"So where's the wine, then?"
"Not for sale at the moment. Sorry."
"Then why again do you have a liquor license?"
Jude picked up the gourd, took a measured sip, and set it back under the counter. "Having it now means I'm ready when the time comes. I'll bring proper drinks when I start doing the yakitori nights."
Snart looked at him for a moment, said nothing, and finished his sandwich.
The next customer arrived on the smell alone — an man who'd been walking past with no particular intention until the braised pork reached him and redirected his entire afternoon.
"What is this? How much?"
"Hamburger. Five dollars."
"That sounds good."
"One coming up — and since we just opened, I'm throwing in a couple of these on the side." Jude flipped open the insulated box beside the cart. Inside, two dozen small round cake sat in neat rows, pale and soft, slightly glossy on top.
"Cake?"
"Handcrafted sugar-free steamed cake. Very clean. Good for your health." He handed two across with the sandwich.
They were, in the strictest technical sense, the extra dough from the morning's bun-making, formed into rounds and steamed rather than wasted. Were they as interesting as the kakuni sandwich? No. Were they free? Yes. Jude had found that "free" reliably neutralized most objections to food.
Lisa, who had finished her first sandwich and was now thinking about the problem of wanting more braised pork without having anywhere to put it, looked up. "Can I buy the meat separately? Just the kakuni, without the bun?"
"It wouldn't travel well," Jude said. "You'd want it hot. Cold kakuni is a different experience — not necessarily a worse one, but not what you'd be buying this for."
She looked briefly disappointed, bought two of the milk buns anyway, and then asked, "Will you be back here tomorrow? Same spot?"
Jude considered this. "Probably not exactly here. Where I set up mostly depends on foot traffic patterns." A pause. "And whether my current enemies happen to be coming through."
"Hey! You — food cart! Stop right there!"
Snart's posture didn't change, but his attention sharpened immediately. He turned with the unhurried calm of a man who makes a point of never looking startled and found three men with visible tattoos moving toward the cart at speed.
Jude, without particular urgency, put the lid on the braised pork pot.
"As you can see," he said to Lisa, conversationally, pulling on his riding mask with one hand, "street vendors and protection rackets have never really gotten along. Even back home, it's only been a recent improvement."
He stepped onto the three-wheeled vehicle, turned the key, and the engine — which did not sound like any food cart engine Snart had heard before — delivered the cart from a standing start to a speed that was genuinely inappropriate for a vehicle of its size, threading into the intersection and disappearing in a trail of exhaust.
The two men who'd been closest skidded to a stop in the cloud of dust left behind.
"Again?!"
Lisa, eating a milk bun, looked at them with mild interest. "Again?"
"That guy's been running stalls all over the city center for weeks." The larger of the two was visibly furious, the kind of anger that comes from repeated embarrassment. "Never pays. Fake plates. Always wears that facemask. If we could just find him once without the bike, he'd be finished."
Snart's lips pressed together in a thin line. He was putting the pieces together now — the slightly improvised quality of the cart, the multiple permits that suggested someone who'd filed everything in a hurry, the engine that had no business being in a food truck. The food itself had been genuinely good, which meant the operator wasn't an idiot. He was just apparently running a street food operation specifically designed to be unchatchable by local organized crime.
That's a creative approach to market entry, Snart thought, and filed it away.
Three neighborhoods over, Jude coasted to a stop, lifted his facemask, and resumed his internal monologue about the fundamental rudeness of Central City's criminal infrastructure.
"Five times a day," he muttered, adjusting the pot lid to check on the remaining stock. "Five times. Gotham's mob at least had the decency to consolidate. These people are clearly running on thin margins and taking it out on independent vendors." He checked his license display, which was entirely legitimate and registered to an identity that was also entirely legitimate, just assembled from nothing four days ago. "No manners. No professionalism. I just finished modifying this tricycle."
He pulled back into traffic.
The strategy was deliberate, not just defensive. Once Barry woke up and became the Flash, the city would start generating incidents at irregular intervals across a wide geographic area. Being a street vendor perpetually in motion — chased across the city by increasingly frustrated gang members — gave him a mobile presence anywhere in the urban center without anyone asking why he kept appearing in different neighborhoods. A food cart being hunted by the Mendez crew was unremarkable. A random Asian man appearing at Flash incidents across the city would eventually attract the wrong kind of attention.
Besides, it was genuinely profitable. The 10x multiplier didn't care how he made the asset points, only that the work was real.
Speaking of which, he thought, scanning the afternoon crowd. Three weeks, every neighborhood in the city center. Still no sign of Drake or Camilla.
He was still thinking about this when someone grabbed the handlebar of his cart.
"Oh my god — is that kakuni?"
Jude looked at the person who'd stopped him. Young, clearly a student, and staring at the sandwich board with the particular intensity of someone who had not eaten this type of food in a very long time and had given up expecting to.
The accent was Japanese. So was the expression.
"And are those—" the student squinted at the insulated box "— mushi-pan? What on earth—"
"Ahem." Jude held up one finger. "We're in America."
The student straightened up. "Right. Sorry. What do you call them?"
"Hamburger." He pointed to the first item. "Handcrafted sugar-free steamed cake." He pointed to the second.
The student stared at him for a moment. "That's genius," he said, with complete sincerity. "Shouldn't these be ten dollars each?"
"I'm an honest merchant. Five dollars. Good ingredients, fair price, good for all ages."
"Five dollars." The student took out his phone. "Hang on—"
Three minutes later, Jude watched him return with a friend and a large carry bag. The two of them negotiated the entire remaining inventory: every steam cake, both remaining portions of kakuni, and — after an extended conversation Jude hadn't quite followed — the braising pot itself, still warm, along with the residual braising liquid.
Jude stood behind the now-empty cart.
They took the pot, he thought.
"Boss! Same spot tomorrow?"
"Next time for sure," Jude called after them, "but I can't promise when."
He watched them disappear around the corner, struggling under the weight of the basket and arguing about who was going to carry the pot up the stairs.
By mid-afternoon, the day's total sat at just over a thousand dollars. He counted it twice, not because he doubted the number but because it was satisfying — ten thousand asset points already, and the sun wasn't down yet.
He opened the shop.
SYSTEM SHOP — ITEM DETAILS
Eternal Vine (Top Grade) Price: 10,000 AP
Steeped in the gourd's wine: each sip immediately restores one-third of current maximum stamina and increases stamina recovery rate by 50% for fifteen seconds.
Note: For those who run.
He purchased it without deliberating. A stamina-recovery additive keyed to rapid depletion and large-volume replenishment — designed, clearly, for someone whose power source burned fuel at a rate no ordinary physiology could sustain. Not useful for him at current output levels. Extremely useful as a support item once the city's resident speedster was back on his feet.
He filed it under forward planning and went to find somewhere to set up for the dinner crowd.