Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 8:30 PM Norfolk

  This morning started off like how it had for any number of days before I had apparently gotten the Nom de Justicier, “Verdigris”, with Rex heading out before sunrise and I got ready to head down for breakfast. The newspaper didn’t focus on my extra-diural activities, with the focus being on the tallies going up of people being declared “missing” and them all being linked to the “Blip”. I quickly scanned this broadsheet and found that this was a worldwide phenomenon. The sheet mentioned that something called the “United Nations” was meeting to determine the cause and what can be done about it. I figure that someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. will clue them in on to what they know shortly, but that with the decrease in personnel, it might take a minute.

  I headed out as normal, shortly after I finished the breakfast, and rode around the city, checking out the old area where the Pepsi Boys were previously located. A little while before I would be heading in to work, I found a trio of the Warlocks starting to speed up to pull up on me. They obviously felt that I was an easy target, but I didn’t think that they knew my other identity, just via my bicycle. I spotted an alleyway up ahead and cast Prestidigitation to get ready. I then rode my bike into an alleyway, a good distance ahead of them, hid my bike, and started up my sequence of spells.

  I started with Vanish, to get me short term Invisibility. I immediately initiated the Oath of Anonymity, Cat’s Grace, Displacement, and Haste before the trio pulled their bikes up and into the alleyway. I saw them looking around and getting off their bikes with two of them armed with what appeared to be sawn-off shotguns and one armed with a pistol, with chains, knives, or a metal pipe in their other hand. As the Invisibility from my Vanish was ending, I cast Mirror Image, and as I appeared there were five duplicates around me, all shifting oddly in the alleyway. The three bikers looked like they couldn’t believe their eyes when me and the images appeared out of nowhere in front of them.

  To give them credit, they did react immediately after me, but I did get three shots in before one managed to respond in any way. Unfortunately for them, my shots managed to do a fair amount of damage. My first shot hit the middle one with a sawed off shotgun in the left shoulder, my second one in his right shoulder, knocking them back and out, and deflecting and hitting the one with the colt m1911 in the chest. My third shot hit the same pistol wielder in the chest, knocking the wind out of them and dropping them as well. The final biker, seemingly confused by a) the plethora of multiple copies of the Verdigris Vigilante, b) the fact that they all seem to blur in some way, shape of form, c) the Vigilante seems to be twitching like a meth head, and d) that same set of vigilante images all raised a Beretta, fired, and the shots managed to drop two of his buddies before he could fire a single shot, aimed at the general area of my mass of images, and even managed to get close enough to me to cause one of the images to dissolve.

  I took aim at the last one, as he seemed to be backing up quickly, and fired off two shots, hitting him twice in the chest, and causing him to fall over backwards and knock himself out. Quickly, I shifted my Prestidigitation to collecting up the five rubber pellets that had been fired in this quick fracas. Since I wasn’t hurt, I checked to make sure that there was no one who was wounded in the crossfire, got my bike, lifted it up, and Vanished to run for a solid twenty four seconds before the Haste effect ended, and I ducked into another alley, so that I wouldn’t pop up out of nowhere in the middle of the street when my Vanish expired. Although the Displacement had already expired while I was invisible, my Mirror Images were still in existence.

  I didn’t have enough time to wait for the spell to expire before heading to work, so I tried to use some math, and I had no real way to get help from Rex (no way to get a message to him, now that the service that got him messages was lost to the safehouse fire), I decided that I was going to use back roads to get as close as I could, to at least within a quarter of a mile, then I’d pop Vanish again, and speed the rest of the way on the bike. The plan worked well enough, in fact, I was inside the parking lot and at the back door with twelve seconds left to spare before my first casting would expire. I snuck in the back door, put my bike in the usual storage area, and snuck into my workshop quickly, before texting Bob that I had a slight issue, that I was in my workshop, and that I’d show him as soon as he was free. After about thirty seconds, Bob came in to see that I had four copies around me.

  He shook his head thinking that he was clearing his eyes, and asked if he was drunk or if there were multiples of me. I smiled and told him that it was a defensive spell, to attempt to prevent attackers from hitting me, and that it was set to last for over seventy minutes more unless I could get his simple assistance from him. Bob asked me what I needed him to do and I asked him to attack me with a simple switch until the extra illusions disappeared. Bob asked me why I couldn’t do it myself and I showed how the images shifted ever so slightly to where I could not hit them. I told him that Rex could possibly show up now, but that it would probably take him just as long to get here, as I felt success from him right now, and didn’t want to pull him from that.

  Bob picked up the switch, and flicked it at me, managing to knock away an image, leaving me with three. Bob laughed as it disappeared, and said that this was fun. He flicked the switch out again, striking another image. He smiled and said that this could be quite cathartic. Bob tried to swing wide and unfortunately missed all of them.

  He attacked a fourth time and got the second from the last image. Leaving just the image and me, for Bob to figure out when he was swinging. Bob swung the switch a final time and dissolved the image. I thanked him and he asked me if it hurt me at all to have the images disappear. I told him that it didn’t but that if I had been hit, it would have just been a normal hit.

  I smiled and said that it was better to have some simple switch than a sword or a heavy club swinging away at me. Bob laughed at that and said that he could agree with that. Bob asked me why I had the defensive spell up and I told him that I had been confronted and followed by three of the Warlocks, who tried to jump me in an alleyway that I had ducked in to get away from prying eyes. Bob asked if I had confronted them in my normal clothes, and shook my head, saying that I had activated my Oath of Anonymity to stop others from recognizing me. Bob nodded and said that he hoped that it worked, and worried about my bike being obvious.

  I admitted that I had not really thought about that, and told him that I would try to figure out a way to work on that in the future. Bob nodded and I asked him if there was any activity going on today. Bob shrugged and said that it looked to be a good business day, but that there wasn’t really a call for my… unique… services yet. Probably just another batch of the “Ultrasonic cleaning” if anything. I thanked him and said that I would get on it, whatever Doug wanted to split off with me.

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  Bob cleared his throat and said that he didn’t know when Doug would be coming back. Bob told me that Doug had called him last night and said that he was having a crisis of faith after the instance with the wine. I held my hands up in apology, and said that I would be more than willing to leave to prevent any dispute with his employees. Bob ran his hand over his head and admitted that he thought this might happen, but he figured that it would be Steve more than Doug. Before I could say anything else, Bob said that the issue was already before us, and me leaving would not solve it, that it was something that Doug would have to come to on his own.

  I sighed, visibly shirked, and said that I’d go get to work on today’s orders. Bob patted me on the shoulder and thanked me for continuing on. I had an idea as he walked out, but I figured that I would “run the numbers” before I even approached Bob with this. I didn’t need to cause any more distress without running things by him first. So, I started my day with getting the racks of rifles, shotguns, and pistols and brought them over to my workshop.

  It was even more than yesterday, and I assumed it had something to do with decent weather or something like that. I spent the first hour quickly disassembling them, mending them, cleaning them, oiling them, and reassembling them as I had yesterday. With a fair amount of time to kill, while this was going on, I pulled out the four boards that I had prepared to be enchanted for the cots. I used a Page-Bound Epiphany to get instructions on enchanting camping gear like the boards, the shower, the toilet, the purification pearls, the water tank, the field provision box, the platters, and the blankets, knowing that I had already had these instructions in my library at the storage unit, and just didn’t have access to them here. All I had materials for today were the cots, unfortunately, so the shower would have to wait for another day.

  I quickly got the boards out, as they had already been prepared and carved as needed. I would be doing the whole lot of four of them, as I felt that I should probably be able to get them done quickly. The engineering associated with them was a bit difficult, but it was managed so that it would work, even in an extradimensional area. The salt was heaped upon the table as the four, one foot by two foot, birch wood boards soaked it up. I wondered while I was focusing if I could find a way to concentrate the salt even further to minimize weight, but I put a pin in that for later.

  After five and a half hours of focus and enchanting, I felt drained and unable to enchant another item for the rest of the day. The four boards were ready, so I brought Bob in to show him, after I got a leftover sandwich from the breakroom. I handed a board to Bob, and told him to visualize a height, and say the command word. He did so, and the board drifted out of his hands, aligned parallel with the ground, and expanded to be four feet by eight feet, as the board unfolded by itself. I told him that the weight limit for the cot was three hundred pounds, and that it would stay at that height until it was dismissed, but that it could not be moved from where it was put, as that would cause the cot to collapse back into its board form.

  Bob seemed a bit taken aback by this, and asked me how much one of these would run, and then added on both in salt and in currency. I did the math in my head and told him just under fourteen thousand with a direct conversion of gold to cash, or a fifty pound bag of salt, and two hours of work. Bob stared blankly at me for a minute and asked if I had any idea of what this would solve in this world. I shook my head and he told me that he would have killed any number of people to be elevated off the jungle floor four feet when he was in the service. I shrugged and said that I would have been glad to make them, and that I can make up to four a day at that rate.

  Bob said that this was too important to not bring up to someone in the military, that it was a sleeping system that was comparable to the weight of anything that they had now, required seconds to set up, took up MUCH less room than a cot, and could be set up almost silently. I offered up that I could also make a bedroll that would keep you in good conditions as long as the weather isn’t substantially lower or hotter than normal, and that would also help heal up people who slept in it for a full eight hours. Bob looked at me and asked if he got back in contact with his agent at the Seal Team, if I would be willing to make one of these for each of the sixteen. I told him that I would be glad to make the cots, but that it would take a bit to get them all carved and ready. Bob asked me for the materials and said that he’d get what I needed.

  I sighed and gave him the number of one foot by two foot birch boards that would be needed, the stain and lacquer, and a set of four carving tool sets, and the salt that would be required. I also added that if he wanted the bedrolls too, I would need sixteen wool bedrolls. He went to his office and brought back a poncho and a woolen blanket and told me that he had been meaning to ask me if this poncho would work for the tents and also if this blanket would work for the bedrolls. I took a look at both of them and figured that the quality would be sufficient for both of them for their assigned rolls and he laughed when I told him. Bob asked me if I would be willing to make a set of four tomorrow, and maybe a blanket the day after tomorrow.

  I shrugged and said that I would be glad to and said that I could go get the boards today. Bob told me that he would order four of the boards today, and that if the military wasn’t happy with it, that he’d give them out to the people who worked here as gifts. I told him that this sounded like a good idea and told him that each bedroll would be another two bags of salt each as well, and each would be a day’s enchanting. Bob thanked me for another thing to upsell to the military, and I shrugged, saying that it was just another thing that I can do, but that I might need to figure out a way to make more items at once. Bob said that this would probably be a profitable investment for me, long run.

  I shrugged, saying that getting rich was never a focal point for me. Bob said that he’d get me the lumber by tomorrow morning, and the blankets by Monday. I told him that with the work that would need to be done on the boards, I could probably enchant them on Friday. Bob agreed and said that he’d at least be thankful for a cot that kept him off of the ground for whenever he camped. I nodded and told him that I needed to finish off the day with the firearms, to which Bob agreed and headed back to his office.

  I finished off the day with the rifles and returned them to the racks for being sent out or picked up the following day, and then said good night to the rest of the crew, before getting my bicycle and leaving. I headed around for a bit before going to the storage unit. I was certain that I wasn’t followed, at least, as I went through a few alleys and down the wrong way down a few one way streets that were empty. When I got there, Rex was in the tent, reading again. I greeted him and asked if he had a productive day, in English. Rex nodded his head, and spoke in Draconic that he had caught many fish.

  I congratulated him and said that I had something to show him. I took out the four enchanted birch boards and used the command words for each individually, and set up the new “board cots”, three in the spare room and one in the bedroom that Rex and I had claimed, to replace the one that I had set up here. I grabbed the “mundane” one, collapsed it, put it back in its bag, and put it in the main room in a corner, to be dealt with. I looked over the items left to prepare, and decided on getting the shower and the pearls set up next. Rex claimed one of the board cots and curled up on it.

  I got everything that I planned to be working on tomorrow and asked Rex if he was going to head back to the Hotel. Rex declined in Draconic and I shrugged, figuring that he could make his way out in the morning. I shut the gate and “locked” it, before heading out to the hotel. There wasn’t any danger or attacks on my way there, and I got a decent meal at the restaurant in the hotel. Amber was there and when I got to the bar to get my meal, she indicated that she had heard some interesting news that a group of Warlocks got ambushed by “Verdigris”, when they were apparently just driving around before walking down an alleyway, guns drawn, and are now being held on suspicion of gang activity, possession of illegal firearms, possession with intent to distribute for narcotics, and disturbing the peace.

  I shrugged and said that being in a gang was a dangerous occupation, and that since there were less criminals due to the Blip, it only stands to reason that the remaining criminals would be more likely to get caught. Amber gave me a side eye and a smirk before going off to get someone else a refill. I finished off my meal and my drink before saying good night to Amber and heading up to my room. I did a quick Sift of the room to see if there were any signs of any more infiltrators, found that there was none, and got my stuff ready and clean for the next day. I made sure that the linen was clean and free of any issues and got ready for bed.