God Hates A Gambler 3B

Flash Grenade
[Common Ability]

The fuck do I need a flashbang for? One green eye twitched at himself as the name of the power popped into his head, the awareness of what it could do settling into his bones. The name pretty much said it all. I’m a human bomb right now. I can flash and bang alredy. 

Flash Grenade was as simple a power as he’d ever gotten, if a little bit flashier than his usual draws. A ball of hard light he could throw and make explode, exactly with the same output of a military flashbang.

Apparently, it also did ‘extra damage’ to ‘dark enemies.’

Whatever the actual hell that meant. 

Vampires? Shadow-monsters? Black people? Chance bit back a hiss as he threw his head back and stared at the ceiling. “The fuck am I gonna do with this?”

His voice hit the bathroom tiles and bounced around a bit, before he let his head hang one more time. Ignoring the crick in his neck, Chance stared at his bruised reflection, waiting for the mirror to offer a punchline.

It didn’t.

Fuck. He bit back a grunt as he licked his teeth, the taste of blood on his tongue again. One more… one more? What’s today? 

Yesterday was Wednesday, which meant…

Week’s almost over. So, he could afford at least one more pull.

He’d already had six pulls this week counting the shitty grenade, and three more draws were waiting to be used. One more can’t hurt, right? Yeah, definitely not, as long as he could make them last till midnight Saturday.

Eyes closed again as Chance pulled on the same slot where Flash Grenade was sitting pretty and useless..

The slot rolled again, the wheel spun, and the deck shuffled again, too many choices for him to even see or track flitting by until…

Finally…

He pushed off the sink, ribs popping a sharp complaint, and took a breath deeper than he had since the moment he woke up. Eyes opened up as a few of his little aches and pains eased off to nowhere and Chance gave the beat-up kid in the mirror a little smile. Not bad.

Cardio
[Common Trait]

A trait.

A trait was good. Nothing amazing, but considering how his lungs were working better and his heart beat was as strong as his best day, it was definitely nothing worth whining over.

Plus, traits lasted longer too.

With a sigh, Chance stripped the rest of the outfit off. The heavy combat boots, the high-water dress pants, the boxers, the socks. All of it hit the floor in a dirty pile he would deal with later.

Maybe. 

Probably not.

The gray hoodie he pulled from his closet and over his head ran two sizes too big, cuffs frayed into loose threads. Black sweatpants hung loose on his hips, fabric stained over the knee with something viscous he never bothered trying to identify.

It was already past noon from the sounds outside. Way past noon.

The sun hung high outside, weak daylight filtered by smog spreading into the room. The second Chance was fully dressed, his stomach decided to remind him it hadn’t been filled since yesterday with a loud growl.

Yeah, yeah.

He made his way down the narrow wooden stairs to the first floor, each step a refresher lesson in exactly why taking blunt-force from a man twice your size sucked. As he finally hit the bottom landing, Chance didn’t even bother turning his head to look at the fridge.

He knew the exact inventory waiting in there.

A fat stack of nothing, topped up by maybe a plastic bottle of generic ketchup and a half-jar of pickles.

With a sigh, Chance walked into what was theoretically a living room, the couch occupying the space a nightmare on its own. Upholstery stained a dark brown by God-knew-what, rusted metal springs poked out through cushions fighting against all odds to stay close to comfortable.

They were losing, but they still fought anyway. No matter what, sitting was still better than standing. Chance dropped his weight onto the cushions with a heavy grunt, letting his head tilt back to stare at the water-damaged rings painting a map across the ceiling plaster.

No food.

No money.

No job.

Well… No paid job.

Don’t worry, kid. I’ll find you.

The big bastard’s voice drifted back up as Chance’s empty stomach twisted. Yeah, good luck with that, old man.

Sportsmaster didn’t have the address. Hell, Chance didn’t even have an address. Add that to the fact that the guy never saw his actual face with the red bandana and the swim goggles in the way. 

No government name. No birth certificate. The guy didn’t know the squat and didn’t know shit. I’m safe.

Chance rubbed a hand over his face, only to wince as the base of his palm scrubbed too hard against the deep purple bruise taking up space on his jaw. Right, let’s get some food.

He forced his weight off the couch, ignoring another complaint biting at his sides again. With another sigh, he shoved his hands deep in his hoodie pockets and headed for the front door.

The Narrows looked exactly the same as yesterday.

Shitty.

Crumbling brick rowhouses leaning against, plywood covering the windows that had glass in them at one point. Black plastic trash bags piled high on the street, brown fluid leaking into the gutters and down the storm drains. Nobody bothered to turn their heads over to the teenager limping his way down the street, definitely not the few locals shuffling past on the cracked sidewalk. 

That was the only real benefit of the Narrows. Everyone breathing in this shitty little part of Gotham City was too busy trying to not get knifed to worry about you.

The rubber soles of his sneakers slapped the pavement as Chance kept walking, letting his thoughts roll backward day by day and week by week as he avoided the immediate problem of his empty stomach.

January.

That was the month the entire board completely flipped.

It was hard enough in life without a leg-up.

Especially hard when your parents were the same legs kicking you back down every single fucking time you tried to do better. His barely-there day-drinking, hot-boxing, can’t-keep-the-rent-together-if-it-fucking killed them parents. 

They changed the locks on the apartment the same afternoon he caught a suspension from the high school, when the random drug-sniffing dog hit his locker for weed. Funny how he was getting blamed for shit that was entirely their fault, considering they blasted the cramped two-room with mid every single night. 

On top of that, he couldn’t exactly wash the heavy skunk smell out of his cheap hoodies when nobody put quarters in the laundry jar for three weeks.

He tried explaining the physics of secondhand smoke to them, tried running the simple logic into their heads.

They didn’t care. You’re seventeen, Anthony. Figure it out. 

So he figured it out.

His friends helped him out as long as they bothered to care, which meant a few weeks of sharing a room in a couple places till parents found out and sent him packing. Then his ‘friends’ helped him out too, with a month or so of couch-surfing in various traphouses. 

Chance put a quick stop to that after somebody pulled a gun on him ‘cause nobody told the guy there was somebody knew in the space. 

The rest of the time he made do the best he could; sleeping upright in all-night diners, snoring in the stiff plastic chairs of Gotham General’s waiting room until security caught wise and tossed him back to the curb. 

Those three months weren’t idle either. He was busy doing what he did best; hustling his ass off to make money. Running street cons, palming wallets, playing the marks on the boardwalk, doing whatever sketchy math it took to keep fifty dollars rolled up in his pocket.

And then the calendar hit his birthday, the Red Sticks cornered him in the alley, Chance pulled the slots.

And just like that, the rules of the universe completely changed.

Still funny though, how the game changed and he still ended up on the losing end anyway. 

The bodega was claustrophobic, tube lights buzzing and half-way to flickering against ceiling tiles. The guy working the register behind the bulletproof glass didn’t even look up from his phone when the door chimed, or even when Chance moved through the narrow aisles.

Bad move.

Storage came in handy here, even with the cameras and the mirror overhead.

It didn’t do much to stop him from reaching and stashing away a couple family-size bag of chips while looking like he was just rifling around for something. It definitely couldn’t keep him from vanishing up some drinks, a bunch of candy bars and a few other little small things that wouldn’t look too obvious. In the end, all Chance went to the front with was a medium-sized bag of off-brand chips, two heavy chocolate bars, and a two-liter of orange soda that was probably radioactive for how cheap it was. 

He slid a crumpled tenner under the glass slot, grabbing the change and calculated the new total he had to make last for another month until he could find a good hustle or a new job.

Either way, the local library sat three blocks over.

Chance spent the entire walk there trying not to think about how spectacularly stupid the rooftop encounter had been.

Sportsmaster.

As soon as he pushed through the heavy glass doors of the library, Chance found an empty computer terminal with a sticky keyboard, and started typing away for more info on the guy..

The search didn’t take long.

Sportsmaster wasn’t just some local Gotham freak with a gimmick that Batman brawled with on a slow Tuesday. The guy’s Whizipedia page was a scrolling nightmare of international alerts that went back too many decades to make sense. Jesus H Christ, man. Wanted in fifteen different countries. 

Elite-level mercenary work. 

Major assassinations. 

Cartel enforcement.

Active since the late eighties.

Chance paused at that one, fingers hovering over faded white keys as he ran the mental math as quick as he could. The eighties. That’s… 

That was thirty years. Thirty fucking years of supervillain mega-murder-kill bullshit. The guy had to be, what, fifty? Fifty-five?

Which made no fucking sense.

Sportsmaster didn’t move like someone about to collect Social Security. No bad knees on someone that could jump off a three-story building like it was three steps. That massive hand gripped tight to his collar didn’t feel like it was low on calcium when he one-handed Chance into the air last night. 

That was some bullshit right there.

Meta genetics? Super-steroids? Good living? I don’t know, man.

Chance scrolled through three more articles, skimming the text for any mention of whatever powers or enhancements Sportsmaster could have had because nothing normal explained the raw mass and muscle the guy seemed to throw around. Eventually, the headache behind his eyes won the argument against his curioisty, and he closed all the browser tabs slowing down the old computer.

The sun was already dropping behind the skyline by the time he pushed back out onto the street, smog bruising the sky an ugly purple-orange.

Chance cracked the plastic seal on the orange soda, sipping it as he walked the blocks back to the squat.

The squat was completely dark when he shouldered the front door open, light cutting in from the streetlamps outside in thin stripes through the gaps in the window boards.

Chance headed straight for the kitchen, plastic bag of junk food swinging in his left hand and the heavy bottle of soda gripped in his right.

He took another long sip of the orange sugar as he pulled out everything he’d pocketed from Storage onto the counter. With a sigh at the literal weight off him, he reached out to grab the stained handle of the refrigerator door.

“Hey, kid.”

Orange soda sprayed out, a toxic mist coating the entire surface of the white fridge.

The bag dropped from his hand, chips crunching against the linoleum as he spun around. His fingers were already burning, Explosion ready to go off against… against…

Sportsmaster.

The big bastard himself stood perfectly still in the dark corner of the kitchen, massive arms crossed casually over the thick chest as he leaned back against peeling wallpaper like he owned the place.

Chance’s heart slammed against the back of his ribs as his mouth opened.

“…hey b-boss.”