Youko took another bite of her sandwich, a simple turkey sandwich, made with fresh sourdough bread. She savored the warm sandwich, sitting on a bench made of brick and mortar, her bottled tea resting on a simple wooden table. The small restaurant was homely, reminding her of a small cottage in some distant place away from the city, it was surrounded by green. Small trees, vines, pots of flowers, she couldn't possibly know all of the species of plants that was in that small plot of land. It was her favorite sandwich place to go to, and she suspected that she wasn't the only superpowered person to like it. After all, through numerous attacks in the area, this particular sandwich shop has always come out mostly unscathed. The shop had to be incredibly lucky, or a number of protectors, maybe both. Auriga took another bite of the simple, yet delicious sandwich. The satisfying crunch of the lettuce and the soft crumb of the bread, the blending of the turkey and mayonnaise-
Her bluetooth headset chimed. She tapped it, and heard her brothers voice.
"Youko! City wide, red alert!" Youko jolted upright, but the brick bench didn't give way and neither did the large wooden table, causing her to just hit her hip against the table. She groaned in pain, her mouth still full of sandwich. She looked down at her sandwich, not even halfway done and frowned. It was pricey, and she couldn't just toss it...
"The police are setting up strong points at the hospitals, schools and community centers. As soon as you switch, we'll send you the alerts and coordinates." Her brother briefed her. Youko thought fast, she grabbed the paper plate and her tea, jogging back into the shop. The TV was on, but she didn't pay much attention to it. She turned to the owner of the shop, an elderly woman.
"Excuse me, can you wrap this sandwich and may I leave it here? I'll come back, promise!""Of course dear." The woman said,
"Youko?" Youko nodded, and the elderly woman took out a sticky note and wrote her name on it.
"Now, you have somewhere to be right?"Youko rose an eyebrow in confusion, and the elderly woman nodded towards the TV. She looked over and saw that the news was on, showing a live feed of the inner city, black, living tar like creatures swarming. Already a number of superpowered people, heroes, were fighting against them. Although the news helicopter wouldn't show much of them, she knew that the first responders were working just as hard.
"Ah, um... yeah. Nothing to do with that stuff, not at all." Youko explained, poorly.
"Good luck dear."Youko gave a quick two finger salute and jogged out of the shop. Outside, people were hurrying to designated safe zones, phones in hand watching the chaos of the inner city from afar. Youko put her hood on and jogged down the road, surprisingly empty of cars. She sped up into a run, and grabbed the pendent of her necklace, its sharp points poking into her hand. She ripped it off her neck and went into a sprint. She gripped the pendent tighter.
"Starlight Legionaire!" The pendent glowed in her hand, red rays of light slipping through her fingers. She threw it ahead of her with surprising speed, the shining pendent left her fingers and few a few feet ahead of her before shattering mid air into a cloud of fine particles.
"Auriga!" In a split of a second the particles gathered together into a sphere, igniting into a bright ball, akin to a sun. Youko took a running leap right into it, the sphere splitting up into bright sections, attaching themselves to the girl. Youko landed on her feet and continued running. The light dulled, revealing red armor, and a white coat. Now Youko was Auriga, and her run went far beyond the speed of a normal human.
"We've got you. Linking data stream now." Her brothers voice crackled through her helmet. A number of blue transparent pillars appeared in her helmets heads up display, the strong points the police and armed forces had set up.
"We're acquiring distress calls from a number of surrounded and cut off groups." Auriga sped up, becoming a red blur, heading towards the closest group. A pair of patrol officers and a group of civilians. She turned the corner and saw them holed up in a shop, the two officers barely holding off the creatures. Auriga leapt and performed a superman punch to the closest monster, at her speed and strength, would have outright killed a normal human. But this monster wasn't phased, it recoiled from the punch, but it wasn't destroyed.
"The heart Youko!" She heard. Auriga examined the monster a little bit closer, its slime creeping up her right arm. She inhaled sharply, then glowed for a few seconds. A few seconds was all she needed, using the light from her right arm, she examined the monster. Its armed gripped around Auriga, but she saw it! A black mass, darker than the rest of the body. She grabbed the mask of the creature with her left hand, pulling it to hopefully get the heart closer to her right hand. After a moment of struggle she gripped the heart with her right hand, then crushed it. The monster dissolved away into nothing quickly after. One down, but there were still more. She scanned the floor and found loose pebbles from a knocked over pot. She took a few steps to reach them and picked up a number of them. Auriga only needed a few for now, and only a fraction of her power. Her arms became a blur as she threw the small rocks at the other monsters, not all of the pebbles hit their mark, but the ones which missed the hearts of the creatures appeared to have stunned them.
She looked over to the left and saw a flashing pillar of blue light, that was the closest strong point. She rushed into the shop and grabbed a person, then sprinted at full speed to that strong point, a hospital, already a barricade of patrol cars and armored vehicles surrounding it. The location was chaos. Ambulances ducking and weaving through the streets crowded with monsters, trying to reach the hospital, armored vehicles, officers and soldiers letting loose with their guns, and civilians fearfully gripping each other. Some of them had picked up weapons for themselves, contributing to the defense. Auriga dropped the person off next to a perplexed officer, then repeated the run several more times, only taking half a minute to transport about a dozen people.
"We're not done yet, getting... Over a dozen more distress calls. Marking for you now."Auriga looked to the closest alert and zipped away from the hospital, leaving more than a dozen perplexed, but safe, people behind. Nearly fifteen minutes and over two hundred people rescued, her brother spoke up again.
"The city center. One of the biggest we've ever seen, satellite imagery suggests the smaller ones have combined to form one larger. Additional smaller creatures are forming a gel like layer over its body." Auriga ran around a destroyed construction site and found a few fist sized steel ball bearings, she put them in a bag and sprinted up to a large buildings roof, where she got a line of sight to the massive creature. It had attracted the attention of the other heroes already, and they were attacking it. The red legionnaire grimaced, she picked up a ball bearing.
"The building might not withstand a Lightspeed Star launch." Her brother informed.
But what was her individual safety worth in the face of this danger?
"If you miss, you can destroy a few city blocks, especially with a projectile like that.""We wont miss." Auriga spoke, two voices speaking as one.
"There's other heroes in close proximity to it right now."Auriga groaned and gripped the fist sized ball bearing tightly, there was too much in the way for a full charge Lightspeed Star. She put it back into the bag, watching the battle for a second, contemplating what to do next. Suddenly one of the heroes lost their transformation! Auriga gasped and sprinted towards them at full speed, if he needed to be caught, the red armored legionnaire would be there to catch him.