We got to New Orleans easily enough, outside of various spots of traffic. The city is lovely, and poking around online, I found us a place, the Palace d'Armes, a nice little courtyard hotel in the French Quarter of the city. I wasn't really sure what that all meant, but it was there. Dad crashed out almost immediately, which, after being the only driver in the car the whole way, I totally got.

I, however, had spent the entire time cooped up in the car and wanted to stretch my legs. With not a whole lot of planning, I ended up over on Bourbon Street. The feeling here was different even on just a personal level. I'd become used to everyone knowing who I was in Portland, but here, supers were a more known quantity, they had a regular team, so while I did get recognized, it wasn't anywhere near like it was back home, which was nice. Dad had mentioned a cafe here, so I sort of started in that direction but got distracted. There's a lot of food here, so I ended up sort of snacking my way through the French Quarter. True, I couldn't take advantage of all that Bourbon Street had to offer, being rather distinctly too young to drink, but it was quite lovely.

Much as it's called the French Quarter, I noticed that a lot of the buildings were more Spanish construction, having homes built around a central courtyard. I liked the architecture and sent along pics to Aimee and the family on the text chain. Mom kicked up a slight fuss at me wandering around New Orleans by myself, to which Mackenzie asked the question about what Dad was going to do if it was something I couldn't handle. I told Mom that if anything got hairy, I could just teleport out immediately as fast as thought, and between me and Mackenzie, Mom seemed mollified. On with the tour!

I did finally make it to that cafe Dad had been raving about. He'd mentioned the doughnuts some half-dozen times, but I'd have felt bad if I went in first and got one. He had not, however, mentioned anything about coffee, and in retrospect, that's sort of criminal on his part. Coffee is big in Portland, but to my knowledge, we didn't have anything like this. Not that our coffee is bad or anything, but it's.... y'know, regular coffee. The coffee they made here at... Cafe du Monde- I'd have to check pronunciation- was an absolute treasure, and I put it on the list of things I needed to learn to make it back home. It wasn't tourist season at this point, and a warm Tuesday afternoon in late October, so getting a quick minute here or there to talk with cooks wasn't terribly difficult. I got some helpful pointers, and every one of them seemed to be very insistent that I need to be aggressive with seasoning.

This wonderful low-key afternoon would get interrupted pretty hard as I was sitting at an outdoor table, reading on my tablet, coffee cup in hand, when I heard a voice growl out, "No!"

People started to scream as I looked up to see a man in his mid-twenties growing in height and size, clothing tearing, hulking into a behemoth, "You won't take me in!"

His accent was really deep, and it took me a moment to register, but register it I did, "What? I'm not- Shit!"

Reaver ported me before he punched through the table and chair I'd been resting comfortably in. I was to his back now, "I'm not a-"

He wasn't listening, flinging the broken table at me, before turning to charge. Fuck. My coffee was still in my hand, still holding it and the tablet when I changed locations. Thank God, tablets get pricy, "I don't want to fight you!"

He... didn't care, and I ported again back behind him as pavement stone cracked where I'd been standing. He was incredibly strong, and from what I was seeing, a possible D-Tier. Unfortunately, his powers and my powers had an issue. As long as I knew he was coming, I could just keep porting around. The other side of it wasn't great, though. I had no idea what this guy's limit was, and it might not be packed, but there were still a lot of people here. I sighed, I wasn't getting out of this, and ported again as he charged through where I was, porting onto a balcony for distance. I downed the rest of my coffee as the guy down below bellowed, "Get back here and fight me!"

I laid down my tablet and the coffee cup on the balcony. Time for some testing. I ported back to him, "Hey! 'Roid Rage!"

Why do I say things? I succeeded in kicking him in the head in the air, and he fell back a step... from surprise at the hit, and nothing else. Great, strength and toughness to back it up, but if he went back at all from that, it wasn't true invulnerability. I'd felt the give in the kick, he had been hit, and it stung him, that was just all it did.

I ported again and continued getting hits in where I could, keeping him contained by porting all around him. With the agility boost, sync, and teleport, I could stay out of his way, and get small hits in. Hmm, he kept leaving his left side open. Mackenzie had a similar issue in her fighting, tending to favor swings and kicks on the right in her case. I focused, catching him multiple times in the same spot. It wouldn't hurt him, but it was having an impact, and making him even angrier, and I could start to see a slight weakness on his left side. Enraged though, he brought both arms up- an opening. One last teleport behind him and I unleashed the black tendrils the moment I was ported, wrapping both hands. Being so strength-focused, he ripped forward as hard as he could, and instead of fighting the pull, I instead pulled with both arms and flattened my body out to propel myself faster. I felt the impact as my feet connected with the base of his skull, and he went down in a heap.

He wouldn't stay down, so while I had him, I let the tendrils out, tying hands and feet together behind his back. People cheered and clapped. Most had the sense to run off, but some few had whipped out cameras to watch the fight. He struggled, but now, the tendrils' leverage was on him. He wouldn't be able to break them, his own strength cut down by the position. Thank God we went to that Rodeo in St. Paul for Scouts last year. Certain in my hold, I looked around, "Hey, could someone call the cops? My hands are full!"

The cops did arrive, along with a tall man with dark skin, who bowed with over-exaggerated grace as he came, his voice and accent both deep, "I see we decided to have some fun our first time in Nawlins, no?"

"I was just trying to get some coffee, man," I was tired. Maintaining the hold on the tendrils did start to drain, and when his rage form had dissipated, I'd had to retighten the binding.

The man laughed deeply, and stood up, "Is fine, bon temps. I'm Binder, and I'll take it from here, child."

As Binder enacted his powers, brilliant colored runes appeared, seizing around him, "It's Marcus. You know this guy?"

He shook his head, "No, sir. Dis one's new to my city, but we get a lotta his type. Supers who are tryin' t'dodge the law, and get themselves out on the Gulf.

"You've done good here. You in the city long?"

I released my tendrils as Binder brought the super to his feet, "Not really. Dad wanted to stop here to see the cafe."

He nodded, still smiling, "Well when we're done here, let me show you the city, as thanks for this."

I nodded, got my things, and paid for another coffee, this one to go. I left a tip, and feeling a bit guilty, money to replace the table and chair. Binder was good to his word, and after he'd processed King- Really, he called himself King?- He stopped by our hotel and took us out on the town. Dad was a bit worried about the fight, but Binder explained that I'd handled it like a pro. In Portland, the H.A.A. had cussed me out for acting, but in New Orleans, the vibe was very different. Binder had given me the accolades for the capture and seemed more at ease with me having done underaged hero work. A sort of rolling, "It's all good, cher" sentiment.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

For the first time, it really occurred to me that the individual conditions of supers were very different depending on where they were. It also turned out that they also varied by Tier. E-tier, such as myself, had a ton of restrictions on what we could do, while higher tiers tended to be less so. It made a certain sense, since really, what were you going to do to someone like Crimson or Anansi? Pushing them only turned them into an issue you couldn't handle anyway.

Binder was D-tier, his ability was able to capture multiple opponents at once, even strong ones like- I'm not calling him King, 'Roid Rage it is- 'Roid Rage. That guy was E-tier. Yeah, his strength and endurance were crazy, but he had to activate them, and couldn't hold the form all that long. In form, he was D-tier, but again, limiters brought the ability back down. That seemed to be a recurring theme, that even if what you could do was powerful, if it had some obvious exploitable flaw to it, then it didn't rate as high. This meant that the true D-tier powers were ones that didn't have some drastic massive drawback to them, they were full up by an order of magnitude. My ability was different, since it continued improving, and was difficult to scale properly against other powers. Anansi could warp fate itself, Crimson could use magic to fly, fight, and just so many things, and I could learn just about anything. However, if I wanted to get out from under the absurd restrictions on me, I needed to start working on secondary abilities. Moving up in tier changed my view of the field.

The rest of the drive back over the next few days was good, and I actually got in some things I needed. I did work on some merit badges, by this point submitting most of my community badges (I already have the service time, so it was mostly done there), physical ones like Athletics and Personal Fitness (I'll just casually run a triathlon), and I caught up with Mr. Bethel. He was getting ready to head out on his regular hunting trip, which could help me snag at least half a dozen badges on the back of that. He was more than happy to have me along since his son wasn't actually that much into it. Tom Bethel, his son, quietly sent me a thank you text that was written like I'd just gotten him off of death row.

Portland H.A.A. did contact me about the "Battle of Cafe du Monde", and yeah, got chewed out again by John. I just eye-rolled my way through it, but they did have to admit I'd handled it well, keeping civilians out of the fight, and using dodges and restraints to capture the villain, keeping him held until legitimate authorities took over. I did also point out that I had tried to de-escalate things, but it just hadn't worked. They did the adult, where despite the fact I'd had no choice, they treated it like I somehow should have known that I would get jumped by a dude outside while sitting around having coffee. Am I supposed to be a kid or a highly trained veteran of combat who maintains constant awareness? Pick a fuckin' side!

Aside from that, the trip was pretty fun. Got to go to Six Flags, picked up a whole mess of souvenirs for people back home, and texted links to love songs to Aimee. She mentioned another dance coming up, and the 1% kicked up something interesting: I liked dancing with her, but we could only really do that at school dances unless I thought of a way to set something up, "Hey Dad. What would you think about something like a nightclub, but for like, under 18 only?"

Dad considered it for a moment, "Could work. Most businesses can, really, it's just a matter of whether you can get the business to keep it going, and stay ahead of costs. You thinking of making one?"

I nodded, "Yeah. One annoying thing is there really aren't many places for us to go in Portland. Like, take Ground Kontrol for instance. It'd be a great place to hang out, but after 5, it turns into a bar, and we can't be there. Kids my age don't even get home til around 330-4 o'clock, so it's not really a thing for us. D&B is cool, but it's really expensive for most kids, and it's really just games and food. I want a place that's ours, y'know?"

He nodded along, "I get it, but there's a lot that goes into something like that. We can take a look at it, though. Right now, we've got the mall purchase coming up, so we do need to focus on that. On that front, there's another dead mall up in Vancouver, so if this works out, we might look at doing that as well."

There was a problem there, "Then we should buy it now."

Dad looked over with a raised eyebrow, "We don't even have the first one up and running yet. Why the rush?"

"It's... so like, basically, as soon as we prove this thing's at all viable, there's gonna be this whole rush of people trying to get in on the action, so I figure if we wait, then it'll probably be gone before we can get there."

He stayed silent for a bit, "I mean, that's a big move, but if you're determined, I'll take a look at it."

I nodded, and broke out my laptop, using the hotspot on my phone. I started looking up dead malls, and there were a lot. COVID had been the final bullet in a lot of struggling malls, but the death of malls had been coming for a long time, the lockdown and social distancing had just sped up the process. As we drove across Texas, I kept researching into it. Malls had started getting killed off by the presence of online ordering and had several other distinct issues. The main issue of having a reliable customer base, though, was circumvented by my plan to add residential to the equation of the mall.

A whole other section of it, though, was the fault of short-sighted thinking on the side of the businesses in the malls. For many store owners, they'd taken the approach of cutting down staff to lower costs, but from what I could see, that had only managed to hurt them more in the long term. Customers had trouble getting questions answered because there was never anyone around to answer them, and the remaining employees were too tired from the extra work heaped on them to hold up proper customer service. So, people had turned to Amazon, while the stores tried to make all of their own online stores, but that again only undercut their own physical businesses. As well, with a lack of employees came a rise in shoplifting. I mean, it made perfect sense- Fewer people working meant less security, too. Shoplifters tended to hold off if they were being spoken to by employees since that could get them caught. That obstacle removed, it was just the natural thing for the shoplifting to get worse.

The other side of it was that the general poverty situation had also contributed highly to a rise in theft and a decrease in sales. People were desperate, and if you push anyone into a desperate situation long enough, it's bound to lead to worse actions. That had been proved with the Wal-Mart self-checkouts. Sure, most people would generally pay for their goods, but if you're on shakier financial ground, you don't get as many options to be the paragon of morals and ethics. At a certain point, survival trumps rules, whether you were stealing food to have it to eat, or a PS5 so you could sell it to make rent.

Without creating paying jobs, alleviating homelessness would be a nearly insurmountable task. Sure, homelessness had a direct endpoint- Everyone has a home, and are thus, not homeless. Mission Accomplished! Not really, because there were a ton of limiters. Anna sent me a link to a TedTalk, on the subject of motivation. Apparently, it had been redone on YouTube by a group called RSAnimate, and to summarize, people had three needs for motivation:

Autonomy. The ability to feel like they were making the choices in their life, that their life was their own.

Self-Mastery: The feeling of getting better at whatever you're doing, to know that you're progressing.

Purpose: A reason beyond the work itself. So a single dad working a drudge job could put forth that he was doing it for his children. A person working as a teacher was sculpting young minds or a stockbroker who was working to afford a better life.

I thought about it for a bit, and the underpinnings of it were important. If I couldn't provide these things, it would be far more difficult if not impossible to fix the damage. Another section of the video mentioned that money was only a motivator insofar as that you made enough that it wasn't an obstacle. I couldn't just provide housing, I had to remove the financial obstacle, and that meant creating jobs. Of course, the mall would employ a bunch of people, as would my company, but I was starting to realize we needed a much higher industrial base, a problem I'd already encountered in recreating Portland in Cities: Skylines. We had industry, sure, but jobs-to-residents was a problem. I needed some sort of business that sold things outside of the system of Portland, to bring money external to Portland into the city. There was Intel, Nike, and Amazon, but more could be done.

Hmm... tech. I mean, I was already building a video game, and I owned a solar-power company now. I could relocate them to Portland, and use that, but there still needed to be more. I couldn't do all of it on my own, or anywhere near it. I need networks, and connections that could help me navigate this, that could run these businesses separate from myself.