God Hates A Gambler 5

“…s where you want to be?”

Cracked vinyl stuck to the back of his thighs, peeling away with a wet sound every single time the cab hit a pothole.

“Kid?”

Which, considering they were heading into the Narrows, meant that ugly little noise was pretty much its own soundtrack.

“Kid!”

“Huh?” Chance blinked up as the taxi driver shifted his weight, one hairy arm thrown over the headrest to look back through the scratched plexiglass divider. A look that was equal parts pissed and confused formed on his face as he stared at Chance, like what you had when you just stepped on a dead bird.

“I said…” The Italian man clicked his tongue. “This where you wanna be?”

“Uhhh…” Green eyes slid to the right to stare out the smudge-streaked window, the Narrows stretching out in all its condemned glory in front of the glass. Brown sludge leaking into the street from overfilled and abandoned trash bags piled high, the buildings themselves leaning against each other like drunks after a good night.

Not really but… He looked back at the driver and nodded. “Yeah. This is it.”

The driver’s heavy face did something complicated, hand rubbing at his five o’clock shadow as he looked Chance over, from the clean clothes to the thick grocery bags piled high on the seat next to him.

Finally, the man’s eyes slid back out to the street. “Huh…” 

Chance blinked back.

“If you say so.” The driver shrugged heavy shoulders, making it clear his job ended here. “Your funeral.”

Chance dug a hand into this pocket, bypassing the crumpled damp taped-together singles he’d been hoarding in his shoes for months and pulled free a freshly folded twenty. He slid the green paper under the narrow slot in the glass. “K-keep the change.”

The driver snatched the bill, eyeing the money in the light. He almost flinched as the cabbie did what he said, but Chance pushed down the urge to take it back and shoved the rusted door open with one shoulder. 

Summer Gotham heat hit like a shove, the air conditioning inside the car strong enough to make the ride manageable. June in Gotham was a specific brand of miserable, thick humid soup oppressive enough to make cheap clothes stick to your spine and grimy enough to make you want a shower after five minutes. 

Chance wanted to blame all the smog being pumped into the air, but he didn’t really know anything about how the weather worked anyway.

The Narrows didn’t help the equation, either, all that unbroken concrete and black asphalt baking under the midday sun; the stench of exhaust fumes and rotting garbage compacted tight at street level.

Five grocery bags triple-bagged tight, Chance hauled them up the cracked concrete steps to where his squat waited. Plastic handles shifted to one hand, he dug a shiny key out of his jeans and slid it into the deadbolt. The reinforced lock was as brand new as the key, a safety feature he’d been missing out on for a while, and he appreciated it even more as he pushed the way into his place and immediately locked it behind him.

Steel chain sliding in place for good measure, Chance turned around and let the cool air of the inside flow over him.

Home sweet fuckin’ home.

It’d been a lot sweeter over the last three weeks. 

Twenty-one whole days since he officially started running plays for Sportsmaster. Two solid weeks since that incredibly messy first job that turned a standard stash apartment in the Bowery into a crime scene.

According to what the boss had told him, the GCPD were dead convinced that some kind of major gang murder went down in that apartment, so much blood that they didn’t have any other guess what could have happened.

Those five guys who were shooting at him and trying to cut him open were sitting in holding cells on suspicion of major homicide, too.

Which, honestly?

Not my problem.

That the literal gallons of blood soaking the carpet technically belonged to Chance was a minor detail and he definitely wasn’t in any mood to stroll into GCPD and explain the details.

Not like he had any love for street bangers, anyway. 

Chance dropped the heavy bags onto the kitchen counter with a sigh and started unpacking his haul for today.

Real food.

A loaf of bread that wasn’t already half stale at the edges sat next to sliced turkey that wasn’t a weird kind of gray and right beside a bag of apples that weren’t already mushy from being in the back of a bodega for a month. 

Wild.

Sure, he spent the last three weeks risking his neck, taking hits on the regular, and getting introduced to all sorts of weapons on top of the repeated introductions to drywall by people way bigger than him.

But other than all the blunt-force trauma? Things had literally never been better.

Chance pulled a cold gallon of milk from the bag, eyes immediately flickering to the stamped expiration date just out of habit.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

June 10th. 

The second job from the boss was simple enough. Grab a runaway courier before he gets to local protection.

The mark was fast as they came, Ante had to give him that much.

Fast enough that he booked it through three blocks in a dead sprint, moving through the alleys of the Bowery like his life depended on making the drop. 

Chance had just been faster.

Super Jump was a hell of an advantage; a terrifying nauseating advantage.

One second, his boots were on the cracked asphalt, the next had the world shrink beneath him as he cleared three stories in a single sickening hop. Forty feet up, his feet dropped onto a gravel rooftop like he just skipped off the curb. 

The courier never even saw his shadow.

Which was crazy considering Chance had dropped on the guy straight from above. Gooning slotted right into his brain, the draw flooding him with a whole stack of violence and viciousness he didn’t have in him the day before. 

All of a sudden, he just knew things.

All sorts of things.

Like exactly how to pin a struggling shoulder, and the perfect way to armbar somebody who didn’t know their place, and the exact specific dead-eyed tone that made people believe you’d snap their index fingers backward if they kept kicking.

“Stay. Down. Capisce?”

The guy stayed the fuck down.

Enhanced Vitality sitting pretty and passive in the third spot meant the couple of wild elbows Ante took to the jaw and ribs didn’t slow him down at all. Hell, the bruises were already fading back to yellow by the time he dragged the cursing courier back to the boss.

Which meant a crisp set of hundreds from the boss. 

Five of them.

Easy money.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

June 13th. 

The next job ran messier, Sportsmaster sending him after another whole group on his lonesome again. Clear squatters of a smuggling hideout.

Way messier.

He didn’t have anything against squatters, considering the obvious, but a job was a job was a job.

Especially when it came from the boss.

And the job this time involved taking out six tweakers crammed tight into a rusted out storehouse that sure as hell wasn’t theirs. High as hell on whatever junk they shot up into their veins, and not a single one of them interested in packing out just because some skinny teen in a red bandana and bowtie told them their lease was up. 

Mind Blast made them change up pretty quickly.

Ante ducked a pipe, one hand reaching out to aim as two fingers went up to his temple.

“Gah!!”

The pipe clattered to the floor, the man tripping over himself as he took a migraine right to the brainpain. It wasn’t much and it wouldn’t last long, but it was all Ante had in him with the draw right now. The draw was supposed to be as strong as he was, and he didn’t really have all that much mental energy to spare. 

Either way, a migraine was still a migraine and the second guy went down as he caught the exact same psychic work-over. This time though, Chance layered it with a burst of light. 

Flash did its job as a blinding burst of light took both of them off guard, the migraine combined with enough light to blind had them running around screaming. 

Guy number one dropped to the floor, just groaning after a while.

Number two took himself out, running headfirst into a concrete support pillar.

The other four ran.

Aww, man. Ante’s face fell behind the mask as he didn’t even get to use the actual draw he’d been looking forward to. His actual ace in the hole, Ink Manipulation, sat unused in his set of draws; the Rare pull as cool as it sounded.

A solid whip of ink lashed out across the storehouse floor, wrapping tight around a sprinting squatter’s ankles and tripping the guy over; a full-sprint run turning into a faceplant on the concrete.

Definitely gonna miss this one. 

Either way, six hundred in his pocket made him feel better about it.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

June 18th. 

“Mother-!”

Put down a freelance bruiser who crossed a local fixer.

This one was… easy, actually.

Not because the guy was weak or anything. Nah, no way. 

The bruiser ran big, like actual heavy-weight big. 

Not brick-shithouse massive like Sportsmaster, but built wide enough to make Ante’s mouth go dry when the guy charged him in the parking garage. 

Unfortunately, Venom made the guy’s night suck hard.

Bandana tugged down, a thick glob of green spit flew from his lips and straight into the charging musclehead’s face. It stung the enamel on Ante’s teeth on the way out, but he couldn’t say it wasn’t worth it as the bruiser dropped to the concrete, screaming on his knees.

Oh don’t be a baby. Ante rolled his eyes as the guy pawed at his own, fat tears pouring down the big man’s face. Shit ain’t stronger than dollar store pepper spray.

Ante stepped to the side, ambient moisture pulled out of the damp night air and swirling around his hands. With a grunt, he sent it out in a line; a harsh whip straight across the guy’s back with enough force to drop him flat.

Lesser Hydrokinesis didn’t have all the oomph of his Explosion but it was still worth it.

Water Bubbles, on the other hand? Ante let a few float up from his palm, five fragile bubbles popping harmlessly against a concrete pillar. 

As trash as the draw said it was.

Still, though… Seven hundred dollars for a good thirty seconds of actual combat wasn’t bad.

Zero complaints.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

June 21st. 

That one was a test.

And not a pop quiz, either.

Ante knew the score as soon as the boss told him what he had to do.

A meta in Gotham was already a hard fight, but a meta who was already a bruiser running protection was someone that knew how to fight with what they had and was tough enough to not be scared.

The guy was muscle for a mid-level fixer, one that managed to piss off exactly the wrong kind of people. And the guy didn’t seem to mind, considering he was strong too.

Not tossing cars strong or nothing, but the guy could definitely put his fist through a brick wall if he tried. At least, that’s what the numbers Sportsmaster had on the guy said. 

Which meant Ante could end up being folded in half and half again if he wasn’t careful.

So when he pulled Arc, Third Arm Sash, and Hero’s Bandages… well, he wasn’t exactly happy about it. And risking another pull for some trash draws would only make him feel worse.

The fight ran brutal.

A fuckin’ nightmare on both sides.

Blue electricity crackled heavy through his forearms, Ante getting the jump on the guy as he pushed out a massive shock right into the bruiser’s chest as rain fell in thick sheets. The bright blue cloth of Third Arm Sash lashed out over his shoulder to wrap tight around the meta’s thick throat to yank him clean off balance.

Chance took hits, though. 

Grazing hits that felt like full-force hammer blows.

The kind of hits that cracked ribs and split the skin over his cheekbones. 

But Hero Bandages took over, white cloth erupting out of his skin and wrapping tight over the damage like it had its own instincts. The magic gauze fixed him up as soon as he even felt the hurt, Ante’s body repairing him as he kept swinging and shocking and choking.

By the end of it, he won.

Barely.

The meta-bruiser went down twitching in a puddle of rainwater, electric charge locking up his muscles as Ante limped out of the railyard looking like a mummy from head to toe.

One thousand dollars later, he got home with a smile on his face and blood in his teeth. Ow.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Milk and the last of the perishables found their way into the fridge — his fridge, stocked with his food that he paid for with his money — and Chance cracked open the plastic seal on a cold juice box.

Apple. The good, name-brand kind. Not the generic sugar syrup that stuck to your teeth.

Sipping on the juice, Chance dug his phone out of his hoodie pocket; the piece of brand new glass and plastic staring back at him. He’d bought the thing a few days back to replace the one someone had lifted off him while he was sleeping in a diner booth back in the ass end of February. 

Walking right into a corporate store and signing a whole contract for a pre-paid data plan had been weird, but he’d done it.

Mostly because he needed an actual phone, something that wasn’t just a burner.

Let’s see if this goes as bad as I figure.

With a sigh, Chance dialed the ten digits from memory, hitting the green icon and raised the cold glass up to his ear.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

“Hellooo~ooo?”

A kid’s voice tumbled out of the tiny speaker; high, bright and almost sing-song enough to ease out the Gothamite accent. 

Chance couldn’t help his smile. “Hey, Stephie.”

“Cousin Chancie!” The ten-year-old’s voice spiked even higher. “You got a phone!”

“Yeah, I got a phone.” Chance leaned back against the fridge, smile getting wider and wider despite himself. “Your dad around?”

“Nope.” She popped the ‘p’ hard enough to clip the microphone. “Daddy’s at work.”

Of course he is. Uncle Arthur was never around when he needed to talk. “Can you get your mom on the phone?”

“Uh-huh! Hold on!”

The phone clattered against something hard, a voice shouting in the distance before a different deeper set of lungs spoke from the other end. “Chance?”

“Hey, Aunt Crys.” His smile fell away, Chance holding back a sigh already. “Just wanted to call and let you know you can tell Uncle Arthur not to worry about making space on the couch for me. I’m doing okay.”

Silence stretched over the line, his Aunt Crystal quiet as she simply breathed over the line.

Then…

“Oh. That’s… that’s good, Chance.” She cleared her throat, the tired rasp in her voice almost making her sound relieved. “Arthur’s been talking a lot about how he needed to talk to you about all… all that.”

Uh-huh. Sure he was. “Yeah, I figured.” Chance took another sip from the juice box, eyes on the peeling wallpaper. “Anyway, I’m good. Got a steady job, got a place to stay and all that. Doing good for myself.”

Real good.

“I’m glad you landed with both feet, sweetie. You’re… you’re a good boy, Chance.”

“Thanks.” Chance swallowed hard, the juice suddenly tasting a bit bitter. “Tell Stephie I said bye.”

“I will.”

The line went dead with a soft click, dead air in his ear.

Chance pulled the phone back, staring at the black screen before he set it back down on the counter. A sigh left him.

“I don’t know why you thought that would go any different.”

Chance flinched hard, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum as he twisted around. 

Massive arms crossed over his chest, Sportsmaster stood at the bottom of the stairwell.

“Jesus!” Chance pressed a shaking hand to his chest, heart kicking through his ribcage. Green eyes flicked over to the locked door, untouched chain still in place.

“You should get a clue, kid.” Sportsmaster chuckled his way. “Your uncle doesn’t give a shit about you.”

Chance shook his head. Yeah… He’d known the man his whole life enough to know Uncle Arthur thought he and his mom and pretty much every one on that side of the family were white trash. Not important, though.  “B-boss, you know I got a phone now, right? I know you got the number.”

“I know.” 

“So maybe… call?”

“You can ignore a call.”

Chance blinked, mouth hanging open as he stared at the brick wall hanging just outside his kitchen. “…but I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” Sportsmaster’s shoulders shifted. “But you can.”

Chance opened his mouth.

His brain ran the logic and hit a dead end, before immediately giving up. Yeah, okay. Fair point.

“Anyway.” Sportsmaster pushed off the wall, boots heavy on the floorboards. “Got a new contract.”

Chance straightened up immediately, juice box falling to the counter. “What’s the play?”

Sportsmaster didn’t answer right away.

But behind the plastic of the hockey mask, Chance could have sworn the massive bastard actually smiled.