Risk It All: Cashing Out (ch. 33) (Patreon)

"What did you just do?" I breathed, an image flashing in my mind of the last creature that had gotten their hands on the venom that was now raining down from the sky in fat drops. Killer Croc had gone toe to toe with Superboy, who could bench near fifteen tons for a workout. Who could hit harder than anyone on the team. Who could get knocked through half a forest worth of trees and brush off the splinters like it was nothing. That Superboy. And before him was Mammoth, the user back on Santa Prisca.

Jin just gave me a deeply amused smile and I didn't receive my answer from her.

"Twinkle!" I heard a woman shout off in the distance, making my attention snap to her. Her scream was accompanied by the sound of snarling that grew in volume. I didn't have time to think about it. I looked down at Jin, who opened her mouth to give me some smartass remark I didn't want to hear. I slammed my fist into her nose, using the skill Tekken, knocking her out, and leaving her pinned to the ground with my sword. Thou Shall Not Kill saved her life, but I had to leave my sword in her gut to make sure she didn't die.

Not because I particularly gave a shit about her life at the moment, but my brain had shifted into such a high gear that it felt like I was thinking a thousand thoughts at once. The implications of what was happening gripped my heart with an ice cold terror and gave it a savage squeeze, filling my veins with ice and dread. If things were half as bad as I thought they were, then as much as an absolute piece of human garbage as she was, I could use Jin.

'New plan! Buster-venom was just mass released over the city! Forget the Fog!' I ordered, using flash step to close the distance between me and the screams that I could hear, a hand ready and waiting for Gluttony to spit out one of my spare swords. A Chinese broadsword with a handful of rings in the back of the blade. I blurred between the trees, and in a single step I had arrived at my destination. My heart dropped to my shoes.

The woman that was screaming watched in horror as her Chihuahua grew rapidly, his skin tearing as dense muscle rapidly grew and expanded. His teeth grew longer and sharper, the handmade sweater that he wore tearing off as the Chihuahua grew vastly larger while snarling to itself. I never liked Chihuahuas. They were small, annoying, and hyper-aggressive little buggers that snapped at the heels of anything larger than them, which was naturally everything. However, in a few seconds, the dog, Twinkle, now towered over his owner with bared teeth and pure murder in his eyes. An overly aggressive dog was cute when they were too small to do damage, but an overly aggressive dog when it could treat solid steel as a chew toy?

I flash stepped forward, reinforcing my blade as it became coated in the night sky. For the first time since I got my power, I made the choice to deactivate a skill just as my sword caught the neck of Twinkle, and it passed through while the dog was still on its way to growing to the size of a small car. Twinkle's head flew free, his snarls and growls abruptly ending while the woman screamed in horror, more afraid for her mutated pet than when her own life was in danger.

A purchase had been made: Metalbending

Good. Beifong was being proactive. Normal buildings wouldn't be able to stand up to the artificial spirit beasts that were being created, so shelters would need to be made.

"You killed Twinkle! You killed my dog!" The woman shouted at me, but I didn't have it in me to feel bad for what I had done.

"Go to Happy Harbor High School, now!" I snapped at her, bringing her up short. "What happened to your dog is happening throughout the city. If you want to live, then go there now!" I barked at her, taking in a deep breath as I flash stepped away. I had a range of two miles, but I couldn't travel that distance in a single step. It would take about ten and about as many seconds to arrive. I touched down on the top of a building that overlooked the park. The woman seemed to get her act together and started running for the high school.

She wasn’t transforming, I thought to myself. I had seen the video from Santa Prisca, back when Kobra had started taking over and that Mammoth guy had taken the serum. He went from stick and bones to throwing hands with Superboy with a single shot. And, so far, the woman wasn’t showing any hint of the transformation even though she had certainly had a few drops land in her mouth when she was one her back.

Did the formula not work on humans? I honestly had no clue, and standing around wasn’t going to give me the answers.

'We picked up your cousin. Lady Shiva pulled a disappearing act, though, but she didn't seem happy,' Robin told me as I spotted another beast forming from the venom that still rained down on us. I flash stepped down, my blade plunging into the hard carapace of a rolly polly beetle. The bug that had grown to the size of a dog squirmed for a moment before I ripped my blade free.

So, this was my family's doing alone? Great. Fantastic. 'Wake Zatanna up. I'm sending citizens to the high school. Kid Flash, I need you to help evacuate civilians. Everyone else is search and destroy. Kill any animal you come across,' and that was an order I never thought I would give, but when I flashed down the side of the street, what I found firmed my resolve to do it.

Half of the body of a middle-aged man hung out of the mouth of a semi-truck-sized rat next to a car. It came up from the water drain based on how it was busted open when the rat got too large. The rat was bulging with muscle, its spiked fur as sharp as daggers based on the impaled woman hanging off of it. With two massive paws, the rat started pushing the rest of the body into his mouth, torrents of blood spilling out with each nibble-like bite. All the while I could hear screaming coming from the ruined car, which the rat had ripped open so that it could feast on the people within.

I sank deep into the Black Heaven and Earth technique, filling my lungs with air as I shot towards the rat with my blade raised high. The concentration of the venom that entered their bodies influenced their strength, I realized as the night sky plunged down against the top of the rat's head, my swirling moons shattering their edges on the rat's fur. It hissed at me, taking a swipe at me at incredible speeds, but I double jumped out of the way. It felt the blow, at least.

However, it was cold comfort to the realization that whatever else was living in the water drainage system just catapulted up to the top of the food chain.

I landed on the top of a minivan that was thankfully empty, though it looked like it had been in use not long ago, the people in it having fled. The rat turned to look at me, its beady black eyes so large it felt like I was staring into the void as it sized me up. The beast hissed at me before deciding that I was its next meal and lunging at me.

I chose to meet it head-on, my broadsword going over my shoulder, the blade pointed at my feet. 180 Pound Phoenix. I flung the condensed ball of night at the rat, and it slammed into its head, stopping the creature cold in its tracks before sending it skidding back across the street. The rat landed heavily, whining pitifully as it clutched at its head. I grit my teeth and deepened my breathing, the night sky cooling around my blade as I flash stepped forward, plunging the sword into the rat's eye and unleashing the cyclone directly into its brain, shredding it to pieces.

Still, I felt how sluggish the damage was to accumulate. Like I was cutting through wet cement or tar. The vitals were still vulnerable, but if they got much stronger then even a shot to the brain might not be enough to kill one.

Ripping my blade free, I went to check on the person in the car to see a teenager around my age, his skin as white as a sheet on the verge of hyperventilating. I don't even think that he saw me. I didn't have time to reassure him, a cold and rational part of my brain told me. Every second that I wasn't finding beasts and killing them, I was putting other people's lives at risk. I had to keep moving.

Which is why I had never been happier to see Kid Flash appear, his own face pale as beads of sweat mixed with the rain dripped from his skin. "I got him," Kid Flash said, going in and undoing the guy's buckle. "But, Koi… it's bad out there."

I know. "The League?" I asked him, my attention switching to another crash. Not a beast, but a car that had turned too fast and slipped on the wet street. The reason for their speed was made evident when a large bird swooped down and clutched the car in its massive talons. I think it used to be a bluejay. Either way, I sprung into action while Kid Flash continued his evacuation.

I used 180 Pound Phoenix, the technique quickly becoming a favored one, and the bird's ribs snapped under the attack. It hit the ground squawking in agony, but I leapt up into the air and used the moonbreathing style's Third Form: Loathsome Moon Chains, two slashes slamming down into the bird's chest before detonating in a small explosion that shredded the bird's organs.

I landed lightly on the ground, glancing back at the family who looked at me with wide eyes. Kid Flash appeared a second later.

'Robin's talking with them, but that's why it's bad, Koi,' Kid answered even as he vanished in a blur of speed. I continued to move on, only to pause when I saw exactly what he meant. A TV behind the glass window of a pawnshop was displaying an alert that only happened when things were bad. Really bad. The kind of alert that didn't show up even when some dickhead wizard tried to blot out the sun and kill all of humanity.

A red alert.

This wasn't just happening in Happy Harbor. This was happening across America.

No…

'This is world wide, isn't it?' I questioned, darting down another street to see a crowd of people fleeing from massive ants. One picked up a car, effortlessly raising it over its head, but before it could crush the car or the family inside, I darted forward and cut off one of its mandibles. It only made sense, I thought as I beheaded the ant. Why would they send this rain here to Happy Harbor of all places? What good would it do them if they couldn't fight the beasts?

I thought that they would be more… insular about it. Administer the venom to an animal in a controlled dose, fight the animal, kill it, do cultivation things to the body, then rinse and repeat. They didn't gain anything by unleashing the venom only in Happy Harbor. However… the same couldn't be said if they released it across the planet. Everywhere.

'The Justice League is working on it,' Robin told me as I cut the legs off of an ant -- the exoskeleton was a pain to get through, but the joints were weak and they were soft on the inside. My lungs began to ache from my deep breathing, as I spotted a massive pitbull biting into the side of an ant. They were working against each other… and I saw a young girl holding a leash in her hand as she stared up at the dog. It was protecting her? 'Zatara and the Green Lanterns are working on dispersing the clouds. They're getting Weather Wizard on board too, but…'

'The damage has been done,' I finished for him. I don't even know what the aftermath would look like. What could it possibly be when you had so many beasts wandering about and all they had to do was lap up a little puddle of buster-venom to become a massive man-eating beast?

I snarled as I pressed forward, throwing myself at the ants and slaughtering them. Their bodies piled up in a twitching mass behind me, and I raised my blade up to put the pitbull down, only to momentarily pause when the girl shouted. "Sit! Sit!" she called out, and to my shock, the dog obediently sat down. Okay. Okay, I could work with that.

'Some trained animals can be saved,' I thought to the team as I left the dog be. The more it killed, the less I had to. It would protect the girl for now and I wasn't sure if it was a wise idea to send her to the high school.

I flew through the air, determined to clear the city myself. I passed over Superboy, who punched out a beetle before turning to take on some other rats that had crawled up out of the sewers. Above the buildings, I saw Megan battling giant birds, slamming them into the ground or using her telepathy against them. All the while, the rain poured down on us all, soaking me to the bone, and I felt a deep and unnatural chill cut me down to the bone. Not just because of the cold.

Things were pretty bad here. A god damn anthill was in danger of over running the city. Rodents and insects that I never gave a second glance to were ripping people apart and worse as I saw a building start to collapse, making me pivot as I flew through the air. They were knocking down buildings. Things were bad and we were here to mitigate the worst of it. What were other cities looking like?

It had been minutes since this crisis had begun, and already I knew that the death count had to be in the tens of thousands across the planet. And that number would only climb higher and higher and higher. That fact weighed heavily on me as I flash stepped to the cause of the building being toppled to find a centipede had crawled through the building, busting through its supports. It was the size of a bus and about three buses long, with hundreds of needle-like legs digging through the asphalt like tissue paper.

It was freaking out, I realized, leaping into the air and sailing above it. How confusing would it be to go from the size of someone's hand to the length of a couple of buses in the span of minutes? I couldn't blame it as it threw back its head and let out an awful screeching sound that conveyed the beast's confusion at what was happening to it. But, all the same, with a double jump, I threw myself down and delivered a powerful Focus Stomp on the top of the centipede's head, shattering its exoskeleton and making the insect collapse.

I rode it down as it collapsed heavily onto the ground. I took in a deep breath and opened my market -- sixty thousand points. Beifong had taken the lion's share, and it was smart too. His bending was the only way I could think of to make a shelter for everyone. Happy Harbor was a small town, but it was still large enough that not everyone could fit in the high school if it wasn't being fortified. I took the points and I threw them all into my stats -- the insects were getting bigger and stronger. I couldn't afford a drawn out fight.

Strength: 2000

Perception: 1750 (875)

Endurance: 2500 (1250)

Charisma: 1000 (500)

Intelligence: 1000 (500)

Agility: 1500 (750)

Luck: 1000 (500)

I had barely peanuts left when it came to prestige, but at the moment, I couldn't bring myself to care. I needed to be faster and stronger and this fight wouldn't be ending any time soon. All of my stats were cut in half because of Beifong, but he was too necessary for me to dismiss him. However, with a mental exchange, we quickly agreed to split the endurance stat which I previously had all of to give me my full strength stat. He also urged me to move on quickly.

Everyone in the collapsed building was dead.

The pain that came with the jump in stats was intense, but I was already moving on when I saw what looked like a jumping spider darting through the air. I flash stepped underneath it, and when it came crashing down, I Focused Stomped upwards by flipping myself upside down and the half ton of spider was knocked up. It crashed down on the street below, its abdomen shattered to pieces as I touched down on the rooftop it intended to land on.

The streets below looked like a warzone -- crashed cars, fleeing and screaming people, and there was so much blood mixing in with the rain. It was a scene right out of hell. I threw myself into the fray, shouting for everyone to go to the high school while I fought with all of my might. Some of the beasts were harder to kill than others, but they weren't used to the changes that they had undergone. They didn't know how to use them. They were confused and scared and running on base instinct. It was the only reason why I could kill them so easily.

But, they also weren't as strong as Superboy, I noticed as I beheaded what had once been a cute mouse. I saw Kid Flash moving down the road, grabbing people and vanishing with them. I skidded down the street, carried by my momentum, when an odd sound reached my ears. It sounded like a loud bang and rattled the glass in the windows around me.

Frowning to myself, I darted forward to find the source and came face to face with a man-sized praying mantis. Its body was still needle thin, almost to the point that it had trouble remaining upright. I noticed the blood on its mandibles and claws. As well as a good half dozen bodies around it, though most of them were alive, just covering their ears.

The night sky coiled around my blade as I dove forward, appearing before it momentarily before flash stepping to the side. My blade was raised to behead the insect before its massive eyes looked to me. My eyes widened a split second before its claws shot out, missing me, but the roar of the sound barrier shattering slammed into me with physical force. I grunted, everything in my right ear going quiet, and all of a sudden I couldn't tell up from down.

I hit the ground hard, rolling to my feet a half dozen feet away. Only to find that I was leaning too far one way and nearly collapsed on myself. My sense of balance was gone. My inner ear was fucked, and it was as the mantis turned around that I realized I couldn't hear anything -- not in my right ear, and only a high pitched ringing that seemed to stab into my brain from my left.

'I'm in a pinch-' I started, knowing I needed backup, but before I could even finish the thought, the praying mantis moved. It darted forward with nimble speed, its multiple legs serving it well, before its claws darted forward. I shifted my blade, protecting my chest, and it felt like I had been kicked by a horse when the blade slammed back into my ribs, knocking me back dozens of feet. I could feel every rib that I had cracking, spiderweb cracks forming along my sternum.

My hearing was gone, and I managed to stay on my feet through nothing but dumb luck and the Water Flowing Smashing Fist principles I could still use without a sense of balance. There was a bad crack in my sword, but it was still whole. I went to grab my sword with both hands, only to realize that my other hand wasn't responding.

Which kinda made sense, in hindsight, when I saw the mantis reach down with one of its claws and pick up the arm that laid at its feet and begin munching down.

My gaze turned to where my arm was supposed to be, only to find a bleeding stump just below the shoulder.

"Oh," I said, even though I couldn't hear myself. That wasn't good. There were a lot of proper reactions to realizing that you were short an arm -- screaming bloody murder for one, or collapsing into a ball of agony. For me, it was more weird than anything. It was like my brain wasn't registering that I was, in fact, missing an arm. My shoulder was weirdly numb, but beyond that, there was no pain.

My sword fell from my hand as I went to stop the flow of bleeding, desperately wishing that I had learned how to close my blood vessels like Jin had. Blood seeped through my fingers, spilling out like a gushing river. It was then that the lightheadedness hit me, forcing me to drop to a knee. The entire time, I watched the praying mantis chow down on my arm like it was the first good food that it had ever had. It was a sight I would never forget.

'Koi!' I heard Kid Flash shouting in my head, appearing on the other end of the road. His jaw was slack and there was a look of horror on his face when he saw me. I don't think I had ever seen him look that scared.

'I'm pretty fucked, Wally,' I admitted. But, as bad as it was, it was hard to panic about it. I knew I had options to take care of the damage -- I had already been eying a regeneration skill, but I hadn't bought it because I never needed it. I never realized how apt the saying 'it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it' was.

'I'm getting you out of here,' Kid Flash swore before he all but vanished in a blur of speed and I felt something scoop me up a fraction of a second later. I watched the praying mantis eye Kid Flash as we fled the battle, able to keep up with his speeds even if the insect couldn't react to them. Yet.

A few seconds later, we slowed down on the other side of town, in front of the high school, and I barely recognized it. Massive slabs of stone jutted up in front of the walls, acting as a protective barrier. There was a stream of people forcing their way inside, and I saw Robin and Artemis making sure nothing came close to them. In a blur, I found myself in a half filled classroom.

Kid set me down in a teacher's admittedly comfortable chair, his mouth moving, but I couldn't hear a thing. 'Hearings gone,' I thought at him, making his eyes widen.

'You're going to be okay, Ren,' he told me before vanishing and reappearing with a first aid kit. He started bandaging up my arm, but I was soaking through the bandages fast. I opened my Market and saw that I had forty thousand prestige. I doubt it was because of my Metube videos.

I purchased the skill Regenerator for thirty thousand, giving me a T1R1 skill. Thankfully, almost instantly, the bleeding began to slow with my arm. And I heard a popping and crackling sound in my ears as the damage started being repaired.

"Go, get out there, I'll be fine," I told Kid Flash, who looked doubtful. "I'll be out there again soon enough."

Kid looked like he wanted to argue for a moment but he caught himself. He stood up, sending one last glance at my severed arm, before nodding. "Okay. Take care of things here for us, fearless leader," he said before blasting off in a blur of speed. At least, that's what I think he said. I watched where he vanished out the door for a moment before I heard the nervous chattering of the other people in the room as my hearing slowly returned to me. Glancing at them, I saw that they were all terrified. And giving one side of the room a wide berth.

"Woah, what got the better of you, cousin?" Jin asked me, surprised at the state I was in. I met her gaze for a moment, and my injuries were forgotten. Before I realized it, I was standing on my feet, stumbling across the classroom to where Jin was bound with metal and concrete, keeping her arms and legs pinned to the wall. Still, she looked at ease.

"What the fuck is this, Jin?!" I snarled at her, flinging a desk that was in my way to the side, it crashing to the ground and everyone else in the room flinched at the sound. All except Jin who just wore an easy, bemused smile. "Do you have any idea how many people you've killed?!" I snarled at her, a flash of pain in my chest as my heart pounding at my fractured ribs made me wince.

Jin tilted her head, "I told you already, I didn't do anything. It was the old bags of wind back home that decided on this." she said, but as if to make it clear she wasn't defending herself, she continued, "I mean, it's not like I don't agree with the spirit of the idea, but… meh."

What the actual fuck was wrong with her. "You… Jin, do even understand how many people are going to die because of this mess? It could be millions," I stressed, trying to drive it through her head. But, if she could move, I got the sense that she would have shrugged with an uncaring attitude.

"So?" she questioned and I was floored by the insane callousness. So? Was that it? She was just fine with millions of people getting ripped to shreds by animals and insects for… what exactly? Strength? Power? "Ren, you've been pretty sheltered," Jin decided, a noise of disbelief crawling up my throat. "It's true. I don't blame you for it. It's just how the world works now."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded with a shake of my head. What was her point? I had to know. I had to know what could be used to justify this tragedy that would kill a lot of people. Men, women, and children. Fuck. I had to know because I hated that I was stuck right here, waiting for my arm to at least cap off before I went back out.

Jin considered me for a moment, pursing her lips as if she was trying to find a way to make me understand her insane fucked up logic. "The Elders want a return to the golden age. Back when spirit beasts dominated the world and when man had to fight tooth and nail just to survive. Because, back then, weaklings would go to our Sect and beg to be accepted as an initiate even with their final breath. Our family had power back then and the Elders want to be self important jack-offs that get to enjoy the world begging them for a handout." She sounded like she didn't care, but there was an underlying layer of distaste there.

"They don't get that the world's changed in the past thousand years. They aren't a part of the world like you and I are," she elaborated, but I had to shake my head.

"So why do this? Why help at all? If you're a part of the world then you have to know that this is wrong," I stressed, forced to lean on a desk when I shook my head too hard, my balance not all the way returned.

"Is it?" Jin questioned, tilting her head ever so slightly. "Let me ask you this -- how many people in the world actually matter?" she asked, and my jaw dropped at the audacity of the question. "I mean, really, how many? How many people actually have any semblance of control over their life compared to how many are just… drones living one day to the next, paycheck to paycheck? That live just to be alive? Do they ever actually accomplish anything? I mean… how many people disappearing would it take for the world to notice that they were missing? Because I'm thinking that it's billions."

She shook her head in obvious disappointment. "And even then, the remainder exist solely to be the cogs of society, to serve their masters, whether they realize it or not. There are billions of people on this planet that are completely redundant. That don't matter at all to anyone but themselves or to other people that don't matter. They don't have the strength or the skill to be anything other than chaff that strangles real talent and ability, robbing them of their deserved place in life."

I… "So, you decided to kill them all?" I snapped at her -- I didn't even care that she had a coherent point, as self-absorbed and stupid as it was. I didn't have it in me to debate it. Maybe she was right and society was fucking people out of their deserved place in life, but a reasonable response to that wasn't to murder three-fourths of the population.

"The Elders are morons," Jin spoke with contempt. "They want to perfectly recreate the golden age. I don't. Neither does dad. I want a world where everyone matters. They can be meta-humans or cultivators or aliens for all I care. Where no one is standing around waiting for someone like you to save them, and they just save themselves. I'm not going to shed any tears about deadweight being cut free."

The logic was absolutely monstrous and I hated it. Buried in there was a half decent point, but it was completely undercut by how she was going about solving the perceived issue. Her aim was to murder billions, electing to just not care about their plight. It was utterly insane and fucking evil.

"And if I decide that you're dead weight?" I questioned darkly, my one hand curling into a fist. Jin smiled at me as if I had said something funny.

"Then you kill me," Jin dismissed without a care. My lips thinned and her smile grew. "The strong eat the weak, cousin. You're stronger than me. It's annoying, and I kinda hate it, but that doesn't matter. You beat me. Kill me, let me go, or anything in between -- it's your right to decide."

I grit my teeth to the point that it felt like they would shatter under the pressure, thinking over her response and batshit crazy logic. "And if I told you to help save the dead weight?" I asked her, earning a long, theatrical sigh from her.

"I'd do it. Very reluctantly."

"Then get out of those restraints and get out there." I bit out, earning a cheeky grin, and before the sentence had even finished, Jin landed lightly on the ground, her restraint crumbling to pieces. I met her gaze with a glare, not happy at all with this, but Jin was strong enough that we couldn't afford to keep her on the bench.

"Let's go then!" she said, sounding much too cheerful.