[Rolling Ptinum Gacha Ticket]

  [Fortune's Lover]

  |Epic Trait|

  You are absurdly lucky, to the point where even if you did not have any other abilities, this alone could be considered an ability. If it's a chance, it's in your favour. Fate is curved in your direction, but not all luck is good. (Does not affect Gacha)

  I knew metahuman powers could get fucking weird. Super strength, lightning, bending space and time. I'd heard enough to believe almost anything.

  But this?

  This was still fricking crazy.

  I stared down at the third wallet I'd found today, lying right in the middle of the sidewalk like it wanted to be noticed. I gnced around first, half-expecting one of Gotham's cssic setups. A mugger in an alley or some mob goon waiting to crack my skull the second I bent down.

  Yet… nothing

  There was no lookout, nor was there anyone in the alleys.

  I picked it up and whistled softly. It was stuffed with cash.

  Shit. Who the hell carries two thousand dolrs in cash? That was almost triple what I'd pulled from the other two wallets combined. The leather was high-end, too, the kind of thing I'd never be able to afford even in my best year.

  Weirder still, there was nothing else inside. No ID. No cards. Just money. Do rich people really run around with cash-only wallets?

  There was a tiny little Bat symbol stitched on the corner. Whatever. Score.

  I pocketed it and continued on my way with a faint smile.

  Then reality caught up, because this was Gotham, the city where happiness went to die.

  I turned the corner, and my expression soured. Several apartment blocks had been burned down to bckened husks, windows blown out, walls cracked and scarred beyond recognition. Another reminder of the st twenty-four hours and how quickly things had spiraled into hell.

  People were sifting through the wreckage, voices breaking as weeping drifted through the air. I clenched my jaw and moved on. It was what I'd always done in this city, the city I'd had the shitty luck of being born into.

  Although… maybe that luck had finally flipped.

  I'd crawled out of the harbor earlier and somehow walked away fine. No sickness, no coughing, not even a rash. I hadn't been glowing or anything insane like that, but I'd still taken about six showers just to be safe.

  "Jean, you're alive!"

  I smiled as I stepped into the dingy bar, and Rodney spotted me.

  "So you're still kicking," Audrey called from a nearby table, the small girl with the mohawk already smirking.

  I snorted. "I'll damn well still be kicking long after your sorry ass, Audrey."

  She flipped me off. I returned the favor with a grin.

  The pce was almost empty. A few regurs sat around nursing drinks, murmuring to each other. It was close to evening. Normally, the bar would be packed with guys looking for work. Recent events had clearly changed that.

  "How bad is it?" I slid onto a stool next to Rodney and gestured for a drink.

  He pushed a bottle of Gotham's signature beer toward me. The perfect symbol of the city. Tasted like crap.

  I took a long swig.

  "Not good, man," Rodney said. "Freeze and Firefly went nuts down at the docks. Half the pce is frozen solid, the other half's on fire. They got caught, at least. Joker pulled something at St. Jude's, but the Bat shut it down. Still slipped away though, like always. Riddler's back in town too, and I'm hearing he's recruiting hard. The other big names haven't moved yet, but rumor is they're all gearing up."

  I thought back to st night and grimaced. I'd hoped murking that asshole would've trapped the crazies for good. It was a stupid hope. Gotham never worked that way, and it loved killing hope.

  "Where is everybody?" I looked around the Crook's Bar, a name that was only funny because it was true. This pce was basically the Home Depot for henchmen and goons. Yet it was emptier than I'd ever seen it in my five years working crime in Gotham.

  "Skipped town or signed on," Rodney said with a hollow ugh. "Only real options left. I'd do it too if I could."

  That earned a low chorus of bitter agreement from the other patrons.

  I recognized most of the faces around, people I'd worked with or crossed paths with over the years, all of us trapped in the same dead-end tier of criminal life.

  Yeah, even criminals had a hierarchy. A real shitty one.

  At the top sat the crazies and their cult followings, the psychos people either worshipped or feared enough to convince themselves it would somehow end well. Beneath them was organized crime, the mob families, triads, and mafias who ran things with brutal efficiency and were more than willing to drown someone in concrete if it improved their margins.

  And then there was us.

  The handymen of crime, the freencers and fixers who handled the dirty work no one else wanted, scraping by at the bottom while everyone above us climbed on our backs. We were smart enough not to follow the lunatics. But not ruthless enough to thrive under organized crime, which left us stuck.

  Right at the bottom of the dder, with nowhere decent to go.

  God, what a fucking pce to be.

  "Fuck Gotham…" My head thunked against the bar.

  That earned another low chorus of agreement from the room. I drank hard, trying to drown the maise and the creeping sense of despair, while keeping half an ear on the conversations drifting through the bar.

  "You think the Justice League's gonna show up?" Morris asked. He was old, gray around the edges, the kind of guy who'd survived mostly by keeping his head down.

  "Hell nah," Audrey said. "Pretty little League's too busy with aliens. The Reach, and the… ugh…"

  "Gordanians," Rodney finished.

  I downed another drink.

  Was this it? Was this how it ended? A bunch of washed-up criminals bitching in a bar while the city burned around us?

  "You think the mob's gonna make a move?" another guy asked.

  "I heard Bck Mask is running property jobs up north," someone muttered.

  "Fuck that," Audrey snapped. "One of his lieutenants has it out for me. I'm not working under that psycho."

  Is this it, then? Out of luck and drunk for the rest of my life?

  No… not anymore.

  [Fortune's Lover]

  The words floated in the corner of my eye. I was still half convinced I'd gone crazy.

  Maybe I was.

  Maybe this was just some delusional fucking dream as I drowned in Gotham's Bay.

  But… who the fuck cared?

  Let's roll the dice.

  I smmed my bottle down on the bar.

  "Are you assholes really just gonna sit here and wallow?"

  Heat rushed to my face. My heart was pounding. Every head in the bar turned toward me.

  "Jean, you're drunk, you don't know—"

  "No!" I smacked my palm against the counter. "I know exactly what I'm saying. We've all given up."

  I pointed at one of the older guys. "You. How long have you been in the business?"

  "Uh… twelve years. Maybe."

  "And how many people have you seen get sacked, stabbed, or die real ugly in those twelve fucking years?"

  He grimaced. "Too many to count."

  "Exactly!"

  I climbed up onto the bar, wobbling just a little, and looked down at the familiar faces. The bottom of the barrel. People trapped in petty, miserable crime because this goddamn city never gave us another way out.

  "We've been stomped by the crazies. By the gangs. By Gotham itself for years." My voice grew louder, but I didn't stop. "And we just took it. Like a bunch of bitches."

  I hurled my gss to the floor.

  It shattered with a sharp crack, loud enough to make everyone flinch.

  "Gotham bent us over and rode us raw," I said, staring them down, meeting every pair of eyes in the room. "And you know what I say to that?"

  Silence.

  "No more!" I shouted. "Fuck the crazies treating us like disposables. Fuck the mob that treats us like trash. And FUCK GOTHAM!"

  There was a fire in my chest now. "Who's with me?"

  For one long, awful second, nobody moved.

  Then Audrey stood and smashed her gss on the floor. "Yeah!"

  Another gss shattered.

  Then another.

  The sound kept building as faces hardened, jaws clenched, and something ugly and determined took shape in their eyes.

  "Say it with me," I said, raising my hands. "Fuck Gotham!"

  "Fuck Gotham!"

  We poured out of the bar like a wave.

  And for the first time, I had the feeling that life was gonna be good.

  —

  "Ugh…" I lifted a hand and winced as a sharp headache speared behind my eyes.

  What the hell happened st night?

  I remembered leaving the bar. I remembered shouting. After that—

  I looked up.

  And froze.

  I was lying in a ballroom, one of those obscene marble-and-gold monstrosities owned by the ultra-rich. Velvet drapes hung from the walls, polished floors stretched wide enough to stage a football field, and everything reeked of gaudiness.

  Except where the chandelier should've been, the fucking Riddler was hanging from the ceiling.

  Full green suit. Question marks everywhere. Spinning slowly like a disco ball.

  [Feat! Riddle This, Bitch!]

  [+1 Gold Gacha Ticket]

  "…Fantastic," I muttered.

  "Boss, you're awake!"

  I turned my head very carefully.

  Audrey hurried over, wrapped in an obviously stolen fur coat and yered in enough jewelry to bankroll a family. She looked exhausted, wired, and more than a little proud of herself.

  "I'm the boss of what, exactly…?" I asked.

  She squinted at me. "Are you still drunk, boss?"

  "Humor me," I said. "Expin."

  "Well," she started, casual as hell, "we went out, and, uh… shit happened. But you took over the Steel Cobras, the Bck Clouds, and the Jade Leopards. You united them. Then we stormed the Riddler's ir!"

  [Feat! Hostile Takeover!]

  [+1 Gold Gacha Ticket]

  "…Right," I said slowly. "And the weird-robed guys crying over Bibles?"

  Dozens of grown men in robes were bowing toward me, murmuring prayers, pressing their foreheads to the floor.

  I blinked.

  Then I noticed I was sitting down.

  On a throne.

  A throne that was, unmistakably, a golden, jewel-rimmed toilet someone had dragged into the middle of the ballroom.

  Audrey scratched her cheek. "Yeah, not sure about that one, boss. I bcked out after we started using the Riddler like a pi?ata. But from what I hear, they're calling you the Son of Crime or some shit."

  [Feat Achieved! Religion of Crime Usurped!]

  [+1 Gold Gacha Ticket]

  My movement hadn't gone unnoticed.

  Gangsters of every stripe, cultists, and familiar faces from the bar all rushed in, forming a crowd around the throne.

  "BOSS!"

  "BOSS!"

  "BOSS!"

  The chanting shook the room.

  I leaned back against the porcein throne, staring up at the spinning Riddler.

  "Hahaha…"

  Even when you were lucky, Gotham always made sure it got the st ugh.

  ***

  Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.

  I have advanced chapters on my if you wanna read ahead.