Gacha God: Dominos (ch. 9) (Patreon)

"So, you can make copies of yourself?" Peter questioned, his jaw-dropping as he looked at Seb Two, then back at me, then back at Seb Two. "Is that your superpower?"

"Nah,” Seb Two answered.

“My superpower is that cool stuff drops in my lap every once in a while. It's how I got the AT's and the yoyo,” I added on with a supporting nod from Seb Two. “It’s happened since I was a kid, but I had to leave a lot of my stuff behind when I left home.” The only thing that I took was my Time-Turner and that was mostly because I needed it to get out of my less-than-home sweet home. It had been heartbreaking to part with my vault of stuff. I had to part with it though -- getting out by myself was a risk, but trying to take all my things with me? I never would have made it out the metaphorical door.

Ned nodded as he sat on his bed, looking at Seb Two. “Is it magic?”

I tilted my head, sharing a glance with Seb Two, who shrugged indifferently. “Ish. Sorta. I think,” I also offered a shrug at Ned, mostly because I didn’t know the answer myself. I had plenty of guesstimations about the origin of my power and the neat stuff that I could roll for, but I never managed to get a solid answer to confirm what it was or how.

“Cool,” Peter muttered, reaching out and poking Seb Two in the chest. Naturally, Seb Two poked him back. Harder. “How many can you make?” He asked me, rubbing his chest where Seb Two poked him, as if he was confirming that he did feel the poke, so Seb Two was real. In response, I glanced down at the Ring of Nine Dragons before summoning the other eight Sebs.

We filled room. No much room for all. Crowded.

“A lot,” Me answered, giving nod to Peter.

“Shoe untied,” One of Me said. Looked down at shoes to see lace was untied. Didn’t notice. Tripping hazard. I knelt down to tie tripping hazard, but hands froze. Hands mimed tying laces, but couldn’t do it. I looked up at Me's.

“Who can tie laces?” I asked Me's, making all of Me's bend down to check.

“I can!” One of Me said, making the rest of us stand and shove tripping hazard towards him. Other Me bent down to start tying tripping hazard, but Peter spoke up.

“Uh- Sebastian? How about you… you know, consolidate to tie your shoes, then everyone else will have tied shoelaces when you multiply?” Peter asked me, Ring Bearer. I frowned at Peter, then at tripping hazard, thinking… that… hm…

I nodded slowly, “You is… Jesus fucking christ,” I breathed, dismissing the rest of the clones. My hands went to my head, rubbing my temples as I recovered from that. “Ugh. That was the worst. It felt like someone… I don’t know, put a throttle on my brain,” I told the two, who were exchanging looks of mild concern.

However, it did offer me a bit more insight in how the ring worked. My intelligence wasn’t divided equally with each clone. Each one got something like a tenth of my brain power, and when you divided that up until we each had a tenth… It was a real blind leading the blind situation. Additionally, my skills and abilities were divided between each clone -- which was why only one of the Sebs had the ability to tie our shoes.

More experimentation would be required. How strong were each of the Sebs? How were skills and abilities determined? Could I deliberately give one Seb a skill or ability? How were the skills divided? Was the ability to fight weighted the same as the ability to tie my shoes? I was still feeling out the ring, but it had a lot of potential. Right now, however, it came with some dangers.

“I don’t think I should be going above two or three clones,” I decided, dropping my hands to see agreeing nods from Peter and Ned. At least not until I managed to get more brain power -- I think the Divine Water could help me out with that. My thoughts were sharper since I started drinking it, but smartness was something difficult to define. Maybe I could start doing puzzle tests or something and marking my progress with each dose…

Regardless, creating too many clones was a danger to me. Two or three left me with enough processing power that I didn’t feel too dumbed down. Four or five was the danger zone, and anything above that was a no go for me.

“I’d say that would be a pretty good idea,” Peter remarked before gesturing to his chin and I realized my dumbass had been drooling. “Can the items only be used by you?” He asked me, and in response, I tossed him the Ring of Nine Dragons. “Seriously?”

“Just give it a thought. Stick with one to start,” I told him and, a second later, Peter Two materialized from thin air, dressed in the same chemistry pun shirt and cargo shorts. With little to no hesitation, the two high fived. Then they offered Ned a high ten, technically, who returned it with a giddy expression. “Feel the difference?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “I forgot math,” he supplied and that was a pretty big thing to forget.

“I can do math, and a little chemistry,” Peter Two supplied before he vanished from sight. Peter offered me the ring, and I did see some level of discomfort on his face. I imagine that he felt the throttle far more keenly than I did. I was a bit brighter than most, but Peter was a legitimate genius, so having a tenth of his brain power stolen away? He’d feel it.

I took the ring and slid it back on my finger where it belonged. I didn’t particularly mind other people using my items, but I preferred them with me. My items could be used by anyone in theory. In practice, that wasn’t exactly the case. Some items needed magical power to use, and if you didn’t have any, then you were shit out of luck. Then there were items like the Divine Water that I couldn’t use without some outside help because it’d kill me. Maybe someone else could knock that water back with no issue, but I couldn’t.

What I got was never influenced by what I needed or what I wanted, and I rarely knew what I could get until I got it. It had always been that way, and I had little reason to believe that it would ever change. It didn’t matter to me much. Sure, some items would undoubtedly be far more useful than others, but I had yet to encounter an item that wasn’t useful and powerful in its own right.

Ned started to speak up, likely to ask to get a turn with the ring, only to be cut off by an alert from his computer. He immediately jumped up, sliding in his chair to his monitor to click on the alert. I peeked over his shoulder to see what was going on while Ned summarized as he read, “Shield is checking out the scene at the docks. An Agent Adda and an Agent Barnes. But, more importantly… we’re piggybacking off of Shield’s investigation into the Russians.”

I could see as much. In some ways, our investigation was way ahead of the secret agency's, but in other ways, they were lightyears ahead of us. They were already breaking down the structure of the mob from the known members by using the police files. “Did they-” I started to ask, only to be cut off by Ned, who was all smiles.

“Yup -- they just showed me the back door they have in the NYPD. I’ll need to create some spoof accounts to take advantage, though. It’s one thing to observe within an operating system, it's another to actually interact with it. That shouldn’t be any trouble. But, more importantly, Shield broke down the Russian’s financials. So, uh, to preface this -- I was looking for offshore accounts and stuff, but I was coming up empty. I thought it was because I wasn’t looking in the right places, but…” Ned trailed off for dramatic effect.

I let out a small laugh, “But they don’t have any,” I finished for him. Meaning that the Russians operated in hard assets rather than liquid fidelity -- cash, drugs, weapons, and so on. That was very useful to know. Especially considering what else I knew about their organization. “Are we finding any locations that we didn’t know about?”

"I have a list of suspected fronts from the cops, but nothing concrete," Ned answered without missing a beat. From the looks of things, there was a fair bit of overlap between our list and what the police had procured, though the NYPD's info was more expansive. I took note of all the names and addresses, taking a moment to reach into my backpack to grab my journal. I was still on fifteen timelines, but the one I was currently on was the only one that saw the aftermath of attacking the ring at the docks. "But, Shield has, like, real-time monitoring on the guys and they're moving agents into position to watch more of them."

I made my decision then and there. Why break my back when Shield was so willing to help us out?

I spent the day and night at Ned's, who was more than thrilled that I was willing to stay over with him and Peter. Never saw his parents even once, but I did see a bunch of cult classic movies that I had missed out on. Then we ended up binging several seasons of the Sopranos in a single sitting for the sake of irony. It was a good show in a ‘product of its time’ kind of way.

All the while, during that full twenty-four hours, Shield aggressively mapped out the Russian Mafia. I could have gone with the original timeline because, by the end of the day, Shield knew everything about the Mob all the way down to what color underwear each member was wearing. Stuff like where they were and when they would be there was absolute child's play. It was actually kind of scary, to be honest. And I wasn't the only one who thought so.

"It's not the cops' fault," Peter remarked as I continued to fill out my journal. Names, locations, points of interest, and so on. Writing out exactly where someone would be and where in the natural undisturbed timeline left my hand cramping up, but it was necessary. It could take a couple more goes before I decided to settle on a result, so having the natural timeline for reference would help a lot. "They're dealing with all the mobs and gangs in New York. Shields, like, a bajillion dollar agency that's focusing on one mob in particular."

By focus, Peter meant arranging for a high-end deal to get their foot in the door so the rest of the agency could see how the mob moved.

"Maybe, but the point still stands. Shield had enough evidence to put all of the Russian mob away and they got it all within the hour," I shot back.

"Illegally," Peter protested. "Cops have to deal with warrants and stuff. The court system and bureaucracy."

"Ehh, that just shows me that the cops need less red tape," I decided. It was a fun day. Shield did a bunch of the leg work for us, doubling our initial findings. Technically speaking, we also had only been at it for a day, but the contrast was rather stark. Unsurprisingly, the full force of a secret agency using a microscope managed to get more than Ned on a single computer when he was half distracted by the Sopranos at any given moment.

Now it was just a question of what to do. I was still enjoying the idea of leading Shield around by the nose as they scampered after me, trying to uncover my identity. Pulling the wool over the eyes of a multinational secret agency just tickled me in all the right ways, so I was reluctant to go out again simply because it would mean that they would find me. They knew the targets, they knew I was targeting them, and I’m guessing the entire thing was trapped to hell and back several times over.

However.

Another part of me was compelled to finish what I started. I picked a fight with the Russian mob, so I had to finish the fight with the Russian mob. It was downright rude to fuck off in the middle of a fight. And it left the mob with enough power that it could try to find the money I stole from them. So, I was torn between my sense of… well… responsibility was a bit of a strong word, but it was closest and my entertainment. I hadn’t realized I’d be putting myself in between a rock and a hard place when I picked this fight.

Probably should have just used time travel to win the lottery, but oh well.

Pursing my lips, I looked at the information before me while Ned and Peter bickered back and forth. Shield would come after me for my trophies. And to imprison me, and stuff, but I was more worried about keeping my trophies… huh.

I think I had a way to get my cake and eat it too.

…

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Peter asked me, sounding nervous on his end. “Shield is on really high alert. They’re totally expecting you to do this,” he added, telling me what I already knew.

“I know, but we read their game plan,” I responded, looking down into the city, dressed as Audacity. I could feel my brainpower hitting a hard cap. Not enough to make me a drooling wreck, but enough that it did feel distinctly uncomfortable. That was the price I had to pay, however. “Which means we know how to break it,” I added, cracking my neck and getting ready for a burst of action.

Peter and Ned were silent on the other end and I waited for their verdict. We hadn’t spoken about it, but they knew the facts -- if I got caught, then they would get busted too. They were too connected to my identity. So, it felt like a real dick move to follow through on this without their express blessing. But, the entire reason I was out here was because I knew I would get it.

“Alright,” Peter decided, voicing his approval. “Just be careful, okay? We’ll feed you information about their movements but, uh, try not to be… too obvious that you’re getting the info or they’re totally going to figure it out.”

Pretty decent advice considering. It was hilarious -- we were going to out fox the spies. "And now it's time for the show," I returned, gunning my ATs and throwing myself off the building that I stood on, starting the night off right.

Flying down, my AT's hummed with life, blasting down the street. I had a list of addresses memorized, and I knew exactly what path I would be taking to reach them. I flew down the busted-up streets, wall riding up a building before I started traveling on the rooftops. My mask protected my face from the wind, but I still felt it as I sailed through the air at high speeds, blitzing through Hell's Kitchen like a speeding bullet. Any lingering fear about busting my ass was gone after the second dose of Divine Water. Instead, I tried to get as much speed out of the skates as I could.

I found my first stop easily enough -- a run-down building. Troika Restaurant. A front. It was where they sent most of their human trafficking victims for holding until it was time to throw them into a shipping container and send them somewhere. Where, I would learn soon enough. For now, I flicked my yoyo at the front door, knocking it clear off its hinges and folding it like paper. Sailing through the opening, I saw familiar faces. The owners were associates of the mob, a few people above were outright members with a handful of innocent customers intermingled.

My yoyo snapped out at the targets as I entered the restaurant, hardly slowing down in the slightest. It slammed into one gangster’s chest, caving it in as he reached for his gun before I whipped it to the side to slam it into the side of the head of the man sitting next to him. Phantom yoyos spread out, smashing through tables and chairs, and people. The owners dropped to the floor, one of them screaming as he cradled a broken arm, while the other lay in a growing puddle of his own blood.

Skating down the way, I banked off the staircase that led to the basement, and planted my feet into the chest of a Russian mobster that was coming up the steps. He fell back down them, his gun going to the side and clattering to the floor. My yoyo lashed out like a whip, colliding against him, then the phantom yoyos started to tear into the rest of the gangsters that were coming up the steps from the two rooms that were meant to house them.

The hallway was filled with screams and the crunching of bone while I passed them by, wall riding past them where they fell while my yoyo smacked into my palm. I had no idea if they were going to make it or not, but when I kicked down the door at the very end of the hallway, I found that I didn’t particularly give a shit.

I was greeted with the sound of panicked screaming as the door flew off the hinges, striking the wall. My gaze darted to the source to see a handful of people -- three of them. Two were women, with one sporting a black eye and a busted nose… the other was a child. Lightly tanned skin, a head full of curly hair, and he had a real pair of lungs in him because he screamed loudly as he clung to the two women for protection.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that no one was coming before I spawned a Seb, who entered while I crouched down to them. “Everything is going to be okay,” I told them and I saw that the women recognized me after a moment. “He’s going to get you out of here and make sure you get to the police. You don’t have to worry about a thing anymore,” I told them.

“You’re…” one of the women spoke up, looking at me with wide eyes that were filling up with tears.

“You’ll be okay. I’m going to make sure of it,” I said, standing back up and leaving the other Seb with them to help get them out. I would learn their names later because I felt a plan cooking in the back of my mind. I raced out of the area as soon as quickly as I entered, banking off of the walls to ride up the stairs, and within seconds, I escaped from the restaurant faster than anyone could react. The entire ordeal lasted about a minute, most of which was talking to the human trafficking victims.

I was putting an end to the Russian mafia tonight. Down to the last grunt.

Even if Shield was determined to get in the way because as soon as I hit Triokia, Ned informed me that Shield was mobilizing to intercept me.

Most of the Russian mob’s territory was within throwing distance of Hell’s Kitchen, and with blistering speed, I tore through the fronts and hideouts. Shield thought that I was recruiting helpers, and I leaned into that assumption since it would cover for the Ring of Nine Dragons. Each front or safe house that I hit had a strategically placed Seb that would run in after I was done to start looting everything that wasn’t nailed down.

The Russians didn’t keep their bank in a single location. Instead, they spread it out, with some locations having more money than others. However, the smallest amount I found was fifty thousand dollars in cash. The Russians also dealt in a little bit of everything, I quickly discovered. Meth, cocaine, heroin, pills, crack, and weed. There were pounds of the stuff that were quickly shoveled into duffle bags by a Seb who took as much as he could possibly carry before burning what he couldn’t.

Guns were also popular. Pistols, shotguns, assault rifles. Even found an RPG, though I didn’t find an actual rocket for it. Sadly. All were given to Sebs, who would in turn runoff to the same destination.

My Cave of Wonders. The system was pretty simple. Some Sebs would dump off what they had before vanishing, and once an arbitrary time limit had passed, they would close the Cave of Wonders and send out a text to Ned or Peter, who would then update me with the new location where the Cave reopened, so I could sen the Sebs there. That way, it would keep Shield guessing, because the Cave of Wonders only ever appeared where people wouldn’t look for it.

A good two dozen Sebs must have made their way to the cave by now, but I had no idea how much we had looted as I tore through the Russians like a bullet, leaving pure devastation in my wake. A lot of broken bones. More than a couple corpses. I had no sympathy for them, really. They tried to kill me and they knew the risks of signing up.

I couldn’t care less about their extenuating circumstances -- maybe they were doing it to support their family, or take care of a sick relative. Maybe they were raised in the culture and they never had a chance to experience anything different. That stuff didn’t really matter. Why you did something mattered less than what you did, and what they did was join the mafia. Intentions were important, sure, just not as much as actions and the consequences of them.

Old gangsters were a rare thing for a lot of good reasons. And it just so happened that, tonight, I was another reason why there wouldn’t be any old gangsters in the Russian mob.

The devastation was fast and harsh, and the cops couldn’t ignore it. The air around Hell’s Kitchen became filled with the sounds of sirens. The police to apprehend the criminals, ambulances to take care of the ones I fucked up, and firefighters that were trying to tame the flames that I left behind when I destroyed drugs, guns, or money.

“Left, left, left!” Ned exclaimed in my ear, and I immediately obeyed the order, pivoting down a back alley by banking off of a car and riding the wall. Not a second later, a black sedan with tinted windows drove by, stopping in front of a building that I had already raided to give chase to a Seb that was fleeing. Up above, I heard a helicopter flying as they searched for both me and the Sebs. I was a craftly little fucker, and with Ned’s help, even my Sebs had managed to avoid capture despite having a frontal lobe tied behind their backs.

I paid it no mind as I landed on my final destination. The HQ for Veles taxi at the corner of 44th and 11th. It was a run-down building that acted as a garage for the taxi service. That, and the headquarters for the Russian mafia. It was in a tizzy, I noticed. My little rampage lasted for twenty minutes at most -- hitting the Russians with blistering speed because I understood that I was on the clock. I’m pretty sure that the only reason I hadn’t seen a Shield agent so far was because they were watching me, waiting to see what I did and where I went.

“We’re getting hit! Troika was a damn blood bath,” I heard Kazan shout as he entered the garage. It was dimly lit with taxis parked along the walls with a good dozen mobsters. I knew all of them by sight. A mean-looking Russian man with short hair and a scar down his face was Vladimir Ranskahov. The still mean-looking, though less so, with longer hair was Anatoly Ranskahov, his brother.

“They will come here,” Vladimir remarked as he took an assault rifle from one of the mobsters that tossed it up from the basement. It was meant to be used for tools and stuff, but from where I stood, they turned it into a vault where they kept their big guns and bigger money. “Do we know who it is?”

Damn, their responses were slow, I thought as I casually started rolling up to the garage door. I dunno. Maybe my standards were too high, but I fully expected to be greeted with a wall of gunfire.

“No one- Ah,” Anatoly started, sliding a magazine into an AK-47 before he turned around and he was the first one to catch a glimpse of me as I lazily rolled forward. “He’s here-” Anatoly began, shouldering the gun before he started to unload in my general direction. That was a lot of bullets, I thought as the other guns started to join in on the chorus, filling the garage with the sounds of gunfire.

As soon as he started to alert everyone else, I gunned the throttle, so to speak, and I shot to the side, crouching low as I used the taxis as cover. And, neat thing that I learned -- the only safe cover that the car could offer was near the engine block. Bullets could, would, and did tear right through the doors and trunk of the yellow taxis. However, I wasn’t using them to protect me from the bullets. I was using them to cover my approach.

“I will give you this -- your name is a fitting one, Audacity!” I heard Vladamir shout over the chorus, sounding damn near gleeful. The gunshots never stopped, but some were taking the time to reload. “You came here alone! Without backup! For what? Why have you targeted us?”

Uhh… Shit, why was I picking a fight with the Russians- oh, yeah. “I was planning to rob you guys!” I shouted a response, my yoyo in hand as I rode the wall, sailing over the bullet-ridden remains of the taxis. “And I figured I’d better deal with all of you so you don’t come sniffing around to take back my money,” I shouted, flicking my yoyo out at a taxi that a handful of Russians were hiding behind.

My yoyo tore right through it. It had fucked up the Chitauri speedsters, and whatever those things had been made out of couldn’t be compared to fiberglass and steel. However, I did notice one thing as the phantom yoyos tore through the car and into the men hiding behind it -- the damage dealt to them wasn’t exactly the same. Theoretically, if something could go through steel like it was a wet towel, then it should be able to go through a person just as easily. Instead, the yoyos tore through the car, then slammed into the people with bone-shattering force instead of turning them into swiss cheese like the car.

Good to know, I thought, whipping the yoyo to the side to slam it into the side of another car while I flipped through the air, sailing directly towards the Russians that were scrambling. A fatal mistake, I thought, the Eye of Cthulhu impacting my palm a split second before I flicked it back out at the feet of the Russian leaders. Kazan was killed on impact, but Vladamir and Anatoly flew forward, their guns clattering to the ground while their legs were shattered.

I know that the Russian strong man thing was a stereotype, but Vlad was a tough son of a bitch, I had to admit. I landed on my feet and Vlad flipped himself on his bag, barely sparing his ruined legs a glance, before checking on his brother, who had passed out from the pain. And he immediately began talking shit, “You think you will get away with this?” He snarled at me while I scooped up a handgun, gave it a shake, and felt that it had a couple bullets left in the magazine. “Do you think there will not be retribution?”

Vlad spat at me, “I will see you gutted like a fish. Your skull will be my new coffee mug,” he swore at me.

“Thanks. I feel a bit iffy when it comes to dealing with downed opponents -- I mean, killing a guy when he’s trying to kill you is pretty easy, but when they’re down for the count? I dunno. Feels gray to me,” I remarked, pointing the gun right at him. “So, I'm just going to file this under preemptive self-defense. See ya’ in hell. Tell dad hi for me,” I bade him farewell before pulling the trigger, killing Vlad with a bullet to the head.

Then I put one in the back of Anatoly’s head. My relationship with my siblings was pretty weird. Ritualistic death games did tend to strain relationships when you were all competing against each other. However, there was a reason why there were so many movies about avenging a family member. Better to nip that in the bud while I had the chance.

Tossing the gun to the side, I turned my attention down to the vault and realized that I was going to end up having to burn a lot of it. The vault wasn’t exactly huge, but it was stuffed to the absolute brim -- the Russians had expanded the abasement at some point. One side was an armory that was separated by a wire grate, while the other side was where they kept the drugs and cash. The armory was empty given that most of the weapons were upstairs, but the cash and drugs?

If I had to give an estimate, there was at least three motherfucking shit loads of drugs and money. There was a good twenty kilos of cocaine alone, not counting the kilos of heroin or meth. There were duffle bags filled with rolled-up bills -- maybe a million in cash per duffle bag, and there were ten duffle bags.

“Whoever said crime doesn’t pay is a fucking moron,” I remarked, because it paid stupidly well. It paid off for the Russians, and it paid off for me. I made a split-second decision and spawned a couple of Sebs, each one taking three duffle bags -- Of the five that I summoned, they managed to get all ten duffle bags while I grabbed two bags filled with drugs. Not sure what I was going to use them for, but I like to keep my options open.

With that, I reached into my fanny pack, took out some liter fluid, and started spraying everything down before flicking my lighter open and tossing it at the bunch while we made our escape. I heard sirens just outside of the building, telling me that the police were pulling up. One perk about having my thought process divided up was the fact that we were all on the same page because none of us hesitated in our parts.

“This is the NYPD, come out with your hands up,” I heard an officer of the law shout out, parked in front of the garage. More cops gathered, but more importantly, Shield had come out to play. Their blacked out cars and vans pulled up, scaring the shit out of the cops, and the cops were demanding explanations. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that the cops weren’t meant to be here. I guess they just got clever and guesswed where I would go instead of trying to catch up to me.

Still, it cut for an impressive sight as I rolled out of the garage. A veraitable wall of cars, cops with flashing lights, and secret agents. The helicopter even shone a bright light directly on me, trying to make sure that I didn’t escape their notice this time.

“Merry Christmas!” I exclaimed, slinging a duffle bag up and over directly in front of me. The Sebs did their job well because they had emptied the kilos of cocain in it, and now the powdery substance was raining down on the secret agents and cops in a smoke screen. A waste of perfectly good cocaine, but it was worth the loss.

“S-Stop right there-” One of the police officers shouted, pointing his gun at me, only to think better of it when I sailed overhead and landed on the other side of the street. Everyone reacted how I thought they would -- it was an unknown substance that they were just doused with, and even it if was a relatively harmless one like cocaine. The ones that managed to escape the snowfall were quick to give chase while the helicopter looked down on me, hunting me down.

Which suited me just fine. It gave the other Sebs all the time that they needed to get out of the building and head towards the Cave of Wonders as quietly as they could. I was the distraction while they got out with the loot. It took them a few minutes to reach it on foot. It was in an old dilapidated building near the Hudson River.

I led the cops and Shield on a merry chase while I kept my eyes on the sky, making a round loop as I felt more and more of my brainpower returning to me.

Deciding that enough was enough, I wall rode up a building, gunning the throttle to give me enough speed that I was flung forward when I ran out of wall. Sailing across a back alley, I perfectly landed in the dilapidated building -- the walls were crumbling and covered in mold while the building itself smelled of mildew. Though, that could be due to the sewer grate that was located within the building -- I’m not sure why. I think it might have been a water control building at some point, but that was a long time ago.

One of my Sebs crawled up from the Cave before the Cave of Wonders reverted into being two halves of the Golden Beetle. “What’s the total, Seb?” I asked him, taking the two halves and tucking them in my pocket before taking the item that he handed to me. We all knew what the plan was.

In response, the Seb handed me a list. “Fifteen million dollars, thirty-three kilos of cocaine, eight kilos of heroin, a wide variety of pills, fifty kilos of pot, forty-four kilos of meth,” I listed off the money and drugs that I gained during my little adventure. The guns were, sadly, more of the same. More handguns, for the most part, but I did have a decent selection of assault rifles and shotguns now. So, that was nice. As soon as I was done, the Seb vanished, leaving me alone in the room.

Just in time.

I heard the door getting breached, completely knocked off its hinges and reduced to splinters. I took that as my cue to drop down into the sewer, landing with a disgusting squelch. I was going to have to clean my ATs badly after today. Nothing stained quite like blood and shit. Knew that from experience. “Audacity, you have to get out of there!” Ned’s frantic tone reached my ears as I sped down the straight line, knowing that Shield would have the tunnels crawling with personnel.

“Already on it, Ned,” I told him, taking out my Time-Turner. I gave it a single spin, winding the clock back by an hour, before the entire raid even took place. “Sorry to do you like this past me, but sacrifices for the cause n’ all,” I remarked, shaking what the Seb gave me. A can a spray paint with fluorescent green paint that would glow in the dark. The can wouldn’t be in the Cave of Wonders anymore, and Past me knew what the plan was.

I couldn’t escape Shield. Not in a normal way. As soon as I entered the tunnels, Shield would flood them with agents. Simply put, there was no real way to hit the mob and avoid Shield. If it was just me? I could take getting brought in. I had my fun. But, I had Peter and Ned’s identities to worry about. I didn’t want to fuck their lives up just because I got caught.

So, I drew a large circle on the side of the wall, the paint glowing ever so slightly in the dark. Pretty eye-catching. Speaking of eyes, I drew two Xs within the circles and then a squiggle for the mouth. A marking that I only used three times before in my life. Simply because circumstances in which I had to use it were pretty rare.

A mark of suicide for Past Me when he came down here.

He would see it, off himself, and as far as Shield would be concerned, Audacity had simply vanished. Tucking the spraypaint away, I checked out my handiwork to see that it was unmistakable for anything else. And with that done, I tucked the spray paint away and simply began to roll down the walkway to make my great escape.

A huge breath heaved out of me as my adrenaline came down and I considered the events that just transpired. Despite myself, a small grin tugged at my lips underneath my mask.

“Today was a great day.”