3 Establishing Goals And A Risky Move

(Carter POV)

Opening my eyes, I see a nice ceiling, one I could never have owned in my thirty years of life. It was plain, but the architecture could not be denied due to its detail and the cleanliness of the place. Sitting up, I did my daily stretches, walked out of the room into the main room, and overlooked the place. It was nice, but it was empty. It lacked a lived-in feeling.

In all honesty, if I hadn't been so frazzled yesterday and tired from jumping, I might have just stared at the ceiling all night as I had never fallen asleep in new places so easily before. But my prior experiences were not much better, so I will have to see how this goes. Walking out onto the deck, I took in the view, and while there was some snow on the ground, it was more towards the edges due to the awning above me.

It was nice and more importantly it was mine.

I deserved the best, or at least I thought I did. After everything I have gone through, the simple fact that I am here in this moment means I could be better. I could be the best. But I had to plan this out. A journey may start with a single step, but if you fall and break your neck due to not watching yourself, you only have yourself to blame.

So I needed a plan, I needed resources, and I had the power to be anywhere eventually. I was tempted to rob a bank similar to the main character of this world as, unlike him, my money wouldn't be traceable due to my private account, which was backed by the jump chain. 

But I couldn't take that risk; it's too obvious.

I needed to think, and I needed to place myself in the shows of well-connected religious extremists. I already knew that my Trackless perk kept me from being seen by CCTV, and my DNA was unable to be found unless I pointed it out, but if I am too obvious, the protection goes away.

First off, abusing future knowledge to gain money as while I have this pad and own it, I still need to pay the building for it, and they are not cheap as I saw the cost amounted to at least four thousand dollars a month for my monthly payments. Luckily, since the place is paid off by the jump chain, all I need to worry about are taxes and other fees other than a mortgage.

So I needed income, and since it was 2008, I could invest in certain companies, but I needed a computer, and I needed money to buy it unless I decided to do business in a library. But then I remembered something important. My warehouse has an unhackable and traceable PC.

Patting myself on the back for that, my planning continued as I still needed money to invest, so that issue still needed addressing. And while I could take a loan from the bank, they could say no due to not being very investable. Was investable a word? I think it is.

I would rather not be indebted to anyone. In fact, my very being hates that, so I went to the drawing board yet again. Sighing to myself, I wracked my brain for ways to make money without alerting the Paladins.

Walking back inside, I sat down on one of the chairs in the main room and went further into thought. At this point, I almost smacked myself over not paying too much attention to local news over the years, but then it hit me. While I couldn't steal from banks, why not steal from criminals?

If I cover my face, wear gloves, and jump, it would be the perfect crime. It's not the best idea or even a good one, but it's an idea nonetheless. First, I need to get my hands on a police scanner. Placing my clothes on, I walked into the elevator outside my door and went to the bottom floor, noting every open room if I needed to escape or hide.

The building I was in had ten floors, and as I went into the elevator and clicked on the bottom floor, the elevator stopped at floors three and two before it stopped at ground level. After stepping out and walking into the streets, I headed to a nearby Walmart I went in and grabbed some batteries, gloves, a ski mask, and a scanner, which I took from a pile of others that won't be missed I placed them in a basket and walked into the bathroom.

Thankfully, shoplifting security was at an all-time low due to the recession at this time, and there weren't any sensors on them, so I walked into a stall and waited for the room to clear out. After walking into one, I focused back on my pad and jumped. And in a split second, I found myself back on my bed.

I hadn't even noticed when I started breathing again, which then turned to laughter at the pure rush of just doing that. Maybe this is why people steal things just to feel the rush of trying to get away with it. But calming my beating heart, I looked at the scanner, placed the batteries in, and turned it on before going into the warehouse and looking over pictures of the city.

I needed to have locations to jump to if I was gonna do this, so I went over to the PC in my warehouse and looked over pictures all over the city. My perfect memory was working its ass off right now, trying to keep all of these pictures indexed and remembered at certain points, which, thanks to Google Earth, made it so much easier with the street-side view.

The scanner mostly consisted of normal calls between officers, but one caught my attention:

"-Taking fire! We have ten suspects exiting the building! Requesting backup!" The line went dead as a small smile made its way to my face.

Noting the location, I jumped to a nearby building overlooking the place, and they weren't kidding with the gunshot, and bullets were flying everywhere as multiple men armed with automatic weapons began to unload on the arriving police and Swat teams.

Seeing the building had a back entrance, I jumped onto a building that looked at the back and saw men loading what looked to be stacks of cash and drugs and looking into the vans disguised as cleaning trucks. I managed to get a good look at one before they took off.

I had never jumped into a moving target, but I focused my mind and cleared any rampant thoughts before I jumped and found myself in the back of the van. Silently fist-pumping, I searched for the money using the scanner light. Getting closer to the driver's end, I thanked the jump chain for not having a window pointing toward the back.

Looking through all the bags quickly but also closing them to make sure that no one suspected anything, I finally hit the jackpot as I found three duffel bags filled with cash. Making sure that they didn't have any dye packs I swung the bags onto my back and, with a smile jumped into the other van and did the same,

By the time these guys hit New Jersey, they wouldn't have even realized that they had just lost half of their cash. But I didn't feel bad as these guys were Blood Street, and their gang would take a bad hit in a few years anyway. Jumping back to my apartment, I opened the bags and checked for any trackers, and after taking them apart, I started counting the score.

Totaling up to a good five million dollars, I couldn't stop smiling at this success, and I put the bags in the warehouse before taking the mask and gloves and throwing them in there, too. Laying down on the couch, I mentally went through everything that had just happened, trying to analyze for any failings.

"Dye pack check is done. Trackers were not found, stolen goods were moved so I couldn't be implicated, and my identity was kept a secret. All in all, I think I did good." Giving myself a high five, I looked to the address where my account could be accessed.

But what struck me as odd was the bank itself, as I never heard of the Bank of New Cadia before. It was an odd name for a bank, but there had been stranger names, so I just went with it. Although according to the daily hours they closed at six earlier today so I need to wait until tomorrow.

If this account was as secure and untraceable as it said in the document, it should be fine to place all of this money into it for now through more jumping practice and heading into the warehouse. I practiced for hours on end, trying to increase my jump speed and distance. While the jump from the vans to my apartment was decently large, most experienced jumpers can go across the entire world in seconds.

At most, I could jump across the city without feeling any strain or nausea, but it should fade with time as I get used to jumping. The very thought of eventually being able to jump to other planets does bring a small amount of excitement but for now, just being able to jump across a city is enough for two days' worth of training.

Now I have five million dollars and more when I start investing. It will take a couple of years, but eventually, when I can jump across the world, I can make more cash runs. I would have to say though, that the feeling of jumping is liberating in a way like nothing in the world can hold you down.

It was invigorating, to say the least. A small piece of freedom in a world of unseen chains and strings. Sitting down on one of the chairs in my apartment after a few hours of training I looked at my jumper bucket list.

1. Get rich as hell (In progress.)

2. Read Harry Potter and Watch Star Wars (Incomplete)

3. Learn of other possibilities for future jump worlds (In progress)

4. See if I can avoid Paladins for a year (Still unwanted)

5. Go sky diving (Need to find a place for that.)

6. Get drunk in a safe environment (My Warehouse so I don't jump into a volcano)

7. Jump using a car (Griffin style)

8. Learn how much stuff can jump with me without strain. (Unknown)

9. Take a pen from the President's office

10. Learn to live?

It was a small list, but one nonetheless. If there's anything I know about myself is that I needed goals in the short term to keep myself going, and while most of them revolve around learning the limits of my jumps, I needed to do other things, things that were more random and just to see if I can get away with them.

I needed to learn my limits in this jump. I needed to do something to take my mind off of things. It was almost unhealthy as I almost see this world as a type of game in a way like a game of cops and robbers. It's hard to see it as anything else, really, and maybe that's the drawback I took talking, but I just don't know what I'm looking for here.

I mean the fact that I basically took one that made me more self-centered as well as one that made me essentially a wanderer in all but name. I could feel that I did not want to talk with others. It's the reason I took the drawback anyway as I saw it as free points it was probably a mistake but one I could eventually make up for.

Taking care to place the money in the bags I put them by my bed in the warehouse and simply stared at them almost thinking they would disappear when I opened my eyes the next morning.

It was going to be an interesting ten years.

Self-Centered +100 CP:

Say you suddenly find yourself with superpowers. Think of the things you could do and the lives you could save! I'm not sure what a Jumper might be able to do, perhaps save people from natural disasters, but-- Ah, you've robbed a bank. And... Is that the Mona Lisa?

I see. Why bother helping other people and using your powers for good when you can use them to live a life of luxury, am I right? It's easy to forget about the stationary world when you have all the freedoms of being a Jumper. It takes an exceptional person to resist. You are... not one of them.

Desert Plant +100 CP:

Maybe you adapted to living in the desert a little too much. You've been alone for a while now, so much so that you have developed something of an unhealthy liking for the state of affairs.

In simpler terms, Jumper, you're something of an asshole who won't admit they're lonely.

(In all honesty I'm finding it hard to actually figure out a way to get my character to go into conflict with anyone as due to the nature of jumping as a jumper it makes it hard to actually have conflict in a world where the people hunting those that can teleport in seconds can only rely on surveillance Tech. this jump may only last a few chapters along with others but I am having fun writing them.)