At first, the people thought it was just another graffiti. Then my tag showed up consistently and only in certain areas.
As expected, people saw my territory marker as the rise of a new gang in an area of the town that wasn't expected to see their rise.
Shantytown, as I've described, was a less well to do area of the city in comparison to the Downtown. It was worse than some areas of the Docks where gangsters openly operated with impunity with the backing of Lung and the Empire (though in different territories).
Yet why was no one here?
The answer was simple: it's not worth it.
Shantytown, or the Downtown Coast more formally, was an area closer to the Downtown where the PRT and the Protectorate were than the two parahuman gangsters' territories. Maintaining any level of presence here beyond minimal required a lot of resources (mainly time and manpower) to get around the federal and independent heroes and agencies.
Also, moving their capes from one location to another to respond to hero/vigilante/police attacks?
Without a teleporter or extremely fast Mover, it would be impossible to respond in real-time. While Oni Lee made ABB far more mobile, he was also one of only two capes in the ABB. This moved their area of safety for their gang members without their protective umbrella. This would shrink their already small territory even smaller.
On top of that, Oni Lee wasn't Lung; he could be defeated with the current roster of any parahuman factions in the city, just with more than a few members.
The Empire could.
But why? They controlled some of the more affluent regions and received funds from the Medhall Pharmaceutical through Kaiser's civilian identity. On top of that, Shantytown was a very mixed skin color area; the area was not what E88's central doctrine sought.
Now, the Merchants had the highest presence here in the Shantytown because they cared jack shit about the place. If their members got caught? Meh. If the lost some profit? Meh. The dumb fuckers lost the products? Well, they better be punished for their stupidity!
In essence, Merchants that came to Shantytown to sell were Merchants who didn't care about orders from the gang's cape leadership, which was an oxymoron in and of itself. Skidmark led the gang, yes, but it was more because he was the most successful of them all even and after he got his power (or so I read from Bet internet's speculations).
Without the gangs paying attention to this place, it also meant that the PRT and the Protectorate didn't pay attention to this place. Why would they? Maybe minor villains and gangs might pop up, but the biggest and the baddest weren't here, so there was no need to waste money and manpower patrolling a location that wouldn't be affected by the big bad three.
And perhaps the damning cause of it all: only a twentieth of the population lived in this area, which was almost as large as the Docks. There was no large customer base for druggies, no large racist population to draw recruits from, and absolutely no minority communities existed here beyond maybe that on Hispanic community in the far east.
So the conclusion?
[Nobody important cares about Shantytown] Infoman concluded succinctly.
Exactly.
It was the perfect place for new capes to start their career out.
The other "perfect" places were the Trainyard and the Boat Graveyard, but those were close to the gangs and the authorities, known to be the starting location of a few local capes, and heavily monitored by everyone.
Oh, and the Merchants also dominated those areas, so there was that.
-VVG-
The city was suffering what could only be called its final death throes. One of its two biggest money makers and employers just took a bomb to the face and wiped out an "unfinished" Endbringer base, five blocks of rich businesses, and roughly ten thousand people. Fire was already the biggest threat to the city, engulfing at least three blocks in the span of a day.
Fortunately for me, now was the time during which all of the biggest people - E88, ABB, PRT, Protectorate, and even the Merchants - were duking it out in the Downtown and the Docks. Everyone knew the city was going down the drain and … still fighting for its scraps
God, were they pitiful.
I didn't know the exact details yet, but it had something to do with the attempted forceful acquisition of some area of the Docks by the ABB in the chaos, the E88 interfered, and then the PRT got involved.
Me?
I was making false records and ID for myself. Or rather, I was getting someone else to. I contacted Faultline by her business number and simply asked if she knew anyone who could make high quality fake ID.
We talked for a bit and then I talked to the forger.
One thing led to another and in was now at the Palaquine, Faultline and her crew's base of operation to pay her and the forger for their services.
Wearing what could only be a casual spring outfit and a domino mask, I waited in one of the club's waiting rooms with a suitcase filled with (looted E88) bundles of twenties. With me in the room was none other than Newter, obviously keeping an eye on me.
"So what do you intend to do?" he asked me out of the blue.
I looked at him. "Excuse me?"
He rolled his eyes. "Just asking if you are a villain, rogue, or a indie."
"Why do you ask?"
"Curious, is all. New mask in town and he needs a ID? Kinda weird, you know?"
I conceded the point. "Well, I can tell you that I am not a foreigner and do not intend to be a hero."
"A villain?"
"If you stretch the word, then yes."
"Kinda like a roguish villain."
"I'd prefer a villainous rogue. Rogues are, after all, businessmen, and what are businessmen if not evil?"
Newter laughed at that.
"Okay-"
There was a knock on the door and thenFaultline came in with an envelope.
"Hello, Editor," she said. "Do you have the payment for both of us?"
Straight to business, I see.
I pushed the suitcase across the desk and waited.
She took it, opened it, counted, took five random samples to check for fakes, nodded in satisfaction, and closed the suitcase. Finally, she handed me the envelope
I opened my envelope but then stopped before I pulled it out.
"You guaranteed the quality of this work, yes?"
She nodded.
I pulled it out and checked.
…
Everything was good. A new fake birth certificate was added to some random and out of the way in Utah town's archive, and I had a copy of it.
"Utah, huh."
"Bored and underpaid bureaucrat looking to make some money, or so she told me about herself."
I hummed and then closed it.
"Good business, Miss Faultline," I said as I rose up to leave.
"Before you go," she spoke up. "Do you have any information on Case 53's?"
I stopped and looked at her.
… she did help me for cheap and didn't cheat me.
"Just one. The leadership of this world are in on it, particularly the PRT"
"And your proof?"
I grinned.
"Highest concentration of Case-53's is America."
"It seems weak."
"Anymore than what I revealed will put you in harm, Miss Faultline. Just know that all Case-53's became what they were out of desperation from both parties involved."
I left swiftly after that, using "Escapism" to leave their club building entirely, giving them no chance to question or detain me.
-VVG-
As I said to Newter, I wasn't going to become a normal villain. I have been planning on "going rogue."
While I knew that my power set was well suited to heavy hit-and-run schemes, I knew for a fact that it would create me a lot of enemies that I didn't need to make. It would also make Taylor unhappy, whose feelings I've begun to care about since I mastered the both of us. To that end, I switched from planning to become a quiet villain to a quiet rogue.
My product?
Well, I had four powers I could use to make money, of which only one would cause me trouble. They were "Stitch Fix," "Constant Boltage (misspelling intended)," "Alter Plant," and the most troublesome of them all "Powers Behave."
Those were the names I put on them. They weren't creative names, but who's gonna know?
Stitch Fix was a simple power. If there was a physical damage, then I could physically apply material of any kind and use that material to fill in the space to structurally fix whatever was damaged. I haven't tested it extensively, but I did try to apply plant fibers to cracks in asphalt and the crack got fixed (there was now also a physically mutated plant that was as long as the crack, but who cared about details, hmm?)! The only limitation was what material I could provide.
Constant Boltage allowed me to constantly provide 344.81 mKh per day or 344,810 kWh per day. It was very impressive. All I would need to do was recharge any kind of large batteries and take payment for that. I could also hook myself to the grid to provide power, but I wasn't one to sit in one spot and allow myself to be literally hooked up.
Alter Plant allowed me to genetically modify plants and then accelerate their growth. Its limitation was that I could only work with what the plant had and any significant change required a lot of time and effort on my part. Oh, and I also needed a dedicated garden because if I was going to be growing plants, then they needed their nutrient and that meant soil, fertilizer, and whatnot. What I could do with Alter Plant was simple: grow fast growing, parasite-resistant, and low water needing plants. I could grow these plants myself for their fruits or grain and sell them as I saw fit on the farmer's market.
Or I could make poisons.
The last one was the riskiest and the most profitable: Powers Behave. As the name suggested, I could alter how the power worked, one detail at a time. It was limited by the power's "central philosophy," if you will, and the fact that I needed several days to fix one detail. It was a slow process that, should I ever make it commercial, going to cost people a lot of money.
For now, I intended to stick to recharging batteries and fixing to get by.
And if any asshole wanted to make a ruckus in my territory, then I would take out the trash.
-VVG-
The very first assholes I had to fight was the Teeth, who apparently thought the current crisis plunging Brockton Bay into chaos was the perfect time for them to return to their hometown.
Goddamnit.