Marvel: Empire of Power

The intelligence gathered by Finch, Anya, and Mickey painted a clear picture: Lou Scarelli was feeling the heat from Desmond Fitzpatrick's organized resurgence. Scarelli's operations were becoming more reactive, his enforcers jumpier, and a paranoid air was settling over his organization. Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, was methodically consolidating his alliances, his movements discreet but deliberate, like a master chess player arranging his pieces.

Elias saw an opportunity to subtly exacerbate this tension, to be the proverbial stone that alters the stream's course without revealing the hand that dropped it. He wasn't ready for a direct confrontation with either faction, but he could make them bleed each other.

His plan focused on one of Scarelli's more lucrative, and thus heavily guarded, ventures: a string of illegal gambling dens hidden behind legitimate storefronts in the working-class districts. These dens were a steady source of cash for Scarelli, funding his muscle and his reach. Disrupting them would hit him where it hurt.

Elias summoned Anya and Mickey to a rarely used storage room above his bookstore. The scent of old paper and dust was thick in the air.

"Scarelli has three primary gambling dens east of Saint Laurent Boulevard," Elias began, tapping locations on a meticulously drawn map of the city that Dr. Finch had annotated with his findings. "Here, behind 'La Belle Fortune Blanchisserie'; here, above 'Le Cochon Qui Rit Tavern'; and this one, the largest, in the basement of a supposedly defunct import-export company called 'Trans-Global Shipping'."

Anya, her Archer eyes absorbing every detail, nodded. "I've observed them. The Trans-Global location is heavily guarded. At least four men outside, more within, I suspect."

"Precisely," Elias said. "A frontal assault is out of the question. But we can introduce... chaos."

He turned to Mickey, whose Goblin features twitched with a mixture of fear and greedy anticipation. "Mickey, your task is infiltration, but not theft, not this time. I need you to plant these." He produced three small, identical metal cylinders, no bigger than a thumb. "One in each location. Discreetly. Somewhere they won't be immediately found, but where their... effect... will be noticeable."

"Effect, Mr. Thorne?" Mickey eyed the cylinders warily. "They ain't... gonna blow up, are they?"

Elias almost smiled. "No explosions, Mickey. Nothing so crude. These contain a highly concentrated, intensely noxious chemical, developed by a... former acquaintance with a talent for such things." (A polite euphemism for a discreet, under-the-table chemist he'd cultivated a relationship with prior to the System, one of his many small, useful pre-System assets). "When activated by a small internal timer – which I will set – they will release an odor so foul, so persistent, it will render those premises uninhabitable for days. Imagine the smell of a thousand rotten eggs mixed with burning sulfur and an ancient blocked sewer. No one will be able to stay inside, much less gamble."

Mickey's nose wrinkled in empathetic disgust. "Sounds... potent, sir."

"It is. Your Goblin agility and stealth will be paramount. The Trans-Global location will be the riskiest. You'll need to be a ghost." Elias handed him a more generous upfront payment than usual. "Success will be handsomely rewarded."