He could have descended, neutralized the officers in seconds, and taken the weapon to his own cave, but Batman has a code: he doesn't attack the law without justification. To him, the weapon was "safe" in police custody.
Or so he thought.
With a fluid motion, he fired his grapple gun. The cable went taut, and his black silhouette disappeared between the skyscrapers, melting into the darkness from which he was born.
I exhaled the air I didn't know I was holding in my lungs as I watched the dark red dot move away and vanish. My hands trembled slightly. It wasn't fear; it was the side effect of an overdose of pure adrenaline.
"I was three minutes away from trying to negotiate with Batman," I whispered, and a nervous, almost hysterical laugh escaped my lips. "If I had stayed, I would have ended up in a cell in Blackgate or in a straitjacket at Arkham Asylum this very night."
My laughter died down, and I frowned.
"But what the hell is he doing outside of Gotham?" I thought, biting my lip. "If Batman is in New York, it means the 'variables' of this world are more broken than I thought. That is problematic."
I looked down at the street, where the patrol car was driving away with sirens blaring, taking my valuable Sonic Weapon to the District 4 Precinct.
Far from feeling defeated, a slow, calculating smile returned to my face beneath the mask.
Stealing from Batman is suicide. But stealing from the District 4 police... that's just a regular Tuesday.
"Thanks for the ride, officers," I said, turning around and vanishing into the shadows. "I'll be picking up my package soon."
I knew I didn't have much time. A.R.G.U.S. would come soon to claim their lost technology, but I counted on an unexpected ally: bureaucracy.
Between local police paperwork and the time it would take for the feds to be notified, I calculated the weapon wouldn't leave the precinct for at least 12 hours.
I had money. Lots of money. And in the underworld, money is the best superpower. With my dollars, I didn't buy weapons. I bought chaos.
I didn't wait. That same early morning I contacted three rival gangs and a group of radical anarchists operating on the periphery. I paid them in advance with a single condition: coordinated chaos.
"I want the city to burn," I ordered them with my distorted voice. "Burn squad cars. Smash luxury storefronts. Make noise. Make it look like the start of a civil war."
With barely a few hours since the robbery, and trusting that Batman would already be crossing the bridge back to Gotham to maintain his Bruce Wayne facade at dawn, hell broke loose just as the first rays of sun touched the city.
It was a choreography of destruction. 911 calls collapsed in minutes.
The Captain of the District 4 Precinct, desperate and overwhelmed, had to deploy every available officer, pulling those off duty, reserves, and even traffic cops to contain the three fronts of riots I had orchestrated far from his building.
Just as I predicted, the precinct was left operating with a "skeleton crew": only the receptionist, a couple of scared admin clerks, and empty cells.
It was my moment.
I approached the back of the building, activating my [Stealth]. I located the external fuse box and, with a pair of pliers I took from the Inventory, I cut the main line.
Snap.
The building plunged into darkness.
"The emergency system will take 120 seconds to boot up the diesel generator," I calculated. "Plenty of time."
Darkness was my ally. I moved through the silent corridors, my steps muffled by my Skill. The few administrative staff were fumbling for flashlights, leaving the path to the evidence locker clear for me.
I reached the door. Reinforced steel. Impossible to kick down, difficult to pick with lockpicks in such short time.
"I don't have time," I thought with calculating eyes.
I pressed myself against the cold door. Thanks to my [Tactical Map], I could see the outline of the sonic weapon I was after on the other side.
Since I still couldn't walk through walls, I opted for concentrated brute force. I opened the System Store.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Buy: Magnetic Thermite Bomb (Small). [Cost: 180 Gold]."
I attached the magnetic device over the lock and activated it. Hiss...
A blinding white light illuminated the hallway for a second. The thermite burned at thousands of degrees, melting the steel mechanism like hot butter. The door gave way with a metallic groan.
I leaped inside, dodging the molten metal dripping onto the floor. I ran toward the central cage, which had a simple padlock, and smashed it open with the butt of my pistol.
I grabbed the Sonic Weapon. It felt cold and heavy in my hands. "Come to papa."
[Store in Inventory].
Suddenly, I heard hurried footsteps in the hallway. The smell of ozone and burnt metal from the thermite had alerted someone.
"Who goes there?" shouted a trembling voice holding a flashlight.
Using my small size, I slid under an administrative desk just as the flashlight beam swept the entrance of the depot.
"Damn it, they've broken into evidence!" shouted the man, running inside.
That was his mistake and my chance. While he entered, I rolled out into the hallway. Right at that instant, the red emergency lights began to flash, bathing everything in an intermittent crimson hue.
I ran to the back exit and threw myself into the street. Outside, chaos reigned. Sirens in the distance, smoke from arson, and screams. Amidst that disorder, no one noticed a small shadow calmly walking away from the precinct, with a triumphant smile beneath the mask.
Ding! [Villainy Achievement: Architect of Disorder] Feat: You have outsmarted the local police and orchestrated massive civil chaos to cover your tracks. Reward: +560 Gold + 0.1 Charisma. Reputation Evolution: The underworld is starting to fear your name. You are no longer seen just as "The Transporter," but as a calculating madman who likes to watch the world burn.
As the days went by, I had to deal with a domestic problem: my caretakers started to get suspicious. I was always haggard and tired in the mornings, sometimes skipping breakfast to catch up on sleep, when I was supposed to have slept all night in my bed.
I had to tell another lie, one that would feed their institutional vanity.
"I'm working on advanced scientific research," I told them with my best face of innocence and misunderstood genius. "But I need more space. The noise from the other boys breaks my concentration, so I've decided to move my studies to an abandoned factory I found a few streets away."
The mention of the "abandoned factory" had the desired effect: panic. Of course, they would never let me go there.
But it worked in my favor. Believing they had a future Einstein under their roof and fearing I would escape to a dangerous place, the caretakers quickly offered me a way out.
"The basement," said the director. "You can use the old basement storage room. It's private, quiet, and safe. But don't leave the building."
I smiled inwardly. I had won.
They granted me the key to the old storage room. To maintain the facade and justify my time there, I had to clean up years of dust and cobwebs. I also spent some money buying materials, old microscopes, and second-hand science artifacts at pawn shops.
Justifying the materials as support from my private tutor and his friends.
Now it looked like the lab of a budding scientist.
But the important thing was that they no longer suspected. The "lab" gave me the perfect excuse to be awake all early morning doing my supposed experiments—when in truth I was escaping through another basement exit—and to sleep peacefully during the mornings, always promising to show up for lunch at noon.
In the afternoons, I continued my physical training. My Mixed Martial Arts master was surprised. He couldn't understand how a boy my age possessed such strength, agility, and discipline.
"You learn like a retired veteran in a kid's body," he told me once, watching how in a short time, I was on the level of kids several years older than me. "You have the mind and instinct of a predator."
But it was at night when everything got really interesting.
After thoroughly investigating the geopolitical map of crime in New York, I came to a conclusion: Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, controlled Manhattan with an iron fist. There, nothing moved without his permission.
But Queens... Queens was free. It was a chaos of disorganized gangs, small-time dealers, and unnecessary noise. There was no king. It was fertile and wild ground, waiting for a farmer who knew what to plant... and who to prune.
Little by little, I started building my organization from the shadows. I made a name for myself not as a leader, but as a "facilitator." An independent worker capable of solving logistical problems of weeks in a matter of hours. I started accumulating money, weapons, and drugs in my Inventory. My reputation grew so much that, occasionally, Wilson Fisk himself hired me for delicate transport jobs.
"You have talent, son," one of his lieutenants told me one night. "Mr. Fisk is interested. He wants you to join the organization formally."
I politely rejected the offer, but I knew I was walking on thin ice. The more of a name I made for myself, the more danger I was in. Fisk and the other crime bosses wouldn't tolerate such a powerful "independent variable" for long.
Whoever controlled me would control the fastest logistics in the world.
Paranoia became my best friend. I had to spend a fortune in gold (1,750 coins, almost all my savings, leaving me with a critical balance of 40 gold) to upgrade my [Tactical Map].
[Upgrade Complete: Tactical Map Level 5.4 ? Level 6.1 (Advanced Biometric Sensor)]
The system installed a new 3D augmented reality filter in my real-time vision, allowing me to see thermal targets and markers even through concrete walls and ceilings. The interface now classified every entity within a 500-meter radius with a precise color code:
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Green: Ally / Friendly (Includes Safe Route tracing).
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Blue: Civilian / Neutral.
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Yellow: Items of Interest (Quest/Loot).
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Red: Threat / Hostile.
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Violet: Mortal Danger / Supernatural.
With this new advantage, I established strict rules for working with me: "Only two people at the meeting point. No exceptions."
It was one of the best decisions of my life.
One night, I had a negotiation scheduled with a major mobster whose offer to join I had already rejected twice. The deal was simple: I would bring a shipment of recovered weapons. I arrived at the meeting place, an abandoned textile factory, an hour early. I stayed in the shadows, observing my map.
I expected to see two blue dots. What I saw was a constellation of red dots.
The factory was infested. With my 3D augmented reality update, I could see from my safe spot the snipers in the rafters, thugs behind crates, assassins at the exits.
It wasn't a meeting; it was an execution.
"So they want to play rough," I murmured.
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