They were all spit out of the waylines right inside Standing, including the Quickdraw and the lander, while Johnny was still on his power trip. It shouldn’t have been possible to travel nearly that fast through the waylines, but Johnny made it possible. Somehow.
The accelerated travel had left Jacob completely strung out, and he quickly passed out. He only learned the details of what happened afterwards when he woke up, and gathered additional snippets over the coming days.
The Martians got a shock when a whole web of glowing waylines opened up in the sky and began dumping riches on them. Not just gold, but other precious items and even Relics, too. The injured urgek warlord who had commanded the enemy fleet was ejected outside a cafe where a group of the baron’s knights just happened to be enjoying their day off, allowing him to be swiftly captured for interrogation.
Pieces of urgek technology and even a fully intact inferno drive, which they used in place of skip drives for interstellar travel, were recovered.
But Johnny wasn’t done. He kept on betting. The people in the streets of Standing reported seeing him float into the air, embraced by the golden, ghostly projection of a huge angelic woman, wrapping his entire body in her hands and keeping him aloft.
The miracles he manifested only grew more grandiose. Illnesses were cured, people awoke from comas, even the recently dead sprung back to life, some awakening in their coffins to claw their way out.
Even minute things, like vision impairment or crooked teeth, were reportedly corrected. Johnny’s influence rippled out across Mars and far beyond, stretching the very fabric of the universe to its limits in its increasingly desperate attempts to satisfy his godly luck. Things happened that simple luck alone could not explain. His fortune was so great that reality ceased applying in the normal sense.
But Johnny kept on flipping. And he kept on winning. Over and over and over again. Once he reached what he himself reported was around one billion units of luck, he abruptly vanished out of the sky. Just winked out of existence.
He appeared two hours later on a random street, long after his luck had run out and the careening waylines had all vanished. Where he had gone in the intervening time he wouldn’t tell anyone, regardless of how much he was pressed on it.
After his reappearance, he was taken into the baron’s palace—ostensibly a ‘guest’, but more like a pampered prisoner—until the higher ups from Mars and Earth could figure out what to do with him.
Given the highly public nature of his display, no one could deny the significance of what had gone down. Johnny became an overnight sensation with the people of Standing, who were out for days shoveling gold and other valuables into their homes. In the end, the baron was only able to recover a fraction of it for his own coffers.
Johnny’s name was on everyone’s lips. Most paraded him as the second coming of Paragon, and some were convinced that his power was far greater. There was a church established in his name, which was swiftly shut down by the baron, and multiple underground places of worship cropped up instead.
Jacob himself was called in to testify, along with everyone else who had been on Gamuun—even those who had not seen any of the display, like Becca and Tarim.
After five days of deliberation, Johnny was issued a unique ranking by the remnants of the Heroes’ Guild—S+. The rationale, Jacob guessed, was that the Guild didn’t want to set Johnny up as humanity’s second U-Rank and cultivate all the expectations and admiration that entailed, with the possibility that he would blow himself up every time he used his Aspect of Gambling.
Of course, no one was fooled, and no one took the S+ ranking seriously. Regardless of what the Guild said, everyone spoke about John Palatini as Paragon’s successor. Humanity’s second U-Rank, and a last gift of vengeance from the dead mother world.
Johnny was released from his confinement, and his first act after dining for free at the finest restaurant in the city was to—quite publicly—announce his resignation from the Heroes’ Guild. That sent the Guild and the baron into desperate damage control, but there wasn’t much they could do. At this point, Johnny was untouchable. He already had friends in high places as well as overwhelming public support, and they didn’t want to risk antagonizing him in the first place, knowing what he could do. So they let him do exactly what he wanted, and wore forced smiles as they issued statements of support.
Johnny didn’t quit the hero business altogether, though. Together with Jacob and a few others, he reformed the Hero for Hire business. At first, Jacob was somewhat confused why Johnny would be interested in going private now after turning him down before, but Johnny explained that he wasn’t interested in being controlled, exploited, or suppressed by those who thought they were in charge. He had seen the way that the Guild handled Paragon, always keeping her out of the public eye and rarely allowing her to flex her powers, and he wasn’t impressed.
There was nothing Johnny enjoyed more about the whole situation than the overwhelming fame, so there was no way he would allow himself to recede from the limelight. Hence why he was going private. The powers that be would have to beg to work with him, and offer him whatever he damn well wanted for the privilege.
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Mr. Beau was invited back to manage the day-to-day operations of the company, this time with a salaried position rather than taking a percentage cut from assignment rewards. Under his oversight, Hero for Hire expanded aggressively, hiring two dozen heroes from both Earth and Mars and five times as many support staff.
It was an overwhelming period of change. Even with the five million Jacob had earned from the Gamuun job, the kind of money he saw Johnny throw around like pocket change was making him dizzy.
Jacob bought a house for himself, Becca, and Tarim in the Peaks, with three floors and a nice green garden and six bedrooms, the majority of which he imagined would go unused. It didn’t exactly have the charm of a quaint cottage on a sunny hill, but it was better than a cramped apartment in the Works. Even with his millions, it would have been difficult to secure a home like that without the influence that came with being a personal friend of John Palatini. The 25% off the asking price was a nice bonus.
With everything going on, Jacob did not find the time to sit down properly with Tarim for the next two weeks. When it all finally started to slow down, he resolved himself to make his thoughts clear to the kid. He tracked him down one day—a surprisingly time-consuming feat in the great big house, and brought him into the study to talk.
“So,” Jacob said, clearing his throat as he went over by the large desk. “I’ve been looking into schools to enroll you in.”
“Yeah?” Tarim asked disinterestedly, letting his finger trail across the old volumes in one of the many bookshelves—books that had all come with the house. None of them had been read.
“Focus up, please.”
Tarim looked over at him. He blinked, the yellow eye out of sync with the human one. “You’re enrolling me in some school. Got it.”
“Yeah I am. But in order to do that, I have to be your legal guardian. The authorities have tolerated this whole thing so far, but I mean… it’s not strictly legal, me keeping you here like this.”
“Right.”
“So I’ll have to make it official, unless you have any objections.”
“Make what official?”
Jacob’s face went tight with annoyance at the boy’s willful ignorance. “The adoption, stupid. I’m adopting you.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Really really?”
“Unless you object.”
Tarim grinned. “Nah, I’m all right with it”
“Good. Then we’ll be going for some appointments in the next few days, and after that I should be able to—”
“If you’re adopting me, that means you’re going to help me, right?” Tarim asked, slowly approaching him.
“With what?”
“With Snapping. Becoming a hero like you. Can’t keep putting it off, you know.”
“Tarim, that’s…” Jacob sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’s way too dangerous. Especially right now, with the crusade happening. Fifteen or not, you’d probably get drafted into it one way or another. Please, just enjoy being a kid for now. You won’t get that time back later.”
Tarim shook his head firmly. “No.”
“Well, I’m telling you to.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my dad.”
“I’m about to be.”
“Not if I say no.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“If you don’t help me become like you, I’m not going to stick around. Why do you think I came with you all this way?”
“I mean, I like to think I’ve been taking decent care of you, given the circumstances.”
Tarim snorted at that. “Right, sure. Except you smack me around and call me stupid and ugly and all sorts of other things. And you never listen to me, and you always think you know more about me than I do. And you never admit you’re wrong, and you’re never nice to me, and these days you barely even talk to me.”
“Okay, listen…”
“And that’s fine, Jacob! I don’t care, really! I just want this one thing.” Tarim held up one finger. “Just one. Make me a hero. If you do that, you can treat me however you like. I’ll be your son, and I’ll call you Dad, and I’ll get good grades in school or whatever the fuck you want out of me.” His finger trembled, and his face screwed up as he held back tears. “Just, please… let me have this one thing. I can’t be powerless anymore.”
Jacob glared down at the boy, hands on his hips.
What’s wrong with him? How dense can he be?
“Kid, I know what’s best for you,” he bit out. “Once you turn eighteen, you can do whatever you like. Until then, you listen to me. Do you understand?”
“Of course, yeah.” Tarim let out a bitter laugh. He clenched his raised hand into a fist and slowly lowered it as he began to back away. “You know what’s best. You always know what’s best for everyone, don’t you? You do this to Becca, too. She actually talks to me. She tells me things. She listens to me. I feel sorry for her, you know. Having to be stuck in a little glass box for you to look at and admire. But I won’t put up with it.”
“Tarim…” Jacob said, taking a few steps towards him and holding out his hand.
“Nah. I’m done with this. I’m going.”
Tarim ran out of the room.
Jacob dropped his hand. He let the kid go. Half an hour later, the front door slammed, and Tarim was gone.
There was no point in going after him. He’d be back. It was probably better like this, anyway. He’d see for himself that Jacob was right, and then he wouldn’t be so fucking uppity when he came back.
It took about a week of not seeing or hearing from the kid before Jacob realized that maybe he wasn’t coming back after all.
He wouldn’t answer any calls. Jacob sent him 10 000 flora over the System, just as something to tide him over. Beyond that, he didn’t know what to do.