Ch.21

Welp, looks like Riggins is convinced. Mark Sanderson thought to himself.

Stabbing yourself through the hand with a knife that someone else had handed you and then letting that person poke and prod at the wound before healing it in under a second made for a damned convincing argument.

So was chopping firewood with your bare hands and running as fast as a car. No real way to fake it either, at least not when you’re watching it up close and in person. He was a bit relieved when the kid told them he couldn’t keep up that speed for more than a few minutes, though.

He was less relieved when the kid added, “Yet.”

He was even LESS relieved when Ramirez had told him that he would eventually be a LOT faster than that, though, and that his normal running speed would eventually exceed his current top speed by 15 or 20 mph, if his estimates were right.

They were standing next to Riggins’ truck, and his eyes looked haunted. “Yup. I know how ya feel, compadre.”

Riggins shook his head. “You believe him? That’s a damned tall tale, Mark.”

Sanderson nodded. “Why would he lie? It's not like there’s anything the government can really do to threaten him! Maybe a drone strike or a round through the head from a Barret fifty-caliber could kill him... maybe. Local PD found sixteen 12-gauge shell casings and thirty-two 9mm casings by the front door. He took all that, from under ten feet away, got back up, and went and rescued his mentor’s grandkid... and I know you’ve seen the file from what was left of the Federovs in the back of that warehouse when he was finished with them!”

Riggins grimaced. Even to an old pro like him, it had been a gruesome sight. The warehouse had looked like a scene from a slasher flick. He’d seen victims of a grizzly attack in better shape than some of those Federov mooks had been in. “Yeah... and he did it again, tonight. We’re lawmen, Sanderson. He’s a vigilante, at best!”

Sanderson nodded. “He God damn sure as Hell is. So what? The kid’s got a point. We can’t touch the Federovs, lord knows we’ve tried for years! You know it and I know it. They’re gonna come after him again at some point, and that poor kid Jojo Hale, too. Both of us have gone off the reservation more than once in similar situations, don’t tell me you can’t understand where the kid’s coming from? Plus, he’s offered to HELP! What would we do if someone like Federov got powers like Ramirez has?”

Riggins nodded, hesitantly, his face turning very grim. “That’s... Damn, if the kid’s right, that’s coming, ain’t it? Yeah, we ain’t superhumans.” he told the other Marshal, shaking his head.

Sanderson pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one of them, and offered it to Riggins. Riggins accepted it, and Sanderson lit another one. “Yet.”

Riggins looked at him oddly. “What?”

“Neither of us are superhumans... yet. If the kid’s telling the truth, most people are gonna get upgrades like he has... and what he can do is just the beginning! I know that most people with a lick of common sense will just laugh at us if we don’t have the kid there to prove it, it's why I dragged you all the way out here, John. If what he’s sellin’ is the truth, it means we’ll see more and more crazy shit coming at us and the local law boys as time goes on. If we stay on the kid’s good side, not only do we have a person who can help if crazy shit goes down, someone who might be able to DO something about it, but we’ll also have a source of information about it all, too.”

Riggins looked like he’d just eaten something he didn’t like the taste of. “What if it turns out he’s full of shit? That all of this is some crazy power fantasy spurred by the first recorded superhuman’s power manifesting or something a different flavor of crazy than the one he’s selling?”

“Well, how are you with a Barret fifty-cal these days?” Sanderson asked him, shrugging his shoulders. “No, but seriously. I’ve spent a few hours today lookin’, and there’s been some kooky shit going on the last few weeks, boss. No one flying around or throwing thunderbolts and shit, but there have been a lot more crazy-ass stories about people doing things that look impossible have cropped up in the last few weeks than you normally see. There’re even videos of some of it, online.”

Riggins inhaled from his cigarette, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. The look on his face was grim. “I get it, I get it. Shit! So, what’s the play here? Wait until someone does something that there’s no explanation for, and then have the kid come give a demonstration to the brass?”

Sanderson nodded. “Yep. Anything else’ll get us both psych leaves, I reckon.”

Riggins chuckled. “Shit, Sandy! If I hadn’t just seen all this firsthand, I’d be putting you in for one, yourself. Fucking Legends & Labyrinths, huh?”

Sanderson chuckled and nodded back.

“Welp, at least it gives me an excuse to get in touch with my nephews, the nerdy little shitnuggets!” Riggins said with a small grin.

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I was happy that the two Marshals left looking thoughtful. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from them, but thoughtful was better than the other options. I felt like Sanderson’s boss, Riggins, had been at least mostly convinced.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The only thing close to evidence of that I had was that they both left me their work and personal phone numbers, but that felt like a good sign. Also, my Sense Motive check was at a +20 and I’m pretty sure that’s what it was telling me. The social skills were a lot more complicated than I had ever thought of them as when I was playing L&L.

Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Sense Motive, and Perception all combined to make me a LOT more aware of my interactions with people. Not just what they were feeling, but what I was feeling. I think that’s probably a good thing, but those skills also made me a lot more aware of how I could manipulate people.

That part felt pretty icky. Acting like a con man, lawyer, or a politician was not high on my list of things to do.

Honestly, I kinda hoped someone high up in the Federal government or U.S. military would Awaken, and I wouldn’t have to deal with any of the stuff that I thought was coming down the pipeline because of all this.

But I don’t really believe it’s gonna go down like that, now do I? I need to get to 4th level ASAP, but I also can’t gimp myself. Access to Potions and being able to make Wondrous Items is too danged big of a deal.

After they left, it was time for me to get in some practice. I had started doing it in the last few days while I was Dreaming, as a break between Crafting projects, but I had so many skills, Feats, and Combat Arts, I knew I needed to start practicing regularly for real. Just a few days had been enough to let me know that Crafting and Training were both making me extra Records, and I was starting to see evidence that as I practiced those things more and more, as I got more familiar with them, the Records I gained for the time invested was going up as well.

My third day of training and crafting I’d made more than twice as many Records from them as I had the first day. The fourth day it had gone up by nearly thirty percent more!

Sure, it was next to nothing compared to what I made in an hour of killing spiders and Skraven in the dungeon, but who knows how long I’d have access to an experience farm like that? Any source of Records was something I was going to exploit, especially when it had other benefits, and Crafting definitely had benefits, and I was almost positive that Practice would, too.

I just didn’t know what they were, yet. Melnaria had made it clear to me, though, that effort was part of what the Great One considered an important element of Dreamers and Awakeners development, so I couldn’t imagine him not rewarding diligent practice with our abilities.

My guess was that practice was going to wind up granting us Competence Bonuses and maybe some kind of a Mastery, from regular practice... something that would be significant, if not overwhelming. It felt like my Lore skills were hinting at that, too? There was nothing definite, it was just a... sense that there would be benefits. It sure makes sense, though, if you think about it...

The truth was that I needed to be good at all of these things until I found people who I could trust to do them as well or better than I did.

Even then, I’d still probably want to be good at them!

Could I go crawling through dungeons for magic items? Sure, I could, but the odds of finding the exact things that you needed were super slim...

If you could make them yourself, you ALWAYS knew you’d get precisely what you were looking for!

Usually for half or a third, maybe less, than what you’d pay for it if you bought it! I said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, if magic and the supernatural really are coming, everyone’s gonna want magic weapons and magic armor... heck, magic items and potions in general, too!

Which means if you can make them, if you can provide them to others, then you’re gonna be one rich sunavabitch!

Not only that, but money was what you needed to make magic items. Money, materials, crafting skills, and supernatural power, to be precise... though that didn’t necessarily mean that YOU had be the one to have the supernatural power.

If you did go dungeon crawling and found magic items that you didn’t want or couldn’t use, you could, essentially, suck the value of those undesirable items out and turn it into what you were trying to make!

If you had the skills to make the item yourself, you even got to do it at the same rate as you would for creating it yourself... in other words, two or three to one in your favor! In layman’s terms, if I started making magic swords to sell, and I found a +1 magic dagger, I could suck the magic out of that +1 magic dagger and make it into a +2 magic sword! Maybe even get it most of the way to a +3 magic sword!

Needless to say, that was a massive upgrade in profit. The only difference was the additional time taken to do so. Once I could make magic weapons, I’d probably be able to make a +1 sword a day... well, a bit under a day, really. To make a +2 sword would likely take two or three days... but it would sell for four times as much, so it was probably worth it?

It was even better when working on my own magic items, because I could just suck the magic juice out of items and use it to make my own items stronger! I’d be focusing on that pretty hard for the near future... once I had everything in place to even start doing it in the first place, that is.

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When I was done practicing and working out, I played with Banner for a little while, that little shit had been going crazy locked in the back yard while I showed off what a Qi user could do for the Marshals. I had to be careful about letting him run on the back lot. There was a decent-sized sounder of wild pigs, at least two bobcats, and a pack of coyotes that wandered through the nearby forested area.

I’d never forgive myself if Banner got hurt because he got into a fight with wild animals.

I was torn when it came to Banner. It was completely possible for anyone, for the cost of three Feats, to gain an Animal Companion at your full level in L&L. The thing was, though, in most L&L games, it simply wasn’t worth it to do that, because three Feats was a huge investment! For some race/class combos, you’d be 5th level before you even got three Feats!

That meant that I could probably make Banner into an Animal Companion, and level him up. For another Feat, at 7th or 8th level, I could even advance him into any one of several magical canine races! The only question was whether or not I wanted to.

On the one hand, a smarter, super powered version of Banner would be totally awesome!

On the other, it would mean me acknowledging that he’d be going into combat... and part of me rejected that idea pretty strongly. On the other, other hand, if the world turned magical and went to shit like I was expecting it to, it wasn’t like he’d have much choice about fighting, of course.

If he was going to have to fight no matter what, of course I’d want him to be able to defend himself!

That said, the idea of Banner being forced to fight hurt my heart more than a little. Yes, he was a dog, a descendant of wolves, and it's not like German Shepherds weren’t often chosen for duty in the police or the military... but he was my Banner buddy! I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and just the thought of him being injured hurt me deeply.

But it always came back to the same thing. Was I really helping him by not making him into an Animal Companion if a magical apocalypse was going to happen? Would it really be better to not give him levels, hit dice, and the power to fight back? Especially if those fights were going to come to him regardless of what I wanted?

Sure, maybe when magic showed up the world would turn into a magical utopia, full of guardian care bears and alicorns who wielded the powers of love and friendship to remind anyone who wanted to be nasty that being mean was just bad! Then everyone would start holding hands and begin singing happy songs!

What’s that, Ray? You don’t think that sounds like that's very likely to happen in the real world? I couldn’t help but be snarky with myself!

No shit, Sherlock. I’m pretty sure that some fucked up combination of Mad Max, The Walking Dead, and Shadowrun is a MUCH more likely outcome.

Shadowrun was a tabletop RPG and it had been made into really good turn-based CRPG. It’s setting was essentially Cyberpunk with magic, elves, and dragons. Other fantastic critters, too, of course.

Essentially, I guess I think a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future seems like the most probable outcome of giving our current world easy access to magic, Qi and supernatural stuff. That’s exactly why I convinced Chris to essentially turn his property into a fort over the next few months.

If I keep making the kind of money I did last night taking out mob goons, it won’t be very hard to do so, either. Melting all those tacky rings, earrings, and chains down and turning them into expensive, hand-crafted, masterwork jewelry that’s worth even MORE than the stuff I looted is gonna be a real pleasure, too.

I just need to figure out how to sell the Rolexes. I’d done some checking. The four Rolexes I looted last night had a retail value of nearly $150,000!

I fell asleep, visions of loot dancing in my head.