Ch.20
I took all of their phones and put them in my little homemade Faraday Cage, grabbed the two tablets and three laptops I’d found, put them in there, too, and closed and sealed it.
No one’s going to track these bad boy’s cell phones unless I decide that I want them to!
I might have also taken the cash in their wallets. What? These guys each were carrying a few hundred bucks! There had to be 5 or 6 grand here just in cash... and, well, they certainly didn’t need it anymore. There was a few grand more in the pot for the poker game, too! They also all seemed to really like expensive jewelry and watches, and like half of them were wearing Rolexes!
So, yeah, I grabbed those, too.
Lord, I really am going full murderhobo on these guys, aren’t I? Between the cash and the jewelry, this has got to be, like, forty or fifty THOUSAND dollars of stuff?! Maybe more? I’ve looked into it on a lark in the past, and a Rolex can go for over $500k! $20k isn’t an unusual price for one...
I had at least two pounds, maybe two and a half pounds of gold and diamond jewelry, here. One dude looked like he had gotten most of his fashion sense as it pertained to jewelry from 80s and 90s gangsta rappers!
Seriously! Who wears a dozen gold chains nowadays? Too bad its all fourteen karat gold... This one moron, at least, still thought that kind of thing was cool.
Of course, selling it as it was would be impossible. But guess who had two thumbs and had professional levels of smithing and jewelcrafting skills?
Of course, I held up both hands, thumbs up, and then pointed at myself with them. “This guy!” I said out loud, chuckling and grinning.
A moment later, I started to feel bad, to get an attack of my conscience, feeling guilty for having fun and enjoying this.
Those feelings of guilt lasted for about three seconds or so... right up until I remembered Jojo’s broken ribs, the bruises covering his body nearly from head to toe from the several hours long beating he’d taken yesterday. Add in the fact that a few of their buddies had, oh, MURDERED me last night and that feeling quickly disappeared and was replaced by a grim certainty that this had been the right thing to do.
Well, that it was the right thing to do might be up for debate, but it was certainly the correct thing to do for someone stuck in my position. The more Federovs I took down now, the fewer that could come after me or Jojo. Fewer Federovs meant a lower chance of getting other people I cared for caught in the crossfire... and at this point, I wasn’t going to deny that was GOING to happen.
If they ever got a clue that it was me who’d taken out their guys at the warehouse while freeing Jojo, they’d come after me and anyone near me, I was absolutely certain. These guys WERE beyond the law, apparently, and I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for them to come after me or my friends!
I’d already used Pneumatic Healing and Qi Regeneration to repair what little damage I’d taken, and I’d held onto the bullet that popped out when I did so. That shit actually hurt way worse than it should have. The guy did over 30 points of damage to me in one hit, after my DR! Even with a crit, that’s a LOT of damage...
I took out some bleach I’d brought with me in a spray bottle, and sprayed down every place I’d seen a drop of my blood land... and with my +22 Perception check plus Acute Senses, it was easy to know where that was and enough bleach would do the same thing as the hydrogen peroxide, making it difficult or impossible to get DNA from it. Heck, it should do an even better job.
It was a genuine concern now that there wasn’t much question that my DNA was in the system from all the gathering they did from the giant blood puddle that was my den! THey might not know it was mine, but I didn’t want to leave something like that to chance!
That said, hit points are bull shit, and man am I glad I have them! I just got shot with a forty caliber semi-auto, at point blank range. I got shot full on in the gut, and with the angle it hit, I’m pretty sure it got my lungs... and I felt perfectly fine even before I healed myself!
Like it hurt and all, but it in no way was limiting me. That seems nuts. It felt very different from yesterday. When ex-Pretty Boy and Company had opened fire on me, I think me standing there was as much mental shock as anything.
Yesterday, as I was getting shot, my brain was busy telling me that a human would be unable to react and should die from being shot like that. I was still certain that I was a normal human, so I reacted like I thought a normal human should!
Now that I knew better, though, getting shot was... a bit uncomfortable? Well, ok, it hurt like Hell! Really, though, that was about it, just pain. High Fortitude saves let you mitigate pain and, like I said before, hit points are bullshit!
Anyway, all of that took less than two minutes and then I was high tailing it outta there. I spent a point of Qi on Qi Cloak and a point on Qi Rush and covered the distance between the Panda Palace and the set of buildings I’d left my laptop on easily before either effect dropped. I then parkoured up the side of the building, easy enough to do when you get a +4 to Acrobatics rolls for every +10’ over your base movement when you’re making checks involving jumping.
Free running, or parkouring, up the side of a building uses both jumping and climbing, so this bonus adds to your Climb check. To climb the side of a building is a DC 15 check. That’s literally trivial with my +26 including the bonus from my move speed. Normally, making that check lets you climb ten feet, but by taking a –10 to your roll, you can climb an additional ten feet.
Spending a point of Qi raises my movement speed by +30’, giving me an extra +12 to my Climb check for one round... raising my Climb check to a +38 temporarily, making me able to take a –30 to my climb check, to raise the amount of distance I can cover to forty feet in a single round, and letting me climb a four-story building in about six seconds! Taking 10, which is possible because it's out of combat, means that even with a –30 to my check, I get an 18, easily climbing the building!
Heck yeah, that’s how REAL parkour ninjas do it! It was hard to not be excited at just how awesome the stuff I could do now was. And I’m still just touching the edges of it. I’m still only 3rd level!
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I grabbed my stuff and got the heck out of there. Just as I hit the ground, I heard sirens wailing in the distance.
A bit over six minutes. That’s a pretty impressive response time from the cops. Good to know.
I got the heck out of there.
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I was burning a bunch of clothes in a metal barrel, again, having changed into a set of clean clothes I’d brought with me after taking a shower in the garden hose. Better to be a little paranoid than be dumb and get myself busted.
That said, burning all these clothes is gonna get expensive, fast. I should be getting the deliveries of the leather, dyes, fabric, patterns, and leatherworking kits I’ve ordered soon, and then it’ll be time to make some outfits I can just clean. It's too bad I can’t enchant it, yet, but experience now will help later on.
The construction crews would be here tomorrow, and we were told it would take them about three months to put up the building that I wanted, a lot of that time being them taking the time to let the concrete for the foundation, sub-basement shelter, and basement to dry and cure. The concrete wall would be built at the same time.
All things considered, we were having them build the sub-basement to fallout shelter standards, which they were doing by putting four remodeled, reinforced shipping containers on top of a concrete foundation about thirty feet down, side by side. They would then arc weld them all together and make doors and larger rooms by removing chunks of the sides of the containers, then they would cover it ALL in rebar reinforced concrete!
All in all, it would make a forty foot long by forty foot wide by ten-foot-tall steel room covered in rebar reinforced concrete! Once we had access to magic to enchant it with, we’d be able to turn it into a bunker where we could probably survive most anything short of a direct hit from a nuke!
We were putting in water and air filtration and recycling systems as well. They were surprisingly inexpensive. As far as power went, I was pretty sure that Cantrip level magic items would be more than enough to run any reasonable number of electronic devices we wanted, all basic enchantments either Chris or I would be able to make easily.
Even that would only be backup, as there was no reason the solar panels, wind farm, and hydro power systems we’d put in years ago for the tax breaks and cash incentives should stop working from what my Lore skills were telling me, even when Mana did become a factor!
Apparently, the construction crew was excited about doing this, too. Chris had been more than willing to put down a mortgage on his house and property when I pointed out to him that there might easily be some kind of apocalypse incoming, and having a place to ride it out, or even a defensible base to work from, made a lot of sense.
His property, despite the small subdivision nearby, was miles from anything that could be considered a part of the city. Out here it was mostly big hills, farms, and forests! Somewhere more remote might be nice, but here we already had potable water in the form of a decent-sized pond and a stream that had never run dry in all the years he’d lived here. It was apparently fed by an artesian water source in the hills on top of all the rain Portland was known for. That also meant fish and wild game were a resource they had available, too, from the pond and forested areas.
Getting some chickens, pigs, cows, and maybe sheep would be neither hard nor unusual in Portland, either! What it all added up to was that this was a lot better place than most people could say they had, and if he and Chris spent some money, now, to get a head start, it could be even better! That was without considering what they could do when they had access to magic!
The mortgage had gotten same day approval. We’d designed all the stuff we contracted the construction crews to do around the idea that it would be able to be improved in the future, too. Chris was an engineer after all, and even if he was an electronic engineer and not a civil engineer, there was a good bit of overlap!
While we were still at the bank, I’d pulled a big chunk of money out of my savings and just gave it to Chris. It was enough for him to pay the new mortgage for the entirety of the first year. Then I promised to pay him more if he needed me to.
“If I need you to?” Chris had asked after I said that, looking at me oddly as we headed back out to his car. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Logically, Captain, financial institutions are going to have a hard time collecting loans if a Magical Apocalypse happens, correct?” I’d responded, raising an eyebrow in a Nimoy-esque manner, doing my best Mr. Spock voice imitation.
Chris didn’t really like the sound of that, but I could see the cogs in his head turning. I felt it was obvious, though. The mortgage he’d taken out was a big one, but it was still something that he could easily afford to pay back, particularly if I was helping him do so.
But if magic and monsters became real, then big, strong walls and an underground shelter out in the country would probably be worth their weight in gold.
It would certainly be worth more than a couple hundred grand in a denomination that had zero value any more... you know, since the government that had issued it was non-existent? Or since the bank that was holding onto it and the internet it relied on to transfer funds was gone?
That said, even if the only use we got out of it was the crafting areas, this would probably still be a good investment. I could already make weapons and equipment that could be enchanted up to +4, or DC 28, every time. Better materials and crafting gear, more Feats, more levels, and maybe more Talents would push that even higher.
After all, in a magical world, everyone would want the highest QL weapons, armor, items, and the best potions they could get their hands on. Gear is a major portion of your power in most fantasy RPGs. The best Gear, made precisely to boost your strengths and cover your weaknesses is the difference between mere competence and UBERleetness!!!
So, yeah, this was a smart investment anyway I looked at it... that also gave me some hope for all the people that wouldn’t want to fight. Crafters can gain experience, after all, just by making quality gear, which means that even non-combatants would have a way to level up and most of all, help out!
I didn’t know if Chris was a hundred percent convinced that Dreamers were real, but it seemed like he was most of the way there, since he’d come along with me to the dojo this afternoon. He’d talked to Sensei Kai, and taken his first Kajukenbo class since he’d gone with me for a year or two back in high school...
I’d just dropped several small to medium sized pieces of firewood into the barrel fire when I realized that I had company.
I smiled when the wind shifted, and I recognized the aftershave the breeze drifted past me. “Marshal. What can I do for you?” I asked without turning around. He was about fifty or sixty feet away still and was being very stealthy. If his scent hadn’t given him away, I probably wouldn’t have heard him until he was a lot closer. He quite obviously knew how to move silently in a forested area, but my Perception roll was simply absurd.
I heard a sigh. “Oh, not much. Got a report of a bunch of Federov’s men getting chopped into little, tiny pieces again, so I thought I’d come and have a talk with you.”
I nodded. “It’s sad to hear that something so terrible happened to such fine, upstanding citizens! Can I offer you something to drink, Marshal Sanderson? Or wait, it sounds like you brought a friend along? Can I get him something while I’m at it?”
Two simultaneous mildly annoyed sighs came from about eighty feet apart. Then Sanderson chuckled. “Told you so, Riggins.” he said.
If Sanderson looked like he got his style sense from an urban cowboy from the late 1980s, the man he called Riggins looked like a college football player who’d kept himself in shape despite being in his 40’s. He was a Black man, six foot four or six foot five inches tall, and 240 pounds or so with a shaved head and a goatee.
He was wearing dark jeans, either black or navy blue, it was hard to tell in the dim light, with a black, long-sleeved turtleneck, and a black sports coat. He was armed the same as Sanderson.
Marshal Sanderson walked out of the woods, smiling and waving. “That’s John Riggins, he’s technically my boss. John, this is Ray Ramirez, the guy I told you about.” I shook Sanderson’s hand as he got nearer, then Riggins’ hand a moment later.
Riggins looked me over, obviously a bit tense. “Tell me you didn’t drag me all the way out here at this time of night to have a pow wow around a fire and to drink some beer, Sanderson.”
I smiled. “Ah. Gimme a sec. I’ll grab you guys a coupla beers and some of the good stuff. Be back in a jiffy.”
A couple minutes later, I came back with an ice bucket filled with a couple of different microbrews, a plate full of homemade chocolate chip cookies, and three tumblers and a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label that was a bit over half full, all balanced on a small table. I handed both of them a beer, and noticed Riggins eyeing the bottle of J.D. I handed both Marshals a homemade chocolate chip cookie.
“Give them a try... they’re just cookies. Nothing in them other than normal cookie ingredients.” I told them, taking a bite out of one of them myself.
Damn these things are good! I almost regret sharing them! It IS kind of funny that I had to hide them from Chris after I let him try them...
They were an experiment, but having a +16, with an extra +4 for masterwork equipment totaling up to a +20, Cooking check lets you make some mind-bogglingly good food...
Quality Level 30 chocolate chip cookies probably approached the best thing these two had ever eaten!
The two Marshals eyes got very wide after taking tentative first bites, and then the plate of cookies disappeared very quickly.
What? Circumstance bonuses to Diplomacy are a thing! A QL30 gift gives a +5 to Diplomacy checks, and I wanted to make a good impression...
Important facts for later. “Ok, so, Sanderson, I assume you want me to tell him what I told you?” I asked.
Sanderson nodded. “Ok, then. Marshal Riggins, do you carry a knife? If so, can I borrow it?”