off to her class.

I watched her run without a care in the world before I thought about what I intended to do right now.

With a sigh, I drove to the Dockworkers Union and parked my car in the same spot that Danny has been parking his car for the past decade and a half. As I got out of the car, I saw how unkempt and rundown the entire place was.

The Dockworkers Union headquarter wasn’t actually by the coast but deeper inside the Docks and close to the Downtown. It used to be close to the port and the coast, but they had been more or less kicked out by the Port Authority who didn’t extend the rent and then from “core” of the Docks by the Asian gangs that moved in.

Of course, there was no work in the port itself; the oil tanker that blocked the harbor spilled its oil content and killed off the fishes in the area, so not even fishing had survived the ordeal.

It was a sad, sorry state that a port town couldn’t even get its own fish.

I walked into the union building and then to the administrative floor of the five story building.

“Danny? You’re later than usual,” Rebecca “Becky” Shaunton said from her place at the receptionist desk for the administrative floor.

“Yeah. I … had to do some thinking. Some things happened that made me question a lot of things,” I shrugged. “Is Michael in his office?”

“He is.”

“Got it. I’ll go see him. I have some proposals to run by him.”

Michael was the official head of the union but the unofficial second in command.

This was due to the unofficial hierarchy that ran the union. The head of the union was the union’s representative but not the director of the union, which didn’t have any directors in the first place. All decisions were made democratically with votes, officially, but unofficially, the “heads” were the ones who

It had a lot in common with the patron system found down in Texas where the richest or most powerful man took charge of a community (or an entire county) and made decisions as he wished.

That’s how Nixon got 99% of the votes from one of the Texan counties when he campaigned to become the state governor. All it took him was a phone call and a few promises to that county’s patron.

The union’s heads were elected positions, however, so there was an actual democratic process that did happen.

Unfortunately, there were currently only one head, and that was me, Danny Hebert.

All of the other heads left after they got the job experience and then better job offers outside the city.

Danny Hebert’s official position in the union was the “Head of Hiring,” “Head of Organization,” “Head of Business Negotiation,” and “Head of Civil Management” (aka peaceful protest department).

I knocked on Michael’s office door.

“Come in.”

I opened the door and walked in, and saw a man as equally overworked as Danny sitting behind a cheap metal desk with wooden top that had piles of papers and an old computer to the side.

Michael Fiddiskil, a 57 year old second generation Finnish with receding blonde hair turning gray and black eyes atop a slowly wrinkling face, looked up. His downturned lips immediately shot up into a smile.

“Danny! What’s going on, my brother?”

He was also a man who professed to love “modernity,” going so far as to painstakingly adopt new slangs, idioms, and culture.

“I need to have a serious talk, Michael,” I said as I closed the door. “Do you have any meetings set up in the next three hours?”

He frowned before looking to the side, flipping a small palm-sized notepad with his pen, before shaking his head. “No, but I do have one at 1 P.M. with the dear old mayor.”

I snorted. “So negligible.”

“Give the man some slack, Danny boy. He does try.”

I sighed. He did, but his focus was not in the more heavily populated and disenfranchised Docks but the high property valued and rich West Suburbs and Downtown. He did what he thought was right to save the city.

I sat down across from him as he gestured for me to sit.

“So what did you need to talk to me about? Is it meeting the mayor again to petition for another attempt at fixing the ferry again?”

“No,” I shook my head. “It needs to confidential.”

He blinked for a moment before he slowly nodded his head. “You have my lips sealed if you wand them that way. What’s the problem?”

“Not a problem per say…” I muttered before reaching into my inventory, the very act causing my limb to disappear into the void and causing Michael distress with how his eyes widened and nearly jerked away, and then I brought out a mask.

It was a simple design for a helmet that LvL 100 Yggdrasil Clerics wore. Its buffs and stats were just barely above average, but everyone wore it at some point because it was part of the Cleric’s LvL 10 quest chain.

Michael stared at the plain black mask with two round eyeholes.

He gulped. “Y-You’re a cape, Danny? Since when?”

“Yesterday night. Nearly dying will do that to a person,” I replied quietly with a half-lie before shoving the mask back into my inventory. “... I have to ask just how great of an impact removing all of the abandoned ships in the bay will have on the bay.”

His eyes widened. “You think you can?”

“I know I can,” I said before pulling out a warhammer.

It was the perfect example of a fantastical warhammer with a big head. The warhammer forged out of Star Silver by my grandchild and aptly named “Crusher” was a gift from Sarah, the second eldest granddaughter, for reaching Warrior LvL 10.

I smirked before stashing the warhammer back into my inventory.

He gulped. “Even if it takes time…”

“We can open the bay again for shipping.”

Michael tittered with excitement belaying his age but the excitement soon died down as the cynicism the bay planted in everyone reared its ugly head.

“Would they?” he asked quietly as he leaned back into his chair. “The mayor and his office certainly would be happy about it but you know as well as I do that half of the city just doesn’t care anymore.”

This was also true. The city had shifted its focus from shipping to service years ago. The riot was just the tipping point.

It just wasn’t that there was no business looking to use the port. It was also the fact that all of the shipping infrastructure that used to be there are now either outdated, rusted over, stolen, or scrapped if all four didn’t happen.

If they wanted to open the port again, then they needed to fix the harbor, get new infrastructure in, and then somehow fix the Trainyads, which was another part of the town was out of commission.

When the shipping dried up and then the harbor got closed off by a oil-spilling tanker, nothing went out of the city and soon nothing came in. Just like the port, the trainyard’s infrastructure was suffering from all four conditions.

I knew for a fact that more than a fifth of the rails had been pulled off and sold illegally.

“So then what do you want to do?” I asked. “We’re dying already. Why not try this?”

Michael looked … unhappy.

“You know that you don’t have to convince me, Danny. If you say we gotta do something, then the union will back you.”

“But would it be worth doing if I can’t even convince you to follow me?” I asked in turn, and he looked at me in surprise.

He continued to stare before he finally snorted. “Being a cape really fucked you up, huh?” he asked. “You actually sound like a congressman now.”

I grimaced.

Both Danny and Michael hated politicians. It wasn’t that politician, as a job, was bad or that we were anti-establishment. No, it was the fact that both state and federal congressmen and women would make big talks about revitalizing the state’s only port town and, once elected, change their tune and put their support behind the PRT and the mayor’s office in improving the Downtown’s service and tourism sectors.

After ten years’ worth of politicians - from the left’s extreme liberals and right’s ultra conservatives to the moderate left and the libertarian right - all promising the same and then renegding on the promise, no one in the union liked or trusted politicians.

Mayor Roy Christener, for his part, did at the very least make an attempt, which was more than any other congressmen and women had done at any level of the government, which was one of the reasons why Danny actually gave the mayor a modicum of respect.

A part of Brockton Bay residents’ innate cynicism came from this historical and continuing lack of government help and betrayal.

Hell, even Detroit got help from their state government.

Brockton Bay never did.

“... You seriously want to try?” he asked me.

I nodded. “It’ll take some time to plan, gather support, and organize our response - and counter response - to anything that may come our way, but I do. No. I will make sure that the bay lives again,” I promised while looking at Michael in the eyes.

Because the only other option after this was to use violence.

This has to work.

“What about the gangs?” he asked me. “How will you handle them?”

“If I have to, then I’ll bust some nuts and tits,” I grunted with a scowl.

He tapped his foot impatiently. He did that whenever he felt insecure about something.

“How about this, Michael? Both of us will take a hike toward Exeter, stop somewhere in the middle, find a secluded forest, and I’ll show you what I can do.”

He paused and then nodded.

“Alright. Today?”

“You said you had a meeting.”

“I can push it back.”

“Alright, then let’s get it done today. I’m going to show you a lot of cool shit.”

“You mean meaningless cape shit,” he grunted.

Oh yeah. Old Michael here didn’t like capes. Liked how the world made sense before the 80’s. He didn't let his distaste affect his judgment, though.

Frankly, I too preferred my old world to this twisted caricature of Earth. USA not striking down violent gangs that wrack up hundreds of deaths per month? That’s heresy.

… Yeah, this USA was a weaker mirror image of the one from back home.

-VB-

“Alright,” Michael said as he got out of the car after two hours of driving the day after we talked at the Dockworkers headquarters. “Show me your weird shit.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes.

“Well, I have Options A, B, C, and D. Which one do you want to see first?” I asked him with a drawl as I scratched the top of my not-yet-balding head. Would my new constitution as a Nastika, the highest form of Sura, be enough to stop that? "The weakest to strongest."

"... kinda like Eidolon?"

"Not really but also similar, yes," I replied cryptically, and Michael sent me a glare my way for my cheek.

"Fine. Show me your weakest."

With a mental command, my body became enshrouded in a glittering holy light. Michael froze as he took it in…

"So you glow?"

I barked out a laugh.

"[Heal]."

Michael flinched as the same light engulfed him for a moment before he processed what he heard. "Dammit, Danny, what are you-?!"

"You're not limping anymore."

Mt friend froze and then looked back down at his left leg, the same leg that once got eviscerated by Hookwolf.

He wiggled his foot. Then shook his knees.

Finally, he jumped up and down.

"... well, holy hell," he muttered.

"Next, the second weakest," I said as I removed the [Holy Protection I] from myself and pulled out my war axe.

The six foot long axe, a third of which was the head of the axe, cut into the ground with a sharp scratch between stone and metal.

Michael stared at the axe that looked like and did weigh two tons.

"Danny. What the fuck."

I chuckled as I easily pulled the half-buried axe out of the ground … and then threw it.

The winds roared as my axe chainsawed into the woods, and the trees creaked and moaned as my axe blasted through their trunks with ease. Then it came back like a boomerang, and I caught it.

The blade hissed and smoked as the two of us watched at least two dozen trees fall. Deep crashes boomed out into the forest, and I stood there as if this was nothing.

[Warrior's Throw X] wasn't nothing. It was the spell that warriors could get after learning all of its previous levels as the Warrior class leveled up. It was a powerful range attack for a melee class, but came with the caveat that it had a five-minute cooldown. It wasn't nothing, but it was also not a warrior's best skill or spell.

Michael, on the other hand, kept looking at the damage a single spell had done before slowly looking at me.

He broke out into maniac laughter. “I’m not sure I want to see what your stronger powers look like,” he tittered nervously.

I briefly thought about it.

I was stupidly powerful, even if less than half of all of my classes transferred to actual real abilities. A level 10 [Cleric] could resurrect a hundred plus people per hour, though with the limitation that their deaths were fresh and not by natural causes (poison notwithstanding). A [Warrior] could do more than what I just did; smashing Hookwolf would be not only possible but chum change if I had the right gear… which I did. I evolved [Wizard] into being [Siege Wizard], which complemented well with Vritra Nastika that favored overwhelming offensive attack.

By itself, [Siege Wizard] could probably light one of the bay's districts on fire. Knocking down skyscrapers would be harder but doable with time.

And as for Vritra Nastika…

"You probably don't want to see it, no," I replied. I would only bring that out if an Endbringer came by. "I will say that if I ever go villain, then they will need to deploy all of the Triumvirate to put me down."

He made a half-snort before cautiously looking at me. "You're not a guy who puffs himself up and I don't think you are puffing up right now."

I grimaced. "Kinda hard to do that when your wife is a professor who shreds any half-bad argument you make."

He laughed at the tidbit and then sobered up. "You're the most dangerous guy on the East Coast, huh?"

"Only if they make me angry… or remove all restrictions," I sighed before putting a hand on his shoulder. "Union's one of them, so I don't think that restriction will be going away any time soon."