There was a short anticipating silence as Isaac slowly, at a measured pace, brought out the items from the bag.
The first were dark sheen gauntlets with faded yellow-brown tint, along with a complementary mask.
Peter and Gwen watched with slightly frayed nerves as he didn't even bat an eye at the rather distinct mechanical wonder suit that featured recently on the New York Times and The Daily Bugle.
Unaware of their thoughts, he brought the rest of the Shocker's suit and boots and set them across the counter, looking at them with appraising interest.
Gwen nudged Peter and gave him a nod signaling him to do it. Their eyes, mainly Gwen's, were focused on Isaac's face as Peter brought out his suit's spider emblem from his pocket and held it out to him.
"Something else?" He asked as he took the emblem and actually looked impressed. "Smart. This way I don't have to expand the space in here."
"Right." Peter nodded.
"Wait, you can see it?" Gwen asked, surprised. After all, the storage ring under the emblem contained Rhino's broken exoskeleton and his words insinuated that he could see it without taking it out from the ring.
"Yes." The man answered easily, still looking at the ring. That cleared up a major suspicion the two teens had, that the owner had some sort of ability. While Peter agreed, and as much as she loved him, there were just some things where she found it hard to take Peter as a reliable source for information.
The whole bit with purchasing the storage ring and putting it behind his chest emblem was her idea… well it was simply a fashionable replica of the Bag of Holding he had fitted into his utility belt. Since all that was required for it to work was that the item to be stored was in contact with wearer, other than the simple option of wearing it, she suggested that he could simply put it on his chest piece – doubly so as it was also the most protective section of his suit – an advice he had taken after forgetting twice to put on the ring in his hurry for heroics.
She also played a major role in finally convincing him to sell off any parts of any villain's suit that he managed to acquire.
"I'm impressed, kid. This is a step up from the other things you usually bring me. Are you sure you want to sell it? I'm certain you're smart enough to come up with a few gimmicks from dismantling them." Isaac tapped his glasses, which he had taken off at some point, against the gauntlets.
Peter shook his head however with a slightly embarrassed smile on his face. "I've already studied them. I can make something from them, sure, but I think I'll… profit more if I sell them."
Isaac laughed as he reinstalled his glasses back to his face. "Now you're speaking my language, Peter. Profit is the center piece of any trade. Always remember that."
Both teens shifted uneasily at those words because it reminded them all too clearly why they were doing this, and he was right. They needed funds, aka profit, for their plans to move forward if they wanted to defeat the Green Goblin.
Their awkward shuffling, however hidden it was, did not escape Isaac's appraising eyes. The smile on his face waned a bit, not too much to be noticeable, as he regarded their stiff shoulders and tight expressions.
"School that rough?"
"What?"
"You look tense, Peter. Both of you."
"Right, school. Um, no, we're fine." Gwen answered, leaning forward to peer at the gauntlets. "So how do you know what these do without, like, extensive testing?"
"Appraisal is the bread and butter of every trade."
Gwen eyed him. "I thought that was profit."
"Profit is the 'reason why', appraisal is the 'how'." The answer was obscure in a purely educational way that ensured that every other answer would follow the same pattern. "Should I write up a quotation?"
"Not yet," Peter handed him a list of chemicals and tech parts. "And I want recommendations."
"On?" Neither of them could tell if he was faintly amused or if the smile on his face was his naturally polite smile.
Peter didn't hesitate at this juncture. It was clear from the way the nerves left him as he engaged Isaac that he trusted the man's input to let it affect his plans if needed.
"Things like gene enhancements, gene splicer tech, and maybe some magic items, but not too much of that." He fished out something from his pocket and held it out. "There's only so many components the compartments can hold before it starts losing efficiency and becoming too bulky."
Isaac took the webshooter and held it close to his face, studying it intently, all the while both teens watched him not even blink at what was an obvious, though silent, admission.
"Easy enough." He said as he handed it back. "So what are we starting with?" Four catalogs landed on the table.
"Don't mind if I do." Gwen said with eyes brimming with excitement as she snatched up one of those catalogs.
"The most expensive?"
"Expensive is a choice, Peter." Isaac said as he picked up one of the catalogs and took out a pen from his breast pocket. "But in this case, it's not the wrong one. Gene overture it is."
Peter picked up his own catalog and Isaac started listing off options and jotting some down for comparisons and references. It was a weird study session with two overly smart teenagers and a mildly suspicious older man in a shady shop.
Most of the options were in the expected price range of tens of millions to billions, and some were so ridiculously priced that Peter and Gwen doubted either the prices were fake or it was something that no one could ever buy. One such option was one called 'One For All' but it was obscenely expensive that he instantly rejected it. Another was…. Surely whatever a Kryptonian Codex was could not be that expensive.
A lot of items were crossed off the list but the few that remained were either the top of the line at an accepted price range, or they were more aligned/attributed to Peter's needs.
For the gene enhancement he was going for a drug called Trigger. Calling it a drug made Peter queasy.
—Perfected Trigger (My Hero Academia): The perfected form of the Trigger drug developed and streamlined by Kai Chisaki.
Trigger, on a basis, is a drug that amplifies, and in some cases forces the evolution of the Quirk Factor by several stages. The perfected form does this on a grander scale as it not only opens up the evolution path, it also greatly enhances growth towards it on the plus side of removing the adverse effects the original version had.
Price: $26,500,000.
Seeing the price made him dizzy. He did not know what a Quirk Factor was but easily suspected it was something tied with supernatural abilities from wherever it was from.
"I can get you magical potions for resistances but I doubt you'll like those as they are not easily replicable for obvious reasons." Peter agreed.
The resistance serums he had bought from Isaac were all scientifically replicable and he was able to fit tiny doses of them into his Omni-Tool/webshooters for easy injection in the case of necessity.
Between his Detective Mode Cowl and Omni-Tool, analyzing and synthesizing an antidote from all the chemical residue from his fights with the Goblin was a piece of cake, so he was good on that front.
His suit was good, thanks to Edna Mode and her miraculous Omni-Fabric, but his Amulet of Protection, the same thing that had saved his life in his earlier fight with the Green Goblin, was broken so he needed a replacement.
"Now, magical protection. I can give you another Amulet or do you want something stronger?" Isaac asked, making Peter pause.
He really did like the Amulet and its subtle effects but his recent fights had shown him that not only was it fragile, but that he also needed something stronger.
Isaac saw the look on his face and dropped two items on the table before he could say anything. One was the familiar amulet and the other was a sea shell.
—Impact Dial (One Piece): A rare shell-like device from the Sky Islands that absorbs and stores kinetic energy from physical blows or explosions.
*It has a limit that, when reached, unleashes the stored force as a highly concentrated concussive shockwave.
*Though highly effective, the recoil slightly damages the user.
—Amulet of Protection (Dungeons and Dragons): An enchanted amulet that provides both magic and physical protection to their wearer by shaving off a brunt of the incoming attack, whether physical or magical.
Be reminded that the bigger the level of attack incoming, the lesser the damage that can be absorbed by the amulet.
"To take care of the recoil." Isaac tapped on the amulet before Peter could say anything, and then pointed as the colorful shell. "Though I'll warn you to be careful if you want to dismantle this guy. It works weird, so I doubt you'll be able to replicate it."
That caught both of their attention as well as inquisitive interest but they easily accepted it. It wasn't hard to believe that a shell that could store and release kinetic energy was operating on weird physics, like magic.
"Now let's get to the good part." Isaac pushed them to the side and spread out the Shocker's suit across the table with an apparent gleam in his bespectacled eyes. His small book and pen were suddenly in his hands.
The Shocker's suit, other than his Vibro-Shock gauntlets that fired concentrated high frequency kinetic blasts, absorbed extreme levels of kinetic energy that was also used to fuel the gauntlets. It also generated a protective vibrational field, which was the true source of his durability. He was a huge pain to fight, especially when one blast of his could rupture Peter's eardrums and mess up his whole balance.
Wait, Peter's eyes blinked in surprise as he looked between the shell and Schultz's suit. That was just a portable device that mimicked the suit.
The Rhino's suit, the metal contraption he called one, had been a countdown calamity that were it not for his detective cowl, Aleksei would have damaged the suit in his blind desperation to the point that it would have been impossible to get him out of it. Luckily the worst case scenario was easily avoided and the wrathful man couldn't be less thankful for it.
He was distracted by the sound of paper being torn and looked up to see a sheet of paper being held out to him.
Gwen scooted over and peered over his shoulders to look at the invoice only for her jaws to drop to the same low as Peter's. Shock, stunned silence, disbelief and panicking surprise was visibly plastered across their faces.
Their frozen faces moved in sync between the invoice and Isaac multiple times as they couldn't believe the ridiculous price Isaac had given them.
"If the suit's weakness to water shorting out its circuits had been fixed, it would have been a really good deal, or maybe even a collector's item."
The total cost of both suits were just a few hundred thousand dollars short of 30 million dollars and most of it had come from Shocker's suit. It was, without a ridiculous doubt, the most egregious amount of money he had ever seen.
"I told you this haul was a step up. Actually, the worth of it was why I included the Trigger. It's better than most things you'll find in the same bracket as it strictly does its job and nothing else. It'll evolve your X-gene or metagene or whatever subsequent you have."
They both looked at him, absolutely speechless and flabbergasted, and just kept staring dumbly at him.
"…. What about taxes?" Gwen asked halfmindedly.
"Tax free," Isaac smirked. "If you want, I can create an untraceable/unhackable and tax-free account for your change if you're that worried. For a small fee of course."
".. Please." Gwen replied weakly as Peter was still stunned at the memory of the amount he was about to have in his possession.
He remained scrambled even after the purchase was done and he and Gwen left. He had over two MILLION dollars. He was a millionaire. Was he now a millionaire? Different streams of thoughts boggled his mind, and Gwen who was just watching it all, shook her head in exasperation.
"Look alive, Pete. We still have things to do." She shook him out of his reverie once they got to his place.
Right. He took a deep breath and temporarily pushed away the thoughts of millions in his bank account from his mind. He looked down at the syringe filled with red liquids in his hands and without further ado, stabbed it deep into his chest.
"Peter! Your arm, idiot! Your arm!" He could faintly hear Gwen's screams but all that was drowned out by the electric sensation running through his veins.
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