The heavy rain trickled to a stop shortly after Lucian finished dinner. With nothing to do and a few hundred dollars sitting pretty in his pocket, he went out to collect some essentials.
His first purchase was a backpack. Nothing fancy; just something to keep stuff in until he found a place to stay. Maybe serve as a pillow while he slept. To be an effective pillow though, it needed stuffing—so he got eight sets of clothes from a thrift store that he could mix and match, and he was set. Conveniently, his backpack came with a flashlight stuffed inside that neither he nor the cashier noticed.
'Well well well... won't say me no to a freebie.'
After those came a balaclava, goggles, and a cheap replica hockey mask. Proper headgear was a priority, after all. He also made sure to purchase from different stores to avoid suspicion.
Following a quick last-minute visit to a crafts store, he cut the hockey mask in half and kept the bottom, and cut out a section of the balaclava to leave out his nose and mouth. He then used small eyelets to reinforce key spots on the balaclava, which let him secure it safely to the half-hockey mask using aluminum wire.
'This ain't no Batman cowl, but it'll do me for a while.'
Headgear now ready, he stuffed it to the bottom of his backpack underneath all of his regular clothes.
...
Still energetic, Lucian decided to roam around. The city was alive—more so than he imagined a city rife with crime could have ever been. Crowds flowed like molasses even in the night, though they stuck to the main streets where light was constant.
Billboards, headlights, business signs, and lampposts. So long as these things were present, the people could at least pretend that they were safe.
Then again, it wasn't like they had any choice. If they hid in fear all day every day, then Gotham might as well have reduced itself into a ghost city. The only parts of it that looked deserted during the night were the roads less traveled, residential areas, and industrial zones.
'Well... it's not like it'll stay this way forever. Just you wait, Gotham. We'll fix you eventually. Soon, your people will feel at ease no matter the hour.'
Lucian could only assure it of that because of the Headmaster's request.
That being was his benefactor—the one that deemed his soul worth saving to give another shot at life. He spent two years in the Headmaster's domain, otherwise known as the Academy, living like any other student there.
As for why he was in Gotham now, to make a long story short, he was asked to lend a hand. The Headmaster's youngest daughter wanted him to test some of her prototype technology. They received formal approval from the Headmaster to conduct a live field test, under one condition: that Lucian grow powerful enough to conquer one universe for him.
His method mattered not—only that he bring one universe into the Headmaster's fold.
And so, here he was. Gotham was a shithole that needed fixing, and he was a man that needed to conquer one universe. Any universe that he wanted.
And since he had chosen DC, what better place to start than Gotham? If he managed to cleanse it of the evils that plagued it, turn it into the best version of itself that he could manage... then that would be proof that his influence was beneficial. That could easily snowball into the eventual completion of his objectives.
Discomfort cascaded all over Lucian's body. [ Justice Sense ] had interrupted his musings.
Surprisingly, that Ability's range was quite limited. It must have had to do with his level. Certainly, knowing where all the crime was across the entire city would have been too much for a Level-0 host.
Lucian turned his head and squinted. Across the street, something moved in the shadows between buildings. A small sharp object glinted in the light, and he was already crossing over with his mask over his head.
Near the incident taking place was a series of trash cans. He picked up one of the lids and moved in. He had already confirmed by then that the act had only one perpetrator. Warily, he snuck close and raised his arm to strike.
His target turned, having sensed his presence somehow. He raised the lid just in time to catch the jabbing, bloodstained knife. Metal screeched against metal, and Lucian took a step back.
'Easy now, Luce. Check yourself. That ain't no golem, so go easy on him...'
The mugger was still shocked. Behind him was his victim, slumped and bleeding against the wall. Lucian capitalized on that moment and threw his trash can lid like a frisbee.
Flinching, the mugger raised his arms to protect his face. Lucian moved in and struck—his arms snaked around the mugger's own and twisted. With a pained squeal, the knife fell from the mugger's hand, and the battle tipped in Lucian's favor. Clearly, that mugger hadn't been conditioned to pain.
Lucian stepped into the mugger's personal space. His foot hooked behind the enemy's leg and his arms delivered a quick shove. When the mugger fell backwards, Lucian quickly mounted his waist and delivered a full-force punch to his jaw.
The mugger's body went slack underneath him.
[ Combat EXP: 10. ]
[ Next level: 70. ]
'The victim...'
Lucian tore off a large section of the mugger's shirt and darted to the woman in the alley. She was pale, but not too much. The bloodstain on her clothes grew slowly. Judging by her breath and the faint moaning, she was still conscious.
"Hey. Lady," he called out silently. "I see the wound in your gut, but are you hurt anywhere else?"
"N-no," the woman struggled to reply.
By then, Lucian had already folded the fabric and pressed it to the wound over the woman's clothes. "Can you stand?"
Instead of answering, she tried to get to her feet. She stumbled, but managed to get upright on shaky legs with his help. "Thank you," she rasped out.
"Alright, then. Let's get you to a hospital."
[ Rescue EXP: 10. ]
[ Next level: 60. ]
Lucian was surprised when the woman didn't deny an ambulance ride. Apparently, that was one of the few good things in Gotham—Wayne Enterprise funded every public healthcare facility in the city. Now confident that she wasn't at risk of any further harm, he stayed behind and watched from the shadows as the first responders picked her up.
Now alone with an unconscious mugger, Lucian leaned him against a wall and took his belt to bind his arms with. Then, he jabbed his fingers in a spot on the mugger's abdomen where it really hurt. Lucian stepped back when the mugger gasped, lurching forward with spittle falling from his lips. He leaned back in as the mugger struggled to catch up with reality.
"Sit your ass back down," he commanded.
Filled with terror, the mugger complied.
"Why'd you do it?" Lucian asked. When no answer was given, he made demands. "Tell me why. Make me ask a third time and I'll put you to sleep and wake you back up to ask again."
That got the mugger talking. "I really didn't want to...! I just seriously needed the money," he stammered. When fixed with a glowing-eyed glare, he shrank back further. "Y-you! You're one— you're one of them...!"
Lucian's patience drained fast. "Fuck you mean 'one of them'?"
The mugger's expression hardened, as if he'd just found his second wind. "You're one of those meta-freaks!"
"Yeah? Well, fuck you too," Lucian grumbled. Again, he knocked that mugger out cold.
He reveled in satisfaction for only a moment, and then rummaged around for anything useful. There was nothing besides a cellular phone—an older model with a keypad. He punched in the emergency hotline and reported the mugging, and then left.
When the police came, they would only find that man and a bloodied knife with his fingerprints on the handle.
...
With his mood dampened, Lucian wandered around some more to blow off steam. After resetting the phone and swapping out the SIM card, he used [ Justice Sense ] to find some incidents to resolve.
During the first one, he came upon a thief trying to break into an apartment. Lucian promptly chased him off and warned those who lived there in case another attempt was made later on.
He went on to visit an open bar to take a break, but some cunt tried to spike a girl's drink while he was there. He brought attention to it and got the perpetrator arrested.
In another attempt to improve his mood, he even visited a pet store—which was, to his dismay, attacked by some Joker wannabe. He was dressed in a cheap suit and wore a shitty green wig. Lucian dealt with that one with more vitriol than usual and earned a significant amount of EXP for saving the animals.
There were incidents that he couldn't handle, however. His strength was nowhere near passable as superhuman just yet, though he was much stronger than the average human being. He would still suffer difficulty against opponents with firearms and the like, and even worse against crowds.
He stayed away from those types of incidents, investigated from afar, and called the cops instead.
'Need to get stronger fast... so much wasted opportunity.'
[ Combat EXP: 20. ]
[ Rescue EXP: 40. ]
[ Total EXP: 60. ]
[ Congratulations! Your level has risen to 2. ]
[ One for All bonus: Power +1, Vitality +1, Agility +1 ]
[ Class Points: +1 ]
[ Free Attribute Points: +5 ]
[ Next level: 200. ]
– ৹ – ৹৹◎৹৹ – ৹ –
Host: Lucian Sant-Pearce
Matrix: One for All: Lost Flame
Level: 1
EXP: 0/200
Classes: Brawler [1]
———
Attributes:
Power: 11
Vitality: 14
Agility: 11
Intellect: 10
Mentality: 11
Spirit: 11
Luck: 0
– ৹ – ৹৹◎৹৹ – ৹ –
Lucian dropped three points into Vitality, and one each for Mentality and Spirit. He would have popped some into Luck, but the Program explained that it couldn't be raised using Free Attribute Points. He would need to go through Quests or some obscure means in order to boost it.
In the end though, it wasn't a big deal. Luck functioned on a plus-minus scale. A positive value meant better fortune, and a negative one would obviously be otherwise. A value of 0 just meant that his fate would sway in neither direction.
As for the attributes that he could raise, he judged Vitality to be the most important. It defined his durability, longevity, energy levels, resistances, and much, much more. Meanwhile, Mentality boosted thinking speed and reaction time among other things, and Spirit affected his willpower, charm, etc.
Power was something that he could easily supplement with weapons—at least for the time being. Agility, meanwhile, was more important than Power, but not as much as Vitality. At the level he was at, he had no reason to worry about being faster just yet.
As for his first class level, he took on the Basic class, Brawler. It was a power-and-durability type of class, and with his current skillset, it was the best he could have chosen. Its first Ability, [Rough-houser], boosted his physicality as well as any object he used as an improvised weapon.
If that wasn't convenient enough, maxing out the Brawler class would give him access to the 'Intermediate' Monk class—which had an Ability that would grant him access to lifeforce manipulation.
...
Mentally exhausted late into the night, Lucian decided to finally look for somewhere to settle down. He wandered the city streets until the buildings thinned, making way for some actual greenery to manifest. It wasn't much, really—just some tough trees and hardy shrubbery, barely scraping by in Gotham's toxic environment.
'Ah, such inspiration—true symbols of tenacity against the human plague.'
Eventually, Lucian's wandering led him to a water channel. Its flow was murky, filled with gunk. It was to the point that soil clumped up enough in certain sections to grow moss and grass. Bridges crossed over the channel at fixed intervals, wide enough for only one car to pass through at a time.
Beyond that, the sections past those bridges seemed deserted—a small ghost town in the middle of the city of crime.
"Well, I'll be..."
Across that bridge stretched more road, battered and broken from decades of disrepair. Directly across the bridge from Lucian was a plot of land where the trees grew wilder—more alive. Even the shrubbery was thicker and more widespread. What truly caught his attention, however, was something beyond the trees.
The unmaintained road pulled into the plot and stretched into a dirt path, persisting only because unhealthy soil had been packed too tight for the grass to overtake it. At the end of that path was a structure—an old chapel. It sat lonely in the far center of the land around it, likely falling apart from the inside.
Lucian had lived in one of those before. In his first life, his family ended up in financial ruin. They were taken in by a kindly old priest that let them stay as long as they needed, so long as they helped around to maintain the chapel itself.
Lucian eventually graduated high school while under Padre Basilio's roof. His younger sisters—twins—were in the middle of high school themselves when he died.
"Man, the memories," he mumbled, stepping forward onto the abandoned road.
That place... he would make it his home for old times' sake.
৹ ◎ ◉ ◎ ৹
"Dead for at least an hour... internal bleeding from head trauma."
Batman rose from the ground next to a body he'd spotted on patrol. It was an adult man, stripped of his clothing besides his underwear. Scattered all around him were miscellanea, and the only thing of real note among them was his wallet. It had been emptied of everything besides his identification and banking cards.
A boy spoke from above. "There's nobody around. Everything's clear."
It was Robin, garbed in brightly-colored clothing that concealed the same armor that Batman sported. Draped over his shoulders was a black cape with protective, insulating lining, and his eyes were hidden behind a domino mask.
"I did catch some tracks, though," Robin continued. "Three people came in here, and only two left. One of them actually entered from that alley over there."
Batman nodded. "Write down your findings. We'll go over them once we have all the information we can get."
He then took a small camera out from his utility belt. Two quick snaps brought out flashes of light. Pixel-perfect pictures of the dead man's ID had been captured, front and back.
"Oracle," said Batman, pressing down on the side of his cowl. "I'm sending you someone's ID. I need you to look into his background."
Nodding to himself after receiving a positive response, he looked around, focus high. Up along a building's corner, hidden under a fire escape, was a surveillance camera.
"Robin. Let's test some of your skill with technology."
—=—=—=—=—=—=—=—
I always intended for Lucian to live in a chapel. I sorta kinda just forgor to do it in the old version of this fic 'cause I got carried away with everything else since I had no focus. Also yes, Lucian's the guy on the cover [duh].
Anyway, this is Jay!Bin! You know what's coming.
Also, tech in this universe is behind ours by quite a bit, and the economy's not as bad as present. Only Batman and other wealthy/technologically-inclined characters will have access to things we consider modern.
End Note: Power Stones are fuel, and kind comments are food for the heart.
To those able and willing, you can support me further by buying me a ko-fi at [ ko-fi . com / mr_blorp ], or by subscribing!