Monday, June 04, 2018, 09:30 AM, Norfolk, Virginia, United States of America

Well, as per usual, Rex and I woke up with the morning sun. We are getting consistent rest here at least, without nearly as much worry about monsters attacking in the middle of the night or anything similar. We might have to deal with thieves, but then again, it would probably just give me and Rex some more ability to get rid of the villains in this world. I got breakfast going for both of us and made sure that the stew is still going, before getting dressed and ready. I knew that today was going to be interesting, starting a new job is always interesting, and this was basically just going to be a mask to hide what I did off hours.

I knew that my items wouldn’t automatically be able to stay safe in this safehouse, so I resolved to utilize everything I could up before heading in to work, so I looked at the hundred or so pounds of salt that I had stored up for making items masterwork and weighed the cost of making an item masterwork compared to having full access to my magic. Ultimately, I decided that it would be better to have the spell capabilities than to have a singular item being slightly better. I went around, setting up whatever I could to make the safehouse less of a target, and hide my things that I would not be taking with me to work. Rex assisted in helping find any possible ways that we could be targeted. I added in the usage of some of our simpler magic effects that were not exhaustible, and we tightened up security as best we could. None of the windows would be able to open, the doors would not be able to be opened from the outside. The only way in was a tiny dryer vent that Rex could JUST squeeze through, or by magic, which I had access to, if I did not expend it all today.

With all that settled, Rex and I headed out, him for a day of flying and swooping on fish in the Chesapeake Bay, and me for my first day at the job and Bob’s Guns. Rex flew up from behind the house and headed towards the Elizabeth River. He knew to fly over to the place where I was working at high-sun and to return home by the time the sun set, and if weather got bad, he was to return to house and take shelter in the back porch to dry off. I took off and made my way when it was about fifteen after nine, by my phone, and took the safe route, getting to Bob’s by half past nine, and finished off all of my pre-work notes.

*****

Monday, June 04, 2018, 9:30 PM, Norfolk, Virginia, United States of America

I had just finished writing my notes when Doug opened up the door and escorted me in, looking disappointedly at the sky. I asked Doug what the issue was, and he told me that it looked like it was going to storm pretty bad today. I sighed and hoped that Rex was going to have some time to fish on his own. I didn’t relish the thought of having to go out riding in the rain to go buy fish for him. Doug took me to the place where I could put my bike, and we headed back to the workstations where I would learn to work on these modern firearms.

We started the remainder of the morning with detailed diagram of the firearm in question, and it included a breakdown of every individual part of the firearm itself. Doug noted that this particular firearm, a 1911, was one that frequently came through the shop. I absorbed everything that I could on the first time around and Doug asked me to take the firearm apart, clean it, and put it back together while he watched. I focused for a second, invoked a bit of the magic that would help me out with this kind of check, and managed to amaze Doug with a thirty second tear down and put together with a thirty second clean time in the middle. Doug took it, inspected every aspect of it, and nodded appreciably before asking me if I was sure that I had never dealt with one of these before.

I shrugged and told him that this was the first time that I had ever taken apart and put together one of those, but that it followed an example of one that I had seen done before. Doug thought for a minute before taking me over to the list of current firearm cleanings scheduled. He went through the list with me and showed me where each firearm was stored and where each would go. He noted to me that I would mainly be responsible for taking apart, cleaning, and putting back together of each one, diligently cleaning, oiling, and returning for testing. He told me that he would check on me at around noon and confirm that I was doing a sufficient job, before setting me up with the next firearm to learn on.

Doug then went to talk to someone in another room while I started working on each firearm individually. I activated my Prestidigitation arcane spell surreptitiously while Doug was walking out of the room, before moving on to the next firearm. After about twenty minutes, Doug came back with the General Manager, Steve and they stopped me from working what I was working on to talk. Steve asked me about the 1911 that I was working on. I told him that I had ensured that the firearm was safe, removed the magazine, disassembled the firearm, cleaned all of it, oiled the appropriate sections, and reassembled it.

I handed, safely, the firearm to Steve, and he looked it over for a bit, inspecting it before setting it down. He went through every part of the gun and asked what I had done for each item. I told him which pieces were removed in which order, which were re-oiled after cleaning, and how they were put back together in order. Steve handed the firearm to Doug, who took a look over it and noted that I had done an outstanding job, not even having any fingerprints left on the firearm after I was done. Doug asked Steve if he thought that this was satisfactory, and Steve agreed. Doug looked to me and told me that I had the job.

Steve and Doug turned and walked back into another room, both having left me to my tasks, and went to go talk about something else. Before I started working on the next firearm, I did a quick cleanup of the work area while I cast one of my limited arcane powers and clandestinely summoned up a book on information about fingerprints. I balked while I noted that they could be used to connect an individual to an item that was contacted by them, like say a murder weapon to an assailant. Apparently, it is a very common practice to use in this world to solve crimes and get convictions by linking the evidence. Learning this, I started going through every firearm that I was assigned in turn, focusing less on speed, and more on complete cleaning and thorough checking.

I was taking roughly thirty-minutes a firearm, but I ensured that there was no trace of anything that was no trace of any fingerprints or anything else that could be trackable to me. Reading that book leads me to think that I will need to study on a LOT more things than what I initially thought about, especially about the legal system here. I didn’t have the real opportunity to transfer this information, so I had to just let this one slip, and I would have to ask it again later. By the time that I was halfway through the workday, I had gotten through the entire backlog of these pistols that needed to be cleaned, and a few other similar models that were also in que to get done.

At a little before two pm, Doug came back through and said that it was getting on break time, and that he was going to order something for lunch and wanted to know if I wanted anything. I shrugged and told him that I didn’t have any strong feelings on anything, but that if he let me know what were the options that I could go for something. Doug shrugged and said that he was going to order a pizza. I asked him to just get a second one as well, and I’d pay. Doug made the call, and ordered two “meat lovers” pizzas, and told me that they were twenty bucks. I pulled a twenty out of my pocket and handed it to him, thanking him for making the call.

While we waited for the pizza to be delivered, Doug and I went through all of the firearms that I had serviced, with him giving me positive feedback on what I had done, and what I could do better. I took the advice into consideration as we talked a bit more about my style for cleaning. He noted that he couldn’t even detect the hint of gunpowder residue after I was done. I told him that I had always heard that it was best to get things back to as clean as when it was made. Doug nodded to that, as we were informed that our pizza had shown up. We both started eating in the break room, while Doug asked some slightly probing questions about my background.

I did my best to keep up with what I had practiced with Jonathan, keeping it close to that I had originally gone through, so it was easier to remember and keep straight. A small city detective who worked to keep the city safe. I got caught in the crossfire of a “super” attack, and ended up leaving the force, to come here. It wasn’t that far from the truth, as compared to what I have seen, that ancient Azlanti wizard would be the best equivalent to a super on that world, and he was caught in the crossfire of the Azlanti wizard’s spell, along with Rex, and it had sent him here. Doug seemed to acknowledge that, and asked if I knew which super it was. I told him I had never seen the super since leaving to which Doug nodded again.

During lunch Rex had sent to me a series of feelings that indicated that he was nesting someplace safe, and I understood that he was above the building. This was as safe as he could be, in my mind, so I sent back feelings of reassurance without missing a beat with discussion with Doug about my background. I heard the peel of thunder suddenly, and I sent Rex the feelings of “home” and “warmth”. Rex sent back the feelings of soaring through the air and then the joy of seeing the safehouse, which I took to mean that he would head right back to our place. With that settled, I left the restroom and went back to the workshop floor.

For after our “lunch”, Doug got me started on a going through a rifle step by step before heading off to work on a set of specialized modifications for another order that had been placed. For the rest of the shift, I worked on those rifles, working on dismantling them, cleaning them thoroughly, and putting them back together. Of course, I was aided in the cleaning by activating my arcane energies towards the prestidigitation effect every hour or so, just to make the cleaning more thorough, and to do a once over cleaning of the outside to ensure that all fingerprints and possible “DNA” evidence are scrubbed from it. The rest of the day went fairly well, and at the end of the day, Doug told me that he was certain that I had the job. He patted me on the back, and I took off on my bike, the road being a little dryer since the rains subsided about an hour and a half before I was going to be leaving to head home.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

On my way home, I started to regret the bicycle, as even though the road was supposedly dryer, my breeches legs were still soaked. It isn’t anything that prestidigitation won’t correct, but still, it is annoying to experience it. The material that these roads are made of seem oddly solid and yet not at the same time, but that’s just something that I will have to learn to deal with as well. Getting home, I found that there was no apparent unauthorized break-ins or robberies, taking some time and using magic to enhance the ability to find any apparent issues, of which I found none.

Rex was there waiting for me, just inside the back porch, and he told me that he didn’t see or hear anything since he arrived back at the house. I thanked him for his vigilance while I set the bicycle back in the garage. Then we went to the back door, and I opened up the door using the key. There weren’t any signs inside the house of any intrusions, and everything looked fine, so Rex and I moved inside. Rex immediately went over to his reflective heat mat and nested down on it, while I went to the kitchen to get some of my soup that was in this thing called a “crock pot”.

It kept my stew warm all day and doesn’t even need magic or fire. It is a great piece of technology, and something I could easily see David Drake bringing this to Sandpoint and Magnimar eventually, if he doesn’t decide that Magic shortcuts it, that is. The stew was flavorful and filling, so I spent the rest of the day resting and getting my clothes and equipment and items ready for tomorrow. It seems like this job is not as difficult as I had imagined, or maybe my combination of skill and magic works well for the low-level tasks that I am completing. Maybe later on it will get more difficult, but for now, it seems like I can get by with this position.

The rest of the night went fairly well, until it got close to sunset. I weighed the possibilities of going out for searching for gangland trouble and figured that I could give it a go after dark, and so I got set up in my armor and everything. Once I was all set up, I managed to notice a noise coming from outside one of the backyard’s facing windows of the safehouse. Stealthily, I managed to make my way to a window that would allow me to look out, and I managed to catch a look at a would-be infiltrator. They looked to be of the sort that would belong to some kind of gang, but they appeared to be from a different gang than the three individuals that I had dealt before this.

I watched as the person seemed to look into the rooms, before leaving to go back to wherever he had been before arriving here. I quietly said to Rex that we appear to be being cased, to which he nodded thoughtfully. I offered up that we could set up the house to be more appealing, but that the criminals would probably draw too much attention to this house from the “police”. Rex offered up that we should track the guy, and that we might be able to get him and his crew before they headed to our house. I thought that this was wise, and Rex and I decided to head out.

We locked all of the doors securely, and I had Rex put chairs underneath the doors that were possible before we headed out. Immediately I started to look for any signs of the perp’s tracks or trail. I focused back and activated my Running Hunter’s Stance, to increase my speed and give me the gift of a heightened sense of smell. Being able to track by the scent of this suspected robber helped a lot in trying to find from where this individual travelled from to make their way to their hideout. It wasn’t all that far away, an abandoned warehouse just over the railroad tracks, that was apparently up for sale, from what the posted sign said.

I guess since the place is not currently in use is the reason why it is currently being used as a gang’s hideout. Makes sense, at least from what I am familiar with back in the Dockway of Magnimar. I cautiously tailed my prey to the area where the individual was going to meet up with others. Making my way to the roof, to a roof vent that was open, and hiding (with help from Rex), in an area where I can keep an eye on the area while the perpetrator that I tracked waits, while he stands around waiting for others to show up. It took about half an hour for another three people to make their way to the building and start a meeting with the one that I had tailed.

The meeting seemed to have been where the group were discussing other gangs in the area and how they had been lost in the decimation. I’m guessing that they are calling the event the decimation where people disappeared/disintegrated into thin air. They mentioned some groups named “Tiny Rascals”, “Nine Trey Gangsters”, “Lake Taylor Posse”, “La Raza”, “MS-13”, “Grape Street Crips”, “18th Street”, and “Latin Kings”, bit by bit and noting what each one had heard about each individual group and how their members had survived the Decimation. They never referred to their own gang by name, but I guessed that they were the “Painkillers” from what was written on the back of one of their jackets. After a bit of talking about the other gangs, they came up with the subject of talking about how some of the “Pepsi Boys” were caught a few days ago by the cops, but that they had not been released yet and no one had heard about how they were stupid enough to get caught in Old Huntersville.

After their discussion about the other gangs in the area, they got to the subject about different areas they had been casing, and what might be the best one to hit. The other three didn’t have much to offer, mainly that they had each found a few houses that seem to have been abandoned. The one who had been looking at the safehouse that I was living in indicated that there was a LOT of high-end items in the building, but that it was locked up and seemed to have been hit by the decimation, if the food that was left cooking in the crock pot and the other things left on are any indication. The other three seemed to agree with the one who had been looking in the safehouse’s windows, and that the four of them would hit the house after dark, after the scheduled drive through by the cops was done.

Then they started to snort some kind of medication or some other powder, probably a drug of some kind. Seeing this as an opportunity, I decided to jump down and take the three of them out. I readied my revolver, got in my proper stance, and chose a single one of the four to target first. With four of them, and how hard the fight was against the other three, when they were distracted, I realized that I was going to need to actually utilize my firearm in this fight. I decided to try to ensure that I would not kill any of them, but I would definitely look to keep myself, and Rex, alive and well first and foremost.

As I was falling, I aimed to land behind one of the four, activating my charm to minimize any possible injury from the fall, all while signaling to Rex to land on the other side of the group and attack them. I shot off an ultrasonic ray, one of my arcane effects that I can generate at will, to the one that I was landing behind. The ray of sound took on the aspect of fire common to the fighting stance that I had learned at David Drake’s school. The Thug, being completely surprised, fell unconscious from the attack, dropping to the ground as I landed. I shifted my focus from him to another of the thug as he fell, one of the two who had not been targeted by Rex.

Rex had landed on the other side of the group, behind the one who had spied on our safehouse, with a gust of wind, blowing all of the criminals powder off of the mirrors that had been on the crate that they were around, launching a belch of fire at the one that that spy, setting alit the man’s shirt, causing it to burn in a way very dissimilar to any fabric I was familiar with, almost melting and adhering itself to the man’s skin. While remaining drugged men were still recovering from the shock, including the one who was batting at the flames on his shirt who had been at the safehouse, I fired off another enhanced ultrasonic ray, this time further enhanced with a bit of shadow essence, at one of the other of these gang members. Rex followed it up with a bite on the collarbone of the man I had hit, causing him to scream out in pain before falling unconscious. The thug from the safehouse yelled something about there being a dragon, and the other one yelled something about me being a “super”, before they both started to fire wildly at us respectively. This brought my focus to the last remaining new criminal, the one who had the audacity to aim his pistol in my general direction, let alone pull the trigger at me.

I fired off my ultrasonic ray again, using my cesti covered hand for the targeting, and hit the target of my aggression, but not yet dropping this individual. Rex was thrown off by the rapport of the pistols that had been fired in the closed off space and missed when he tried to clamp down again on voyeur, flinching at the last second. I am lucky I had reflexively seen Rex miss his bite, because he put his body right in the way of the thug who he had hit with his fire breath’s gun. The thug was about to pull the trigger when I reflexively fired my own firearm to block the shot. The bullets collided in midair, and the angle of fire veered off enough to miss Rex completely, flying out through the open roof vent, while I dodged the other thug’s round fired at me.

Noting that we needed to end this quick, I yelled to Rex that same concept in the tongue of Dragons while I unleashed another ultrasonic ray, this time at the thug targeting me, the one who I had hit with last attack. My ultrasonic ray didn’t have nearly the impact of the previous one, and we barely managed to drop this foe with Rex’s assistance of a timely bite. The thug slipped gracelessly into unconsciousness as Rex bit him and shook. This left only the thug who has cased our safehouse, who responded in a drug fueled haze with another round fired off at Rex, which happened to miss by a naval mile. I responded back to this attack by hitting him with a quick ultrasonic retort, dropping him into blessed unconsciousness.

Quickly, Rex and I went between the people, checking to make sure none of them would die. With all of their wounds treated, I went about cleaning whatever traces I could of myself and Rex being here. With six rounds having been fired in quick succession here, I had no doubt that the “police” would be here soon. I tied the criminal sup with whatever I could find, again removed any fingerprints from whatever I had touched, and then set about removing anything I thought of as valuable. I still left their firearms, bereft of ammunition to prevent them from firing on any responders to the calls, and made sure that they had their handprints on their guns.

All that they had was more cash, jewelry, and similar previous things that the other thugs had, despite being from different gangs. I grabbed what I could of the loot and prepared to get away as soon as possible. Rex shrunk back down to his smaller size and flew up to the roof while I waited with the criminals, keeping watch over them until police arrived. Eventually, Rex informed me that there were a pair of police carriages showing up outside of the building. I waited, keeping an eye over the criminals, while I made renewed my oath of anonymity. The door busted open with the police yelling for everyone to not move and to keep my hands up. I did so, smiled, and disappeared, dimensionally hopping up to the roof, through the same roof vent that we had jumped through to start this, and then fled the scene, repeatedly using my ability to vanish for thirty seconds and dimensionally hopping again as I needed to get away from an area that the police were observing, and into a hidden area, before I made my way back to the safehouse.

Rex was there, waiting for me to open up the back of the safehouse. We both carefully went inside, and I moved all of the new items to the safehouse’s spare room, along with my adventuring gear. I gave Rex and myself a good once over, making sure that there wasn’t anything that I might have missed, wounds or otherwise, and put Rex to bed after congratulating him. I took the time to clean up all of my gear again. I had burned through all of my expendable magic to make it back to the house, and not be seen, but I figured it was for the best. Settling myself in for the rest of my night, I resolved spend tomorrow night actually finding out more information about the possible evidence methods, and maybe learn more about those gangs that were referenced.