113.

  Well, that hadn't quite gone as I planned. The eventual outcome was somewhere in the territory of what I'd hoped for. I had more information about what was going on and who was supplying the weapons, but now I'd also been left with more questions. Whatever was going on, I had a strong feeling that someone was deliberately sparking a war in and around the Mulberry Estate. Why? Well, that I didn't know.

  To add to the mysteries, I also had to figure out who had firebombed Lear Street

  Thugs' hideout. Common sense told me it was one of the rival gangs, but which one? They all seemed to be going tit for tat at the minute, taking shots at one another, so it could be any of the other three gangs involved, possibly a fourth that I hadn't even considered. I jumped into all this way too quickly with little information or knowledge, and now I was forced into playing catch-up.

  It was daylight hours. Fortunately, I hadn't really picked up any new wounds other than a badly jarred knee and a few more scrapes and bruises. The one on my lower back was particularly irritating, but at least nothing needed stitching or gluing, and the blood was fairly minimal. So instead, I whiled away the day by fixing my gear, which I hadn't really thought would be such a monumental task. The final battle through Building 4 to get to Brick had torn my gear to shreds. My gloves were completely ruined. I'd lost one of the new shiny brass knuckles I'd just started using, and my sweet leather jacket had been shredded by blades. Oh, and everything was coated in blood.

  Grandad's bat had splinters and chips in it, the wrapping around the handle had frayed and come loose, and even the Runes had become damaged. I was lucky that the damn thing hadn't exploded in my hands when using it. I was completely out of Bang Rocks, I had no Chalk Bombs or Flash Coins, and while the Zap Coins were a good idea in theory, I realised in execution that they didn't deliver anywhere near enough juice to incapacitate a man. I didn't have a way to adhere them long enough for the weak effect to take place, so I was going to have to go back to the drawing board with those.

  I was also down a magnet rune and didn't know if I had any more nickel discs to remake another one. The more I tidied up my inventory, the more work that piled up in front of me, and the more exhausted I became just thinking about it. So, I stopped thinking and just started doing. The gloves were the first thing. Fortunately, I had bought a few spares when I last ordered the gloves, so they were relatively easy to put back together. I tore the Magnet Rune off of the old ones and adhered it to the new ones. I considered whether to make another copper plate rune for the knuckles on the left-hand glove, but then decided against it. Those copper plate runes were always janky at best and burned me so badly that I thought I'd rather source another pair of knuckle dusters than go back to the old version.

  I looked at my bank account and realised I barely had scraps left and I used those to order another nickel disc to make another Magnet Rune, but that wouldn't arrive until tomorrow, so I'd have to wait. Next, I set about sewing my leather jacket, and while I was at it, I sewed in a few more matrices of protection that I hadn't gotten around to doing before, hoping that would be enough to protect myself. There was also now a fresh bullet hole in the back of it, which was annoying because the bullet had also singed the leather and made it almost impossible to just sew back together, so I had to don a patch of black felt that I had lying around, which kind of ruined the aesthetic of the coat, but what can you do? Shouldn't get shot, I suppose.

  The Grapple Cord was in decent working order. I just gave it a good cleaning and wound it back around its holder. The metal wrist forearm guard needed a hammer taken to it as it had become so dented in places that I was barely able to wear it properly. But a few heavy blows from a hammer and some more awkward shaping around my knee, and well, it looked as bad as it always did, but at least it was functional now. The belt was fine, at least, which I was grateful for as the Rune on those was so complicated I didn’t know if I could replicate it again.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I pulled my Jet Boots towards me and smiled. They were by far the best new invention I'd come up with. Traversing the rooftops had become incredibly easy. And now that I had my Grapple Cord and Magnet Rune, the Boots would be a lot less unwieldy. Right now I kind of just shot myself upwards and hoped I had enough forward momentum to get where I needed to go, but with the Grapple Cord I could easily anchor myself safely. I still needed to figure out how to land without shattering my ankles and knees but they were still awesome. The problem was, the boots I was using right now were brightly coloured and a size too big.

  I looked at my bank account again and knew I didn't have the funds to buy a new pair. Then I looked at the wads of grubby drug money I had stolen. Against my better judgement, I grabbed a fistful of it and went and bought myself some new combat boots and extra pellets from Jed's. I inquired somewhat subtly about brass knuckles, but Jed said he didn't deal in those things anymore since he got fined by the council. So, I had to settle for a heavy pair of military-style combat boots and some more pellets for my wrist rocket. I got those home and immediately set about the task of carving the Shockwave Runes into the soles of the boots. The boot soles were the perfect material for the Shockwave Rune because, unlike the Explosion Rune, the Shockwave Rune relied on a sort of give and take between surfaces. They had to be giving; it couldn't just be like stone on stone because something would have to break. But the rubber soles were perfect. They gave just enough that the Rune could transfer energy, and they were sturdy enough that, you know, my feet didn't break or blow apart. A nice bonus was the boots were really heavy, like crush-a-walnut-by-stepping-on-it heavy, and in my line of work, you never knew how many walnuts you'd have to crush.

  Crafting had become almost second nature to me. I'd spent so many hours alone poring over the codex and creating weird gadgets and gizmos that I could just enter the mental space required to Craft more easily than I could fall asleep. I'd become quite adept at manipulating different materials with different tools to carve the Runes just as I saw them in my mind's eye, and I was beginning to develop almost complete faith in my creations. That didn't mean I always got it right, but I was always confident that I'd got it right.

  Once I’d finished the Jet Boots 2.0, I looked at the Flash Coins and scowled at them. They just didn't work right. They were unreliable, and even the flash they gave off, whilst blinding if you looked directly at them, was only a mild irritant if they caught you from the corner of your eye or from the side. In that way, the Chalk Bombs were better. They were so wild and toxic that there wasn't really a defence against them. Reluctantly, I created a few more Chalk Bombs, even though I was sick of tasting the chalky powder at the back of my throat, and I was sure I was giving myself some artificial asthma from the amount of the powder I'd inhaled over the months.

  Once that was done, I looked at the Flash Coins again and then threw them to one side. I'd have to go back to the drawing board with those. Something wasn't right. I couldn't figure out what exactly, but they just didn't work. So instead, I set about creating more Bang Rocks. I knew that Rune like the back of my numb left hand and I could churn them out by the hundreds if I needed to, but I settled for making 40 or 50. I filled up the small cardboard box I had for them and then moved on to Grandad's bat. I lovingly stripped the bat back from all the tape around it and sanded down as many of the splinters and chips as I could, taking special care not to take off any more wood than necessary. I then oiled the bat and set it to one side to let it dry for a little bit before re-taping it and then redoing the runes. I just finished the locking process with a handful of salt when I looked out the window and saw that the sun was beginning to set.

  In a couple more hours, I would need to get back out there and find out who the hell set fire to the Lear Street Thugs' headquarters, and potentially get some more answers about what the Syndicate was up to, or if it was even them. But I don't know, it just didn't feel right to me that this Danny character was operating entirely independently of the Syndicate. I mean, where would a local thug like him get that sort of hardware from, and why the hell would he be selling it so cheap? It just didn't make sense. If he was trying to spark a gang war on the Mulberry Estate, the question was why. What did he have to gain from more police attention, more violence on the streets? None of it made very much sense right now, and I was determined to get answers.

  It was time to go hunting for the truth.