A/N:
" " : Dialogue,
' ' : Thought,
"Italicized text" : Telepathy,
[ ] : System.
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June 8th, 2010
Omniscient POV
Nolan bounded from rooftop to rooftop, heading to the closest point on the map he had created, which he remembered was a brothel under the banner of the Sabatino Crime Family. It was a mid-rise apartment building with 8 floors that had been repurposed into a mid-point in their trafficking operation, where they could not just hold their victims as sex workers, but also sell them off to whoever would come to buy.
Using Pulse, he could sense just a little over 200 people within the building, and while he could take down any of the Crime Family members, or the people who ran the brothel, he decided to increase his current repertoire of abilities by quickly doing a 10x gacha pull.
However, rather than a standard gacha pull, he decided to make it a specific gacha pull on Ability Cards, increasing the price from 100GP to 150GP, reducing his pool to 224GP. The same animation he was becoming familiar with played out, releasing 10 cards.
[Ability card: Zoanthropy (Bloody Roar)] – Rare
[Ability Card: Super Regeneration (My Hero's One Justice)] – Epic
[Ability Card: Skill – Shadow Clone Justu (Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4)] – Rare
[Ability Card: Dynamic Ice-Make (Fairy Tail)] – Unique
[Ability Card: Skill – Greater Group Heal (FATE)] – Rare
[Ability Card: Bulletproof Skin (Prototype 2)] – Unique
[Ability Card: Vongola Hyper Intuition (J-Stars Victory VS)] - Unique
[Ability Card: Photographic Reflexes (Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds)] – Unique
[Ability Card: Skill – Witch Walk (Bayonetta)] – Rare
[Ability Card: Snatch (The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Brittania)] – Unique
Deciding that he wouldn't waste time inspecting the cards, as he already knew what these abilities would do, he quickly assimilated every single Card, feeling the intuitive knowledge to use these abilities and skills set in.
After the abilities settled, he very quickly made his way to the rooftop of the establishment, his figure hidden in the darkness. As he got to the roof, he noticed a man and woman, both dressed in black business suits without ties, smoking while looking over the edge. He quickly got behind them and knocked them unconscious.
After knocking them out, he inspected their bodies, and beyond their weapons, he noticed some slight bruising on the man's knuckles, and drying blood and skin underneath the woman's nails. His calm expression went cold, as he knew that these two had, at the very least, physically abused and assaulted someone, as there were no signs of them getting hit. He pulled out a stiletto dagger he had seized from a gang member who had gotten it as a novelty, then very quickly gave them the same treatment he had given the Berretti mobsters.
After leaving them quadriplegic, he decided to test out one of the abilities he had just assimilated, then cycled his hands through the seals for the Shadow Clone Jutsu. Immediately he finished, he felt his energy reserves dip to only a quarter, and with a *poof* and a cloud of smoke, three identical clones of himself appeared.
"I'll take care of the frontal assault. You guys go in and hit 'em from the back. If you come across the victims, heal them then knock them out." Nolan said, and his clones silently nodded, then vanished in a blur of speed. With a short sigh, Nolan then jumped down to the brothel's entrance, and with two quick, precise blows to the necks of the guards at said entrance, knocked them out.
He walked into the building's reception, and noticed that unlike the building's external appearance would lead one to think, the internals of the building had been renovated and refurbished not that long ago. The female receptionist saw him enter the building and froze, her mind piecing together his identity from the rumors and news that had been flying about recently.
Although it was a fact that practically all of the criminals that Nocturne was known to have taken out were men, she wasn't particularly tempted to test if he would treat women the same way. But at the same time, she had a more intimate knowledge of the things that her boss could get done, and so, her fear of her boss' punishment overtook her fear of Nocturne, and she pulled out a pistol and fired at him.
The bullet pinged off the Nightingale Armor, but she didn't relent, and fired more shots, which futilely collided with the armor and ricocheted until her magazine was empty, but that had been enough. The sound of the gunshots alerted the other people in the building, and some of them, assumedly soldiers of the Sabatino Crime Family, had already begun rushing down.
The receptionist panted anxiously as she tried reloading, but was stopped when Nolan fired his grapnel and swung it around her, wrapping her with its wire and pulling her to him. As her body flew closer to him, he caught her by the neck, just as she reached arm's length from him. As the inertia from being stopped so abruptly hit her, she looked at the pitch-black tinted lenses on his mask, her body subconsciously trembling in fear.
As his grip settled on her neck, Nolan made sure he was holding her just right, and then he twisted his hand. With a small *crack*, he broke her cervical vertebra, causing her to very quickly begin losing feeling in everything below her neck. As quadriplegia set in, he tossed her body to the side, and just a few seconds later, the Sabatino mobsters rushed down the stairs and out of the elevator, guns in hand.
The first thing that Nolan noticed was that even with how many guns they had, none of the few dozen men that had come down held the plasma blasters that Intergang had smuggled into Gotham. He deduced that the Sabatino Crime Boss didn't have this place as a high priority 'business', seeing as the people guarding it weren't equipped with the best weaponry they had on hand.
"Damn it! Shoot him!!" One of the mobsters shouted, and shortly after, a hail of bullets flew towards Nolan. He could have simply let them hit him, as they wouldn't have any effect on him, not even if he was naked. However, because of the presence of the now paralyzed receptionist on the floor, he put up a Polarity Wall, causing the bullets to impact it and be broken down into atoms.
Nolan cracked his fingers, and faster than any of them could register, dashed into their midst, hitting their necks and arms with precise strikes that broke just what he wanted and caused them to drop their guns, and used Domino to spread the effects of his attacks. In the span of three seconds, the 60 mobsters that had come down to attack him were now on the floor, and like their colleagues that Nolan had dealt with before, they were now quadriplegic.
Stepping over their paralyzed bodies, he walked deeper into the building, and he felt the auras of more people from further within go still in a manner he knew was the result of being knocked unconscious, and he knew that his Shadow Clones were already working. He went into the first apartment of the building, and inside were a group of women who were huddled together.
Nolan noticed that they had some bruises and cuts on their arms and faces, and that while they were otherwise clean, the room smelled strongly of cigar smoke, alcohol, and semen. He didn't need anyone to tell him what had happened to them in this building. He walked up to the women, who were admittedly and rightfully afraid, given their situation, and simply raised his hand towards them and casted Greater Group Heal.
As the spell formed, he could feel his energy reserves lower just a bit, and he noticed that despite the fact that the spell relied on mana, it didn't seem to fail or come out as less powerful than he expected. The bruises and cuts healed at a visible speed, with the women checking each other's limbs and faces with astonishment. "Listen." Nolan said, and his voice, which the women noticed was that of a teenager, served to calm them down, if even just slightly.
"I'm clearing this place of your captors and their clients, so for now, stay here. You'll be safer here than out there if you ran away without knowing where to go." He said. "Mas e a polícia? E o Batman? Você não pode ligar para eles?" One of the women said to him in Portuguese, which he took to mean that she understood English, but probably wasn't particularly fluent in its speech. "They're taking down other places like this. Gotham keeps us all a bit busy." He replied as he walked out of the room.
As he walked out, another cloaked figure walked up to him, one of his shadow clones. As he inspected the clone, he noticed that its hands were bloody. "What's up with that?" He said, pointing to the clone's hands. "Oh. This?" The clone softly exclaimed, then channeled ice magic to its hands and dropped the now frozen blood to the floor. "Caught one of their so-called clients assaulting a young boy, so I sliced his dick and balls off, and fed them to him. I cauterized the wound to the point of a second-degree burn, so he's gonna be feeling some pain for a while." The clone said, as a small arc of electricity jumped from his fingers.
As he finished speaking, the building's power went out, blanketing them in darkness. The young boy squeaks in fear, and almost immediately, Nolan felt his bloodlust flare up. He didn't know exactly what the boy had gone through, but he knew that it had traumatized him enough to have such a reaction to the lights going out.
Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Nolan turned to his clone. "Take the kid in there, and stay there to protect him and them. I'll go ahead and finish up with the rest of these SOBs." He said, directing the clone to the women in the room. As the clone headed to the room, he headed deeper and higher up into the building, using his Ice-Make Magic to create Ice Sparrows that he used as arrows to direct his other clones, should they pass him.
As he went up, the Explorer's Rune triggered, giving him a full map of the building, as well as a live location of every person within it. The location of his clones, the soldiers they had incapacitated, and the victims they had rescued were all transmitted into his brain. But there was one presence that was moving out of the building through what he felt was a hidden tunnel, which lead from the top floor of the building into the sewers nearby.
Nolan was at the fourth floor, and the presence had just reached the fifth floor. Wasting no time, he moved through the floor, finding the room that the tunnel was connected to, and smashed the wall of the tunnel with a single punch. "Oh, fuck!! Shit! Shit! Shit!!" The person within the tunnel, a man, shouted as he climbed back up the ladder he was descending, trying to scramble away from Nolan. He didn't get far.
Nolan had grabbed onto the man's leg and twisted his hand, snapping the man's fibula. Pain shot through the man's body, causing him to let go of the rungs. Nolan pulled the man out of the tunnel and slammed him onto the room's floor. As he got a good look at the man's face, he felt a profound disgust form in his chest, because he recognized the man. He was one of Gotham City's councilmen.
The knowledge that a councilman had participated in and very likely sponsored the sexual exploitation of people who, with Nolan's limited knowledge of the Sabatino Family's dealings and modus operandi, had very likely been abducted and smuggled into Gotham, incensed Nolan to no end. He was considering killing the councilman and getting it over with, but refrained from doing so. However, this didn't mean that the man would go unpunished.
Nolan put his hands together, and a chill emanated from him. "Ice-Make: Dagger." With him casting that spell, a dagger made of whitish-blue ice formed in front of him. He grabbed it and walked up to the councilman, who was still writhing and groaning in pain, thanks to his broken leg. He grabbed the man's hand, and with a quick swipe of the dagger, cut off his thumb. A scream of pain went out.
"Shut up." Nolan said coldly as he swiped the dagger again, cutting off the man's index finger. The man continued screaming. Nolan's face remained impassive as he continued cutting off the remaining fingers one by one, ignoring the man's screams. Once he was done with the man's fingers, he slashed at the man's wrists and ankles, severing the tendons in each of the limbs.
"As much as I wanna kill a piece of shit like you, I know that that's just gonna put a target on my back for the cops and others like you. So instead, I'm gonna make sure that you can't hurt anyone ever again." Nolan said as he dissipated the dagger, then speedily punched out eight times, shattering the man's elbow, shoulder, hip, and knee joints. Despite the bones essentially being reduced to small fragments, they didn't break skin, leaving the councilman with some internal bleeding.
He would have dished out the same treatment he gave the Sabatino soldiers, but he decided that the councilman deserved to suffer for his actions. After essentially leaving him crippled, Nolan knocked the man out, then walked back to the room where the victims of this enterprise were being guarded by his clones, all the while dragging the councilman by the leg. Upon reaching the room, he tossed the still unconscious councilman to the floor, then called the GCPD's Coventry precincts.
…
June 15th, 2010
Nolan POV
It's been a week since I started this war on the Crime Families of Gotham. In that time, I've seen why many games from this century portrayed many so-called leadership figures as villains. Councilmen, judges, policemen, and of course, millionaires, had connections to the multiple crime families and gangs in the city. Gordon hasn't exactly been pleased with what we've been finding, but he knows that the city would be better off with these people behind bars. I say we're better off with them permanently paralyzed, but that's just me.
Bruce, Dick, and I were the ones responsible for getting the information that led to many of the arrests, which have caused quite a bit of commotion throughout the city. But this isn't enough, not for me. I know that the greatest stake I have in this is potential GP, but I want bastards like these to be terrified of even trying to do anything like this ever again. That's part of the reason why I gift them a little bit of quadriplegia.
But moving past that, I've been learning a few things about the effect of the Cards I've assimilated so far. For one, I have gained cards from one of the Ability Card's subcategories, specifically, Skills. As for how I've noticed this, it's because almost every other Ability Card I've got has caused some alteration in my body, except for the ones that had the 'Skill' prefix.
Electrokinesis changed me enough for my Nen to react. Vongola Hyper Intuition and Photographic Reflexes have altered my perception enough that I can predict the actions of pretty much anything around me. Thanks to getting Ice-Make Magic, I've now got an Origin. But despite me having the ability to create Shadow Clones, my body doesn't possess chakra. It's almost like all these Skills simply draw on whatever energy I have, while the Abilities give me the energy or change required for me to use them.
Speaking of which, I've also learned what animal my Zoanthropy has given me – a jaguar, which by proportion, is the strongest big cat. Knowing how much assimilating Killua has affected me, I won't be surprised that that's what caused that to be my Beast Form. And speaking of Killua, Milluki definitely knew what he was talking about when he said that he's the most talented Zoldyck.
Because of his innate talent for everything combat-related, I've been breezing through improving my proficiency in most of the skills I've gotten. I've essentially mastered the Shadow Clone Jutsu and Air Hike skills. I haven't been able to work on Witch Walk since a full moon is still some weeks away, but I have improved my casting abilities well enough that Greater Group Heal is now a lot more effective and efficient, and my ice constructs are also more durable and form more quickly.
One of the advantages that having as many differing abilities as I do, apart from simply making me more powerful, is that I can pose as a group of vigilantes, rather than one person. Since I don't leave anyone to report back to the crime families, they now think that a group of metahumans has suddenly decided that their time had come. Now, they've been trying to accelerate their deals with Intergang and arm themselves. It's too bad that they'll be dealing with a different me every time.
In the week that's passed I've used my daily pulls on Ability, Item, and Standard Cards, gaining 2 of the first, 3 of the second, and 2 of the last. And so far, the Cards I've gained have been… interesting, to say the least.
[Ability Card: Eagle Vision (Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag)] – Rare:
[A sixth sense that humans descended from the Isu have the capability to develop. It allows the User to instinctively sense how people and objects relate to them. With enough mastery, it can advance to Eagle Sense, and even undergo mutation into other exotic forms.]
[Ability Card: Firebending (Avatar: The Last Airbender)] – Rare:
[One of the four elemental bending arts, that grants the ability to create and manipulate fire, powered by the User's drive. With enough mastery, the User can generate more powerful flames, and even lightning.]
[Item Card: Healing Gourd (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice)] – Rare:
[A gourd filled with vitality-restoring medicine. Created by Emma, an apprentice of the extraordinary doctor, Dogen, the gourd harbors seeds within it that cause its waters to automatically refill after the User rests. It can be used 10 times before needing to be refilled.]
[Item Card: Mark VII "Emperor's Wrath" Pattern Chainsword (Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine)] – Rare:
[The preferred melee weapon of the Ultramarines of the Imperium of Man. It is a monomolecularly-edged sword with razor-sharp teeth that run along a single-edged blade like those of a chainsaw, granting the weapon nigh unparalleled cutting power.]
[Item Card: Piercer Revolver (ULTRAKILL)] – Common:
[A railgun-revolver hybrid that uses electric pulses to fire microscopic metal shards at high speeds. It is capable of an alternate fire that allows for the User to charge the gun further, before firing out the gun's ammunition at even greater speed, allowing greater stopping power and penetration.]
[Standard Card: Item Fusion Ticket (Basic)] – Uncommon:
[Allows the User to fuse two Item Cards to create an Item one rarity and power level higher.]
[Standard Card: 10 System XP] – Banal:
[Use to level up the system]
I assimilated the Ability Cards, gaining the ability to create fire and enhancing my senses once more. The Healing Gourd and the Piercer Revolver are sitting in my inventory. I used the Item Fusion Ticket to fuse the chainsword and the HF blade into a beast of a sword, and used the XP card, increasing my current XP to 110 of 500. This is what I mean when I say a different me. Almost any plans they'll make would fail on contact with me, since I could experience drastic change while they're still making their plans.
As of right now, the streets are quiet. Quiet, but not necessarily peaceful. This is still Gotham, after all. Someone's gonna do something stupid.
*Crash!!* The sound of a window breaking rang out as I finished thinking that. With a sigh, I dash over to the building – a jewelry store, as my senses catch the cause of the crash… and the fire. A man in a gray winged suit, wielding a powerful handheld flamethrower, laughs as he fired a stream of flames which ignite the internals of the jewelry store almost instantly. This is Garfield Lynns, pyrotechnics expert turned arsonist, and his villain persona is none other than Firefly.
[You have encountered Garfield Lynns {Firefly} (Earth-16EW). Reward: 15GP]
While I could use my firebending to fight him, it would very likely end up causing far more damage than necessary. Before approaching him, I create a clone, sending it to extinguish the flames, while I take down Firefly. "Ice-Make: Snow Tiger." As I finish the chant, a massive tiger formed from ice forms and pounces on Firefly, surprising the arsonist. The Snow Tiger lands on him, knocking him down from the air onto his stomach on the ground.
His flamethrower has been knocked out of his hand, but just to make sure that he can't cause anymore damage, I run up to him and freeze his tank of fuel. "Who the hell are…?!" He starts shouting, but stops as soon as he sees me. "You… you're one of those guys. The ones they call the Night Wardens." He says, referring to the name that Gotham's citizens have given me and my clones.
"I don't know who said they could call us that, but yeah. What about it, Firefly? And shouldn't you be over in Blackgate, or Arkham?" I said, grabbing his helmet. I could crush his skull, but instead, I slowly freeze his helmet, embrittling it and forcing his head into a hypothermic state.
"How'd you get out?" I ask him, slowly clenching my hand. "I'm not telling. Even if you got the goddamn Batman here, that won't change." He responds. I honestly don't need to know how he escaped from his detainment, but his attitude's… a bit amusing. Let's see how he likes dealing with Arkham Batman.
"Firefly, it's best that you start talking before I decide that you don't need a voice anymore." I say, shattering his frozen helmet. Seeing the shards of his helmet hit the ground, his face seized up, and I could practically smell the fear coming off of him. I control the Snow Tiger to put its icy fangs around his head, and the fear shows on his face. "We've noticed that a lot of you guys think we're like Batman, with his no-kill rule and all that. Well, you're about to find out how wrong you were." I tell him, while controlling the Snow Tiger to tighten its jaws.
"Wait! Wait, wait, wait! I'll talk!" He shouts, his face pale and dripping with sweat, despite the ice around his head. "It was a breakout at Arkham!" He says. "It was me, Zsasz, Julian, and Tetch." My eyes narrow, as I recognize those names. "No way it was only you four. Who helped you?" I ask him, keeping my voice cold. "I don't know! I don't know…" He says with a shaky voice. "All I know is that someone attacked the place and destroyed a wall. The four of us took the chance to get out. That's all I know, I swear." He says with fear. Might be because the Snow Tiger's jaws kept tightening around his skull, but who's really bothering with that.
"Good." I say, then knock him out. The defeat notification popped up, giving me 10GP. As it turns out, 10GP is the minimum I receive for named enemies, regardless of their strength. And if what Garfield over here said is true, then that means that Calendar Man and the Mad Hatter are on the loose, and have been for a while. Despite the fact that yesterday was Flag Day, Calendar Man did nothing, or maybe he did, but there's been no news or chatter about it. And there's also been no news on the Mad Hatter.
I look over to Firefly's flamethrower and put it in my inventory. It might be a villain's weapon, but it's a damn good flamethrower. I'm not leaving it in his hands. And besides, I've got bigger fish to fry. It's possible that Intergang were the ones that attacked Arkham, but trying to find the reason they did so would need me to interrogate one of their higher-ups.
I look at Firefly one last time, knowing that the store's alarm has definitely alerted the GCPD and GCFD, and for a few seconds, I consider killing him to send a message, but decide against it. For how crazy he is, he isn't really bloodthirsty. But at the same time, his skills have definitely put him on Waller's list for possible 'recruits' for Task Force X, if that even exists yet. Sighing, I leave the unconscious pyromaniac collapsed against the jewelry store's outer wall, with my clone following closely behind me, as the sounds of sirens approach.
Chapter End.
Word Count: 4,209
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