Lady, you have issues. And we don't care.

... Wait, what store are you in? Because a couple packets of ramen and some water jugs seems like a good purchase right now.

What did you even buy here, anyway?

FRACTAL 2017/04/10(Mon)23:21 No. 794972 ID: 218f17
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In my defense, I seriously didn't remember him. Who remembers anything nowadays. When I wake up in the morning after going out, I automatically go through my contacts and delete any new ones that were made the night before - it's a practice that, in my opinion, has seriously simplified my life. But I must've been SERIOUSLY fucked up every time I saw this dude, because he was acting like we'd seen each other several times.

Whatever. It happens. Bullet dodged, I guess.

It's late, but this street is always so aggressively lit that it's like daylight. There aren't many people out - by now everyone's either at home in bed or packed into the clubs. I want to get back to the apartment, and luckily it's just around the corner.

FRACTAL 2017/04/10(Mon)23:21 No. 794973 ID: 218f17
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I've got ramen and several jugs of water, since the pipes are starting to rust and we haven't gotten around to fixing them, and a bunch of junk food and some batteries and a little pack of rolling papers. When I try to flick the lights on, they don't respond.

well, fuck. i don't imagine your phone's screen makes enought light to get around

>>794973
There's someone there. If I were you I'd immediately leave and call the cops to report an intruder.

What about your jury-rigged bicycle power generator? A few hours of that should get the lights on for the night.

Also, check the fridge before the food in there goes bad. You have a gas stove, right?

>>794973
is that long haired person supposed to be in the corner?

use your phone's light to find some candles. let the place up and see if you need to mess with your circuit breaker or if it's just a bad light bulb.

Given it's 1998, the phone screen light option likely wouldn't be bright enough. Do you know your apartment well enough to make your way around in the dark with outstretched hands? Do you keep a flashlight and/or candles for power outage situations?

... Was that window open when you left?

>>794973
if the open window and humanoid figure are of no concern, the shadows in the room seem a little off, might be a ghost, be sure to take only out of focus stills and motion-blur-heavy videos of the ensuing haunt

Who's that chilling by the window?

FRACTAL 2017/04/13(Thu)22:02 No. 795728 ID: 218f17
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It's nearly impossible for me to see anything in the room - on top of the darkness, my lack of depth perception flattens everything out, and distinguishing overlapping shapes right now is a no-go. There's a lump by the window that's bothering me.

"Lucca?"

There's no answer. The batteries, ironically, are for our flashlight, which of course are in the Problem Corner. My eyes flicker to the open window, and I think for a brief moment about an intruder - but there's no way i can call the cops to our place, and I wouldn't want to even if I could.

No way around it: I stretch my arms out towards the corner, trying again. "Lucca? Are you home?" Nothing. I finally hit the corner, and my fingers touch something cool and soft -

"Fiorello. They disconnected the electric."

I scream.

FRACTAL 2017/04/13(Thu)22:02 No. 795729 ID: 218f17
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"Jesus FUCK, Lucca. GOD. FUCKING - Jesus FUCKING SHIT." I scrabble around in the darkness until I find the front of his shirt. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why didn't you answer when I was calling for you?"

"Hm." He goes limp, letting me shake him around for emphasis. "Forgot to."

"UGH." I manage to feel out the flashlight and pop batteries into it, and that's enough to allow me to set up a cluster of candles. I plop down on the floor across from him, glowering.

"How was your day," he asks, with a slowness that I know by now is the equivalent of caution, though no real concern comes through in his voice.

Great, thanks for the scare. Ask if any of the other utilities got shut off.

"The weather forecast forgot to mention clingy ex-boyfriends with a light shower of slaps. But that's just insignificant to 8!+(# about."

Tell Lucca about the guy at the convenience store and ask if he remembers him. Were you expecting the electric to be shut off, or did something go wrong?

well, we got slapped, and the electricity shut off, so like, right now it's kinda shitty. anything else happen today that we don't know about, fio?

also, what can we do about electricity? do we have any way to pay for it or do we have to wait?

oh no, how will you cook your ramen... shit... guess it's junk food for dinner (breakfast?)

did you get anything for lucca? also is lucca okay? who forgets to make noise when called for??

oh man, there he is!
say it was shitty, as usual, thanks, and why the fuck was he just sitting here in the dark? (unless that's normal for him, i guess)

>there's no way i can call the cops to our place, and I wouldn't want to even if I could
You in some kind of trouble?

>They disconnected the electric.
You've got money troubles, at least.

>>795729
Who's Lucca to you?

FRACTAL 2017/04/24(Mon)23:38 No. 797876 ID: 160092
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"I got SLAPPED again." I pop open a package of chips and set it between us. "So THAT was cool."

Lucca tilts his head. "Was that why my phone was blowing up."

"Oh, my GOD, he had YOUR number too? Jesus." I shove a bunch of chips gracelessly into my mouth. "What a fhucking nightmare."

"Lots of teary voicemails over a fifteen minute period." Lucca picks up a chip, examines it, and puts it back in the bag. "Can you maybe stop doing that to guys. It ends up being annoying for me."

"I don't even remember what I did," I protest.

"Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it."

"Don't bitch at me about my personal life." I cram another handful. "Anyway, we gotta pay the electric reconnect."

"I guess."

Great.

FRACTAL 2017/04/24(Mon)23:38 No. 797877 ID: 160092
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>Who's Lucca to you?

Well. A lot of things, I guess. He's a former upperclassman from med school. My roommate. My coworker, now - no, technically my boss, not that I respect his authority, like, at all. He's a freak and an asshole and he cares about exactly two things (getting enough sleep and his next fix). I like him better than I think I've ever liked anybody.

You have horrifically low standards.

>My coworker, now - no, technically my boss
soo, what do you guys do?

You are a very miserable person aren't you.

Go do a job. Make money. Anything to stop being so deep in debt it causes your self-loathing to have more sex than you.

Are we supposed to like these people, or are we waiting on a horde of orcs to put them out of our misery?

nah who needs electricity. the candlelit thing is cool

in times like these the best thing to do is to begin putting together a list of all the crimes you are really good at doing and then to start ranking them by profitability.

What is this, Withnail and I?
Go forth and get ye contact list, find people to scrounge off of. If you've done it before then check Lucca's, anyone looking for a fix has people to get a fix from. I say we do a heist, theives have no recompense and this quest could go anywhere right now.

>>797969
precisely this

>>797924
assume they're just you but with no moral code

Seconding a look at a contact list. If Lucca's lack of drive and involvement is holding you back, you have to find other people to help you get stuff done. How did he end up being your boss?

>>797876
do you legit not remember why he slapped you? that was like half an hour ago tops.

With both characters fully introduced, I can now post a little blurb in the disthread about how, in a convoluted sort of way, placebo is technically a jojo's bizarre adventure fanquest. check it out! https://tgchan.org/kusaba/questdis/res/65967.html#111203[/spoiler]

FRACTAL 2017/04/27(Thu)21:46 No. 798471 ID: 160092
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>You have horrifically low standards.
And yet I'm still disappointed.

>do you legit not remember why he slapped you? that was like half an hour ago tops.
Oh, no, I remember that he slapped me because I flippantly implied he was disposable and only good for casual sex. What I don't remember is what made him expect anything more than that from me.

FRACTAL 2017/04/27(Thu)21:47 No. 798472 ID: 160092
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"Hey, why wasn't the electric paid today, anyway." I nudge the bag of chips at him, since he hasn't had any yet; he doesn't seem to notice. "I thought we managed to scrape it together just in time."

"Ah. Well." He peels a thin strip of foil from around the mouth of the bag. "They came again, so."

FRACTAL 2017/04/27(Thu)21:47 No. 798473 ID: 160092
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And herein lies the problem. The thing about all of this is that there's no fucking reason for Lucca and I to be broke.

I mean, who the fuck's ever heard of broke drug dealers. Especially drug dealers who head the narcotics division of the city mob. ESPECIALLY with Lucca being gifted the way he is. Half the people around here have a little something extra, but I've never seen anything more mindblowingly lucrative than Lucca's ability.

Because Lucca Volpe, as it turns out, can turn table salt into narcotics.

FRACTAL 2017/04/27(Thu)21:47 No. 798474 ID: 160092
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So why the fuck are we poor? Lucca didn't join the mob, he was sold to it. His family, old money, hit rock bottom while we were in college, the same year that I was expelled (the same month, even, like some kind of sick joke). His older brother had already disowned himself and run off to Follow His Dreams a few years before, the fucking dickbag, so the only ones left to deal with the fallout were Lucca and his father, who's a coward and a shithead. And with a gift like Lucca's, the solution seemed pretty cut and dry to the Volpe patriarch.

His dad bit it a year later, because of course he fucking did, and Lucca's stuck paying off the debts - because the mob considers its protection from debt collectors to be our payment, and they take the lion's share of our profits, and then the REST of it GOES TO THE DEBT COLLECTORS ANYWAY because Lucca is a fucking sadsack who doesn't want them to go after his older brother instead. The situation, as a whole, is a nightmare.

well gang let's go sell some drugs

>Lucca's power: transmute NaCl into Crack
>Enslaved to the mob
Hilarious. Just @#$%ing hilarious.

Here's an idea: how much narcotic can Lucca create per day? Because I'm thinking if you FLOOD the mob offices with a literal cloud of crack and call the cops, bam - instant crackdown. Nobody does that because (A) they don't have five tons of crack to spare and (B) even if they did, they wouldn't throw it all away without making a buck.

But Lucca's power makes him a primary asset and threat to the mob. They would rather blow up half their empire than let him go, knowing he could beat them in a year with a near-perfect low-profile crack lab literally at his fingertips. Destroying the mob is the ONLY way to get out, they will throw younger members at his car just to keep him in debt forever.

>>798471
Also you forgot an eyepatch

>>798477
oops! post reported with a link to a fixed image. thanks!

wow, that sucks. so how did you two meet/why is this your problem too?

so the mob takes all the drugs lucca makes, right? all of it? you don't set any aside and sell it yourself?

you must have tried. if its that its not safe to do in this city, maybe you should go on a little weekend vacation.

or just ask for a raise. are you like.... a distributor?

Think you could get the mob to foot the electric bill on the grounds of the well being of their gold egg laying goose? Don't want to risk him tripping in the dark and breaking his neck, after all? ...Actually, why don't they have him under more watch and guard, considering how valuable you make him out to be? You'd think he'd be a prime target for kidnapping by a rival mob family or other organized crime group.

>Because Lucca Volpe, as it turns out, can turn table salt into narcotics.
Okay, how much salt can he turn and how often? We talkin' saltshakers, salt licks, road salting truck loads or salt silos per hour, day, week or what? Also, how pure? And what's the toll on him to do this? 'Cause a ability like that can't be totally free. There's gotta be a price on top of the salt. And relatedly, can he turn narcotics back into salt?

But the bigger question is what all can he turn that salt into? "Narcotics" is a category who's contents varies by nation to nation, region to region, in both law and common knowledge, and into which some substances should not have fallen. So, how wide is the selection Lucca can make? And how much of it could be legit? 'Cause there's a significant number of narcotics that are legit medicine, if properly dosed.

>And with a gift like Lucca's, the solution seemed pretty cut and dry to the Volpe patriarch.
And selling his son to the mob was even more of a horrid shithead stupid move than you'd think at first, 'cause Lucca's power could have paid those debts off legit if he'd gone to work for a pharmaceutical company. Any of them woulda paid him a princely sum to employ someone with his ability. He coulda signed a big, fat contract and made morphine or other opium derivatives for 'em for far below the cost they could make it otherwise. Maybe even other medicines as well. And instead his bloody idiot of a father sold Lucca to the mob for what was likely chicken feed compared to what he could do. With that short-sighed moron at the helm there's no fuckin' wonder why the Volpe family's fortunes hit the ground like a rocket propelled lawn-dart.

>His dad bit it a year later, because of course he fucking did, and Lucca's stuck paying off the debts
...Hold on, hold on... What? How the fuck does Lucca have his family's debt hanging on him? Debt dies with the debtor. Every debt in his father's name should have died with him. So unless Lucca took out loans in his name for the family or co-signed with his father... He did that, didn't he? He's such a goddamn wimp he caved to his father's arm twisting and put himself into massive debt for the "good of the family" once nobody would lend more money to his father. ...Goddamn, what a utter rat bastard...

But then, how is Lucca's older brother on the hook for this debt if Lucca doesn't pay it? If his brother had taken out loans in just his name or co-signed with his father, Lucca wouldn't have collectors coming after him for it, they'd either be going after his brother directly or the both of them. Did Lucca go to the debt collectors and make a agreement to pay his brother's debt? ...And dammit, the collectors could be going after the both of them despite Lucca paying, trying to wring out every cent they can. And unless Lucca and his brother are talking, Lucca wouldn't know if they're doing that. When's the last time Lucca had contact with his brother?

>>798476
While the idea of burying the mafia in a mountain of blow big enough the cops would have to dig them out before arresting them is amusing, the major flaw with it is it'd take a equal mass of salt. But even a smaller version of this idea has the big problem of making sure Lucca doesn't get connected to the illegal narcotics and have a load of charges leveled on him for manufacturing them.

Oh, and what is considered "salt" for Lucca's ability to work on? Does it have to be pure grains of salt, like table salt, or can it be in a solution, like salt water or sweat? Or blood and flesh? Because the human body contains a fair amount of salt and suddenly turning it into, say, pure uncut heroin will fuck someone up royally, if not outright kill them.

Also: Do YOU have a power?

>Because Lucca Volpe, as it turns out, can turn table salt into narcotics.
I'm assuming there's some kind of limit on how much Lucca can produce, or else the mob would have killed him instead of 'employing' him.

Flooding the market with a huge supply of narcotics would have tanked the price and cost the mob money instead of making it.

>>800366
NOT if they actively control him and the supply of drugs. Then it's cheap drugs that are ALL profit and they'll say when he'll produce them.

You got to get muscle and start doing schemey stuff to eventually take over the mob, girl. A free sample here... there, get the muscle addicted, they'll do anything for him. Spike drinks, food, make the superiors your slaves... evolve the ability. Once addicted, they'd never betray him. Can't. The supply would be gone should anyone discover the betrayal. Could they quit cold turkey? Would the withdrawal kill them? Who knows... who knows...

>>800607
You're overlooking that there's still other, mundane, sources of illicit drugs for purchase out there. Those high up in the mob'll have the money and means to get their fix one way or another. Maybe even the middle tier as well. That or go into rehab.

Also, the mob almost certainly has income streams from many more sources than just drugs. Arms smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, and so on. They can turn that cash and resources towards securing new bottom level members and muscle and aim it at Fiorello and Lucca and their power play. Or they play it smart and tip whatever crooked cops they have in their pocket off as to Lucca's ability, what he's doing and where he is. Get the police to do their job for them.

Not to mention the chemical properties of narcotics mean there's a slew of potentially expensive chemicals that you could make with narcotics. It's a field of study that is not heavily invested upon because nobody in their right mind purchases 10 tons of crack and uses it in science experiments. You'd need a well-functioning lab to study the reaction properly, and you can't send 10 tons of crack to the lab and not draw attention from cops and druggies.

But in YOUR case, you can build all the drugs you want, experiment on them, and try to find some combination that's explosive or healthy.