If there was one thing Ethan knew about this world, it's that if you had the 'fortune' of being born a mutant, your best bet was to get on a spaceship and leave this planet as soon as possible.
Otherwise, things would go real ugly, real fast.
Having a seemingly top tier power didn't help one bit with the existential bullshit, in fact it usually made you even more miserable somehow.
Whether it was simple human nature being rightfully afraid of a genetically superior other coming to take their place as the top dogs, or some overly vindictive sapient virus dead set on making sure they would never become the dominant species on Earth, the outcome was the same.
A huge headache.
He could learn how to lift cars with his mind, throw around projectiles faster than a bullet or snap a regular's man's neck with a mere thought.
And it would do jack shit against the cumulative tomfoolery of every party dedicated to the culling of his kind.
He couldn't even be safe from the other people getting socially arse-fucked, they were too busy entertaining their bromance and throwing child-soldiers around for some obscure goals.
Now he could decide to become Nick Fury's private pet mutant, spill a lot of blood for little pay and a constant leash around his neck that would only come off when he was finally put down
It sounds bad, and it is, but he would hear him say 'motherf*cker' a bunch of times and maybe help take down hydra, so it might be worth it!
…No, it sucked too.
The only other way was to amass enough power; be it from his ability, his very own body or financial and political power to influence the world around him and make sure life would be gentle when it was time for her to fuck him.
Now that was something he could get behind.
Especially when he could accomplish all of this by beating the shit out of a bunch of glorified hillbillies who somehow managed to their very own burgeoning criminal enterprise.
A small racketeering ring up in Maspeth, while also subsidizing their income with some dog fights and a chop shop.
All things that would make him substantially richer…if he could abstain from splurging on study material and equipment for his extra-curricular activities.
Thousands of dollars melted like ice cream under the summer sun when you were buying kevlar reinforced vests, pants and high-comfort penile protection, renting storage space without paperwork and paying for his own high-protein diet.
He stood on the roof of a discount furniture warehouse, scoping out the hangar across the street with the kind of focus usually reserved for Dark Souls bosses after they killed a thousand times too many.
Below, the Billy boys were doing their usual dog-and-pony show, half a dozen pickups with more rust than paint, one guy grilling hot dogs off a stolen generator that definitely didn't pass hygiene inspection, and about twenty dudes who all looked like they got kicked out of the same metal band for being too inbred, aggressively racist, or both.
He winced looking at one of them showing off the size of his truck's exhaust pipe, putting his head inside for a reason even Thanos would dread to know, and obviously getting stuck that way.
'Yeah, probably both.'
Ethan adjusted the strap on his backpack and tried to keep his head in the game.
'Darn, they even smell like moonshine.' He shook his head, and no he wasn't going to explain how he knew the smell of moonshine.
He cracked his knuckles and sat down, legs dangling off the edge of the roof, surveying the operation like a bored sniper, waiting for the last batch of Appalchia's finest to come join the circus.
It wouldn't do to be caught off guard by folks who didn't even qualify as low-level mooks.
They were still more numerous than the kind of thug he was used to, better organized…yes, it was somehow possible.
Better equipped too.
But he too had gone a long way from the kid who barely hid his own face, beating up folks barely out of school for a few bucks and some clout.
One just needed to look at him.
Sleek tactical gear he modified just enough to make it unrecognizable from the initial product he bought off a doomsday prepper, full black and reinforced with kevlar and a single ceramic plate to keep his organs in one place, the helmet obstructed his vision, but it kept his head safe and his identity safer.
It also made him look older and more experienced, which was a bonus.
Now he wasn't the top assassin back on earth, though he once held a decent speedrun record on Hitman, but he was sure his get-up worked much better than modified PJs and spandex.
Stimulating the energy within him in preparation for what's to come, he stood, shoulders rolling. A slow breath. Focus. He had practiced enough to know his limits, and maybe just enough to break them, if Youth allowed it.
He wasn't a hero. Not by any stretch of the imagination, even if he somehow ended up dismantling every group of vulnerable lowlives around.
But one thing he could agree on was that breaking limits demanded that he take on increasingly difficult challenges.
Yesterday it was thugs selling weed and dreaming big.
Today it's the billies, leaving many a sister crying.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Will break the bones of the sinister six before throwing their broken bodies at Spidey? Jameson would have a field day with that one!
Ethan chuckled like a man who had to deal with an overly intelligent teenager for years upon years while keeping so many life-ruining secrets.
With lots and lots of spite.
Below, two customized pickups showed up with the final batch of criminally inbred punching bags, Ethan raised a hand and pulled a small lead ball from his bag, hovering it just above his palm.
First, coating in telekinetic power to ensure control…
Second, rotation to increase speed and lethality…
Third…propulsion.
It fired like a cannonbolt, the spinning ball moving faster than most people could react and shredding the air until it hit its target; their precious trucks.
Crash
First came the sound of metal being penetrated like a promising artist in a diddy party, then many tons of steel being lifted off the ground by the inertia and colliding with another vehicle, all the while the controlled ball of doom was still moving, unnaturally seeking out every last one of their cars so that they may not flee before Ethan could have all their money…and justice, it was also for justice.
Then came the screams of twenty hillbillies convinced that the skinwalkers were real, that they were in fact pirates who dwelled in New York, and that they were after their booty.
"Showtime." He grinned.
He dropped off the roof.
Well, floated, really. One of the perks of telekinesis. He still hadn't figured out the whole flight thing, but controlled descent was good enough for now. He landed behind a row of trash bins, crouched low, and reached out with his mind…for his own body.
Now he really could fly, but what he could do was coat his body in telekinetic power, run to build up some speed then push himself forward in a stunt that would probably leave an untrained human with broken kneecaps and a concussion.
When he did it though, it was the other guy who got a concussion, probably because he collided with a pair of reinforced boots moving at high speeds.
Meh, it was on him for having a shotgun, mooks should only carry baseball bats, small knives and the hopes and dreams of their kind.
At least the other boys got the memo.
"What the f*ck are you?" One of them asked, and it took a lot of willpower to not say 'batman' while twisting himself back into a proper fighting posture.
Colleen Wing had hammered the need for solid stance and footwork in him, the lovely woman that she was, teaching him so many ways to break, batter and bruise…pity she was probably grooming him to be a mook for her own murder-hobo cult.
But what can you do? Good sensei's are hard to come by.
The next few minutes were controlled chaos. He'd mapped out the entrances. He knew their possible escape routes, most of which involved the now ruined cars. And most importantly, he knew their tells; the twitchy bald guy who always went for his waistband first, the chain-smoking lookout who got distracted by literally anything with cleavage, the big guy who moved like he'd skipped leg day every day since 1980.
He knew whose knee he should break before he tried to make a run for it.
He knew who packed a mean punch and should thus receive a tire on the face.
And boy did he know to shatter every phone, camera or pager in the area.
It was probably overkill.
It was definitely overkill.
Did he care? No, it was great practice.
Ethan moved fast, hitting them like they owed him money, which they did.
A stack of tires launched into two guys who thought it was smart to try and stab him in the back with a butterfly knife.
A steel pipe wrenched from the wall danced in the air like a pissed-off hummingbird, twirling around until it hit the last hostile in the leg.
In under five minutes, the place was a mess of groaning bodies, spilled hot dogs, and the sounds of tires deflating.
It felt great.
The smell? Not so much.
He breathed hard, flexing fingers that didn't hurt as much as last time, nor did his reserves dwindle too much.
Then came the boring part, the looting.
…Who was he kidding? This was the best part.
Ethan stepped over a guy moaning something about dental insurance and child support, gently nudging him aside with a booted foot like one would a particularly unfortunate raccoon.
He moved methodically, checking each of the pickups first, torn seats, another shotgun which he decided was not worth the trouble, an old tube of menthol lip balm, a suspicious sock, and finally, a duffel bag stuffed with stacks of grimy twenties.
At a glance, maybe three grand total, mostly in small bills. Gas station robbery money. Into the backpack it went.
He made his way to the office in the hangar next, kicking open the door like a man with a refund to demand. It wasn't locked, which meant either arrogance or ignorance. Judging by the laminated "FBI: Female Body Inspector" badge on the desk, he leaned toward the latter.
A rusted file cabinet gave way to some ledgers, handwritten and completely unintelligible, because these guys probably thought Excel was a demon-worshipping cult.
There was a surprising number of pink slips from a local garage. Great, stolen cars with paperwork. That was going to be someone else's problem.
Then came the safe. He found it behind a false panel in the wall, which looked like it had been installed by a guy who thought drywall was a government conspiracy.
Not even a lock, just a latch and a thick slab of wood.
"Gotta love the billies," He chuckled, patting the bills to look for paint bags or a tracker, call him paranoid but…yeah, no that was just paranoid, there was no way they'd manage to rob a bank.
Inside: money. More than he'd expected. Wrapped bricks of cash, neat and silent. He did some fast math and swore quietly. This wasn't low-tier earnings anymore, this was multiple tens of thousands, maybe pushing six figures. Too much.
Way too much.
Then he spotted it, tucked beneath a tarp in the back, in a crate lined with foam.
Packages. Vacuum sealed. Labeled in code, but the pungent chemical stink made it all too clear.
"Cocaine," Ethan said aloud, blinking at the crate like it had personally insulted his mother. "Of course there's cocaine."
He counted the bricks.
Twenty kilos.
Twenty.
Kilos.
He sat down hard on the nearby folding chair, which protested under his weight and decades of exposure to grease fumes.
"Bloody hell, I beat up the Appalachian Apple Dumpling Gang and stumbled into the Colombian stock exchange." He rubbed his temple.
This was bad. This wasn't friendly neighborhood vigilante material, the bullshit anyone could just ignore and go on their merry way.
This was big boys narcotrafficking.
DEA-letter-in-your-soup serious. If he took any of that cocaine—or too much of that money—he'd be on every watchlist from here to Wakanda. Not to mention what might happen if the people who owned this stuff came sniffing around.
Nope. Nope-nope-nope.
Ethan stood up, carefully closed the crate, and walked back to the front of the building. He took out a burner phone, a cheap flip model he only used for this kind of thing, dialed a number he'd memorized from a public PSA, and used his best raspy New Yorker accent.
"Yeah, there's a warehouse in Maspeth, by the old Pine Street junction. Think someone's running a stolen car ring or something. Saw trucks, guns, dogs. Might be drugs too. Just sayin'. Maybe check it out." He said with a voice that could only belong to an old man named Jenkins.
He snapped the phone shut, crushed it and lobbed what was left into a trash bin half-full of burnt tires and cigarette butts.
Back inside, he helped himself to what looked reasonable. A couple more wads of cash—nothing suspicious, just a few thousand.
Enough to cover a few more months, gym equipment, protein powder, and maybe finance his software developing wet dreams after putting aside some cash for hard days.
He also took a pair of walkie-talkies and a custom tactical flashlight which they had for very masculine reasons. Because you never knew when you'd need to signal someone across rooftops or blind a methhead mid-monologue.
By the time he jump-floated back onto the roof across the street, the distant sound of sirens had begun to sing their lonely urban lullaby. He waited just long enough to see the first patrol car crawl into view, then promptly made himself scarce.
He wasn't nearly pale enough to linger somewhere with police presence, even if he removed his get-up, they might feel threatened by the nerdy student with a not so nerdy body.
"Here's to hoping it doesn't come back to bite me," He grumbled, such a promising night made unnecessarily difficult.
How did a bunch of retarded hillbillies get their hand on some heavy coke? How didn't they consume all of it in one go?
This truly was a marvelous world.
Back home, showered and warm, he lay on his bed staring at the ceiling.
No news alerts. No helicopters. No super spies coming to own his arse.
Just quiet.
Too quiet?
He sighed, rolling onto his side. "Let's just hope none of those morons had a cousin named Gustavo with a penchant for revenge."
But if they did?
Well…he still had about fifteen kilos of spite and a very well-reinforced pair of boots.
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at P@treon.com/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.