Risk It All: Payoff (ch. 31) (Patreon)

"I hate everything about this," I said, really kinda wishing that Jin had just killed me when she had the chance. Or I let Killer Croc eat me. Either would be preferable to the date that I was suffering now.

"So quit whining and get it over with. Put the hat on," the other Ren said, standing across from me with a camera in his hands. After some time, it was easier just to refer to my copy as Beifong. Beifong was hunched over, and would probably be twisting his back into knots if it wasn't for our Dex stat. There was a whole lot of work that went into photography, something I really hadn't appreciated. I couldn't tell what that work was because I currently didn't have the skill, but with a sigh of reluctance, I put on the hat that wouldn't look out of place on a newspaper boy in the ninety-thirties.

With greater reluctance, I tossed the other half of the scarf over my shoulder. Then I smiled at the- "No, no -- don't smile. Look like you didn't know there was a camera, and you just happened to look at it at the right time- there!" Beifong said, snapping some pictures with a camera I had purchased with prestige. In the wake of the Yakuza incident, I got a fair bit of attention from the media.

Mostly because people knew it hadn't been Batman that attacked the Yakuza HQ. An entire gang had vanished overnight. There were a number of people praising me for making the streets safer, and just as many people ripping into me for being so reckless, and so on and so on. This time, the comments didn't really bother me, but it was mostly because I did what I did to protect my family.

Instead, I focused on using the prestige in a proactive manner. In doing so… I did something I never thought I would. Something I said I never would.

I downloaded Instapic.

The fact of the matter was that I was obscenely hot now. On the verge of being too hot. And in this day and age, being sexy made you famous. All you had to do was take some pictures, slap on a filter, and upload. I almost didn't know why I bothered with Metube. It was so easy-

"I can hear you disparaging my art," Beifong said, not sounding happy with me. "There's a lot more to it than slapping a filter on the photo -- there's lighting, composition, and angles to consider. This isn't snapping a selfie in the bathroom mirror. It's art. Dickhead. Now, pose two." I rolled my eyes at Beifong being a diva, taking pose two.

Photography was a skill that I bought to take better photos. Basically, I was my own professional photographer. Another investment I made was into increasing multi-form. I had hoped to increase the number of copies that I could have at once. No such luck despite a hundred thousand points dropped. Instead, I gained the ability to pick a single stat and keep it from being halved -- right now, I picked Charisma, and also gained the ability to sense my copy's thoughts. It was kinda a shorthand telepathy.

We went through poses three through five. Sometimes we changed locations, sometimes with different clothes. But, you can only make Gotham City look so pretty. Instead, we decided on the rough urban look -- dilapidated buildings, abandoned warehouses, a train yard that hadn't been used in at least half a century. Ended up buying lunch for a bunch of homeless people that used the locations as homes. I'm sure if I still had Photography, I would understand it more, but right now, I was just a pretty face so I just struck the poses that I was told to.

"And we're good," Beifong said, going through the photos as Gluttony spat out a laptop. Beifong flipped it open and opened the Instapic account. My lips thinned when I saw that the account that barely had any photos already had half a million followers. Barely a week into its creation. Far more than all of my Metube accounts put together, times ten.

Hard work should be more rewarding.

He uploaded the photos and I saw that they looked pretty good, kinda like the stuff you saw on magazines.

"Not a fan of the too-small shirts," I said, taking off the V-neck that was three sizes too small for me.

"It reveals our muscle definition," Beifong countered, applying a gray and white filter, doing something to make my eyes pop, before he began sorting through the photos for the one he liked best. "It shows without showing," he said, picking a photo that revealed the scars on my forehead. The one blemish on an otherwise perfect face. With a few touches, the good photo became a great photo. I'm sure it was normally more complicated, but…

It would require actual effort to make me look bad.

The photo was an instant hit, shares and comments flooding in. My Prestige shot up as well when Beifong uploaded the photo to our other official accounts on other sites.

It felt dumb, but I couldn't deny its effectiveness. Being pretty was a superpower of its own.

My phone rang, and Gluttony spat it out. Flipping it open, I saw the caller ID was Zatanna. "I'm just finishing up. I'm on my way now," I told her, tossing the computer back into Gluttony and dismissing Beifong now that the deed was done.

"You better. Nice photos," Zatanna remarked, and she was damn right about that. The early morning sun cast a brilliant light through the broken and foggy windows. Godrays earned their name. "Are you reading the comments?"

I scoffed as I headed to the nearest Zeta Tube, "No, that's just asking for trouble." People didn't know what restraint was, much less practice it online. I would have thought that being super sexy and having every girl that saw a picture of me want to bang me would have been a blessing, but more often than not, it was downright creepy. People just assumed that their comment would be lost in a sea of thirst, so they just… really said what was on their minds.

Zatanna chuckled, "Smart. They are desperate," she said, and there was a bit of a vindictive glee in her tone. I think she took a dark amusement in reading the comments posted to my pictures. Not really sure what she got out of it.

Arriving at the Zeta Tube, I vanished in a flash of light, and I arrived to see Zatanna standing across from me in the Mountain, the phone pressed to her ear. She was wearing a dark purple and white bikini, and smiled lightly when she saw me arrive. "Ready for a day out?" she asked me, and I responded by taking off my shirt and pants, revealing my white swim trunks which I was wearing beneath, marked with a palm tree on one leg.

Things had settled into a new normal in the past couple of weeks. Especially among the team. They could always be better, but in comparison to the time when I fully expected the team to dissolve, this wasn't too bad. Things between me and Robin were fine. Me and Kid Flash were lukewarm but still better than we were. Kaldur and I were also fine. In all, things were a hard okay. Which was a marked improvement over the firmly not okay that we had been.

So, I was looking forward to the little outing that had been planned. A beach day. The entire team was invited for a little bonding time, but Wally couldn't come. Today was the day that his high school resumed. Something that was looming over us all. It's why we were going out -- one last hurrah before school resumed.

A door opened revealing Conner, who carried what amounted to a refrigerator that was filled with snacks. I sent Gluttony forward to help him out, and he offered a nod when the fridge vanished.

"Right, pocket dimension," I heard Artemis say under her breath, following Conner out. She wore a lime green one piece, her blonde hair pulled back into a braid, with her face lacking its usual mask. She seemed self-conscious about it, but unlike Robin, she wasn't sworn to secrecy about her identity. She still hadn't told us her actual name, and I had no intention of finding out until she revealed it herself.

Megan, on the other hand, had a small woven basket handbag that she showed no interest in having me take off her hands, and a huge sun hat on. I don't think she needed it. Could Martians get a tan?

"We're ready to go!" Megan exclaimed, practically vibrating with excitement, throwing her hands up. Conner looked at me, not appearing exactly enthused with the beach day idea. I'm mildly shocked that he agreed to go. Behind them was Kaldur, who was dressed in when in guessing was Atlantean casual wear since I can't imagine Atlantis did swim trunks. Robin was behind him, wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sunglasses that he never took off out of costume.

Tossing my spare clothes into Gluttony, we made our way down to the private beach on the backside of the mountain. The beach was made of white sand and the blue waves crashed upon the shore in a steady rhythm.

"Beaches are a lot nicer outside of Gotham," I remarked, earning something that resembled a laugh from Robin.

"I know. Where are the broken bottles and garbage?" he questioned, sounding almost similarly confused as I was. The further I got away from Gotham, the more clear it became that the city was a literal dumpster fire.

Because of the stunning lack of sharp glass hidden amongst the sand, it made it easy to pick out a place to set up -- umbrella, towels to sit on, and the fridge was cracked open for snacks.

Megan pretty much instantly dragged Conner off to the shore to play in the waves. Or, rather, where she splashed him, and he stood there awkwardly, until he decided it was a competition and with a single swipe doused Megan with a tidal wave of water that threatened to carry the Martian girl out to sea.

Zatanna sat next to me on the beach towel, "I'm so glad I could come," Zatanna sighed, soaking in the sun.

"Are you still grounded?" Artemis questioned, sounding near bewildered at the idea. However, Zatanna tilted her hand back and forth.

"Kinda?" she said, looking at me, and I offered a pretty unhelpful shrug. "Ever since we started the mental missions, Dad has been letting up. I don't even have to sneak out anymore." And that was marked progress.

The mental missions were a weekly training exercise. Martian Manhunter would stop by, put us all in a circle, and connect our minds so we could undergo a simulation of a mission. It begun shortly after the last actual mission on account of the fact that, so far, we didn't have a single mission that went smoothly on file. The simulations were so we could get experience without the danger -- such as nearly getting eaten by Killer Croc, blown up, or stumbling into a warzone between an ancient cult and a drug cartel.

It was part of why things were a hard okay now. I still didn't particularly care for Wally. We were just two very different people. But, with the simulations, we learned how to work together.

"So, it's more of an arbitrary thing instead of a net No for everything I want to do," Zatanna said, offering a shrug. She gave me a pointed look that I tried to ignore because Artemis was right next to us.

Given that I wasn't dead, Zatara seemed to… I won't say accept, but was resigned to the fact that Zatanna and I were officially dating. When we went out, there was a curfew that she had to be back by, but it was a marked difference between actively preventing us from seeing each other. Zatanna admitted that they had another huge fight when she got back to her house. And, as much as she was quick to label Zatara as a tyrant, I couldn't help but notice that the metaphorical chains slackened when Zatanna was proven to be safe.

The mental missions proved that we weren't utterly incompetent idiots that jumped head first into danger, so Zatanna was tentatively back on the Team. As for us, about a month into our relationship, the only source of drama between us was Zatara himself. And he seemed to recognize that, so he took a step back to give us some breathing room. I'm pretty sure that he was giving us enough rope to hang ourselves with, but if he didn't find us hanging from any rafters, everything should be fine.

"If you say so," Artemis said, sounding glad for it. "Will you be able to go on actual missions again? That's not something you can- oh. You already have?" She asked, catching the look that Zatanna gave me that could best be described as smug. She really wouldn't let anyone stop her when it came to something she wanted to do.

"Once, but I don't think I'll need to," Zatanna admitted. Then her phone buzzed, and she checked it. A smirk found its way onto her face before she showed me the screen. I saw it was a news article. About me. The cover was the picture I had just posted, and underneath it was a few paragraphs worth of a summary about me -- poor family raised in Gotham, shot in the head, nearly assassinated by Black Mask, then my relationship with Zatanna and the video of me dealing with the Yakuza. Overall, it made me sound like a tragic character from a soap opera.

"That was fast," I remarked.

"Look at the news company," Zatanna urged, and…

"The Daily Bugle? Really?" You'd think they had better things to report on than me. Out of curiosity, I checked my Prestige counter.

Two hundred thousand prestige and counting. The prestige was coming in so quickly it honestly felt like cheating.

"Aren't you worried? About having a famous public identity?" Artemis asked me, and I shrugged in response. Her concerns weren't unfounded. However, my public identity was already out there. And I noticed that I got way more prestige when it was my real identity compared to Koi or Beifong or my various Metube accounts. If it was Koi that posted the pictures, I'd only net maybe a third of the amount that I currently had.

"Not really. I can use a copy to be in two separate places," I reminded her, glancing at Artemis. Beyond her, I saw Kaldur had gotten involved in the splashing contest, competing against Conner with magic. Robin was busy making a sand castle with Megan, who made liberal use of her telekinesis to prop it up so they could make something I wasn't sure should be structurally possible. Guppy provided the water with waterbending. "The extra attention shouldn't cause any problems." If it would, I would have been told as much from Batman or Wonder Woman.

"Still didn't see you making an Instapic account. Do you think you could work your magic on some of my photos?" Artemis asked and I nodded, the inner artist inside me jumping at the chance to utilize my Photography skill.

"The account is a means to an end," I started, only for Zatanna to roll her eyes affectionately. "It is," I protested. I didn't really get the whole obsession people had with other people's pictures. Being good at something didn't mean I understood why it took off. There had to be more to it than just being hot, right?

"Poor you -- incredibly handsome, with hundreds of thousands of adoring fans, superpowers, and dating me. It's so sad I might shed a tear," Zatanna sassed me.

Artemis was quick to join in, "Suffering from success. It must be very difficult dealing with so many people liking and sharing the photo you posted. How do you deal with all those compliments you get?" Both girls broke into giggles at my expense -- Artemis and Zatanna proved to be good friends. They did well together. Especially when they were teaming up at my expense.

It was a welcomed relief from my suffering at the hands of two pretty teenage girls when the splashing contest slowly grew more and more chaotic and Conner eventually sent what had to be a metric ton of water splashing over the beach by smacking the water a little too hard with an open palm. I waterbent the water away before it could drown us, but I was quick to join in on the fun afterward, mostly to escape the teasing.

However, when I was swept away in one of the tidal waves caused by Conner, it was evident that I didn't really have the raw power to complete with Kaldur and Conner in the water. I let myself sink beneath the waves for a moment, opening my Market.

Three hundred thousand prestige. Being hot was playing life with cheat codes and I hoped it never got patched out. I didn't even want to know what the numbers looked like on my Instapic account. I think I might cry. But, regardless of how down right unfair the prestige gain was, I didn't let that stop me from using it.

I already knew what I was going to do with the influx of prestige so I began to make my purchases. First, I started with my stats. Having an increased base made the skills more powerful, and when I split my stats between me and Beifong it was always better to have more than less.

Ren Song

Rank: You’re a Star, Baby!

Prestige: 238,000,000

Strength: 1500

Perception: 1000

Endurance: 1500

Charisma: 1000

Intelligence: 1000

Agility: 1000

Luck: 1000

It cost me a hundred thousand points. By the time I confirmed my purchases, I gained a near forty thousand prestige. Having all the stats be a thousand would have been a bit boring, so I put more into Strength and Endurance since I used them the most. I also put some more into Charisma, even though I knew it was kinda a bad idea, simply because it would bother me if it was lagging behind.

There was a flash of discomfort as my body adjusted to the jump in stats, but it was manageable. The higher my Endurance climbed, the easier it was to bear.

Then, I moved into skills. I knew what I wanted, too.

Breathing: Moon Style

T10R4

The Moon Breathing style of breathing and combat mimics the ethereal mystique of the crescent moon, specifically the shape of classical crescent moons, and replicates it with the user's movements, techniques, and abilities.

At 10R4, all techniques have been unlocked and the creation of new ones are available. Power of all crescents and slashes have been increased dramatically, as has fine control.

Flash Step

T10R4

The Flash Step Stance's foundation is rooted in explosive movement to advance or retreat from an enemy’s position. To the untrained eye, the user will move as if in a blur.

At T10R4, based on Endurance and Dexterity, anywhere within a two mile radius can be reached in a single step, provided that the targeted destination is not within an obstructed location. Speed of arrival dramatically increased.

Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist: Counters

T5R1

A foundational martial arts style centered around devastating counters and relentless offensive strikes. Currently, only counters are available.

At T5R1, all force exerted is maintained when countering.

Batto Sword Drawing

T5R1

Qi circulates around the blade in its sheath, allowing for a quick unsheathing. This is the fastest drawing technique of the New Shadow Style.

At T5R1, speed of drawing is rapidly increased.

Reinforcement

T5R1

By imbuing your energy into an object, it becomes more resilient and effective.

At T5R1, Reinforcing your own body beyond its natural limitations is possible.

Tekken

T5R1

A straight jab that delivers an overwhelming impact.

At T5R1, Tekken’s impact has a force multiplier of 2x.

Focus Stomp

T5R1

A technique based on the Soul Crushing Blow, but fine-tuned to be a more precise attack, focused on a single point of impact to deliver devastating damage.

At T5R1, range of the focus stomp is increased.

Koi was the focus first, so the techniques for that identity got a massive boost. He also gained an additional two skills.

Longsword Mastery

T5R1

Swordsmanship in the East is considered to be a thing of beauty, while the West treats sword fighting as a means of killing the enemy and nothing more. Pragmatic, crude, and often times brutal, a swordsman of the West was in no way inferior to a swordsman of the East.

New Shadow Style: Simple Domain

TR51

A range of thirty feet around the user is becomes the users Domain. Everything within is accounted for, as are all things that enter and leave, allowing for near-instant reactions. Range can be exchanged for enhanced clarity.

I preferred my asian swords, but Diana had come through and given me a longsword that was fairly similar to her own. I hadn’t used it beyond some mild tests to get used to it, but the sword was incredibly durable.

For Beifong, I increased his bending abilities across the board.

Airbending

T5R1

Formless and shapeless, the wind comes and goes as it pleases, effortlessly weaving over obstacles.

Eathbending

T5R1

To move rock, you have to be stubborn as a rock.

Metalbending has been unlocked for purchase.

Waterbending

T5R1

Water takes the form of whatever contains it -- it can be light and formless, or it can crash down upon you with the weight of a mountain.

Bloodbending has been unlocked for purchase.

Firebending

T5R1

Fire is passion and life. The flames produced are directly linked to the desires of the user, their intensity and brightness never wavering.

Lightningbending has become unlocked for purchase

Seismic Sense

T5R1

Through ones feet, one can sense the vibrations of everything around them. Fine detail will be lost, but with a single step, a city can be revealed.

Chi-Blocking

T5R1

Chi flows through the body like blood, and with deliberate and targeted strikes, it becomes possible to turn that flow turbid and listless, immobilizing the body and hindering the flow of chi.

I didn’t purchase any of the unlocks as of yet. I wanted to get a handle on the newly increased abilities before I added more to my plate.

With my final purchase, I picked something that needed to be increased. Something that I should have invested into from the very start.

Thou Shall Not Kill

T6R1

It is now impossible for you to kill your enemies. They will always survive whatever injuries that you inflict on them, so long as the brain remains intact. So there’s no need to ever pull your punches! They can’t die, even if they really want to!

At T6R1, damage that is dealt hurts an enemy exactly as much as the user wants it to. A technique that should vaporize them to the last atom can be endured, merely rendering them unconcious if wanted. Attacks that should shatter bones and rupture organs will simply break them, and deal internal bruising.

Increasing Thou Shall Not Kill meant that I didn’t have to hold back my strength or techniques. I could hit someone as hard as I wanted, and instead of punching a hole in their body or something, I would just deliver a clean break. The control that I was lacking was taken care of.

And, with my purchases made for two hundred thousand points in total, I grabbed hold of the water and I began to pull, summoning a large wave that pulled back hundreds of pounds of water. My feet touched the ground and through the loose sand, I knew exactly where the others were. With a smile on my face, I launched the wave towards them all, sweeping over Conner and Kaldur. Showing off my control, I deliberately avoided the sandcastle.

Emerging from the sea, better than ever, I saw a matching grin on Conner’s face as he really got into it.

“It’s on.”

...

Bit of a transition chapter. I didn't want Red Arrow ruining the vibe. So, Ren got his first real major jump and the ball has started to get rolling in terms of raking in Prestige. Who needs pyramid schemes when you have an Instagram account?