God Hates A Gambler 1

Life was simple.

Simple didn’t mean good, though.

But life was simple and it had some simple rules to it.

One of those was that when the chips were down — when the deck was stacked — and you had literally no card worth playing left in your hand, you ended up doing some spectacularly stupid shit.

That was a simple rule of fuckin’ nature.

Some people wanted to lie and say it wasn’t.

Usually the kind of people with actual bank accounts. They liked to pretend they were above all that for some reason. 

Like being broke as a joke didn’t rewire your brain. Life was a hustle and in Gotham, everybody and their mother knew there was nothing noble about scraping in the dirt. No, you did whatever the hell it took to keep some money in your pocket for five good minutes.

Sometimes that whatever was a three-card monte on the corner of 4th and Pike, letting the mark win twice before taking his rent money. And then, some other times, it was sprinting across Gotham rooftops at almost three in the morning with a stolen Scarecrow canister rattling around inside a makeshift pocket dimension sitting right behind your ribs.

Not a metaphor, by the way.

An actual pocket dimension.

The canister sat inside Ante with a dull pressure, like swallowing a golf ball, sitting somewhere right in front of his spine. It didn’t hurt, not really. But every time his combat boots slammed against the tar-paper roofing, the phantom weight hitched and shifted just a bit, dragging his center of gravity just an inch off every time.

And that wasn’t the only problem on his plate.

The police helicopter swept another pass overhead, heavy propellers beating the air loud enough to make him flinch. I swear to God, GCPD never cares this much about anything. He could have sworn the donut-eaters had the Batman do everything for them, anyway.

But apparently, tonight they had decided to be on his ass in particular.

Ante ducked back against a wall as a wash of white light cut the smog two buildings back, the beam catching the edge of a rusted water tower.

C’mon, Chance. He gripped tight to the wall until the searchlight kept going. Watch your six, man.

Close.

Way too close.

Breaking into a run again, Ante vaulted over an AC unit that probably hadn’t spun a fan blade since the nineties, rusted metal flaking off against the palms of his gloves. Pushing himself as hard as he could, the teenager hit a fire escape hard enough to make the whole thing groan, iron complaining as he yanked his lanky ass up to the next level.

…fuck.

The word almost came out a hiss before he bit it back, staring up at the completely wrecked ladder leading nowhere higher than halfway up. Fire escape would have made this so much easier. 

True, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Ante palmed the side of the roof, hands sticking to the brick in a way that physics would say shouldn’t work. 

Shouldn’t work, but did.

At least for another fifteen minutes. Give or take.

There was a reason Wall-Crawler was his favorite draw of the last few days, and it was mostly because it was just so cool. A good boost to his strength, and extra agility on top of a power perfect for wall-climbing? Who wouldn’t have fun with that? 

Only problem was, he’d already had a bit too much fun with it before tonight’s job. How was I supposed to know I’d need it tonight? It came as a surprise, honestly, but by then it was already too late to complain. Hell, by now, the power was running on absolute fumes, pushing down to the red, that familiar hollow ache building behind his ribs telling him just as much.

The mental slot holding the power — one of three — was stretched thin and ready to give already, and he didn’t even need to track it to do that. It was already showing on the outside, the grip on his hands slipping just a little bit against the brick. Fuck. Ante kept pushing higher, climbing his way up anyway, because there wasn’t really much else to do. What, like maybe fifteen minutes of gecko-grip left? Maybe half that if he pushed himself too hard, and that would dump him right back to baseline.

Which meant sticking to piss-scented alleys trying to dodge the donut-eaters on the ground.

Double fuck.

Boots hit concrete for the second dozenth time in the last ten minutes, Wall Crawler helping him out with just enough extra spring to clear a six-foot gap between a tenement and a textile factory that had been dead since before he learned his ABCs. 

A jump that would have cost him his legs or maybe his life — without the power — was left behind him without a second thought, Ante pushing forward toward the Narrows. Breathing heavy even with the boost, Ante pulled in air that managed to taste like damp rot and car smoke. I need a better mask, man. 

Not to say that he wanted to give up the red bandana. Even though it was just a piece of cloth, it did a good enough job covering his mouth and nose while also looking cool. He couldn’t really say the same for the black swim goggles dragging his hair down and thick with fog at the edges of his vision. 

Thrift-stores never had the best options or the best quality, especially for a costume.

Everything else he had on from top to bottom — black vest over a wrinkled button-up, black dress pants that rode too high on the ankle, heavy combat boots, a red clip-on bow tie digging into his Adam’s apple — had cost him maybe fifty bucks, fifty-five if he counted boxers and socks.

Clearance racks, thrift stores and Salvation Army bins that smelled like old people had helped him put together his perfect look — card dealer at a shitty casino.

Honestly? He’d nailed it first try.

Before he could pat himself on the back anymore, the sound of rotors thudding the sky came too close as the helicopter swung wide, searchlight painting the industrial district in a blinding white.

Rough gravel bit through dress pants as Ante immediately dropped flat against the rooftop, eyes wide and head empty. Son of a- The scrape on his knees was gonna be a bitch to deal with when he got back to the squat — unless he got lucky enough to land a healing draw on his next pull — but Ante bit back the instinct to curse as he pressed tight to the deep shadow of a rooftop wall. Heart hammering, he didn’t dare flinch as he waited for the light to fully pass.

Steady. His tongue slid over his front teeth, the taste of a shitty dollar energy drink from this morning still there. Just… just gotta get to the drop. Get to the drop and you get paid.

His fixer was ‘one of the good ones’.

At least that was what people said when he asked around. 

Ricky K; he’d met the guy in the back of a diner that probably wasn’t making most of its money off food. Asking around for a ‘job’ had the waitress of his favorite spot had him come to the back a few days ago and then he got offered this same gig.

The details had him wanna pull back at first but Ante was already all-in the second Ricky told him the payout. 

Two thousand dollars.

That was the deal.

Two fat stacks for a very specific item sitting in the evidence locker of Midtown GCPD. One canister of Scarecrow’s prototype fear gas from a recent raid of one of the psycho’s hideouts was currently sitting in that lockup waiting for transfer to some federal black site. A transfer that he was supposed to make sure wouldn’t happen.

Ricky had given him all the intel; shift rotations, blind spots, everything but where all the bathrooms were. The fixer didn’t ask questions about how he expected a homeless seventeen-year-old to pull it off.

Ante didn’t give him any answers.

The searchlight finally passed with its last sweep, afterimages from the glare bright enough to make him wince even behind his fogged goggles.

With a grunt, Ante pushed himself up, boots finding traction as he kept moving.

The job was supposed to be simple enough, as simple as stealing from the cops could get at least. Get in, get the nightmare juice, get out. 

Two thousand dollars for maybe five minutes of actual work. 

Two thousand meant a lot, but mostly it meant food that wasn’t heated up in a corner store microwave. 

So he did the job.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Crawling up the outside of GCPD Midtown at two in the morning was an insane idea but Wall-Crawler made it almost easy. The power was an all-around boost, more than just a sticky body; the top-up to his coordination, inner-ear and physicals had him moving like a gecko on meth.

That made it easy to scale the building, already halfway up in under two minutes, with all fours against sheer concrete. Even through gloved fingers and combat boots, he found perfect purchase on smooth limestone that shouldn’t have supported a hundred-forty pounds of underfed teenager. 

Nothing like his first ever set of draws, though.

That first day, his birthday, when the powers kicked in and kept him from getting his teeth kicked down his throat in an alley, he’d pulled something that granted enough stupid monkey strength to one-hand a two-hundred-pound dumpster like it was a helium balloon. 

Playing around with it for a full eight hours meant it burned out that same night, but still…

Nice while it lasted.

Wall-Crawler wasn’t that kind of raw juice. But it did the trick.

Meaning it was good enough to let him slip in through a fourth-floor window that nobody bothered fixing the latch for. Pulse pounding in his throat, Ante had ducked under camera arcs Ricky had mapped out perfectly and made it to the evidence locker without tripping a single silent alarm.

Ante pressed his hand to the reinforced cage lock, focusing hard on his second draw of the week to take care of the job for him.

Explosion.

It was only a day old, a pull he’d made a good three days after the last one guttered out, but it was still one of the coolest and most annoying powers he’d pulled so far. 

Case in point, his hand already started protesting, fingers throbbing as he triggered a burst as controlled as he could make. Small enough to avoid setting off any alarms, the flare of bright orange force and heat was still enough to blast the tumblers to slag from the inside out. Son of a-

He forced his mouth shut, biting his bottom lip as he shook his tingling hands, angry bursts of pain shooting up his arms all the way to his elbows. But the door swung open with whining hinges, and it didn’t take long before he spotted what exactly he was here for; one thermos-full of Scarecrow’s OG-brand trauma-poison sitting pretty in a plastic evidence bag.

Canister in hand, he pushed it up against his chest, the canister disappearing right into the weird pocket dimension that came with Storage, a space carved out somewhere inside his biology.

That done, all that was left was to make his way out.

Which was easier said than done.

He was already halfway out the fourth-floor window when some officer on the graveyard shift decided to walk right out the bathroom, hands unwashed and eyes wide.

“FREEZE!”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

It only took one shout and a pulled gun before his last half-hour became all searchlights and radio chatter and running for his life.

After that, all searchlights and radio chatter and running.

Ante’s boots planted down on the gravel-covered roof of a boarded-up brownstone, as he bent over to let himself breathe for a good thirty seconds. Wall-Crawler sputtered out entirely, the slot rolling back to empty as the enhanced body started to fade bit by bit.

His lungs were already burning, but this… this just made it worse.

Two powers left from his last set of pulls.

His Storage draw still held the Scarecrow thermos, the thing occupying real-estate in some fake-space in his chest. Explosion was still a little at maybe 3/4ths charge, the draw partially depleted from the lock job and the time he spent practicing with it in the first place. 

He wasn’t surprised it was already that low anyway. It seemed like powers like that, the more obvious and the more powerful, drained way faster with each use. Whether it was Flame Hands or Explosion, stuff that pushed out energy were even worse with a charge.

Jesus… still… He wheezed out, hands on his knees. Still getting used to this.

Three months after getting powers, he was already proving all the stereotypes about metas right. Even down to the whole ‘dressing up like a weirdo to commit federal crimes’ bit.

Three months since the night a hustle went completely sideways. Three months since something inside his head pulled hard, and the first card turned over.

It was simple enough, definitely didn’t take him that long to figure it out. No more than two… maybe three full weeks, honest. Three slots, nine pulls a week, and every draw eventually burned out depending on how much he used it and how hard he pushed it.

His third-ever draw, and a bunch of the others, had been some kind of strength enhancement. That same third draw in his first set of pulls didn’t do anything weird but it did make him strong enough to toss two hundred pounds of solid wood straight up. A bunch of others had done the same, all in their own way; one even giving him muscles the size of watermelons.

None of them lasted longer than a whole day, though.

Thing was, a bunch of those draws stacked up and left something behind, though.

Not much, but enough that he could still lift maybe fifty pounds more than he could before, as long as he really planted his feet and pushed himself.

Not even in the same zip code as the real thing, but still proof that the powers weren’t entirely disposable.

He started treating the whole setup like card counting after that; tracking the pulls, and trying to keep to the patterns. All of it had gone down to setting up this whole exact routine, a whole month of practice to land his first job.

And, apart from one little chase, it had all turned out pretty well.

Just gotta get paid. Because Ricky still had to give him his cash. Wonder if I can get it in all fives or n—

“You’ve got something that belongs to me.”

Ante spun, gravel crunching loud under his combat boots as his balls jumped straight into his throat. What the…

Someone was on the rooftop.

Someone he was pretty sure wasn’t there five seconds ago.

A very big someone. 

Gray hockey mask covering the entire face, the guy didn’t need it to be intimidating as hell, considering he was built like he made brick shithouses. Ante wasn’t even sure the guy could make it through a normal door with shoulders like that. Jesus.

On top of that, the guy was wearing a costume, which meant he definitely was not here to negotiate a buyout.

“H-hey, hey, man…” The words slipped out before he could stop them, Ante already trying tot talk him down like he was a mark that wanted his money back. 

Before he could get another word out, the man in the mask took a single step forward, heavy boots making zero sound on the gravel.

Aw, man. Ante leaned back, throat tightening as his fingers flexed with sparks at his sides; Explosion ready to go. I’m gonna have to fight.