Practice shooting?
Bullshit.
Jude wanted to say it out loud, but the truth gnawed at him. His marksmanship was objectively terrible. If he hadn't bought that Basic Firearms Proficiency skill from the system, yesterday's chandelier shot might've hit Philip instead. The mental image of his shift supervisor's head exploding instead of crystal made Jude's stomach turn.
The real sharpshooters in Gotham, the ones who survived, honed their skills over decades. Muscle memory built from thousands of shootouts. He couldn't catch up to that in a few weekends, but he had to try. Skills like this took time to accumulate.
Of course, there was a faster way.
Jude opened the system mall and stared at Intermediate Firearms Mastery. Price: $5,000 asset points.
He closed it.
"Taking shortcuts isn't really my style," he muttered to nobody in particular. A lie, but a comforting one.
That evening, Jude drove his beloved Death Car through Burnley's streets. Philip had given him the address of a shooting range, which meant a long drive from the East End clear across town. The supervisor's petty revenge for nearly getting shot, probably.
Burnley sprawled before him, all glass towers and clean sidewalks. Gotham's central district gleamed with prosperity that made his teeth ache. Entertainment complexes, high-end clubs, corporate headquarters. Everything polished and expensive and utterly meaningless to someone like him.
He was broke. Well, not technically broke anymore. The seven thousand dollars in his pocket represented actual wealth by East End standards. But here in Burnley? That money would make a small splash and then vanish. Not enough to do anything meaningful. The luxury around him was purely decorative, something to look at but never touch.
"That bastard Philip must be rolling in it," Jude muttered, watching a couple in designer clothes disappear into a restaurant that probably charged fifty dollars for an appetizer. "Should've let him get mad enough for a heart attack. Would've been doing Gotham a public service."
Still, Philip's name carried weight. The shooting range had honored the 70% discount without question. The daily fee dropped to something almost reasonable. Jude had stayed until dark, squeezing every dollar's worth of practice out of the trip.
The drive home felt sluggish. The car handled well enough after Johnny's repairs, but Jude's Basic Driving skill only let him push it to about sixty miles per hour comfortably. Any faster and his hands started shaking. The crawl back to the East End took nearly half an hour.
"Hey! Watch it, you broke bastard!"
Jude had just slowed down to cross a roadside drainage ditch when a man in a brown trench coat suddenly shouted from the sidewalk. He had a blonde woman tucked against his side, and he was glaring at Jude's car like it had personally offended him.
"Don't splash water on my clothes!"
Jude glanced over. The man's trench coat looked expensive, some kind of wool blend. The suit underneath was tailored, the belt genuine leather, the shoes polished to a mirror shine. A few flecks of mud had indeed spattered near his feet from Jude's tires hitting a puddle.
Should he apologize?
Jude briefly considered it.
Then he raised his left middle finger, held eye contact for exactly one second, and floored the accelerator.
The engine roared. The man yanked the blonde woman back instinctively, both of them stumbling away from the curb as the Death Car's tires sent up a spray of dirty water. They barely dodged it.
"Must be some East End trash," the man spat, already turning back to the woman. "You okay, honey?"
"I'm fine." The blonde nestled against him, all concern melting into a smile. "Richard, what were you saying before?"
The man stroked her hair, his irritation fading. "Oh, right. I was thinking we should leave Gotham for a while. Get away from all this. Maybe Paris? A little apartment, autumn leaves, wine..."
The woman's face lit up. "Really? Paris in autumn! God, that sounds perfect!"
Jude heard the name "Richard" float back on the wind. His hands tightened on the steering wheel for half a second. Richard. Common name. Probably not important. He'd know if it was someone from the DC roster, right?
He forced his attention back to the road. Just some rich asshole in a nice coat. Gotham had thousands of them.
"Richard Daniel!"
The man turned, confused. "What? Who—"
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
"Oh for fuck's sake, another one?"
Jude's entire body went rigid. Another shootout. He'd driven across Gotham to practice shooting specifically because he'd been in a shootout, and now there was a consolidation course on the way home. Gotham's educational system was truly comprehensive.
He slammed the accelerator and watched the rearview mirror.
A black car pulled alongside the sidewalk. A submachine gun barrel extended from the passenger window, muzzle flash strobing in the dusk. The man named Richard Daniel jerked like a puppet with cut strings as bullets tore through him. Blood misted the air. His expression cycled through shock to betrayal to nothing at all in under three seconds.
The black car peeled away, tires squealing, disappearing toward central Burnley.
The blonde woman hadn't been hit. She stood there for a moment, perfectly still, before dropping to her knees beside the body. Her scream cut through the evening air.
"Talk shit, get hit," Jude muttered, though his voice came out shakier than intended. "Watch your mouth in the next life, buddy."
No point in saving someone that thoroughly ventilated. Even if Jude had enough asset points to burn on a Fast Life Recovery and was willing to sprint back, it was too late. The guy was probably dead before he hit the pavement.
The blonde really had loved him, apparently. She cradled the ruined body, crying hard enough to make herself sick. A real couple, not just some transaction. Tragic, in a Gotham kind of way.
Unfortunately, love wasn't bulletproof. Physics didn't care about feelings.
Jude drove the rest of the way to Drake's apartment in silence. The rich asshole's death bothered him less than it should, which bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Partly he felt bad for the blonde. Partly he thought the guy didn't deserve execution for being rude about his shoes.
Mostly, though, he was pissed about the timing.
Ten seconds. He'd argued with Richard Daniel for maybe ten seconds total, and then the man got assassinated. The Gotham PD would investigate. They'd pull traffic camera footage, find Jude's car, drag him in for questioning. His entire weekend, gone. Wasted sitting in some interrogation room explaining why he'd flipped off a bank executive.
At least tomorrow wasn't a work day. If this cost him a shift at the Red Dragon, if he lost those precious asset points to police bureaucracy, he'd seriously consider burning the GCPD headquarters down.
"Even after transmigrating," Jude said to the empty car, "I still can't escape being a witness to some bullshit. This world is terrible. Gotham is terrible. Everything is terrible."
He parked the Death Car and trudged upstairs, already composing his police statement in his head. Maybe he could speed-run it. Give them the basics, skip the part about the middle finger, get home before midnight.
Drake looked up when Jude slumped into a chair at the dinner table. "What's wrong with you, man?"
"Nothing. Just ran into another shootout on the way back."
"Another one?" Drake's eyebrows climbed. "That's, what, the third time this week?"
"Don't start." Jude rubbed his face. "It's not like I'm attracting them on purpose. I've been in Gotham less than a month. What kind of big shot could I possibly have pissed off? Some random guy named Richard Daniel got killed. Nobody important."
Drake went very still. "Who died?"
"Richard Daniel. Why?"
"Fuck." Drake's voice dropped to something flat and dangerous. "The president of Gotham Bank was just assassinated?"
Jude's fork stopped halfway to his mouth.
Oh.
Oh no.