[IC] MASKS - A New Prequel

[Liliya]

Panel Six

The crowd burst into cheers, shouts, applause; raucous, frenetic energy. Who would have thought they’d be eating this shit up the way they were? With the release of the psyPhone Epsilon, basically a rerelease of the Delta in a slightly larger frame, and just in time for Christmas, the company would be moving millions of units in every major market on the globe. No one would have minded if it had been something indistinguishable from the Delta, they just wanted something new, something special; something to spend their money on so they could show off their new acquisition to their friends, colleagues, loved ones, something to make them feel admired by their fellows for that one, fleeting moment, that one meaningless drop in the endless, flowing river of time. It wouldn’t be hard to argue that she was no different than them, the crowds who surged at her every word threatening to well up and flood over the stage for the chance to get their hands on the newest product. Sure, she’d made a few fortunes in her time, spent a few, too, and if you’d have told her that the girl playing with circuits in her friend’s dad’s garage in Lowtown would be here, on the global stage, speaking to a larger audience then any world leader commanded because of just how admired her technology was among the peoples of the world, well, she’d have probably called you out and kicked your ass out a window, but she wouldn’t have believed you. She was smart, talented, sure, but she’d be lucky not to take a blade to the gut by the time she was twenty three.

That girl had taken a blade to the gut, when she was nineteen, still had the scar to prove it, too. She could have had it removed, she had doctors and not doctors, and even a few not human not doctors, the likes of which no one could buy, the kinds of eldritch contacts that can only be established in flesh and duty over a lifetime of dealings in the darkest reaches of the shadow, supernatural world under the one lit by the glowing banners and towering buildings instructing those who could see to go out and get the new psyPhone, but she kept it, as a reminder. She might be the most powerful woman alive, with aspirations on becoming and staying the most powerful person alive, but it could all be over the first time someone decided to bury a blade in her. That’s probably the hardest thing for the wealthy, the powerful, the intelligent to ever come to understand, just how fleeting it all is, how easily it can all come tumbling down around you. She had never been the type to advocate toughening up the young and meek through pain and loss, she’d been through the same kind of treatment and had never felt thankful for it, but maybe the meanness, the harshness of her earlier years had given her something uniquely valuable among those who tower over their fellows, something that had little to naught to do with how she had gotten here, but everything to do with how she remained here, how she continued to appreciate just what it was she had and stayed willing to fight to hold on to it.

She loved her kids, Ken and Aster, and she’d leave them a legacy both in blood and empire, but she had greater aspirations. She would never be content to get a first look at the newest psyPhone, to create the newest mass consumer product, no, not even to own the company that created the hottest new electronics on the market. She would change the world, fundamentally alter it, like the first antibiotics and the first humans who could fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes had changed the world. The ex, oh, seven project would fundamentally alter reality, our reality, and it would be the legacy she left for her people, her children, her species. “Ma’am, there’s been a situation at the Longstreet site,” how can there have been a situation? What, is it over already? These idiot security, “The site went into lockdown, and then came out of, --,” before she could think, react, her security team rushed the stage, and then they were moving, down the flight of stairs to the exit, not the one reserved for regular celebrity entrances and exits, the public fire exit. Then there was a blinding brightness, a shuffling of boots on the pavement, and she was in one of the company SUVs, the fancy ones that can drive with blown out tires and take rockets head on without being disabled. “How serious is it? Put me through to Ashley,” hardly even had to ask, the looks on their faces said it all. “Jan, then, where’s, --,” oh shit. “He didn’t?” He had flown in to surprise her, some stupid romantic gesture no doubt, that f#$%ing fool.

“We sent a team to retrieve him, --,” that asshole, “don’t bother, he’ll get lost in the City. Send the team to commandeer a jet,” they looked at her dumbfounded, “commandeer a jet, ma’am?” she pulled out her phone, hit the protocol zero function, though she knew it would have already been sent out. Savannah’s in the Midwest, Faust is somewhere off the map, Jan, that asshole, is here, Nucleus isn’t going to get there in time to do anything useful… “yes, mine isn’t going to work out. I don’t care if you have to buy one from the government, get it done,” the guard nodded before pulling out his own phone. Nothing like having every available Guardian somewhere hours out of range on the same day that someone somehow knows to go for ex, oh, seven… She’d have to look into where the leak had come from, couldn’t have been supernatural, the wards she had on that facility. No, couldn’t think about that now. This situation had to be dealt with, and if the grownups were too f#$%ing foolish to have their shit together and leave at least one super in Halcyon, dammit Jan, then the kids, “oh shit, the kids,” she almost jumped out of her skin, they hadn’t checked in? Why hadn’t the protocol zero teams picked them up? “We just picked up Aster, Ken’s on the move, fast. Must be in a car,” had he… Oh, great. He got the call, and didn’t check in. That phone’s probably in the backseat of a cab. She got a message, psyPhone, obviously Ken. “Dad went to see you, on my way to Longstr. Ok?”

Panel Seven

"Are you seriously asking your mom for permission to go out and do badass super hero stuff?" the girl he held in his left arm asked as he frantically texted with his right. "Yes, Tal, I am asking my mom for permission to go out and do super hero stuff," he narrowly dodged a skyscraper after casting a quick glance up from the screen. "Because," he interrupted her, didn't have to look up to know that she was about to say something, "if I don't ask per, --," another close miss, but he was reasonably sure they were moving in the right direction now, "mission, then when her people find my phone in that cab, they're gonna assume someone grabbed me, and she's gonna have everyone in a mask, who should be responding to this threat," a roll, and the site was in front of them, "tearing up the city looking for me," she would, too. Mom might love her work, but she cared more about her kids. Aster was fine, her blinker had already come back in with the code her detail, and to the best of his knowledge only her detail, would have access to, leaving him as the only loose end in need of rescue. His dad had flown over to Europe to meet up with mom, some kinda romantic thing Ken supposed, and he knew Savannah Newman-Hathaway, Lodestar, was speaking at some political thing in the Midwest, and the rest of the team were all off radar or, in the case of Nucleus, at least far enough off the beaten path that she wouldn’t show up for about an hour at least.

If anyone was gonna show up and help her, mom’s, people, it was gonna be them. “You know, this would be a lot cooler if you didn’t need the scooter,” it was true, this little one person flier was super lame for super heroes who should be flying on their own. Of course, he couldn’t fly, not yet anyway, and she wasn’t likely to ever be able to get into the air on her own. Tal was great at what she did, but flying wasn’t exactly in her repertoire. Either way, he was strong enough to carry her and pilot the thing, which either required a lot of practice and precise controls or overwhelming strength to operate effectively, and they had been in a hurry, would’ve taken them twenty minutes by train. He had only had the one, he’d gone out flying with Alex Hathaway earlier and though she made fun of him for needing it, too, he’d held on to it for his regular Cuban coffee, medianoche, and dancing with Tal, it folded up into his backpack and even though she could use the thing better than he could she couldn’t exactly lug him around with her. The phone buzzed, and the shock of it almost sent him flying into the side of a building, but Ken recovered and checked the message. “Aster’s safe. Go get ‘em,” pfft, mom. He snapped the phone in half with his thumb and index finger, before tossing it down to the street. “Hey! That’s my phone!” he shrugged, sending the scooter careening down, fast. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he corrected, barely. “I didn’t have my pics backed up!”

He knew she did. She took pictures religiously, usually embarrassing ones of him, or at least when they were hanging out that's what she seemed to mostly take pictures of. Guess it didn't matter now, though, the thing was broken and in the street somewhere, and the encryption would delete anything that wasn't already destroyed if anyone tried to back it up now. "We're almost there. North or South parking lot?" didn't seem to matter much, but they were approaching from the North, and getting to the East or West sides would make this a hell of a bumpy landing. She didn't answer him, like he knew she wouldn’t, probably still pissed about the phone. They couldn't have anyone placing Talia here, though, of course he had to break the thing. Those were their personal phones, they didn't have business stuff like the Guardians, 'cause, well, they weren't Guardians. They were just kids, mom wouldn't have let them tag a class B villain yesterday. Or today, for that matter, if they weren't the only masks in town. Guess there was Alex and Andrea Faust, somewhere around here, that kid Nucleus had taken in, maybe some other people loosely connected to the community, but for the most part, they were it. She, mom, probably wouldn't have let him do it alone, either, but he used Talia's phone to text her, and she'd recognize the number. Had a photographic memory for phone numbers, Anne Scarborough, he'd done it on purpose. Distract anyone who was coming looking for him with his phone, use Tal's to get mom's attention and let her know the two were together moving on the target.

I mean, he’d have welcomed some backup of course, but there wasn’t likely to be any coming. He knew that masks often did seem to pop out of the woodwork in these situations, but on a time table like this he doubted anyone’d even have heard about anything by the time it was all said and done. Ken was actually rather pleased with himself, a minute ago he’d been dancing with Tal at their Cuban place, and within sixty seconds here they were, flying off to tag a real villain. He’d thrown some cash on their table, left the half eaten medianoches and just went out into the alley behind the joint through the backdoor, threw his phone into a passing cab without the guy even noticing, luckily he hadn’t had a customer who might make mention of the mysterious cellphone flying through the back window, made sure there weren’t any cameras which of course there weren’t in a place like that, threw on his costume in like five seconds flat while Tal did the same, unfolded the scooter after pulling it out of his shitty old backpack, grabbed Tal and just took off. It was scary, sure, but he’d fantasized about doing this for years. That one perfect storm where all the grownups just happened to be off doing their own things, and some real villain happened to pop up causing trouble that just had to be responded to, so they get tagged in, him and Tal, on a real mission with real stakes and real opportunities to prove to mom that they were ready to do this, to be super heroes. And they were… Right?

Panel Eight

F#$%ing hell! Someone really needed to teach Ken that there were controls on these things for a reason. Yeah, if you were strong enough you could just manually drag the things around and make them go the direction you wanted them to go, but shit, that’s not what they were designed to do, or at least not how they were meant to be used. He’d get her killed doing this stupid shit someday, but they were on the ground now, hard landing, but she didn’t think anything was broken, so it was a reasonable success by his standards. Of course, by on the ground she meant on the top floor, roof, of the North side parking lot, which was exactly not where the situation was going down. They wouldn’t be able to just walk into this place through the front door, it was covered with cops and they weren’t going to let these two unknowns walk into this place, no, they’d be waiting for Gravitron, Felitrix, Lodestar, someone with some brand recognition. Australis and Cassiopeia weren’t exactly household names, if anyone knew either of them it’d be Ken, and they’d probably work twice as hard to keep him out of this if they did know who he was. They just let Felitrix and Gravitron’s kid get himself killed walking into an active Class S situation and the media shitstorm they’d catch would put them in an early grave, probably literally, definitely get them forcibly, prematurely retired. She assumed they’d have to go through a sky walk, or just straight up through a wall or something to get inside, but she knew that they had to move, now.

“Come on,” she barked at her friend’s dumb ass, still pissed to shit about him wrecking her phone. Could have just left it somewhere, should have left it in his bag in the alley, no one was likely to just rifle through that shitty old thing looking for valuables. I mean, it was a total mess of a backpack, Ken just held onto it for what she had to assume were sentimental reasons. One floor, another, another, and there was the sky walk into the main building. The cops hadn’t pushed in through the lot yet, just locked down the entrances and exits to the lots and would wait on specialists to actually clear out the floors proper, if they even chose to before things were taken care of by the supers. They ran over, the sliding glass was shut down and the metal bars had slid out horizontally, no way through steel like that without some real power tools, or… Ken just punched through and ripped the thing’s hinges out of the cement, of course. “Show off,” but even though it was true, they were in. Two more doors would be in their way, but these ones wouldn’t be locked. When the lockdown protocol was lifted, and it had been lifted, the outside doors remained locked until outside security or police opened them up, but every door inside was automatically unlocked. The exact reasoning behind that had never made much sense to her, but Tal wasn’t going to question why Anne Scarborough set her shit up in strange ways, no doubt there was some asinine contingency that made this a necessary precaution against something or other.

Flying across the floor they could see that most of the people had already been evacuated, probably right out the front door. Tal assumed that was of the villains design, chances are they were too late and the villains had taken whatever it was they’d come for and were let out with the rest of the civvies. Didn’t matter, still had to be sure. The locker rooms to the lab check in station, and, oh, oh God, oh shit, oh God. Ken had stopped in front of her, she’d nearly ran into him before side stepping just in time to see the awful, everywhere. Blood, sticky, wet, warm, everywhere blood. This place was just… And the smell. Ken was shaking, really shaking. She wanted to tell him to stop, to move, but she couldn’t make herself speak. This was just… Ken turned, finally, and went hurriedly to a trash can, just started puking into the thing. Didn’t even seem all that gross considering what they were looking at. There were bodies just hanging from the balcony, blaster rifles slung over their lifeless forms, security guards on the floor in front of them, brains showing and just limply, lifelessly looking up at her. She thought she could tell that some other people had come in, and you’d think she’d jump in shock, or turn to fight them, or run or something, do anything, but she just stood there, looking back and forth between the dead guy on the floor looking back up at her, and the bodies hanging off of the balcony, squishing the blood and mess under her shoes whenever she turned to look between the two.

Someone was talking, but she wasn’t paying much attention. She could feel Ken and maybe someone else nearby, she thought absently that he must have stopped puking and was saying something, but not to her. No, he was talking to the other voice, the new one, wasn’t yelling or anything, just asking a question, like how’s the weather or something. Tal, with a last, long look into the eye of the dead guy on the floor that probably only lasted a few seconds but felt like hours, looked up, back to the balcony where the Ken voice seemed to be speaking towards. There was a girl up there, just sitting on the balcony, all in blue. Seemed strange, all that blue surrounded by all that sick, sticky red. The color was too bright somehow, too strange, alien. Just shouldn’t be… Here. Not like this. The girl was pretty, blonde and brilliant blue, not a drop of red on her, somehow. It was all over everything else. She was saying something to Ken, sounded real casual, too, like, “oh, it’s a tad chilly, could stand a warm day for once,” and Ken was talking again, louder this time, “a warm day? In Halcyon City, in November?” then she was laughing, politely, hand over her mouth even. He wasn’t, though. All at once the sound came back to her, like her ear drums had popped, and Ken was yelling. “What’s f#$%ing wrong with you!? These are people!” she shrugged, that girl on the balcony. Her scarf was flowing back, like it was in the wind or something, and little neon blue butterflies were floating off of it. Almost... Pretty.

[Tengri]

“It is a bad idea.”

“Is it really? I mean, as opposed to the alternatives. It’s not like I can pretend a group of super-crooks assaulted a research facility, no?”

“No, the absence of good ideas does not imply that the least stupid idea automatically becomes good. If anything, this simply shows how dire the current situation is. In fact, aren’t you too lax for what possibly is a hostage situation?”

“In my defense, sis, this banter is the only thing between me and a bout of hysteria. Not all of us are emotionless machines like you. And besides, this is my solo-debut, you know. I am going to do the best I can on this one.”

“I have emotions a plenty. If you want an example, irritation at my immature younger sister that not only stole one of my vehicles, but also decided to drive her way directly into danger.”

“I love you, too. Warbird out.”

"Fine. Do what you consider necessary. Nucleus out."

And with a simple ping, the call ended. I was never a fan of long chit-chats on the phone, anyway. Now, you might ask what I, a splendid hero-in-training, was doing in an allegedly borrowed car. It’s quite simple, actually: to find and beat some bad guys - or girls, I’m not sexist - into submission.

/one vent passage later/

“It’s me again. Infiltration complete. Wish me luck.” Oh, what I really liked about modern office buildings’ architecture were their ventilation systems since nowadays, those things were usually created with people in mind. As in, people being literally able to cross them, should the need arise. If you wanted to be all stealthy, those babies were perfect, a real piece of art.

And so, here was I, contorting my lithe body and slowly moving across the facility like a silent ghost in the night, only the time was about afternoon. If the first reports were correct, there were five robbers - all with either some kind of advanced gear or innate powers. In other words, rock for my scissors.

It's easy to beat a common criminal, not so easy to take down someone with the direct advantage of being able to bench press a car, and pretty hard to do so five times in a row. Meh, I can do this, probably. I hope.

I heard a male voice, accompanied by someone more feminine, which was quite strange: all assaulters were reported to be female. I took a small peak and saw a pair of capes right under me. Nice. And then, the guy threw up in a trashcan. Less nice.

Amateurs, the smug part of my brain supplanted. Company, the nervous part of my brain added. I would still tap that, finished my less than stellar part. Now then, time for the show to start. If only there was a vent nearby…

/about a minute after/

In a moment, somebody gracefully fell from the ceiling, regrouping her compact body in the air and falling into low crouch the moment her feet touched the ground. She was trained for this. She was trained nearly for all of this.

“Oh, good to have you around. I’m Warbird. Guardian Code: Beta-Zero-Nine.”

And she knew that was totally badass.

[Liliya]

Panel Ten

Wow, that was like something out of a dream. Here in all this blood and death and chaos, and this beautiful woman drops in from out of the sky and introduces herself with a Guardian code? Couldn’t have shown up at a better time either, him and Tal could use all the backup they could get, and she really seemed like she knew what she was doing. Warbird, Ken had heard of her. She was Nucleus’s sister, right? They’d never met, Nucleus wasn’t known to be hugely social with the rest of the Guardians, in or out of costume, and unlike him and the other young supers the relationship wasn’t really the same. His parents, Andrea’s dad, and Alex’s mom were friends, and well, old. They raised these kids together, you know? Shit, he’d been going on family vacations with the Hathaways, and Alex had been going on family vacations with the Scarborough-Poole’s since before he could remember. Nucleus had never been in a situation like that, certainly not with them anyway. She was a part of the team, of course, but she must’ve been a decade or two younger than his parents, and her sister was younger than her, she was more like a side kick to her then a kid, and she hadn’t exactly raised her. Clearly, though, she had trained her, that was an awesome entrance, way cooler than his lame ass wander into a fight and start throwing up in the closest trash can or Tal’s stand around dazed and confused act. She’d actually distracted him from the death all around him, assuaged his fears for a moment, but only for a moment.

This was seriously a nightmare. I mean, maybe Warbird had experience in situations like this, but him and Tal sure as shit didn’t. He’d never seen a dead body. Tal had seen some weird shit in her Sanctuary, he had no doubt, her experience must have been a lot different than his after all, but she looked just as lost right now as he knew he must. He was basically just going through the motions before Warbird showed up, like he wasn’t really piloting his own body, some other person was the one talking to the blue bitch, and was just using his body to do it for the convenience of his already happening to be here. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said to her, for all he knew he asked about the weather or something, but he could remember her laughing, and covering her mouth while she did it, like this was some ballroom dance and they were discussing how the host had put on weight over the past few months. At least Tal had the decency not to say anything stupid. He didn’t know how to acknowledge Warbird, and still didn’t feel all that in control of his own bodily functions, but at least he didn’t think he was going to throw up again, so he nodded to the newest addition to their silly little team and turned back to the girl in blue. She was still just sitting up there, didn’t seem very interested in doing anything about them or pressing the advantage of their stupor and obvious lack of experience in dealing with anything even close to whatever the hell this was.

Him and Tal were in the main room, now, Warbird would be following them shortly if she wasn’t already in here, and unlike the tight little hallway where his dexterous newfound acquaintance had gracefully appeared from the air ducts, this room had high ceilings, good for flyers which him, Tal, and unless she had some awesome jetpack hidden away or something Warbird were not and, given the blue bitch’s position thirty or so feet up on the balcony she almost certainly must be, and on floor level an open set of double doors leading to a stairway. Couldn’t tell what it was for, but he did know enough to know that there was a reason for it to be there, and that it must be what the blue bitch was here guarding. Probably the lab, and if it is the lab, there was still a chance to get these bastards before they got away. He realized it then, they hadn’t been too late, the villains hadn’t just walked out the front door with the rest of the civvies, they were still down there, and if you had to go through this kind of security to get to this point, there weren’t going to be fire exits down there. They had to come back up through this room, it’s why she was here, they weren’t late, they were just in time. Just had to take her before the rest of her team showed up, it was three on one, they had the advantage, at least theoretically, and with any luck maybe they’d get some more happenstance backup. If she’d heard the report, other costumes must have as well.

Hey, you bitch went through Ken’s mind, and as he opened his mouth to espouse the same to the woman in blue, he felt his feet give out from under him. It didn’t seem quite right, his center of balance falling away like that, all of a sudden and without any real warning or apparent stimuli. Nothing had impacted him hard enough to send someone like him flailing, he was strong enough to stop a truck at thirty miles per hour, and as far as he could tell no one had even touched him. Yet here he was, scrambling to find solid ground under his feet, and failing. He realized just as he saw Tal floating next to him that it wasn’t him who had been knocked off balance, wasn’t him falling, or her floating. Oh shit! in one, fluid and altogether unsettling motion his perception flipped from that of Tal floating next to him to her, and to the best of his understanding himself, falling, fast, toward the ceiling, headfirst. F#$%, he couldn’t fly, and neither could Tal or Warbird; the ceiling, or floor maybe, was a few stories up from the ground level, or, was it now the roof? Didn’t matter, it was a long way down, and there was no way Tal could fall that far without seriously getting hurt. Pushing aside a dead body with only a moment of nausea, he felt himself cutting through the air towards his falling companion, and grabbed hold of her, before scanning for Warbird. He just might have enough time to catch her too, if he could find her through the falling blood, bodies and random debris.

Panel Eleven

“What a bitch!” Tal had jumped half out of her skin when this asshole who called herself Warbird, ‘Guardian Code beta zero nine,’ like she was some hotshot badass or something and not just a glorified sidekick, fell from out the f#$%ing air ducts and just landed next to them with some silly ass flourish. She’d heard of her, was that lame parasite attached to Nucleus if she remembered correctly, and clearly she didn’t have half of the tact of her mentor. Couldn’t she see that they were standing on a floor surrounded by dead f#$%ing bodies? This place was a living nightmare and she’s acting like they’re, what, in a video game or some shit? ‘D-d-d-Double Points! Epic flourish!,’ what a f#$%ing c#$%. She was either seriously stupid, a literal f#$%ing sociopath, or just not paying attention to her surroundings one bit. This wasn’t some, “oh, there’s a fight about to go down? I’ll join in, and make a killer entrance in the process,” kinda moment, she could have gotten herself killed! She could have made her or Ken kill her, the f#$%ing lunatic. Just what they needed, another nut job to contend with; what, it wasn’t bad enough that they were about to face down a girl who casually killed, like, seven human beings just a minute ago, and was now f#$%ing content to just sit up there on her little perch disinterestedly watching the silly ass kids make their fancy little entrances? They were all in serious danger, right now, along with civvies and she’s doing fancy flips!? If they got out of this, she was seriously going to kill this Warbird bitch someday.

Tal stepped precariously over the bodies of the dead men on the floor, forcing herself not to take a last, long look into the one, cold, dead eye remaining to the one closest to her, from out of the hall and into the main room, proper. Whether or not this, ‘Warbird,’ bitch had followed her out of the hall she couldn’t say, and didn’t care. F#$% her, this bitch in blue was the important one to pay attention to now, not some wannabe who thought it was cool to scare the shit out of the good guys while they were trying to do their f#$%ing jobs. The hallway with the checkpoint behind her, she stood in a room with a high arched ceiling, and, about fifty feet away and directly below the balcony, open doors leading to a stairway, clearly the entrance to the tunnel leading to the main lab. Seemed like a lot of work to get down there, probably even had those little golf cart things or perhaps a tram down there to get from one end to the other, and with the blue bitch still sitting around she knew the rest of the villains must still be down there, looking for whatever it was they had come for, otherwise why post a guard at the entrance? All the bodies had been armed, so she assumed the scientists and research personnel were still down there, too, or at least the ones who hadn’t been lucky enough to have evacuated by now. They weren’t too late, they could still save those people, could still get justice for the ones that this monster in blue had killed.

Tal decided right then and there that whatever happened, even if she had to accept for the moment the assistance of this totally inept asshole tag along, they were not going to let the bitch in blue leave this building without wearing cold steel bracelets or a person sized canvass zippered sack, and though she didn’t like the thought of killing much, she was almost hoping for the latter, those were people… Speaking of the blue lady, she was still super creepy. The butterflies kept floating off from her scarf in their macabre dance of life and non-life, here and then gone, and the girl in blue kept her seat on the balcony overlooking the blood stained floor, seemingly motionless, breathless. If the little group assembled before her impressed her all that much, it didn’t show. Even the sudden arrival of the, ‘lady,’ in the jumpsuit from the air ducts didn’t so much as illicit a blink from her, like she was watching ants in one of those glass colonies go about their regular day to day, boring old tasks and duties rather than looking at a group of super powered opponents. Finally, after their introductions to one another were said and done, and at least her and Ken were in the main room staring her down, she blew absently at the bang of hair covering her eye, revealing the insectoid wings contained within the socket as opposed to the more typical orb of complex ocular tissue, eerily bringing the wings sticking out from the sockets together as she blinked at the breath, like the creepiest false lashes ever devised. What a super duper gross subconscious tick.

Ken started to say something, and then the world turned upside down. Not like, something surprising happened, the f#$%ing gravity in the room changed course, and Tal found herself falling, towards the ceiling. Oh, shit, not only could she not fly, but she sure as shit couldn’t break her fall without harming herself at a distance like this, it was probably forty feet to the ceiling, or, floor she supposed. Blood spattered across her face, and for a fleeting moment she thought that she’d been hurt, that Ken had been hurt, that hopefully Warbird had been hurt instead of either of them, until she realized that it had come from her friend the dark haired, one eyed dead guy, and she fought back the urge to throw up while falling headfirst toward the roof. She wondered if this was what people who jumped off buildings must feel like right before the end, she’d jumped from cliffs into the water half a hundred times but she had always known that it wouldn’t kill her. She thought that she wouldn’t, couldn’t die this way, that she had to stop this, that she couldn’t stop this, and then the dead guy was floating away from her, and someone smashed into her. Ken, he had her, and then they were turning, sharp, fast, all of this had occurred in a second tops, he couldn’t fly, he’d take the blow for her, he could take it. That girl was still just sitting on her balcony, upside down, seemingly unaffected by the gravity whatsoever, just watching how things unfolded for those foolish little kids who thought they could face a real super villain.

[Raijinslayer]

As the police gathered around the building, unaware of the confrontation that was going on inside, a chilling sound pierced the air. A howl, long and deep, echoed around the area, followed soon by a dark shape landing on one of the police car, causing the roof to cave-in slightly from the force of the impact. As the occupants of the vehicle struggled to escape, the doors jammed shut as they were, those around them bore witness to a rather odd sight. For atop the police car, sniffing the air with a determined gaze, was a wolf. An unnaturally large wolf at that, looking as if it would stand at about 6'6 if it stood upon it's hind legs.

Dressed in ragged rags, it didn't take the police long to figure that this was likely an empowered individual of some kind, though whether it was a friend or a foe was hard to determine. The beast would continue to sniff at the air for a moment, then stepped off the car in order to trot towards the doors of the Scarborough building Lobby. They were currently closed, but that seemed to be of little consequence to the wolf. Within a few nausea-inducing seconds, as the sounds of bones cracking and snapping into place, the wolf was now standing on a pair of bipedal legs, it's forelegs no longer ending in paws, but clawed hands that curled into fists. Within two punches, the metal doors were knocked down and after another series of cracks and bone shifting, the wolf continued into the building, paying no attention to the on-lookers who wondered still who this new super could possible be.

---

Where is rabbit, Okwaho? Gamma smells it, but Gamma doesn't see them here.

Calm down Gamma, they're around here somewhere, you just have to look a bit harder.

Gamma let out a low growl, hunger nipping at her belly while she searched for the delectable scent she had picked up while hunting a few rats in a nearby alley. Okwaho had told her the scent was something called a rabbit, though it was a bit of a strange-smelling one, and that they tasted a lot better then the rats, cats, and dogs that she had feasting on in the month since her escape from the last family the Guardians had tried to stick her with.

Shaking her head free of the notion, she went back to hunting down the smell. The sound of her paws against the tiled floor filled the empty lobby as Gamma approached a rather big hole in the wall. Entering into this new room, Gamma found herself distracted from her hunt by the smell of even more delectable treats nearby. Walking through the cafeteria, she came upon the kitchen, where lots of different foods were laid before her, just ripe for the taking. However, trusting in Okwaho's judgement that the rabbit was really, really good, she only sampled the pieces of bacon, steak, and burgers before her, taking about 1-2 pieces of each before moving on, still looking for the rabbit.

As she sniffed around, however, she couldn't help but notice that the stench of blood was thick in this place, mostly coming from somewhere upstairs, as well as a familiar-yet-unfamiliar scent. Curious about what exactly was going on, she decided that if she didn't find the rabbit down here, she'd go look upstairs to see what was going on.

[Tengri]

I know how horrible this sounds, but given time, you can get used to everything in this world, even seeing corpses on a daily basis. And sometime, you catch yourself on being relieved after seeing a dead body. It’s merely a gunshot wound - you think, glad that tonight you’ll be able to sleep normally, your dreams not invaded by twisted images of eviscerated humans.

Because of the darkness. Because you work from shadows more than any other heroes. You allow them to have such commodities like being able to look at a hamburger without feeling sick. You allow them to deal with regular crooks in colorful costumes or tyrannical masterminds or any other stuff, “regular” stuff. And when they save the world from an alien invasion, they don’t know that a family of three was killed in a dark alley that day. Most of all, you allow them to feel good about themselves.

It grows on you. Like a shell. Monstrosities don’t affect you as much. And when you see a kid with a sword, you don’t hesitate to put him down. And when you see a scene of pure massacre, you only see small details. Small, but important. For this reason, other heroes think of you as a weirdo.

I hide this behind laughs and smiles, but my sister doesn’t. No point, she says, no point in trying to pretend to be something you’re not. I understand her better than ever. I still crack a joke or two on the reflex. Because of the darkness. Because you’re still a little girl afraid of the darkness.

“Heads up!” As the floor suddenly decides that it likes being the wall better, I grab a tiny pistol-like object from my utility belt. Grappling gun. Every street vigilante’s best friend. It takes me milliseconds to aim, even less to pull the trigger. I flash a brief thumbs-up to the dynamic duo nearby and go for the prize.

I let the rope pull me closer to the evil-doer - like how corny this term sounds - and prepare to give her a good taste of my ceramic-plated boot. In a moment, this very moment, time seemingly slows. I see her blink and surprise.

One second. I fly closer, but still not quite close. She shouts at me. It doesn’t matter.

Two seconds. I am closer, prepared to finish this in one swoop. She does something, and in instant… Everything matters.

Three seconds. I see them, multiple possibilities, all shown to me. I see every outcome possible, every reality that fractures from this point. In a kaleidoscope of colors, every actions unfolds in a different matter. I’m everywhere and nowhere in particular.

Four seconds. I have to choose one. And so I do. I pick up one of them, where my kick connects with her face, and stop the ripples. It has to be ended now. I pull the grappling gun at full speed and my accelerated leg meets a very movable object.

And then, her neck twists, accompanied by a very unpleasant sound. I look into a lifeless body on the floor in silent horror. I do not shout, nor wail. I say nothing, my eyes glued to a fresh corpse I made just now. I’m not sure what exactly should I feel, but now I can only feel empty.

“God…”

[Grey]

“This is a waste of time,” I yawn to Jonas, the EMT up at the front of the ambulance, and stretch my arms. I get the kinks in my joints out with satisfying pops, reenergizing my tired body just a little bit more. I glance my reflection in the perfectly shined metal. Tired bags hung under my eyes, making me look like I just got hauled through a knot hole. I’m always telling myself I’ll sleep earlier or take a nap, but I never do. Tonight for real, maybe.

“Dr. Bishop told us to keep you waitin’ here, and I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of one of his spine-crushings.” That one was from Rachel in the passenger seat. She and Jonas were here for injuries. I was here for the super injuries, in every respect of that phrase. “Besides, wouldn’t want you getting used as an example by those activist groups who want the government to crack down on independent capes,” I hear Jonas interject. Inwardly, I cringe at that comment.

“Mmm...” I agreed, fiddling around with my Nebula W7 for a bit, “I guess I can’t blame you guys.” I turn to look out the open ambulance door and at the looming Scarborough Enterprises building, lobby entrance already torn open by some mask by the time they’d arrived. I take a breath and aim the gun in my mind. My senses expand, like a magnifying glass and a filter both placed over my mind’s eye at the same time.

Female lupine. Female humanoid. Female humanoid. Female humanoid. Male humanoid. Several corpses. Large pool of blood. An infinitesimal amount of microbes (not that that was particularly unexpected). The rest of the facility was otherwise empty. The majority of the potential threat entities were gathered in one of the floors above, in an open room littered with dead. Adrenaline levels were skyrocketing in that room. From that, I could surmise that there was a high likelihood of a battle taking place above. Lower down, two lone figures stalk around the building. The closest one is the wolf near the lobby. I don’t know enough else to sniff out what it’s doing. Same for the other independent.

I rub my temples. On one hand, I could sit here, play phone, and wait out the storm. On the other hand, I could get in there, see what’s going on, and rally the two independent capes - or fight them off if they turn out to be villains acting as reinforcements for the fight above. I sigh loudly, getting a few sympathetic looks from the two up front. I was going to hate myself for either decision; I was sure of it.

I look back down to my phone, type some text, and set it down on the ambulance bench beside me. A few moments pass until I’m sure Jonas and Rachel are busy engrossed in this conversation about a certain TV show set in some fantasy world with a bunch of backstabbing, screwed up character fates, and some kind of game. At that point, I get the hell out of Dodge. Sorry Jo and Rach, but I’m pretty damn sure those capes aren’t professionals, and like hell I’m letting them get taken from behind by potential back up.

As soon as my feet hit the pavement, I’m running across the lot, the unzipped and oversized EMS jacket fluttering behind me. If I were in a better mood, I’d compare it to some kind of Baywatch-esque slowmo scene of a beautiful and heroic (sort of) young lady rushing to save the day (sort of) and put down conflict (sort of). I give a cheeky little wave to the cops that see me, but are helpless to stop me, as I enter the threshold of the Scarborough Enterprises building.

---

I whistle loudly at the giant dog on the other end of the hallway. Probably not my best decision in hindsight, but at least I wasn’t holding a ball or a stick. Nope, none of those - just a ziploc full of appleseeds and whatever remained of my hopes and dreams. Which was why the other hand was empty.

Kek.

“Bow-wow,” I joke, raising my hands to show I meant know the wolf no harm. But even with that gesture, I load the gun in my mind. What was the saying? 'Offer one hand, but arm the other'? Something like that. I just didn't want to get caught off-guard if this hound didn't turn out to be a cape. “Not a bad guy, but I'm looking for them. Yourself?"

---

Mentioned: @Raijinslayer
Burn Roll: 8
Burn Counter: 3
Conditions:

• Afraid (-2 to directly engage a threat)

[Raijinslayer]

Gamma's sniffing was halted as a new person walked onto the scene. Looking up from her search, she would watch the newcomer with wary eyes at first, but then they started speaking to her. The girl was apparently looking for bad guys, and thought she was doing the same. Gamma didn't respond at first, instead choosing to circle the girl a few times, sniffing her up and down before finally seeming satisfied with her investigation. Again the sounds of bones cracking and popping in and out of place would radiate through the room as Gamma shifted into human form. Taking a moment to stretch afterwards, getting the kinks out of her back and what not(as well as showing off how ragged, busted, and generally non-concealing the clothes she had one currently were), Gamma also began to answer the new girl's question.

"Gamma doesn't know about bad guys. Gamma came in here looking for rabbit. Okwaho told Gamma that rabbits better then rats, better then dogs, even better then cats. So Gamma came into hunt rabbit, and knows Rabbit is somewhere nearby." Finishing up her stretching, Gamma would then turn to point to a flight of stairs in the direction of the other floors. "Gamma was going to head up there if Gamma couldn't find Rabbit. Lot of blood, like back in Bad place. Gamma wants to know what's up there. Gamma also smells a scent that Gamma smelled before, but different at the same time. Do you want to come with Gamma?"

[Ermine]

So this is what they're up to, huh? Do I casually intervene? Do I introduce myself? I mean, not that there's any point. Most important person to me right now only sometimes recognized my name, when prompted by other people. Usually with a reminder that it's Sophia, not just Berserker. Seriously. Not cool.

I haven't even thought these thoughts yet. Well...now I have. And I know what they're referring to, but I'm not even there. Not yet. Berserker (Sophia Dahl. I remember it now. Good.) barrels through the street, as she is wont to do, though not as literally as she'd like. She's not a savage. She just doesn't see the point in ONLY running when she could run on what amounts to bladed stilts. Super stylish ones, at that. Because, come on. They don't speed her up any, but they sure as hell make people move out of the way as she sprints right into the lobby of the building, with a slow motion wink and wave to the guard. Not slowing time down or anything, just doing it over a greater traveled distance. And now the thoughts she had earlier come to her again. These are the people. Miaow. Or...woof? Aroo? Ah, but now I have that in my head. Stupid audiobooks. If I had just read- right. Stuff. Big stuff. Stop stuff.

Dropping to the ground after removing her foot blades, she switched back to her usual twin axes. Because why not be a stereotype? Especially when you're not really costumed correctly, with your cheap-@$$ plastic mask that looks vaguely like a poorly drawn caricature of some president who hasn't been in office for nearly a decade from a dollar store sale bin, and that literally being all you did for costume this time? Seriously? Why even bother? Then again, she doesn't have time for all my rambling. She has to go upward...in general. On the stairs. Like some...technophobe. "So...this way. If you're interested." She yelled, from the entrance to the stairway. She didn't really know if it was EXACTLY the right way, or which floor she had to go on. That would be too easy. Minimum effort. Not cool.

----------------

The shift in gravity was enough to find out where they were, at least. She wasn't quite there yet, but it was noticeable just outside it, too. That wouldn't do. She'd have to fix that. Which...she tried. And tried. And it probably would've worked, too, if it hadn't been for the two people that would probably have been impressed by it, if they were still following her. So...that was a thing. "Berserker." Because now's the time for an introduction. Just at the edge of a gravity well/ocean/reality distortion/whatever else it was.

[Liliya]

Panel Sixteen

Ken didn’t move after her, Warbird, didn’t even try to reach her once he caught sight of her through the falling debris, refuse and once people forming a cloud of junk around the pair as they tumbled through the air towards the ceiling. She was too far away, and in the opposite direction than gravity was leading him, and besides, she didn’t need his help, or anyone else’s, not for this. She was well on her way to ending this quickly, the bitch in blue didn’t even see her coming, and most of these reality benders weren’t known for being tough enough to just shrug off a blow like the one she had to look forward to in a second. He’d really have to get a grappling gun one of these days. At least, if he wasn’t going to get flight down any time soon, it’d certainly be nice not to have to, “improvise,” in these situations by using his own body as a fleshy shield. He could take the hit, of course, had the physical toughness to not just die or severely rupture tendons, organs and muscle tissue from the impact. If he was lucky and had the correct angle in the fall Tal would lend her weight to his crash, relieving her of the worst of the messy physics and he’d take the blow for the both of them, she sure as shit couldn’t take something like this without sustaining massive, irreparable damage, and they both knew it. Maybe if they’d been trained better, had done something like this in the holoroom or something, he’d be more confident in his angle and in her survival.

Thwack!! Clang, buzz, “errgh,”. It hadn’t been pretty, but with a quick glance at the girl in his arms, he knew he’d done it, she was okay, and he was gonna be sore in the morning, but unlike any normal human his limbs hadn’t been liquefied by the sudden, hard impact. Wasn’t every day he took a forty foot fall, and truth be told he’d rather not have to repeat the experience any time soon, but luckily for him he was more than capable of taking a hard hit without turning into a spout of blood and gooey bits. He’d even landed on his feet, which was way cooler than landing on his back like a total scrub, and besides the falling body that had whacked him upside the head leaving a trail of sticky, wet, red down his face before impacting the ground spraying his legs and lower torso region with a thicker concoction of the gory awful substance that makes people tick, Ken and Tal seemed to be perfectly fine. Fighting back the urge to throw up once again, he cast a glance in Warbird’s direction just in time to catch the aftereffects of the human body moving at speed and impacting a neck with a sharp kick from a boot heel, hard enough to send the bitch in blue facing the wrong direction then she seemingly should be given the angle of her body. Failing to keep his terror and disgust bottled inside, he unceremoniously half set down, half dropped Tal before doubling over in the opposite direction, the image of Warbird sending that woman’s head spinning, neck snapping burned into his mind’s eye.

He felt weightless, and simultaneously heavy, under pressure, the world around him hazy and confused as he heaved. This was just a nightmare. This badass angel in a combat suit and geared out to the teeth falls in from the sky in a world of death and chaos, and just as quickly casually kills her target in a second flat. Could he accept what he had just seen? A computer would, it’s input all that weighed on its memory, devoid of consideration for the ramifications and toll of what had just been witnessed. Ken, of course, was not a machine, and this had been cold, calculated, aimed and timed with a jarring, inhuman precision. Is this what being a super hero means? Watching people die, potential allies kill those villains that kill others, and somehow having to sift through the particular moments, seconds, decisions which begat yet more decisions, in some vain attempt to get some kind of grasp of who is the good guy, and who the bad? Now he’d seen a dead body, several as it were, and watched someone he considered to be a hero kill someone he considered to be a villain, all in the same shockingly small window of time. Had it even been a whole minute? Felt like a world away, a lifetime here and then gone and passed, but he knew, that rational part of his mind still whirring on as though this were all just normal old shit that he dealt with all the time, that it couldn’t have been any more than a few seconds since he entered the lobby. Was Warbird a hero? Some anti-hero? A villain?

Was she some more easily quantifiable, somewhere in between human being who had complex morals and codes of ethics who was likely experiencing her own wave of colors and emotions wash over her at her own actions this day, this moment, just as he was subject to the press of conscience and the whirring of the lizard brain in opposition to the emotional bastion that supposedly made us unique to the beasts and monsters of the world? Ken couldn’t say, everything was too fogged and overwhelmingly blue, the kind of deep, dark shade of midnight that elicits fear of the dark in those who haven’t been exposed to the chilling bleakness that reality holds in those little turns, little moments that shape lifetimes. He was no exception, and found himself simply floating for a moment, capable neither of speech or breath in the face of the obscure, alien blues obfuscating his vision like a cloak or death shroud tossed haphazardly over his face. Something was screaming in the back of his mind, but its message wasn’t coming in clear, overwhelmed by the emotions and coldness of the twilight hues. Wait. He found himself floating, cold, wet, incapable of breath or speech, even his sick seemed to be floating beside him, and this wasn’t just in his mind. Panic overtook him as he suddenly forgot all about the shock of the scene he had just witnessed, and realized that he was literally, not figuratively floating in something cold, wet, and deep, dark blue. Oh shit!! This was water, salty, near freezing sea, and it was all around him, burying him alive in it’s cold embrace. I can’t swim!!!

Panel Seventeen

”Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!!” Tal curled up to Ken as much as possible, as close as she could, given the circumstances. All notions of physics, proper form and procedure, yeah, all out the window in an instant. Falling toward certain death had a habit of causing convention and reason to flee post-haste, and just this moment she didn’t feel much like any amount of training would have prepared her for this, then again maybe some holo time wouldn’t have hurt. She wanted desperately to close her eyes, but found that she couldn’t look away from the bitch in blue, their eyes locked as she coyly smiled at her f#$%ing prey, watching the amateur squirm under her effortless assault. That bitch was enjoying this, this wasn’t just something she felt like she needed to do for whatever lame ass reasons villains cause the trouble for everyone that they do, no, this was about some sicko satisfaction at watching people try to stop her, and fail. She wanted to rip this bitch in half, would even open up on her with those powers she knew would draw the attention of her family’s old foes, the ones that would one day chain her to a throne in a palace under the sea, her sanctuary, her chair, out of an old grudge toward her supposed ancestor long since dead. Even so, she’d gladly have invited their gaze to see this bitch burn, she had never wanted to see someone dead so much in her life as this living piece of semi-human garbage who wanted to splatter her brains, Ken’s brains on the f#$%ing floor, well, ceiling of this lobby.

She saw her then, that asshole who scared her half to death a couple seconds ago, Warbird, flying toward the bitch in blue. How is she doing that? Wait, was that a grappling hook? She was on course to knock the shit out of the bitch, moving faster than seemed at all reasonable given the fact that she wasn’t a flier and was being propelled entirely through use of a tiny little grappling gun and her own presumably totally within the normal spectrum of typical human level of physical strength, and here her and the bitch and blue were, just locking eyes with one another, her pain and fear feeding this bitch’s little ego trip. The woman in blue wouldn’t know what hit her. It was the first time she felt like she could grow to like this bitch, Warbird, knock her f#$%ing head off, girl. The timing, the angle, the speed, it was all just perfect! She’d clock her no question, she was gonna land a little high, but Tal had no doubt she would correct herself before impact and just send the blue bitch flying, or crashing to the ground. Either way, it was gonna hurt, which she couldn’t say she regretted her one bit, and she’d probably follow up with enough force to knock her out, or at least get her to stop fighting back before cuffing her or whatever it was she planned to do before handing her over to the authorities, before they finished up the job. Then they could be the heroes, save the day, and finally stop having to ask Ken’s mommy for permission to do baller super hero stuff.

THUD, SPLAT, CLANG!! Holy shit!! Am I alive? I am alive! Oh, Ken, I always had confidence in you. The thought was almost true, too. She’d thought, known that he could take the hit, at first, before the whole falling thing took away her reason and replaced it momentarily with crippling fear of imminent death by squishing off the floor. Plus, Warbird was just about to, --, Oh… Oh God, even from this distance anyone looking could see that the bitch in blue was facing the wrong way after meeting up, hard, with her face and Warbird’s boot, at speed, and with incredible accuracy. Tal would’ve wondered how she’d managed to land the hit, if she wasn’t overwhelmed with the disgust of what she had just witnessed. She’d wanted to tear the bitch in blue in half, sure, but she wouldn’t have actually killed her, not like that, not when she didn’t even have a second to react, and could have been disabled rather than just… Oh, God. That was cold blooded, she wasn’t even looking ‘till that last moment, she was looking at me! Why’d you need to do that!?!? She wanted to scream, to cry, to throw up, but mostly she just couldn’t understand why Warbird had done that. That wasn’t an accident, that blow was so well placed, computer precise, like something a robot ninja would do, that was planned to happen, meant to happen, had to be. We’re heroes, we don’t do things like that, dying in a proper fight where one side won’t give up and shit just happens is one thing, but that was just killing, cold, calculated, brutally efficient.

Tal felt cold, sick, wet, and altogether disillusioned with what she had just seen. She reached out to pull Ken closer, to take some comfort in him, her oldest and closest confidant, but found herself set down, hard, instead. Ken was doubled over behind her, throwing up again. She didn’t blame him, even if she was pissed that he was more concerned with being human and understandably disturbed by the events of the past few moments to care about her and what she needed, well, wanted from him by way of human contact. She moved to stand, to get up and get away from the bodies around her, to get somewhere else, anywhere where everything wasn’t quickly shattering apart, and taking her faith in humanity along with it, but found that she couldn’t. She could move, though she had a pain in her ankle that told her something was likely wrong and that she was probably in need of medical attention, but that wasn’t the problem. It was less that she couldn’t move, and more that she couldn’t stand, not in any proper sense of the term, anyway. As she moved she seemed to be traveling in one too many dimensions, as though floating. Well, not as though floating she realized, as she grabbed at her throat in disbelief. She found that she was floating, literally, and the chill she had felt upon seeing Warbird kill the bitch in blue, the wetness, it wasn’t exactly all in her head, an emotional response. Tastes… Salty, and it was salty. Sea water? Why was sea water everywhere? “Blub, blub, blub, blub!!” Ken can’t swim, need shelter, air, need… Sanctuary.

[Tengri]

I look at the dead woman on the ground, her eyes frozen, peering somewhere in the distance, calm and serene. I don’t move, not even a muscle, waiting. In a moment, dangerous thoughts spin in my mind. “It’s her just punishment for these people. I did what I had to do. It was only a bad call, not my fault. I didn’t mean to apply so much pressure.” It all mixes together - fear, hatred, duty, training, experience - and above this all, a single thing floats above - regret.

“I… what have I done?” I hear a frail voice; it takes me a while to recognize it as my own. It sounds weak and helpless - I hate being weak and helpless. It was like… that time I messed up long time ago, on my first outing as a cape. I nearly took a bullet to the head, if not for my sister. “I’m so sorry.” I remember saying the same thing that day, while pulling a bullet out of my sister’s shoulder.

“It’s fine. Just make sure to be prepared for the next time.” It seems that after all these years, I still managed to royally screw up. I silently closed my victim’s eyes, giving her body some semblance of peace, and quietly fell on my knees, feeling my legs give up.

And then, something wet touched my costume from beneath. It’s not blood, I noted, no way for any to leak, not with a neck broken like this. I sometimes hate how calm and logical my training has made me. I smell the distinct scent of salt, which equals to sea water. In any other situation, this would be absurd.

I consider simply letting myself drown as some twisted sort of atonement, to let this all end here, but this is an easy way out. I carefully pick up a small breathing device from my utility belt and inhale. It should be enough for an hour or so. I always say, always be prepared - and so do boy scouts.

It’s not enough, I note. If I was my sister, what would I do? I would naturally think about the innocents first. It’s a shame how for all her inner kindness and self-sacrifice, no kid ever considers dressing as me or my “mentor.” In fact, as far as my knowledge goes, we are more popular among older crowds for various reasons: we are strong, independent females - in one case - and look gorgeous in form-fitting costumes - in another.

I note a pair of other heroes, better heroes, and see the guy convulse in panic. I note, he can’t swim, and move right to them, while the girl seemed to attempt something vaguely magical. If anything, I could share some of my emergency gear with them. And so, I swim to them, unaware of anything across me, which in hindsight - and hindsight is always a bitch - wasn’t such a nice idea, after all.

I’m going to save them, stop non-lethally whoever criminals left here and then… then I’ll let the society decided what to do next. If I go to prison, I’m going to do something good in the very end.

---

Roll Superior

[Ermine]

Thankfully just outside the door from where all the fun stuff is going on with the water and whatnot, and also thankful that the doors close very tightly, Berserker gave up on saving the others. They should probably be alright without her, at least for a little while. She, however, wouldn't do so well if she tried again. Not that she minded, really. What could this person do that she couldn't just by opening the door? And really, wouldn't that just let all the water in the stairwell anyway? There's no way that wasn't a safety hazard for literally everyone...or was it? I mean, I could make escape a little harder, but that's assuming the water LEAVES the room. It's probably held in by like gamma radiation or something. Whatever the writers thought. Whatever. Just...yeah.

"Well, well, well, what have we here? Sandy Claws, huh? Oooh, I'm really scared." She yells, little music note bubbles and all, though they're all broken. She's Berserker, not Siren, after all. Not like that ^@)$(&# !$*#$ Siren, at all. She's not even a cool superhero. Little goody two shoes. Can't even dance. "Look, I know you're there. No point in trying to make it unfair when it's perfectly fair already. Or not fair. I guess you need any edge you can get, huh?" And with some sick ass dance moves (not really at all, but she tries), she ends up in a pose reminiscent of many a french girl in drawings, but with her arm in the general direction of the invisilady. Hopefully, this would be more effective than her attempt at fixing the other room. Because anything to redeem her to her readers was a huge plus (because after all, who else would see it that mattered?). "So...how 'bout them invisibility cloaks?"

[Raijinslayer]

Pain lanced through Gamma's body as the laser fire ripped through her, but this was soon overcome by anger as she shifted into her Wolf form out of reflex. Claws out, the wounded flesh would seem to suddenly steam a sizzle as her healing factor kicked into high gear in an attempt to quickly mend the damage dealt. Instead of waiting for the process to finish and remain a sitting duck, Gamma turned on the Rabbit headed girl with a viscous snarl.

There was no time to think, no time to feel, only time to act, and act she would. With a mighty charge, Gamma pounced on the Rabbit woman, attempting to clamp her teeth down on their neck with the intent of snapping it with a quick a sudden jerk to the side.

---

Unleash your powers: Healing factor: 8

Directly Engage the Threat:5 . . . well shit.

[Grey]

Oh lovely. Having a nice little chat with and her First Nations headmate when I detect some weirdo with a rabbit head on the edge of my awareness. Nothin’ too weird about it, right? I’m talking to a wolf-girl, so maybe it would be another friendly?

NOPE.

Let my guard down for one second and this is what happens. Maybe this is some kind of karmic punishment for my presumption that everything would work out just because I was here. I guess it was that tunnel-vision. I knew the thing my biokinetic senses weren't good for detecting were inorganic in nature - weapons, tools, technology - and I could’ve noticed the position of the bunny gunman’s hands. If I had time to shake my head, I would’ve.

But I didn’t. Because capes didn’t have time to shake their head all depressed-like.

A bullet is propelled by a controlled explosion, so too is the nature of my power. I aim down the barrel with my mind’s eye, centering the leporidaean in my sights. The gun is loaded. The safety is off. All that’s left is to pull the trigger.

"Halt." (‘Bang.’)

---

Burn Counter: 3
Conditions:

• Afraid (-2 to directly engage a threat)