Deviant's Masquerade: Get Ink'd (A Toon Villain Quest/RPG)

Act 48: Preparing The Stage


Act 48: Preparing The Stage

--- Joshua Durand ---

Given how close he was getting to the deadline for his heist, he decided that it would be best to once more go over everything for his chosen target. Namely the jewelry store in the mall the junior heroes tended to host events at.

If he was lucky he'd be able to make a decent haul while also gathering a fair bit of Madness, what's more perhaps it was half-assing it a bit but he'd also done the basic outline for the area, and was just double checking that nothing had changed in the two months since he first cased this place.

(Jr. Hero schedule is still randomized. So no hints on who wins that… No major issues with my escape route, especially given how broken my Ink Flow is for that once I get outside.) He nodded to himself as he went down a little mental checklist as he wandered the mall on his phone. (Meaning the only real thing to keep an eye on is what kind of loot I can get from the store.)

Stepping into the place with a handy excuse of checking to see if there was going to be a holiday sale since said holidays being just a couple of weeks away and he needed a gift his girlfriend -(That you don't have.)- would love for their first christmas.

(Also fuck you too.)

(Eh, you've got like half a dozen female friends, I'm sure one of them would appreciate a gift. Maybe then you'll actually have a girlfriend.) The devil on his shoulder whispered.

(Uh, I'm not sure any of the girls I associate with would appreciate jewelry.) He admitted thinking of how most of them would probably prefer boxing gloves to a jewelry box. (Though I guess this seems like the kind of thing Annette or Zylah might like… maybe the GM?)

It was something to consider once he'd actually completed said heist.

For now, he was more busy checking to see if any of this jewelry on display would actually sell for anything, or if- (Nope the good stuff is definitely in the back. Nothing out here is worth more than maybe two hundred bucks and the Doc will probably only pay half of that. And that's only if none of this is fake decoy shit.)

He could work around that but there were still two major problems with going for the back of the store.

First was the fact that he couldn't actually get into the back of the store, meaning that he couldn't plan his escape route properly without outright cutting back through the front of the shop. Something that would give -whatever Jr. Hero was present- time to call in back up or set up some kind of interception if he was unlucky.

Second was the fact that breaking into the back would have fewer witnesses and make for a lesser showing than an outright robbery of the front of the store where everyone would see him. (Meaning I'll have to pick between purposely drawing things out in the front for madness or smashing and grabbing the back for money.)

He was sure there was also some kind of middle ground he could achieve between the two, but that was something he was going to have to figure out on the actual day of the heist.

Scene Consequences

-Joshua is now aware that when robbing the Jewelry store he is going to have to pick between larger money gains and larger madness gains.

---

Since he was already in the mall, a place with a fair bit of foot traffic through it, he decided to go ahead and run a few power experiments he'd been curious about now that he had so many unexpecting guinea pigs and a large enough petri dish to play with.

(Feel like you were mixing up your metaphor a bit there.)

(Shut up.)

Aware that his current experimental plans were going to require a fair bit more finesse than he was usually capable of with this particular power, he went ahead and found a nice secluded corner to down one of the Malice Vials he tended to have stashed somewhere on him.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

With a sweet symphony playing through his head, and a mix of strawberries and copper on his tongue, he began to reach out with his Madness Field stretching it as far and thinly as he could all while focusing more on the mental muscle that allowed him to control it more than anything else.

He was factually and instinctively aware that his 'Madness Field' was just that, a manipulation of the ambient Madness around him and within him. With Madness being some form of mental emotional energy based on the fact that every 'unit' of Madness he acquired invoked some kind of emotional response when nearby.

Now just because he knew that did not in fact mean that he knew what exactly his field reacted to. Was it simply spikes in emotion? Was there some external trigger? Something that would make it easier to activate on demand, a situation that would allow him to better control it, or at the very least make it so the field quit attacking him just because it thought it was being funny.

His various attempts at researching the publicly available information on the Deviant energy known as Madness could be summarized as 'I don't know.' the energy apparently loving to mess with whoever was observing it to the point of actively screwing up any experimental results that were measured.

A problem he was beginning to understand as even with a vial of Malice the energy almost just seemed to do whatever it wanted. Actively screwing with him whenever he simply sat and watched it, as if it refused the very idea of being watched, measured, or controlled with everything that made it it.

(This is downright maddening…)

Scene Consequences

-Thanks to Malice vial gained (1+D6=4) XP to Madness Field.

--Currently: Lv. 4 (9/10)

---

"So, uh, what's the point of this?" Avery asked, sort of just sitting there as Joshua tried to draw the Cabaret around them. Or rather small bits and pieces of it without entering whatever fugue let him draw the whole thing in perfect clarity in the waking world.

"Well, since the Cartoon Cabaret is well, a cartoon, I'm hoping that if I can improve my drawing skills it'll help me with making Dreams and other things for the Cabaret." He tried to explain, losing concentration for a second and his hand spasming to draw with far more detail than his active mind could.

Clicking his tongue he crumpled the paper up before tossing it over his shoulder and starting over.

"I… see…" The Cabaret Manager nodded even if his tone suggested that he didn't. "Well, if you think it'll uh, help boss…"

"It will… eventually." He was sure of it. (If only I could draw something without my powers hijacking it!)

He stared at the seventh attempt at drawing a simple still life of the bar, the quality too supernaturally good for it to have been his actual skill instead of his maddening abilities, before finally deciding, "Fuck it. I'm done with this." and crumpling the page up once more.

"Uh, boss?" Avery blinked as Joshua stood up.

"Frustration is building, and I'm getting bored at failing things today so we're going to do something far more tangible in its actual benefits while being relatively simple in the actual execution to the point of soothing my very damaged and fragile ego." He told his boss dream.

"Uh, what?" The Cabaret Manager blinked once more.

His eyes narrowed as they swept over the main hall of the cabaret in search of something that could easily be spruced up before falling upon the stage. "That'll do."

"What'll do now?" Avery asked, moving to follow as Joshua made his way towards the stage before easily stepping onto it and taking the whole thing in.

He snapped his fingers twice and held his hand out. "Avery, madness me."

"Okay?" His ever faithful boss dream answered before plopping some spheres of madness into Joshua's outstretched hand.

He clapped his hands together, grinding the madness down into an almost powdery like substance, before casting it out onto the stage and willing the substance to set into the wooden floorboards, sprucing them up with a nice shiny gloss as the Madness set into it.

"So, what exactly are you doing now?" Avery asked, eyeing the floor.

"Polishing the stage floor boards." He answered, while running his foot on the ground.

"Okay…" The Cabaret Manager slowly nodded. "I'm always up for improving the Cabaret but… aren't there more important things for us to work on… boss?"

"Maybe but I need a easy win." He admitted, before slowly backing up to the edge of the stage. "Besides, I've always wanted to do this."

"Do what?" Avery frowned.

"This." He answered before taking off in a quick run and a hop that ended up with him sliding across the floor. "Weeee!"

(This is even more fun than I thought it'd be!) He giggled to himself as he continued to run and skid along the ground, almost skating across it as if it were ice with a grace that he could not have managed prior to getting his powers.

At least until he slipped, spun three times in the air, and promptly face planted painfully of course.

"Still… worth it…"

Scene Consequences

-Gained 2XP to Drawn To Life

--*Skill Level Up* Drawn To Life Lv. 2 (1/6)

-As long as Joshua has an 'Audience' he gains a slight bonus to [Reflex] and [Charm] based checks.

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