“I’m feeling peckish,” I say as we watch Mr. Rapist’s body roast in the dumpster. “You know any good burger places around here?”

Annie doesn’t answer for several seconds.

Finally, she says; “Yeah, I do. Let’s go.” And she picks up her backpack and walks away.

“So long, Keith,” I say to the burning corpse. “I didn’t know you for very long, but you were a piece of shit and you deserved this.”

I turn, and find Annie watching me carefully.

She doesn’t quite look scared, but she certainly looks suspicious.

“What?” I ask.

“You know him,” she says.

My eyes widen. Oh, right, I shouldn’t have known his name, should I?

Fuck it. I sigh. I can work with this.

“I don’t know him,” I say. “I just know his name. I’m psychic.”

Annie stares at me dubiously. “You’re psychic?” she asks.

I nod, mumbling an affirmative. “I am. It’s how I know that your name’s Anastasia Springfield, but you go by Annie. It’s also how I know that—” I activate [Observe] “—you’re twenty-three, was born and raised here, and ra… oh.”

Annie frowns. “And what?” she asks, curious.

I stare at her. “You ran away from home at fourteen… because you realized that your father was going to start doing to you what he’d been doing to your older sister for years.”

Annie swallows, looking away.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Annie shakes her head. “It’s okay,” she says. “I asked.”

I suppose she had.

“We should get going,” she says, leading the way out of the alley.

“Yeah,” I agree.

We’ve pushed it enough as it is.

Don’t want to get spotted by the cops next to a burning dead body in a dumpster.

I would not do well in prison.

“So,” Annie says when we’re some distance away from the scene of our crime, “you’re psychic.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t ask me to tell you what you’re thinking though, cause it doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, so you can’t read minds like Martian Manhunter, or something like that?” she asks, and I take a moment to reflect on that statement.

You know, for a minute there I’d actually forgotten that this is a superhero universe. People like a telepathic, green extraterrestrial superhero named Martian Manhunter, of all things, walk among us.

Looks like claiming to be psychic isn’t as crazy an idea as I might have thought.

“No,” I say, answering Annie’s question, “I can’t read minds like J’onn J’onzz can. That’s telepathy, what I do is—”

“J’onn J’onzz?” Annie asks.

“Martian Manhunter,” I say. “That’s his name.”

“How do you know his name?” she asks.

I pause.

“I’m psychic,” I say finally. “Anyway, that’s telepathy, what I do is different. You could say the universe tells me stuff about a person.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Anything it considers relevant,” I say.

“And that’s how you know Martian Manhunter’s name? And all that stuff about me?” Annie asks.

I nod.

Annie frowns in thought, then her eyes widen as a thought comes to her. “Wait, so does that mean you also know Batman’s identity?”

Since I came to this world, I’ve been threatened with a knife twice, watched a man get brutally murdered, and helped dispose of a dead body.

None of that had filled me with even half the panic that Annie’s words do.

“No!” I practically scream, watching the rooftops in the hope that I won’t see an angry Batman coming down on me for some ‘questions’. “Absolutely no! I know nothing about The Bat or his family. Stop asking me such questions you random woman I’ve never seen before.”

I keep watching the rooftops for several seconds, and only when I’m satisfied that there is no one up there, do I turn to Annie.

“What are you doing?” I say, my voice down to a near whisper. “You can’t ask me questions like that. If anyone, good guys and especially the bad, find out I know what I know, do you have any idea how much trouble it could put me in?”

Annie’s eyes widen as she only now comes to that realization.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I wasn’t—”

“It’s okay,” I say, then lean in and whisper; “besides, you’re right, I totally know Batman’s secret identity.”

I lean back.

“Not telling you though. Too risky. He might feel it in The Force.”

“The what?”

I stare at her in mild horror. “Please, tell me this world has Star Wars,” I beg.

Annie frowns. “This world?” she asks.

I open my mouth to make some witty comeback, but then I close it when I realize that I have nothing.

Annie looks at me. And I mean, really looks at me.

“The more you talk the more I realize that I don’t actually know anything about you,” she says.

“I suppose you don’t, do you?” I say. “That doesn’t feel too fair though, considering how much I know about you.”

I consider it for a moment.

“Ask me anything,” I decide. “If it’s… safe to tell you. I will.”

“Really?” Annie asks. “Anything?”

I shrug. “Sure, but I reserve the right the right to answer. What do you want to know?”

“Are you an alien?”

I blink.

My immediate reaction is an astonished; ‘Am I a what?’ But the question really sinks in before I can speak, and my reply becomes a slow; “I suppose I am.”

“Oh,” Annie says with way more relief than I was expecting. “That’s good. This—” she gestures vaguely at all of me “—makes sense now.”

“What makes sense now?” I ask.

“Your appearance,” Annie says, like it should be obvious to me. “At first I thought you were a junkie, but you don’t act like a junkie. You don’t smell like a junkie. So, I thought maybe you were sick or something.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

She opens her mouth to explain, then closes it, looking confused.

Finally, she takes off her backpack (which, speaking of seems a strange choice for a lady; don’t women all use purses and handbags and whatnot?) and passes me a hand mirror from within.

I take the mirror, hold it up, and, despite the bad lighting, I grimace at the sight of my face in it.

“What the hell?” I ask. “What happened to my face?”

I look like a character in a Tim Burton cartoon. An unattractive character in a Tim Burton cartoon.

My skin is pale and papery, my eyes dull and near lifeless, my teeth crooked.

On top of my head is thinning, greying hair.

Annie’s right. I look either like a junkie or someone with a terminal illness.

…Or, an alien too, I suppose.

“So,” Annie asks slowly, “that’s not how you normally look?”

“Of course not,” I say. “I look gross. Wait, is this why [Junkie] threw up when I offered to suck his dick? No wonder.”

“You what?”

“…Nothing. It’s a long story.” Going back to the matter at hand though. “Why do I look like this? Is this because of the isekai thi… Oh.”

I open my Status Screen.

CHARM: 05 (+)

No wonder.

Without a single moment of consideration, I allocate all ten available points into the Stat.

I hold up the mirror to my face again.

They say that when you have nothing, everything is appreciated.

It’s true. Because, even with my CHARM now at fifteen, I’m still not handsome. Hell, I’m barely average. But God, do I feel so much better.

It is only when I put down the mirror that I realize that I’ve just used my powers in front of Annie.

Also, I think I might have just fried her brain.

—❈—

The burger place is locked up just like the liquor store was, and we make our order at a booth and walk off with our food.

I’m not actually hungry—my need for sustenance is a thing of the past—but, eating feels nice, and with everything that’s happened to me since I got here, I need to feel something nice.

Ordinarily, out on the streets with meals like these, a park, or street, bench would be the ideal place to sit. But, of course, Gotham has no street benches.

Maybe they were removed to make life harder for the homeless, or maybe someone stole them and the city never bothered to get new ones, but, whatever the case, there are none.

There is a park not too far from here; but it’s overgrown and likely has a costumed psychopath lurking in the bushes (according to Annie), so, like normal people, we walk and eat.

“So,” Annie says, keeping her voice low since we’re now in a place with people (mostly shady looking ones) still out and about, “you’re from a different Earth.”

“Hm-mhm.”

“And you have superpowers.”

“Hm-mhm.”

“And one of these powers is that the universe rewards you for doing good things.”

“Not just good things, but yes, it rewards me.”

“With actual money,” she says, sounding like she still has trouble believing that part.

“Hm-mhm. Which, again, is why you really should have let me pay for the food.”

“I already told you. No,” she says.

I shrug. If she says so.

“That’s why you saved me?” Annie asks after a moment. Not judging, just… something. “The rewards?”

I look at her. “No. I saved you because it was the right thing to do. The reward was just a nice bonus.”

We walk and eat in silence for a bit. Right up until some smoking teens catcall at Annie from across the street.

They don’t follow after us or anything though, so I try to ignore them.

“Why are you out so late?” I ask, trying (and probably failing) to not sound accusatory.

I hate being out late. Even in good neighbourhoods.

Gotham is not a good neighbourhood. It’s the Knockturn Alley of bad neighbourhoods.

Gotham is what Detroit dresses up as for Halloween.

So, seriously, why on Earth would anyone, especially (as icky as it makes me feel to say it) a beautiful woman like Annie, be outside at two in the morning?

“Work,” Annie says. “My boss, the aptly named Dick, made me do an extra shift.”

I stare at her. From the tone of voice she speaks in and the deep-seated disgust on her face, I harbour a safe guess; “Let me guess, the aptly named Dick was “punishing” you for refusing to fuck him.”

Annie snorts bitterly. “You are psychic,” she says.

“No, just depressingly well-versed in human nature.”

I sigh.

So Annie got raped tonight and probably would have been murdered, because her asshole boss is an asshole.

I can’t even blame Gotham for this one.

Alert!

You have received a quest!

Quest [Punch A Dick] received!

Find the aptly named Dick and punch him in his rat bastard face.

Rewards: $300. EXP 300. ?

Accept: Y || N

“The universe is telling me that it’ll give me three hundred bucks if I punch Dick in the face,” I inform Annie.

“I’ll give you three hundred bucks if you punch him in the face,” Annie says bitterly.

Quest accepted then.

“That’s it,” Annie says, gesturing at a building up ahead.

“That’s what?” I ask.

“Where I live,” Annie says.

“Oh.”

The building is a piece of shit; aged façade, a fire escape rusted beyond the point of usability even to my untrained eyes, obvious cracks in the brickwork… the whole thing looks one safety inspection away from being condemned.

I follow Annie to the building, and I frown as she leads me in and up the stairs with the rusted railings.

The inside of the building is just as bad as the outside; flickering lights, ancient paintjobs, dirty hallways, and an elevator that looked like it last worked when Reagan was in office.

Wait! What year is it?

Annie has a smartphone, so it has to be the 20-teens at least, right?

Although, this is the DC universe; with the work places like STAR Labs and Mercury Labs do, not to mention all the alien tech and exotic energies that can be chanced upon by any rando…

Yeah, judging tech with the eyes of my Earth is not the best idea.

We get to Annie’s door, and she opens it and steps in.

“Sorry,” she says, “it’s not much.”

I step in.

She’s right, it isn’t much. Small, barely furnished, water stains on the walls, and a smell that I suspect might be mould.

I stare at Annie.

She had not offered to take me home with her. She had not asked if I needed a place to stay. She had simply walked here, and I’d followed.

“It’s fine,” I say.