Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other 2 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Definitely not Dio

Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other

Chapter 2

-VB-

Regardless of my personal dilemma, the Golden Morning marched on. Somewhere out there, someone was getting killed, someone else was doing the killing, capes were fighting Scion, and Scion was batting them aside like one would a mosquito. Because, honestly, that was about the equivalent of what a true fight against the Warrior would be like.

Scion was just too depressed to clean the house of the mosquitos. Stuck in bed, just sighing and moping about his wife’s death for thirty years.

And while all of that was happening, I was naked on the beach… smashing a tree with a rock in my hand.

And I watched as the numbers went up in the bottom right corner of my vision.

+10 Wood (210)

+10 Wood (220)

+10 Wood (230)

By doing this, I recognized a few changes about myself.

For one, I did not feel pain, not in the sharp and distinct manner I used to. The rock I had in my hands was not smooth yet smashing its jagged edges into a tree did not cut my hands nor make me uncomfortable. I should also be shivering in the chilly winds but I wasn’t.

“I guess I’m really a cape,” I thought to myself as the tree fell over after I harvested a measly 325 wood, but that was enough for me to make a spear. 300 wood disappeared and I saw a crafting timer for a wooden spear in the bottom right corner of my vision.

Well. There’s nothing to it.

I ran toward Brockton Bay with my sausage and cherries hanging in the wind. And sometime later, I also had a primitive wooden spear hanging off my back. However you looked at me at this point in time, I was not in a good headspace.

-VB-

Brockton Bay was a shithole even during an apocalypse. Adding to the city’s already dismal state was the now rampant looting and pillaging the gangs and looters were engaging in as they saw a chance to act with impunity.

These imbeciles, of course, forgot that in times of crisis, there were more triggers.

And many of these triggers became capes at their hands.

And these new capes were pissed. So pissed, in fact, that waging a war on te established gangs, which included the Teeth, was not out of the options.

So they did.

When I entered Brockton Bay, the city had already descended into violent anarchy. While the more established capes were doing their goddamn best to stop Scion’s rampage in what I assumed was the still continuing Oil-Rig Battle, the military had stepped in.

However, there was a reason why the military had been forced to step down previously and let the PRT take control over parahuman matters. Their predictability, structure, and slow-changing doctrine made them easy pickings for capes with their innumerable variations of power.

An example of this was the Stranger I just killed; a man who was incapable of being observed directly because his power made it so that everyone could only see him from the corner of their eyes and even then only for a moment.

Sufficed to say, the army company who came to relieve Downtown Brockton Bay found themselves murdered to the last man and the Stranger druggie came into possession of military hardware and guns, which he distributed to his followers.

And I was among them.

Rust players would call what I was doing as “ghosting,” the act of slipping into a crowd/zerg/organization to take advantage of their disorganized nature to obtain loot.

And considering that I went from having a wooden spear and no clothes to being kitted out with M4 carbine with holosight, multiple extra 5.56 magazines, a tattered but still usable USA army helmet, body armor, and uniform, and more, I did pretty well with this ghosting.

And I also found out an additional aspect of my power: Stranger powers don’t work on me. I guessed that it had something to do with Gamer power not recognizing or something? Regardless of the causes of the immunity, it gave me a way out without becoming paranoid of the Stranger.

While the Stranger led his band of looters on a pillaging spree, I walked away from it all. So as soon as I was out of sight, I shot him from a distance. The man had been so sure of his power’s security that he didn’t even have body armor, and combined with his warband’s constant shooting and his own power, no one even noticed until he was a lifeless corpse.

It wasn’t long after that the Stranger’s gang got ripped apart by other gangs, looters, and army with no cape support to keep them propped up.

Brockton Bay burned, and I wasn’t going to stay. Ther-.

“Hey, you!”

I stopped and turned around. I had just stepped out of an alley and had turned away from the city center to go back to Boston. Now, I found myself looking at -.

Oh no.

That was Imp.

She looked surprised, or rather her body language looked surprised. “Holy shit, you can see me?!” She jumped from side to side leisurely and saw me following her. “Holy shit, you can see me!”

I just got spotted by Imp, the literal gremlin of the Bay.

And behind her was the Heartbroken, the children of Heartbreaker that I remembered she took into custody. That particular event was on the news but not the part about her custody of the children. Everyone celebrated that guy’s death, even me.

“You! Come with me!”

I looked at the kids behind her and saw they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Shit.

“Can I ask why?” I asked her. I didn’t raise my gun, even if I could probably attack first.

“Because you can see me, duh.”

“Isn’t that a bad thing for you?” I asked. “I was on my way to leave the city.”

“Yes, well-.”

A portal opened up next to her, and everyone tensed up.

I froze as I saw the infamous fedora lady walk out. She pointed at Aisha.

“You need to come through to help Weaver. Bring all of the Heartbroken as well.”

I was about to walk away when I saw Contessa turn to me as well.

“You are needed as well. You know that you can make medical syringes. You will make them for us.”

Oh, right. Medical syringes. The literal cornerstone of Rust’s healing method.

Fuck.