Easy Money and Meaningful Ellipses
"What do you think?" Darkwing asked his comrades, waiting for the video file to finish.
Together, they had just watched a video of a fight between an unknown kid and a monster that they, despite their combined efforts, couldn't pacify for almost half an hour. Not that such interest and, let's say, studying young talents was the norm for them, but still... it's not every day they stumbled upon a creature capable of grinding the Immortal's granite bones into fine dust, and even less often on hitherto unknown loners capable of opposing this very monster. More precisely, this had only happened once in the entire history of the team.
"What's there to think about," the Immortal grumbled, "half of my bones are broken, not to mention the rest, and he didn't even get a scratch."
Despite the voiced injuries, the sixteenth president was standing confidently on his own two feet, but the "rest" was fully reflected on his face, bruised from an unsuccessful grab by the monster's tentacle, and his thinned beard.
"He almost pulled this thing out of the water," confirmed Holly, better known to the general public as War Woman. She protected her beauty in the fight, but acquired a splint on her left leg and significantly battered her armor.
"The kid has obvious talent," Martian Man agreed, but his words quite obviously implied some unspoken "but".
"He is somewhat strange, suspicious," Green Ghost, the youngest member of the team, continued after her loyal friend and mentor.
"He reminds me of someone," Holly drawled thoughtfully, examining the kid's face on the freeze-frame.
Everyone fell silent, and Darkwing changed the video file to satellite data showing the location of one of the three team members who wasn't present at the base with everyone.
"They flew away together," Martian Man stated the obvious.
"The kid wants a suit," the Immortal chuckled through the pain and knocked-out teeth. "So, we'll cross paths again soon... if that's all, then it's time for me to wet my whistle."
At that moment, Aquarus popped out of the underwater grotto with a splash and... splattered into a crumpled lump of flesh on the floor.
"Aquarus!" Holly exclaimed in concern. "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm all..." the ichthyander got to his feet, leaning on Martian Man's friendly shoulder, "fine, but we lost it... I'm sorry."
"What?" The Immortal instantly boiled over. "It was knocked out, how could you?"
"It devoured my people..." the king of the underwater world reported grimly. "I didn't have enough strength I... I barely escaped."
"Don't blame yourself, my friend," Darkwing beat the Immortal to it. "It's our mistake, we should have dragged this creature onto dry land and made sure it was dead."
"Damn it... we need to activate the backup systems, who knows where this creature will show up next time." Holly limped to the tracking drone control system.
"The sea too..." Aquarus answered with determination. "We will not allow today's mistake to be repeated."
The heroes exchanged resolute but grim looks. What an untimely coincidence of circumstances: first Black Samson with his mysterious ailment—a member of the Guardians, possibly already a former one, having practically lost his former power—now this creature that gave a thrashing to all the rest.
"Shit," the Immortal hissed through his broken teeth. "Half the team is out of the game, if something serious happens..."
"We are not the only ones, my friend," Darkwing consoled his colleague. "Fortunately, Earth has Omni-Man, we can always rely on him."
"Yeah, let's hope for Omni-Man." the Immortal agreed with a grim smirk.
---
Three thousand dollars is a very good price for a suit capable of withstanding the conditions of outer space, but for me, as a high school student, getting such money is still not easy. It's not something you can save up from pocket money or beg from your parents.
But I didn't worry too much. I may not have an official income, but I can still benefit from my abilities, and for this, I don't even need to rob anyone... although I will still have to go for a minor violation of the law and tax evasion—and this is probably the most terrible crime in America—just not to attract attention to myself.
But next week, because until the end of this one I am... grounded.
Yes, Mom sentenced me to house arrest until the weekend for a fight. It turned out stupidly, in general. I covered the wounds on my back, forearms, and legs, but I couldn't pull off such a trick with my palms and knuckles. Wearing gloves in the house would have immediately aroused Mom's suspicions, so I just tried to stay out of her sight and hide my hands. But in the morning, when I tried to sneak out of the house without having breakfast, she still noticed something was wrong. By that time, I already had a story ready about a fight with high schoolers and, for greater credibility, I persuaded Will to play along, especially since according to the legend, I was hanging out with him that day. Clockwell, realizing that there was some story behind all this, willingly confirmed that I "kicked those jerks' asses" and everything seemed to go well.
Mom believed the story about the fight, but the only thing is, I forgot what she's like... as a result, I ran into a lecture about how proving your point with fists is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances, and when I tried to enter into a debate on the topic with Debbie, reminding her that her husband has been doing exactly that his whole life...
In general, arguing with a parent when you are a kid, especially winning the argument and crushing them with logic, pointing the parent to their own hypocrisy, is a very cool idea. You will still be the guilty one. If not for aggression, then for disrespect to elders and, funniest of all, bad manners—and also, you shouldn't have pointed out to Mom that reproaching your own child for bad manners means reproaching yourself.
But what's the dumbest thing: having put me under house arrest for a few days, Mom didn't consider it necessary to forbid me from communicating with Clockwell. And he, as a reward for his help, demanded that I tell and show him everything...
"Co-o-o-ol!" Will whispered, breathless with delight, seeing my, frankly speaking, rather ugly scars.
"Hey, hands off!" I recoiled from my friend when he reached his grabbers towards me. "Go paw your own girl."
It was a bit creepy to undress in front of a future gay guy, especially since in the past world he himself admitted that he always stared at me...
"If only I had one..." Will responded gloomily.
And indeed, he is already trying to hit on the girls from the class... not very successfully though, so this topic was quite painful for him, although not to the same extent as in college. There, unsuccessful attempts to get a girlfriend practically drove Will crazy... maybe that's why he switched sides? Who knows...
"What are they like?" the guy finally threw off his gloom. "The Guardians—did you see them in person, like me?"
"Only Red Rush," I shrugged. "He found me after the battle and introduced me to the costume maker."
"And War Woman?!" Clockwell clarified with burning eyes. "Is she really as hot as they show on TV? I would definitely..."
"She's a lesbian," I stunned him.
"Da-a-a-mn, what a bummer," Clockwell drawled in frustration. "Such a loss for the whole world."
"Tell me about it," I agreed, holding back laughter.
After that, we argued for a long time about the design of the suit that I ordered from the master—whose identity I, naturally, did not reveal to Will. Clockwell called my design tasteless and didn't understand why the hell it even popped into my head, but I was adamant.
"God, Mark... have you come up with a name yet?"
"I don't care. This is a temporary option. Later I'll make myself another suit... well, when I solve the problem with... the government."
"Very optimistic." You haven't even heard what I'm going to call myself yet.
---
But finally, the punishment ended, and I could return to implementing my plans. Luckily for me, Omni-Man is currently swamped with work. Black Samson is almost completely out of the game and only occasionally appears at minor incidents, demonstrating pathetic crumbs of his former power, and of the remaining ones, only Red Rush and Darkwing were not injured in the battle with Ave Maria, as the Kaiju was dubbed in the media—and they are, of course, good, but the two of them cannot replace the entire team. What can I say, the day before yesterday Darkwing almost got his ass kicked by the Mauler Twins when he tried to apprehend them alone while Red Rush was dealing with the Lizard League. So for the next month—until War Woman, Aquarus, and the Immortal recover from their wounds—Omni-Man will have to fully live up to his loud moniker.
I only benefited from this situation, because thanks to my father's busyness, I was able to go deep-sea diving on the same day Mom released me from house arrest. Yes, I decided to use my abilities to try myself as a treasure-hunting diver.
In fact, over these months I had already stumbled upon shipwrecks more than once, but having neither a dire need for money nor a desire to explain my finds and attract attention to myself, I left the ships untouched. Moreover, it was precisely during the inspection of one of these wrecks that the ichthyander scouts noticed me for the first time, putting up a brief chase, from which I concluded that they keep watch there, exactly to drive away shrewd supers like me who desire to profit from treasures without asking.
In this world, there are quite a few ways to find and bring a valuable sunken cargo to land. And the simplest and simultaneously most effective is to negotiate with the underwater people, but... it's simple only at first glance. Even terrestrial countries manage to argue for decades about who owns the ships that sank in a neighbor's waters. As happens, for example, to this day with the Vrouw Maria, which the cunning Finns did not allow to be raised until two thousand and eighteen, to then declare that it had lain in their waters for a hundred years and now, according to Finnish law, belongs to them. * The underwater people are simpler in this regard: they consider everything that fell to the seabed their own. And even if this something is completely useless to them, the ichthyanders won't give anything away for free. So every joint expedition has to be negotiated through Aquarus, and he is a very peculiar guy. He wants action, not diplomacy, politics, and all that. And this is quite expected when the strongest representative of the people is chosen as the supreme ruler.
So thanks to Aquarus's laziness and the complexities of international politics, there was enough valuable cargo on the seabed, and I went down for one of such treasures. Yes, it would be more fun to raise something valuable and culturally significant from the Titanic or that same Vrouw Maria, but I'm not here for fun, but for money. So my choice fell on a sunken schooner, which I failed to identify by googling the crash site, which allowed me to hope that no one besides me knows about its existence yet.
It was too far from the shore and submerged too deep to be an easy target for divers, and a couple of centners of gold that I found in the hold obviously wouldn't have covered the cost of the expedition needed to raise them. For me, such an expedition cost only ninety bucks—that's how much went for a professional flashlight capable of withstanding a dive to four hundred meters.
And at first, everything went smoothly: I descended to the ship, which hadn't swum anywhere since my last visit, found my gold, and started filling a Walmart bag with it, when suddenly an indignant gurgle rang out behind my back:
"[https://youtu.be/qMPpnCvCZvw](https://youtu.be/qMPpnCvCZvw)"
Motherfucker...
Turning to the sound, I saw in the cone of light from the flashlight a blue-skinned creature that was belligerently shaking a spear in the water. Moreover, judging by the quite human chest with full tits and the painted lips on the fish face, swollen as if a worm had crawled onto it—it was a female. A fucking beauty... time to bail.
Clutching my burden to my chest, I dashed in the opposite direction from the scout, right through the hull of the schooner half-submerged in the bottom silt. Here another ichthyander tried to block my path, into whom I crashed headfirst, not noticing him in the dark.
Damn you, fucking murlocs.
Pushing the slimy, scaly body away from me, I broke free from the grip of the webbed paws and rushed away from the ship. Indignant gurgles and spear shots flew into my back—some kind of energy weapon capable of boiling water with its volleys and leaving a light burn on my skin. Of course, I could have easily dodged all the shots or even immediately accelerated so much that the murlocs would only have to swallow the bubbles from under my feet, except that a cellophane bag from Walmart doesn't have very outstanding indicators of durability and heat capacity. At the very first attempt to swerve at speed, it almost tore, so I had to take a shot to the back, and then spend another few minutes breaking away from the chase.
Fucking murlocs. Persistent. As if this is really their gold.
The second part of my plan was to fence the loot through acquaintances in the criminal world. I had two options.
The first: find Titan and try to sell this gold through him, but several problems arose here. Firstly, Titan is currently a small fry and simply won't be able to give a decent price for the treasure. Secondly, Titan is a fucking scammer. Last time he used me blindly, telling a tearful story about his daughter, just to seize power himself and take his boss's place. In general, I have no trust in this guy.
The second option: Titan's boss himself. That guy with a calculator instead of a head. He, of course, is also quite the rogue, but he is driven by logic and pragmatism. His mechanical brain is capable of calculating probabilities and almost predicting the actions of other people. And I would rather bet on him than on Titan, fortunately, thanks to that story with Titan, I know Machine Head's lair.
And that is exactly where I headed, having previously changed into dry clothes and hidden my face behind a black medical mask and black sunglasses.
Note:
* Actually much more, it's just that the Republic of Finland itself gained independence only in 1918 and in 2018 will celebrate the centennial anniversary of Lenin's decree granting it sovereignty. And since Finland has not signed the UNESCO International Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, it can act within the framework of its own legislation... if anyone was even interested in this...