I was half tempted to take the second cop's capability for healing, but I figured it would be too small a boon. Gaining his capability for strength was a much more impactful thing, at least at this stage. With these two officer's strength, I was about twice as strong as I was when I arrived. Also twice as fast, thanks to that random girl's capability for moving fast.
My offense was thus improved tremendously, compared to an average person, but my defense was lacking. I had considered taking the capability for defense from the cops, but I didn't like how it sounded; defense capabilities would have been decent, I'm sure, but it wasn't precise enough. I could have taken the capability for offense, but my heart chose strength. Maybe my heart was just ignorant, or maybe pure strength was better than simple offense? I realized I ought to experiment with what capabilities I could take, what the limits were.
I was too squishy for that luxury, though. Too pathetically mortal. So, I did need better defenses, just something more targeted than "defense". Maybe resilience? I would have to think about it...
Speaking of thinking, it was subtle, but I felt like I was mentally stronger too, like I was more in control of my mind's thoughts and feelings. There was a desire within it, to be anxious of the consequences killing multiple people may bring about. Normally, such anxiety would be persistent, but when my attention turned to it, and told it, "Fuck off," it reduced to a quiet whisper.
With Hitoshi's capability for controlling minds, now my own capability, it made me wonder if it stacked with my enhanced capability for strength, to make me especially good at controlling my own mind.
As I looted the policemen's corpses for their two guns and car keys, I considered how I should test the breadth of my boosted strength capability. Testing pain tolerance came to mind, but I didn't want to injure myself without having a healing ability, and how else would I properly test pain tolerance without a grievous wound? The other thing I thought of was to just try and... control my mind. If mental strength was included in the capability for strength, and I had a significant capability for controlling minds (or at least, twice the normal capability for controlling my own mind), then I should be able to do something that was beyond my reach before.
Since it was easier than wounding myself, I went with the second idea while heading to my brand new cop car.
Be happy, I told myself, willing my mood to improve as much as I could make it.
A smile lit my face; I could feel my steps becoming lighter, my breathing easier, like a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying evaporated into nonexistence.
It lasted for the entire fifteen seconds it took to reach the car, and then it crashed back down. My smile morphed to a frown, and I wasn't sure if I was upset that the effect had ended so soon, or if it was an emotional rebound from the forced happiness. It didn't matter though, as my mind stabilized several seconds later, adopting a calmer attitude. Too calm for the situation I found myself in, my consciousness noted... but I'd rather be calm than stressed and anxious.
I started up the car and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. When I straightened onto the road, I gassed it, slamming back into my seat until I was going twice the legal speed limit. Then I slowed down a bit, because I didn't want to get T-boned and fucking die before I could amass god-like multiversal power.
The police radio mounted on the dashboard crackled, and a voice came through.
"Dispatch to Musutafu Four, report status, please."
I turned it off and focused on the road as I thought about my next step.
As soon as I had started driving, a fresh idea blossomed in my head, one with real potential for a quick and easy boost. If I could find a crowd of people, and drift through them, I could get so many capabilities. The only issue with that, of course, is the massive response it would likely invoke; my mind control quirk was strong, but it wasn't suitable for groups of targets. Realistically, it would only take one person with a gun and an especially itchy trigger finger to take me out, let alone a couple squad cars.
Right now, when I was still relatively squishy, I didn't want to act suicidal.
Of course, facing down two cops when I wasn't bullet proof could be considered suicidal, especially when I could have just left and avoided any confrontation, but that was more of a calculated risk than anything. I knew the cops from earlier were expecting to deal with an average man engaging in a quirkless hand-to-hand fight, or maybe just a hand-to-face assault; the barista was stunned when she saw me kill Hitoshi, and then she disappeared, so I had been confident they were lacking intel, and thus I could catch them off guard.
But if I drove through a crowd, and multiple cops came, I'm not confident I could deal with all of them before finding a bullet or two in my brain. I mean, I had two guns myself, but I had never used a real gun in my entire life, so I wasn't sure I could aim them with any accuracy.
Unless the arcade and VR shooting games I played boosted my real life aiming capability...
I'd still be fucked.
My eyes narrowed; a ways up ahead, I could see an intersection with six people standing together on a corner, waiting for the walk signal to allow them to cross the road. There were only a couple cars in front of me, and I was catching up on them fast...
I maintained my speed, which was still well above the legal limit, but not by an insane amount; I didn't want to draw attention by accelerating, nor did I want to make a B-line straight for the small crowd. Instead, I waited to get closer, and closer; the light changed to yellow as I sped down the road, the cars in front already across the intersection. The small crowd continued to wait patiently in unaware bliss on the corner across the road--I reached the intersection as the light turned red and pulled the steering wheel to the right.
The car slammed into them like a two-ton ball going fifty miles an hour into a stack of bowling pins; I hit the breaks right before hitting them as I realized I was going to crash into the building behind them, but I was going too fast.
As a few bodies rolled over the car, and a couple were flattened beneath it, my eyes widened at the fast-approaching corner store entrance.
Half a second later I crashed right through it in an explosion of shattered glass, where I was met with rows of chips and candy and whatnot that the car toppled like they were nothing until it came to a sudden stop, the police car perched atop wreckage in the middle of the building. Airbags exploded as I was jerked forward by the sudden deceleration, softening the impact by slamming into my face like an all-encompassing bitch slap.
It took me a few seconds to get my bearings as the airbags deflated.
Honestly, it was not as bad as I would have expected it to be, if I had enough time to form expectations before I plowed into it. My head hurt a bit, but I was otherwise fine, the store having a cushioning effect on the crash. Much better than crashing into a wall.
I opened the car door and made to get out, stopping only for a few seconds to grab my guns, one for each hand.
Then, it was game time.
The store was bigger on the inside it seemed, as the car was fully inside with several feet behind it, and several feet ahead, although it was devoid of customers, just a middle-aged man behind the register who started shouting obscenities at me the moment I got out of the car.
"Nice day for a drive, eh?" I asked a moment after noticing him.
He broke his tirade of swears and bitching to stare at me. I stared back, waiting for him to say something. It must have looked awkward from an outsider's perspective, but I felt fine just waiting.
No, wait, I just committed another severe crime; I didn't have the time to wait.
I trained my guns on him, "Tell me your name!" I shouted.
He raised his hands, alarm spreading on his face as he begged, "Don't shoot!"
He made to say more, but I activated my trap card before he could get a single syllable out. A blank look overtook his entire being, and I knew.
His body was mine.
With his angry shouting under control, I was able to hear a faint gurgling sound coming from somewhere nearby. It sounded like it was coming from the car, so I took a few steps back, stumbling over some debris from a broken shelf, and found the source of the gurgling only a few feet away.
Mostly pinned beneath the front of the car was a battered and bruised young man, making wet noises as he tried to breathe with collapsed lungs.
The barrel of a gun found his head, and I pulled the trigger. I grimaced when the bullet hit the side of his face and he let out what would have been a blood-curdling scream if the blood in his throat wasn't already quite curdled. Or maybe it was his lungs that were curdled?
I fired another shot and this time, it went clean through his brain. Time was ticking, so I hurried to bend down, but I paused with my tongue extended, hovering above his face. What capability did I want? I hadn't decided before roleplaying GTA 5 in real life... No, I was dual wielding, so wouldn't that be San Andreas?
I shook my head. Quick, quick; capability for strength? Maybe. Capability for moving fast? No, capability for speed? Strength would be better. Capability for intelligence? I'm already smart enough for now, I needed something more immediate and useful to prevent me from getting killed by a bullet. I needed to up my defenses, be more durable. Capability for durability?
No! I've got it!
I closed the distance to his mangled face, next to the bullet hole in his cheek, and lapped up a splotch of blood; immediate pleasure shuddered down my spine and I was faced with so many capabilities, which all faded a way as my heart latched onto one in particular:
Resistance.
I gave his face another lick before I stood up, savoring the newfound delicious taste of blood, the feeling it gave me. Then I speed-walked over to man behind the counter, who just stared ahead like he was brain-dead, and set one of my guns down so I could grab him by the throat and pull him close; my teeth sunk into flesh and I must have hit his jugular, because blood spurted into my mouth so abruptly I almost choked. Instead, I just sputtered as the warm euphoria hit me once more.
Again, I chose the capability for resistance.
The cashier slumped against the counter as his blood evacuated his body, spurting out in pulses across the counter top; some of it got on me, but the spurting was quick to slow down. His body gave an involuntary rattle, the blank look was gone, replaced by a look of despair as he slid off the counter and onto the floor, dead.
My footsteps carried me out of the store, where a mini-hell occupied the corner. A few people had come up to the corner to help my manslaughter victims while more watched a safe distance away. The people I hit laid scattered and mostly dead, with only two still visibly alive; one of them was standing, a man with gray, stone-like skin, supported by a helpful pedestrian who was looking at him with concern. The other survivor, a young woman with white scales scattered across her skin, lay on the ground with her digitigrade legs twisted in ways they really shouldn't be, with another helpful civilian holding her hand and whispering something, too quiet for me to hear.
The third person who had decided to be helpful stood before me; she seemed to have been headed inside the store, perhaps to figure out what the fuck just happened.
She was frozen, her eyes on the guns in my hand. Without giving her time to decide whether to run or speak, I pointed one of my guns at her as I approached and pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. Just to be safe. She started falling forward at the same time she reached for the new holes in her chest; I dashed, closing the gap, and caught her. The angle was a bit awkward to bite her neck, so my teeth found her ear instead.
A scream rang out, somewhere down the street, but I paid it no mind as my tongue tasted blood and I was once more in heaven, where I chose the same exact capability for the third time.
Resistance.
The gunshots, of course, had revealed my presence to everyone up and down the street; several ran for their lives, but a few stayed, one of which held a phone towards me to presumably record this incident. Foolish, but who here wasn't silly from time to time?
I heard a few shouts from the bystanders, but I didn't spare anyone more than a glance, except for the two dudes touching my food. For those two, they stared down the barrels of my guns, one with anger, the other with fear. A lovely dichotomy of confrontation and surrender, both prevented from moving by their will to survive and the injured they supported. The one with a backbone was the one supporting the mostly-fine man, who maneuvered in front with a confidence that made me think he was especially durable.
But his bravery gave me an idea to save a bullet or three.
"Hey, stone-man. What's your name?" I asked, one gun still pointed at him.
He just looked at me, stone-faced, before answering in a surprisingly light voice, "Haru."
His posture relaxed as if the pain and discomfort left him completely. The man beside him seemed to notice as his eyes darted to Haru in confusion.
"Haru, Haru, Haru. Beat the man next of you to death, and then keep beating him."
Haru, like the loyal slave soldier he was, whipped around with a heavy fist that sent his helper sprawling onto the cold concrete of the sidewalk. The other, now only, uninjured man on the corner remained in a crouch beside the freshly-crippled woman and let out a gasp, as did a few of the onlookers that hadn't ran at the first sight of an armed individual. A monotone series of dull smacks met my ears as Haru rained down blow after blow on the unconscious man below him. He was like a robot as he alternated punches with a steady, measured rhythm.
I focused on the other victim of mine, and the soon-to-be victim.
Both of my handguns trained on them, and I pulled the triggers half a dozen times, "Bang, bang, bang!" I called out as I fired off each shot. Most of them missed, but enough hit; the woman, already close to death, peacefully passed away from a bullet in her neck.
And shoulder.
And stomach.
She became one amongst six corpses on the street corner, with the man beside her becoming the seventh as he collapsed atop her, riddled with bullet holes. Screams echoed once more, but I ignored them all. This was a public, broad daylight execution with multiple witnesses, with several of them already gone, plus the police were likely already investigating why they couldn't reach the two officers I had merc'd mere minutes ago.
I had to move quick.
Before a hero came.