Gacha God: Luck of the Draw (ch. 39) (Patreon)

1. Moa Moa no Mi/More-More Fruit
2. Yami Yami no Mi/Dark-Dark Fruit
3. Goro Goro no Mi/Rumble-Rumble Fruit
4. Pika Pika no Mi/Glint-Glint Fruit
5. Soru Soru no Mi/Soul-Soul Fruit
6. Bara Bara no Mi/Chop-Chop Fruit
7. Gura Gura no Mi/Tremor-Tremor Fruit
8. Tori Tori no Mi, Model: Phoenix/Bird-Bird Fruit, Model: Phoenix
9. Batto Batto no Mi, Model: Vampire
10. Ope Ope no Mi/Op-Op Fruit
11. Shiro Shiro no Mi/Castle-Castle Fruit
12. Bane Bane no Mi/Spring-Spring Fruit
13. Horo Horo no Mi/Hollow-Hollow Fruit
14. Kage Kage no Mi/Shadow-Shadow Fruit
15. Mero Mero no Mi/Love-Love Fruit
16. Fude Fude no Mi/Brush-Brush Fruit
17. Moku Moku no Mi/Smoke-Smoke Fruit
18. Raki Raki no Mi/Luck-Luck Fruit
19. Mochi Mochi no Mi/Mochi-Mochi Fruit
20. Goru Goru no Mi/Gold-Gold Fruit

"Oh, thank fuck," I breathed, reaching into the screen so quickly that I nearly missed the fact that all of the options were rather similar. All of them fruits. My power picked and choosed timelines, and it had been a fifty-fifty shot of Evil Me getting his hands on a new item in addition to all my other shit. Even better, it was a themed roll. Those weren't common. In all my years of rolling items, I had only come across a few dozen. Which sounded like a lot, but I've pulled hundreds of items over my various lifetimes.

Without fail, the items from themed rolls were generally some of my most interesting. And, in the current circumstances, it could make all of the difference. The Infinity Stones would be a colossal pain in my ass and it was only pure dumb luck that I had my Audacity attire on me. I ended up destroying the Ring of Nine Dragons, which sucked. A lot, considering that Evil Me would still have his and because of a quirk of my items, only one of them could work in a timeline.

My Sharigan was up, but I couldn't use the Eye of Cthulhu or the 13 Totem Pole. They simply wouldn't activate. My ATs worked, along with my Vile Armor, which meant that I did technically have the bulk of my items. The only one that was in the air was the Slate. So, having an additional item would be a significant edge, especially because Evil Me wouldn't know about it. Giving the dice a blow for good luck, I dropped it at my feet as I stood in the teleporter room on the Fortress of DOOM.

It spun uncontrollably and I couldn't remember the last time that I felt so nervous for a roll. I needed something good. After a tense few seconds and a cold sweat dripping down my spine, the dice landed on a number. 20.

The dice vanished and it was replaced by a funky looking fruit -- it was gold, and it had the rough exterior of a pineapple but it possessed the curvy shape of a gord. I grabbed it-

Goru Goru no Mi/Gold-Gold Fruit

The Gold-Gold Fruit allows the user complete control over any gold that they touch. They can manipulate it -- turning it into a liquid, solid, and even a gas. With proper mastery, the gold will be as dense as the user desires and his range of control increased.

Upon eating the fruit, however, the user will be hated by the sea. Falling into the ocean will sap the user of his strength, making drowning a near certainty. In addition, any salt water based attacks that strike the user's gold will break the connection between the user.

That was… a weird one, I decided, grabbing the fruit that was covered in black swirls. Hated by the sea? A weakness to salt water? Rather odd weaknesses, but I didn't hesitate to bite into the fruit. Not when so much was on the line. What I didn't expect was for the Fruit to taste like ass though. "Ugh-" I gagged before I felt what I could only describe as lightning race down my spine. With a grimace, I choked down the rest of the fruit, core and all.

"I need gold, huh?" I muttered, looking over to Peter's workshop. Dr. Hall wasn't here, I realized when I stepped into the room in search of Peter's 3D printer materials. I had no idea if Evil Me did something with him or if he was finally taking a break from the lab. I was assuming the latter because my Gravitonium lava lamp was still intact, so Evil Me hadn't absconded with that as well. Even if he did leave with most of Peter's gold because it was all kept in the Cave of Wonders.

Leaving me with what he had on hand. Which wasn't much -- just enough for some circuitry work, but I ran my hand over the gold wire. The moment I touched it, I felt connected with it. Responding to my will, the gold wire liquefied and flowed over the desk before reaching to my hand. The conservation of mass got fucked because I was able to condense about four feet of soldering wire into a thin ring around my finger, replacing the Ring of Nine Dragons. Looking back at the spool, I saw that it was covered in a layer of dust.

The other elements that had been in the sodder. It seems like I could only manipulate pure gold.

"I need to rob the federal gold reserves," I made a mental note to myself. That'd be a great place to load up on gold and to see my upper limit. For now, though, I had to focus. Peter was going to the Avengers to bring them in on this clusterfuck. I, rather unfortunately, had a date with a spirit that scared the devil himself. Running a hand through my hair, I turned away and marched back to the teleporter room.

Zarathos was terrifying. He was less a spirit and more of a force of nature. There was no reasoning with him, no hope to make him compromise. All I had going for me was the fact that Evil Me would see the idea as so unfathomably stupid that I would never under any circumstances turn to the mother fucking Ghost Rider for help. And I was under no illusions that the price would come cheap. That price would be what convinced Evil Me that I wouldn't go with that course of action, because brainwashed or not, he was still me.

"Now, I just need to find the sucker," I muttered to myself, inputting a location. I couldn't go to the Ancient One. For one, Evil Me would keep an eye on her because she was the fastest way to find Zarathos and because we expected some kind of reaction from her. The Ancient One didn't care about me when I was minding my own business and cleaning up after myself when I fiddled with the timeline. But Evil Me running around brainwashed with the Infinity Stones? I would be shocked if she left that alone.

No, I had someone else in mind as I stepped through the portal. Jessica's apartment had been cleaned up a fair bit, and Jessica and Triss were in the middle of what I'm guessing was a rather heavy conversation.

"Jesus-!" Triss yelped, all but jumping out of her chair before her jaw dropped. "Wait, Audacity?! What-" she began, but I cut her off with a hand.

"We have a problem," I began and instantly, I saw Jessica knew exactly what the problem was.

"You… idiots!" Jessica snapped at me, leaping to her feet. "Did he get Peter?" She asked, and her guard was all the way up. I didn't fail to notice how she positioned herself between me and Triss. Just in case Kilgrave still had a grip on me.

"That's a whole ass explanation that we really don't have time for. The short of it is that the Avengers are getting involved, and there is an Evil Me running around as Kilgrave's attack dog. So, I need your help to find a demon from hell that I can sic on myself," I blurted and I could feel the lack of context smacking them both in the face. I gave them a moment to digest that in favor of grabbing her laptop and cracking it open. "Ned is currently at discount Hogwarts learning how to be a wizard, so I need your help tracking down where he is because I didn't pay attention in those lessons."

Triss looked at Jessica and I could tell that she thought I was batshit insane. That was fair. I guess this stuff sounded crazy when you were an outsider, one kept ignorant of the true inner workings of the world, rather than the one knee deep in this shit. Jessica, however, bounced back far quicker and all but shoved me away from the computer. "Fine. What am I looking for?"

Zarathos wasn't one to keep a low profile. Actually, that was pretty against his nature. "A skeleton with a flaming skull riding some kind of demonic looking vehicle. Lots of bodies, usually with their eyes left as burnt out pieces of charcoal. But, listed cause of death would be something like shock." Jessica shot me a look, as if to see if I was fucking with her or not, but she began to search all the same.

No headlines. No videos. Nothing.

Except for murals being painted on the sides of buildings of Zarathos -- a bone white skeleton wreathed in fire.

"That's him," I nodded. California? Not really where I expected Zarathos to be, but I also wasn't a vengeance obsessed demon, so what do I know? "Is it just the murals?"

Jessica might be a barely functioning alcoholic, but when she was motivated, she was an effective investigator. I watched her fingers fly as she scoured the web for information. "I'm just seeing rumors and backroom chatter. There seems to have been something big that sparked the rumors a few years ago, but someone has been doing a thorough scrub to erase it."

"Shield," I ventured. The only times they ever did a good job it was to fuck me over. What a bunch of dicks. "Doesn't matter. I have a starting point and knowing Zarathos… he'll find me."

"I'm coming with you," Jessica decided, standing up. And before I had a chance to argue that poor idea, she followed it up with, "I let you out of my sight and you immediately got brainwashed by Kilgrave. You can tell other people what to do when you aren't cleaning up your mess." She said, grabbing her coat and… yeah, I really didn't have an argument there. "Triss-"

"I'm coming too," Triss was quick to decide and I could see that Jessica was going to shoot the idea down.

"Are you secretly evil?" I asked her, making Triss blink. "I don't care one way or the other, but Zarathos will. One of his things is inflicting everything he views as an evil or a sin upon whoever looks into his eyes. So, if the worst you've done is… I don't know, fuck someone over non-fatally, then you're probably better off with us. It'll suck, but you could survive it if you get hit. Otherwise, you're better off getting dropped off at Avengers tower."

Triss was oddly silent for a moment, and I got the impression that… well, that Zarathos's Penance Stare might have a little more bite to it. However, all the same, she nodded, "I'll be fine. I'm coming with you two," she decided.

Jessica wasn't happy, but she was forced to deal with it as I opened another portal. I really didn't have the time for her to war with herself. The longer Evil Me was out and about, the more fucked things got. Kilgrave was an asshole with a taste of power. With Evil Me and the Infinity Stones? Fuck.

Jessica was right. I fucked up and this was my mess to clean up.

Stepping through the portal, we stepped back on the Fortress of DOOM. Tony should still have the Tesseract, so I didn't need to worry about Evil Me teleporting now that he had been locked out. Which made the Tesseract a likely first target. If I were Kilgrave, who was just handed near infinite power through a few gems, I would want to collect all of them.

"You kids were holding out on me," Jessica remarked while Triss gaped at the fact we were in space. I ignored them both in favor of choosing our next destination. French Square. As soon as the portal opened, I was greeted with jazz music, the smell of beignets, coffee, and liquid shit. French Square was a busy place, and everyone around gaped at the portal as Jessica and Triss hesitantly stepped through it. I waited a moment, the portal lingering behind me…

Then I took off my mask, revealing my face to the cameras.

This timeline was shot, and even if it wasn't, I couldn't give a shit. The only reason why I bothered to hide my face was to fuck with Shield and to prevent a river of shit leading to Peter and Ned. Neither reason was valid. So, I gave the cameras a chance to get a good look at me, knowing my face would be plastered over every news screen. That should lead Zarathos right to me. After all, he knew my face.

And I'm pretty sure that I was somewhere on his infinity long shit list.

But, to make sure… "You two go get some beignets or something. I'm going to rob every single cash for gold store in the city," I informed them, and generally anyone who was listening as a crowd gathered, shouting questions and whatever I couldn't be bothered to address.

Jessica seemed a but put out at how I was handling the situation, "And how do I know you won't do something stupid?" She asked, and that was far.

"Because I'm already doing something stupid. No point in doubling up," I remarked before my ATs hummed with power and I shot into the air. Pulling up the GPS on my phone, I got a number of hits and I wasted no time at all hitting them. I shot through the air like a bullet, knowing that Evil Me would see the news and know exactly what I was doing. He shouldn't be able to do anything about it, but that didn't mean he couldn't prepare.

It was as I shot above the city, going to burglarize my first jewelry shop of the evening that I noticed something. My Sharigan was activated, but things were a little… blurry. I didn't really think much of it until everything was reduced to streaks of light below me, but before, even at this speed, I could still see pretty much perfectly. Now, I couldn't.

I could still see fine. It was more… dropping down to 720 on a YouTube video rather than 1080 HD. It wasn't a huge downgrade, but it was a noticeable one.

"Suppose I can't use Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu without a cost," I lamented, not too bothered by the loss in vision as I smashed into a jewelry store. Evil Me had his hands on the yoyo and my staff, so I used the ring of gold. In response to my will, the gold ring became liquid, almost like water, before I created a tendril of it to smash into glass display cases. The gold splashed out, pulling and adding more gold to it while I did the same trick with the shadow tendrils that erupted from my armor. The employees and customers panicked as I robbed the store blind, tearing through it with reckless abandon.

I even ripped the door off the safe to yoink whatever was in there too. With each piece of jewelry, the gold that I connected to got… denser, for lack of a better word. By the time I left the store, I had at least fifty pounds worth of gold, but it was still packed into that little ring and I wished I had the time to play around with that, did denser mean stronger attacks. Would it make it more difficult to control? Was there a limit to how dense I could make the ring?

Questions I would have to answer another time. My phone rang -- MJ was calling me. So was Felicia, surprisingly enough. However, Jessica wasn't calling me so I continued to plunder every pawnshop, jewelry store, and cash for gold trade in that I could find.

It was on my sixth store that Jessica called. I wasted absolutely no time picking up, "Where is he?" I asked, floating upwards because I knew Zarathos couldn't do subtle. He would come at me loud and proud, so to speak.

"People are freaking out about a flaming skeleton two blocks up-" Jessica managed to inform before I caught the scent. A scent that was unmistakable. One that I hadn't smelled in about a year.

Brimstone.

I snapped my attention to the source just in time to see Zarathos's entrance -- a trail of fire marked the wall of a building as he drove over it with a motorcycle with flaming wheels and a snarling skull. He flew through the air, revealing Zarathos himself in all of his glory. Bone white human skull wreathed in orange flames, a leather jacket, complete with a chain wrapped around his shoulder. The bike landed heavily on the rooftop as he came to a screeching halt.

It was my first time seeing him in person. He wasn't as intimidating as I thought he would be as he stepped off the bike. That, however, was something that I knew would soon change. "Hey there, Zarathos. I know what you're thinking, but-"

I cut myself off when Zarathos leveled a finger at me and with seething hate, he uttered the next words as I they were the single most vile curse he could come up with.

"Mephisto spawn!"

Right. This was going to go about as well as I expected.