Angelo
Evening
The Docks
When I was finally able to push myself out of the kneeling position, each and every muscle in my body was stiff and aching from the cramped space of the trunk. My throat felt dry and scratchy from chanting for sixty straight minutes in an enclosed vehicle filled with smoke, but all discomfort was easily ignored when my squinting eyes spied the culmination of an hour-long ritual casting.
My raven. Corvo.
It preened at me from the smoldering remains of burnt herbs and coal, its smooth little head twitching left and right as it scanned me in the same way I scanned it. Dark, compact, and adorably feathered, I'd chosen the perfect form for my Familiar's first summoning. I couldn't fly - yet - and while Sal wasn't some hulking brute, he also wasn't the stealthiest person in the world. A raven, though… It was dark, it was sleek, and it could fly faster than most humans could run.
In a city where we were surrounded by potential rivals on all sides, possessing a reliably sneaky scout was a godsend. The fact that it was a common bird was just icing on the cake.
"Bravo, Corvo…" I cooed softly, reaching out and stroking a curved finger down the side of the raven's plumage.
"Bravo. Braaavo!" It's high-pitched, scratchy voice chittered in response, shaking its head back and forth.
A smile tugged on my lips.
Interestingly enough, there was no need for me to verbally speak to or command Corvo. Now that I've summoned it as my Familiar, there was a powerful magic link tethering my soul to the raven's. I couldn't hear its thoughts, as it wasn't sentient in that way, but it could definitely hear mine. Even now, as I silently stroked my finger down the smoothness of its feathers, Corvo's beady eyes were dead stuck on mine, an unsettling awareness glinting within those tiny crimson pools.
'Fly onto my shoulder,' I mentally directed the spirit disguised as a bird.
With a lazy flap of its impressive wingspan, Corvo lifted itself from the brazier and swept around the side of my head in a dexterous arc, letting out one last 'bravo' before alighting carefully on my right shoulder. I hadn't specified which one on purpose, having willed it to be the right one.
Another thing to note; it acknowledged subconscious desires as well. Impressive.
Settling back down on the cool metal floor, I leaned back against the thin metal wall separating the back of the van from the cabin and urged Corvo towards the double doors. There were a couple more things I wanted to test with our connection, but one of them involved having prepared a touch spell - something I hadn't done this morning. Thus, the only available option I had left was figuring out exactly how sharing its senses worked.
"Manus." I whispered, pressing my thumb snug against my palm, extending my right hand forward, and clenching my remaining fingers down to cover said thumb. A feeling not unlike static electricity trailed down the back of my neck, raising goosebumps along my arms, and I felt the magic in my gut ooze through my pores and shove its hooks into the fabric of reality.
I was getting used to the sensation.
Right in front of the dors, a large, spectral hand - glowing an ominous violet color - materialized in thin air. Controlling the limb was even simpler than commanding Corvus to move; I glanced at the handles to the doors, and without me needing to do more than look, the ghostly hand hovered forward, gripped the handles firmly, and shoved the doors wide open. Immediately, the brisk night air flooded into the cabin, bringing with it the stench of urban decay, unwashed bodies, and motor oil.
Corvus wasted no time in darting out in the darkness, and my Mage Hand swiftly pulled the doors shut in turn.
"Alright now, little raven…" I murmured, closing my eyes and slowly, gently letting out a breath. I could feel my Familiar, perching calmly on the roof of the van, but there was an obvious divide between knowing, subconsciously, where it was, and directly sharing its senses. The spell detailed that I would be blinded and deafened when embodying the bird, but had given no further instructions on how to actually perform the action.
Fortunately, it was no harder than delving into my mind - something I was already familiar with due to my mental spellbook - and slotting my… being into that connection.
Instantly, I felt still, all-encompassing darkness consume me.
The next time I opened my eyes, it was to a city that looked uncomfortably HD. I'd never needed glasses before, but the vision of a bird was on a completely different level than that of a human's. I could nearly see the entire street behind me- behind us, despite facing forward, and the dim shadows of the late evening were nearly nonexistent to the brightness of our avian gaze.
That wasn't even getting into the multitude of sounds that we could now hear that hadn't been apparent when we were inside of the van. Our head turned, feathers ruffling, and the distant, yet unmistakable sound of bed springs squeaking from the apartment behind us filtered through one ear and out the other. There were groans, too - masculine ones, feminine ones. Somewhere a block over, someone was sprinting down an alleyway, their sneaks squeaking and squelching with soggy water. Even more distantly, a man's guttural scream was abruptly cut off before it could even fully begin.
And that was after the sound of gunshots ripped through that same area.
The much closer slam of a door brought our attention back down to the van. Sal had stepped out of the driver's side and was moving around to the back. He glanced up at us, at our perch, raised an eyebrow, but ultimately decided that we were harmless.
We wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a choked-off 'Bravo'.
It was only when he threw the van doors open that we closed our beady red eyes, and-
I gasped, coming back into myself. Instantly, everything felt… lesser. Bleaker. But with that dullness came relief, because, holy shit being a bird was fucking overstimulating. I could already feel the pounding in the back of my head start up again, but I focused my attention on the puzzled face of my brother, staring at me from the opened doors.
"Did you have a nice vision quest?" Sal asked, a genuinely curious note in his voice. "See anything interesting? Spot me when I was picking my nose outside?"
I didn't see him doing so, but I wouldn't put it past him to have done it. When we were kids, one of the things he'd do to get a rise out of me was flick boogers my way. Thankfully, he'd grown well out of that habit, having left it a decade or so in the past. Didn't mean I liked the reminder of it, though.
"No," was my denial. "I did test out my Familiar a bit, to see what came of it."
"Anything cool?"
"It's…" It was hard to explain the feeling of inhuman senses compared to my painfully mundane human ones. Birds had some negatives, like the lack of opposable thumbs. But Corvo's sense of sight and hearing put anything I'd experienced as a human to shame, in terms of the fidelity and detail it revealed. "It's a lot to experience all at once. Find Familiar might just be one of my new favorite spells, though."
There were a lot of things that bridged the gap between the game mechanics of D&D, and the realities of life, that surprised me. How useful certain ritual or utility spells were in reality was consistently proving itself to be one of them. Did I even need to mention my love affair with Prestidigitation?
"Plus," I smiled, holding out my hand. Barely even a second later, Corvo swooped in through the open door, barely missing Sal's ear as it landed gently on the tip of my index finger. "Corvo's rather cute, isn't he? Bastard's a fiendish spirit, so he doesn't shit either. Perfect pet."
There was a pause, before Sal stared long and hard at the raven. "You didn't…open up Earth-Bet to like, getting the attention of Fiends by doing that, did you? Because that'd be bad."
I tilted my head back, resting it against cool metal. My smile turned bemused. "You haven't seen Cursed Spirits running around the city and eating babies, have you? I'm fairly certain our magic is one-way, brother."
It was an understandable worry, for sure, though I was ninety-nine percent sure we were safe. The other one percent was prepared to become Doom Slayer.
He shrugged. "Fair enough. If anything does happen, I suppose we'll just have to deal with it when it comes. Skidmark sent us the meeting location, but I can't imagine he'll be dumb enough to come alone."
Another fair presumption, though given what I'd heard about the man, he might be dumb enough not to bring all of his Capes. But if he didn't have any reason to think us a threat, he likely wouldn't go that far.
Our main priority was taking him out of commission, one way or another. Not just because we wanted his operation, but because it came with a fairly direct reward - the Quest Alert from the System hadn't managed to knock me out of my ritual, but it had been a close thing.
"You wanna be on overwatch, or be down there with me?" Sal inquired. "You're not as tough as I am, so if things get hectic, you're in the line of fire."
My eyes widened slightly.
"Shit, you reminded me…" I narrowed my gaze down at my new component pouch, mentally going through all I had collected over the past few hours. Bones, herbs, teeth, wire, cheap gemstones…
I did have a scrap of cured leather.
The arcane words came to my lips as soon as my magic sensed what spell I was going to use. I rested my hand on my component pouch, feeling the energy pull from the mishmashed jumble of useless and not so useless oddities, while my other hand traced intricate symbols over the baggy surface of my hoodie and pants. The spell only took a couple seconds to cast, but as soon as the last syllable left my mouth, a bright blue glow suddenly suffused my entire body from the head down.
When I exhaled, feeling a small portion of energy flee my stomach, the glow dimmed to a dull shimmer that swiftly faded away.
"Mage Armor," I answered the unspoken question, cracking my neck with a groan. "Should last for the next eight hours; I was waiting for the action to start before I cast it. Suffice it to say I'll be attending the meeting as well."
If we were good at our jobs, after all, there'd be no violence in the first place. Coming out of this initial meeting with more than we'd gone in with was a win in and of itself, and while I'd take advantage of any opportunity to get ahead, patience was a trait my father - and experience - had hammered into my head time and time again.
Thankfully, Wizards were at their best when given time to prepare.
"Sounds like a plan to me then. I'll drive, and we can get a move on."
Getting on the road, it didn't take too long before we'd driven to the other side of the docks, closer to the Trainyard than Downtown. Once upon a time, I could have seen this serving as a relatively thriving industrial port, serving as an embarking and disembarking point for a lot of the Northeast. A respectable enough port city, before Leviathan had done a number on the world shipping industry.
Those days were decades behind us, though. Today's Docks are all abandoned warehouses, garages, and factories. You had homes that weren't hooked up to electricity, desperately in need of maintenance, with the general quality of the buildings declining precipitously the deeper you went into the district.
Cramped tenements with ten, eleven, or twelve families sharing a single bathroom in squalid conditions. Urban decay creeping in on every corner from the various gang tags splattered across the brickwork. It was, in so many words, a shitshow.
Ripe for the taking, if someone with the right vision came along to show these people a better class of criminal.
"That the warehouse?" I leaned forward, watching closely as our vehicle rolled closer and closer to what looked like some sort of abandoned storage facility.
The road leading up to the rusted chain link fences was studded with potholes and debris like most streets in the Docks, and the van shuddered and spasmed with each movement.
In the back of my mind, I could feel my Familiar. Corvo was merely another dark blue, one hundred feet high up in the night sky, waiting.
"This should be the place," my brother confirmed, nodding. "There's some cars out front, so I imagine they're already here."
The back of the warehouse was open, with a few cars in various conditions parked outside. Nothing that screamed that Squealer was around, which was good. Trying to figure out how to deal with her vehicles this early would have been messy, to say the least. At least, from what little information I'd gleaned from Sal and the internet.
I tilted my head, my eyes darting between the vehicles. "Probably got about seven or eight people with him if they took that many cars. They chose a good spot - not a lot of ways to move in from the sides if the back's wide open like that."
For a second, I became we, and our eyes pierced through the gloom and distance with crystal-clear clarity.
The next moment, I was clicking my very human tongue, running a hand through my hair. "There's a guy already watching near that back exit, sitting in one of the trucks. Got binocs, too. Might as well pull straight up to the other cars."
It was a straight-shot, after all - the factory was at the end of some sort of dystopian cul-de-sac, and if we got out to approach from other angles, they'd immediately think that something suspicious was going on, leaving us at a disadvantage in the meeting. These sorts of things happened when you weren't on home turf, though. He decided the meeting spot, so he had the home field advantage. Right now we were playing by Shitmark's rules, but we were the new kids on the block. Everyone started somewhere.
It would make victory all the more sweeter when the inevitable takeover occurred.
Sal pulled in close as per my instructions, with the two of us hopping out. I could tell that he was more than a little primed for violence, but he was following my instructions this time around. If a fight popped off, it wasn't going to be because he flew off the handle at the drop of a hat.
The lookout spoke into a phone as we got out of the van. I tossed him a small wink.
Walking into the warehouse, it was easy to tell that it'd been used for some multiple other purposes over the years. Dirty corners where the odd bit of broken glass sat on the ground, among other, unidentifiable objects. Gang tags, layered overtop each other to create indecipherable graffiti symbology. More signs of neglect and misuse besides, too.
Of note were the men in the space. None of them were what you'd call bruisers in the traditional sense of the word, with pockmarked complexions, or the scattershot arrangement of weaponry. But quantity was a quality all of its own, to be fair, and Skidmark had obviously discovered that lesson himself.
"Is this the welcoming party?" Sal asked, hands spreading wide in a friendly gesture. "I thought we were doing business with Skidmark?"
One of their number, balding, white, and arguably the biggest, spat on the ground. "Maybe you will, maybe you won't. All I know is that we don't know ya'," the man responded. "How do we know you aren't cops?"
Sal scoffed. "This isn't 21 Jump Street, bro. There's no PRT outside, or cops trying to bust this up. Just you, me, and the fat load of money we'll make together." Clapping his hands together, my brother looked between all the men. "Now, are we going to get to the thick of things, or do we got more shit tests to pass? Wanna pat me down for a wire? Gonna do a cavity search?"
"If you're gonna for the last one, be careful. I clench like a motherfucker."
For a few moments, there was only the quiet of breathing and and the light rustle of the wind funneling through the warehouse. Then it was broken by the sound of laughter, raspy and crackly. From the shadows at the back of the warehouse, a figure emerged forth from the gloom.
Skidmark. "You've got some balls, kid! But it's a good kind of spunk, I think. Yeah, I think we can do some business."
I came back into myself at the same time his disgusting, phlegm-thickened laughter filled the air. Corvo was hidden in the rafters of the warehouse at my command, and in the brief minute my brother had announced our arrival, I'd already completed a fairly in-depth scan of the inside and outside of the building. Other than the six men standing or lounging around inside this trash heap, there was the lookout outside the front and two big, beefy motherfuckers doing coke in the overgrown plot of dead grass out back.
There were a couple of reasons they were out there. I was willing to give Skidmark the benefit of the doubt for now and label them 'dumbass insurance'.
With my senses firmly settled back into 'human' mode, I brushed the invisible feather plumes off my shoulders and stepped forward to stand beside Sal. The disgusting crackhead's jaundiced eyes glanced over my face, possibly taking note of my youthfulness, and his lips curled downwards.
Teeth the color of walnuts poked from between the dried lumps of flesh.
"And who the fuck is you?"
If this had actually been D&D, I imagined I would've had to succeed in a Wisdom check not to sneer with absolute disgust. As it stood, I'd dealt with cockroaches before, and a cool expression of stoic nonchalance met Skidmark's scornful glare.
"I believe my brother already mentioned who we are, Skidmark," I replied, speaking out through my diaphragm so that my voice came out clear and direct. Resting my hands behind my waist and keeping my back straight, I took a step forward and glanced around, pretending to scan the rest of the warehouse.
"That ain't answer shit, chucklefuck! Names, and if you say some retarded bullshit like 'Tom' this meeting ain't goin' nowhere."
My brow raised, and I turned to regard him with a bemused smile. "What's your name?"
He blinked. "The fuck- none of your business, assface. Skidmark is all you two need to know. 'Specially if you're gonna be makin' me money like good lil' Merchants."
I reached into the pocket of my hoodie, and in the corner of my eye, I could see a couple men flinch. They were haggard and ill-equipped, nothing more than hobos and muggers disguised as an entourage, but I knew that it only took one freak out for bullets to start flying.
I raised my other hand in a placating gesture, and with the other, in a flick of my wrist, I revealed a massive wad of cash. Illusionary, of course - Minor Illusion only took components, which were hidden in my pocket, and a flick of the thumb and ring finger. Even still, these druggies were not wise. To them, I was very well holding a fat stack of green.
Not hundreds, because what street fiends had denominations like that lying around? Ones, fives, the occasional twenty, all packed between elastic rubber bands. A few grand, maybe, in total if you looked at it from the outside. Maybe more. Definitely more than an ounce of meth would've gotten with dumbass Terry and his crew.
If they weren't on me before, all eyes were on me now. Skidmark's seemed to almost shine with avarice.
But I caught Sal's eye for only a second, pushing all of my intent through that one glance.
Roll with it. My lidded stare said.
Fuck it, we ball. His smirk responded.
Subtly, I nodded my head.
"Let's cut through the bullshit, shall we? My brother and I… we're not merchants. We're entrepreneurs. Businessmen, new to this city. And a couple men of yours," I made a show of glancing around again, my eyes lidded with very real contempt as I examined his hobo squad, "A 'Terry' and 'Ted'; they don't like business, or money, and tried to fuck with us. Terry and Ted got declawed. Went down like a couple bitches, aye brother?"
"Something like that," Sal noncommittally responded. "They had a lot of bark and no bite. We're here, and they're not. Obviously that means we're better suited to doing business, eh?"
"And if that's not good enough for us?" Skidmark pushed.
"Be real. Are you going to lose any sleep over dirtbags like Terry's crew?" There was no such thing as honor among thieves in a group like this. They didn't stay loyal to each other, and ratting out at a moment's notice was commonplace.
Back in our home, men had an understanding that if they kept their mouths shut when they got pinched, that loyalty would be rewarded. Everyone stayed quiet, more or less. It wasn't perfect, but it was leagues better than whatever was going on in this city. Brockton Bay was like a crab bucket. Every faction and villainous Cape trying desperately to climb over each other, all eager to get to the top of the heap.
"Don't answer that just yet. Hear me out first," I continued before Skidmark could rebuttal, the Minor Illusion covered by my body as I turned to the side and slipped my hand back into my pocket. The cantrip dissipated, and I began pacing, my hands returning to their spot against the small of my back.
When I turned my head to regard him again, I could see the way his fists clenched at his sides, dirty fingernails digging into his equally dirty skin. But the flash of money made him greedy, and the mention of Ted and Terry made him curious. The anger came from a place of hurt pride.
I could work with that.
Coming to a stop near a rusted support beam right beneath Corvo, I leaned against the metal and shot the gang leader druggie a darkly amused grin. "An ounce of meth, Skidmark. That's what you gave your boys to sell, yeah? What sorta profit do you make off that much crystal in a given period?"
Clearly, he didn't enjoy having to keep swiveling his head between Sal and me, but there was something different in the air now—a wariness. We were strangers, clearly foreigners to the Bay, and we'd walked into the territory of a potential enemy with absolute confidence, flashing a not-inconsiderable amount of money at the greedy men toting guns and knives.
I didn't need a mind-reading spell to know what he was probably thinking right now.
Capes.
"… Fuckin' chode-gobbling faggot sack of shit. Ain't even gonna ask how you know that. You sold my meth, didn't you?" Skidmark gnashed his rotten teeth together, swollen tongue leaking out to moisten his raisin-like lips. "Bullshit! An ounce goes for- … four, five, six… Seven hundred fuckin' dollars on a bad week. Eight or nine on a good one. You had-"
Good information.
"Two grand," I held up my index and middle finger, a look of pity passing over my features, "And we'd only taken your boys' little schoolyard backpack two days ago. Crime in the Bay must be looking at hard times if you're struggling to break even with crystal, Skiddy. 'Prolly doesn't help that they were shooting all of your fucking product up."
"In comparison, we're saints," Sal smiled, eyes half-lidded and his expression impish. "No worries about us using half of what we get, and underselling the rest."
It even had the advantage of being pretty true. Oh, Father didn't mind if Sal and I had a drink every once in a while. But he'd been pretty clear about his opinions on having a junkie in the family in no uncertain terms. Thus, neither of us had been tempted to try anything harder than drink.
Cigarettes notwithstanding, of course.
Skidmark's face went through a myriad of ugly, exaggerated emotions as he absorbed our tag teamed proposal. It hadn't been directly stated yet, but in meetings like this, a little bit of posturing and bloodletting was necessary. Traditional, even. It was only when his right eye twitched and his hands drifted towards his waistband that I allowed myself to sigh.
"And if we just take your paper and bury you arrogant fuckwad cumslits in the backyard?" He hissed, though the heat in his scratchy voice wasn't hot enough to arouse any real worry in me.
I glanced at Sal.
His eyes shined with something I wouldn't quite call madness but more like barely restrained violence. The expression he had on his face could charitably be called a grin, yet in that moment it felt more like the prelude to a snarl. "You could try. I promise you, you would not succeed."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Sal nodded. "Well, you might beat us. But in the process, I'm confident that I could kill at least five of you." He looked between Skidmark and his assorted underlings. "Anyone willing to take those odds?"
Something flashed in Skidmark's eyes. A weary acknowledgement, maybe? Of a suspicion he'd already been assuming before the threats.
When his haggard face turned towards me, I only smiled thinly.
Above me, with red eyes glinting in the darkness, Corvo squawked.
"Bravo!"
Skidmark's expression flattened, the calm before the storm.
The rumbling within the man-baby volcano.
He didn't disappoint.
"Nanny-fucking bull pussy sacks of donkey ass fucking GOD DAMN IT!" The vocal equivalent to middle-school diarrhea exploded from the drug dealer's mouth, making a few of his men nearly jump out of their skin. He panted, glaring between Sal and I before a violent cough forced him to hack up a disgusting wad of saliva. "Ack- Fuck, fuck it then! You, prissy boy!"
His finger flew in my direction, and I met his red-rimmed eyes with boredom in my gaze. "Yes?"
"… The fuckin' split. You wanna do business with the big boys, let's fuckin' do business. How much crystal you think you can push in a week, and the fuck kinda split are we lookin' at?" It looked like it almost physically hurt for him to say those words, but sheer greed, wariness, and a tinge of desperation forced it out of him.
A split second later, he quickly spat out, "An' don't try to cheat me, bitch. I know you big city types! Killed you kinda faggots for less!"
In return, I glanced back over to Sal. For the first time since we'd walked into the warehouse, a wide, vicious grin formed on my lips.
"I thought you'd never ask, Skidsy…"
Sal
Late Evening
The Docks
A motherfucking key of meth, and a profit split that clearly favored our cut more than Skidmark's. Sixty-forty, in our favor. I had no clue how Angelo even swung that. He'd used a bunch of complicated math and drug jargon that I only slightly understood, and Skidmark clearly had no fucking clue of.
But it worked.
Somehow, someway, we came out of that meeting with over thirty ounces of glistening, light blue meth ziplocked, plastic-wrapped, and shoved into another ratty backpack - practically all the drugs they'd brought to the meeting. Angelo had been all smirks and grins by the end of the negotiations, and honestly, I think Skidmark probably would've tried for his gun if it hadn't been for me and the ever-looming presence of Corvus lurking overhead.
The raven was, admittedly, creepy as hell.
"Not quite the outcome I was expecting," I admitted, as the two of us drove away in the van. "I'd expected us to strike right then and there, and take him for everything he had."
It was what I'd been gearing up to, needling them as much as I had. Then again, I had to assume that Angelo had a plan of some sort. He always was working an angle when it came to business endeavors.
We now had more drugs, yet now was the trouble of finding buyers. The Empire? We were both white, though I wasn't really sure how hardline their racial purity was. Just Germanics? Were Italians a little too dark for their liking? Too many unknown variables.
Angelo simply grinned like the cat who'd caught the canary, the bag of illegal narcotics snug on the floor between his boots. "Patience, fratello. We struck more than just a large amount of drugs tonight."
He leaned back into the seat, raising his right hand, the index finger held up. "One, we've established ourselves as an independent criminal entity in the city without outright claiming we're capes. We still have our names, but how many handsome, teenage Italian criminals are there in the Bay? I doubt very many."
His middle finger joined the index. "Two, we've both demoralized Skidmark and sowed doubt amongst his men. Assuming he brought the roaches that he has even the slightest bit of respect for, that means they most likely get around. Talk to the other Merchants. They're most likely the kinda assholes the other scumbags listen to.
"With a boss as shitty as Skidmark, they're probably already talking shit about him behind his back. Now, input those two smooth Italian heartthrobs - us, by the way - from before. Confident. Cold as ice. Dangerous. And making fucking money. Word will spread. People will get curious. Curious people are greedy."
And finally, he raised his ring finger. "Third - Corvo and I counted eight men in total. Based on the few threads I read about the Merchants and their parties, they number in the dozens. We kill those guys, there's no one to jumpstart our infamy. No one to seed the anticipation. No one to farm. We would've just gotten a bit of drugs, sated our bloodlust, and gained whatever little amount of cash he brought to a potential shoot-out. That's short-term thinking."
Taking a moment to breathe, Angelo finished with, "It is our second day. We lay the groundwork for our legacy now, and the blood sports naturally follow. Now we bleed Skidmark dry; take his customers, squeeze him for his drug supply, and when we can do so, stealthily, raid his drug dens. We'll take over the remains of his shitty 'business' whilst our reputation as criminals grows. 'Hail to the King' didn't specify only killing Skidmark. We have to conquer the Merchants, too. Hit them when it hurts the most."
That was the problem with my brother. You could have issues with the way he did things, but then he'd take you aside and begin to explain things in a way that made it all make sense. He was like Father in that regard, able to reason away just about anything if you gave him time to speak. Then again, it also meant that he could think himself too clever by half, too.
Angelo was right about a lot of what he'd said, but perhaps was thinking on a longer timeframe than was appropriate. "I'm a little nervous about getting too much attention," I admitted. "It's one thing if we get into a few fights, but Coil's still alive, and still very, very dangerous to us."
He was objectively the specter that'd hang over many of our actions. I wasn't sure how much our powers protected us from precogs, if I was being honest. The fact that the scary fedora lady hadn't shown up to kill or capture us, nor had the Simurgh, at least lent some credence to the idea that we were safe to an extent, but that was presuming we weren't already embroiled in a plot of some kind.
Was it wise to push our luck like this?
In the end, I already knew what I was going to do. Put my faith in Angelo and hope that'd be enough to see us through. And when something inevitably backfired, I'd be the big brother and swoop in to beat the shit out of whatever was a threat.
I sighed, working my jaw back and forth. "Welp. It's too late to backtrack about any of it now. Are we laying low for the rest of the night, or getting some masks and trying to scare up some trouble?"
Angelo stayed silent for a moment; his eyes glazed over in that uncomfortable way that meant he was accessing Corvus' senses. After a second, he blinked, tapping once on the dashboard. "Take a right at this stop sign. Unmarked cruisers waiting at the red light up ahead."
It was an easy change, and as we turned right, he continued as if nothing had happened, "As far as Coil goes, he and the Empire are clawing at each other's heels over Downtown. So long as we keep away from pushing up on their territory for now, or making big, loud plays, I think we'll be fine…"
He rested his fingers on his forehead, massaging his temples. "Masks are important, though, once we start throwing around actual superpowers instead of cheap scares. How about we grab a couple, you go expend that energy I know you're holding in, and I… will see if I can make a couple of sales, a couple of contacts. Get a lay of the land, so to speak."
It wasn't the most complex plan, but it was likely the best that we had for the moment. Besides, going out to beat the shit out of criminals with a mask was a good way to expend some stress. Sophia Hess had that much right, even if everything else she believed was a croc of shit.
"Alright, then we've got a game plan," I agreed. "We'll lay low and keep it going nice and simple for now."