I moved fast, but not as fast as I'd hoped I would.

Being Exalted didn't make me all powerful. That was partly my fault. In the half formed between state I'd been during my reformation from who I was to what I had become I'd... lost parts, and grabbed at things blindly.

I hadn't made the absolute best choices I could have. My sense of self had been very... loose at the time. I'd grabbed for what had been familiar, and what had caught my interest. Unfortunately not in that order. As consequence I'd lost large chunks of myself. My mind was... if not slower, less balanced then it had been. My body was harder but quicker to tire. Or maybe that had just been all the stuff I'd been doing?

I didn't really know. I had no way to know. No one I knew was in reach, I had no frame of reference to use against to really know the extent of the... was it really damage if I'd effectively traded those parts of myself for something else?

~Wait you're doing the monologue thing again?~

There was no point not to. I was traveling, tired, and the ability to self analyze was one of the defining principles of sapience.

I had to think about it sometime. Why not now?

~Okay whatever, I don't really get it but if you do I can get that~

There was a lot of stuff to think about on that. Deep soulsearching questions I honestly did not have the time for.

But one I'd make the time for. Later. After getting everyone I'd indirectly endangered out of that danger.

Or at least everyone I could.

Which lead me to this bit of introspection.

~Oh so you've got a point to it this time?~

One of the more frustrating mistakes I'd made in that reformation was grabbing for power when I should have shored up my foundation.

~Is this about some sort of martial arts thing?~

In part. In game mechanics what I'd done is use up all my starting 'points' picking up charms. Supernatural abilities that were the very essence of how an exalt displayed their power. Some were active techniques I spent the motes of my strength to bring to bare, such as the iconic green flames I used to sear The Simurgh. Others aspects engraved into my very self, fundamentally changing how I interacted with the world around me, such as my supernaturally tough flesh.

These were flashy, expensive powers that were costly in terms of experience and could be learned over a few days. Less in others. They were after all for all their power, singular tricks.

~You know this isn't exactly a game right?~

Did that make it any different?

~Well it depends by what you mean by 'experience', do you- oh okay yeah that's kind of accurate~

Well one advantage of telepathy was that you weren't easily misunderstood.

The foundation I spoke of was more in terms of conditioning. How sharp my senses were, how long I could last under strain, the sharpness of my mind. How easily I stayed calm under pressure. I'd pulled some parts of myself through fine, enhanced others far beyond where I had been, but... lost others. Forgotten, cast off, traded. I didn't know how to term it exactly.

~Kind of laying on the dramatics aren't you?~

I was in part. I could rebuild these parts of myself at little personal cost. You didn't need much 'experience' to raise your 'stats'. As an Exalt I could even use techniques to slowly build up things that most humans were stuck purely with the mercies of Nature to deal with, such as my physical appearance.

The problem was it would take time. Less then a normal man would, but still months. Maybe years of effort.

~And you're working on a time limit.~

In Creation I would have had all the time I needed. In the Demon City I could have spent my time slowly training myself up without risk before I was sent forth in earnest. Even in The Realm, a massive rich kingdom which would kill me for my assumed nature on sight, my powers of disguise and skill at managing politic, law, and business would easily give me the capacity to hide away and bide my time until I was ready to move openly.

But not here.

Here I had plenty of chance to truly hone the edge of my ability, to accumulate experience beyond simple game mechanics-

~Which as a reminder, are about a stupid game~

-...and truly learn how to focus my powers as I needed to.

But I didn't have anywhere near the time needed to shore up my basics.

~...Wow yeah that is pretty bad planning~

Yep.

And I had no idea how to-

A bullet whizzed by my head.

Fucking Hell.

What I really needed was a bloody surprise negater!

I dove in fast, sliding in behind a car, which while not anywhere near as bullet proof as Hollywood would suggest still offered a handy screen against aiming at me.

Then I glanced over my shoulder at just what was happening.

The fight was going hard and fast, the bullet wasn't even aimed at me I think. Mostly because someone between me and most of the other guys had just crumbled into white dust.

Oni-Lee, member of the Azn Bad Boyz. Lung's currently only parahuman subordinate and a teleporter who either generated a physical decoy as he transported himself, or generated a new form of himself in a new location at the price of shortening his lifespan to a few seconds.

Either way the old him could still fight for the time left and as such had become very adept at kamikaze tactics, including the tried and true use of explosives.

Since he could shift near instantly, had no limit on copies outside of what time allowed for, and held no hesitance at dying countless times for the sake of victory this naturally made him an incredibly dangerous opponent. In truth I would probably have a worse time fighting him then I would Lung.

And to make matters worse there was the matter of just who he was fighting. A pale skinned pale haired man in singled clothing, in the middle of stabbing through a copy of Lee who had tried to get him into a tackle through the temple with a knife. Killing it before the teleporting bomber could latch on, other hand flashing up with a pistol as they switched tactics near instantly to pump a round into the chest of another coming in to flank.

That one managed to pull a grenade.

twisting the pale man shielded his weapons with his back, currently bare of cloth, as the weapon detonated and ripped him open in a violent display that would earn an R-rating on any movie. He wasn't so much dead as half a human attached to so much meat flopped over.

Then suddenly he wasn't and he was back to his feat tracking for another shot, trying to catch the original before he made the switch yet again.

Alabaster, one of the many capes of the Empire Eighty Eight. A neo Nazi who didn't really get much screen time but was part of the apparently more sympathetic faction of the huge gang. His power was simpler but in some ways even more frustrating. His body completely reset itself once every few seconds. No matter the damage you did, no matter where you did it. The moment he reset it was as if it never happened. You could break his bones, cut his throat, and apparently blow him to bits, and it'd barely slow him down.

The only good thing was it didn't apply to his stuff. Otherwise I'd be completely screwed. As it was the only ideas to take care of him I could think of was to somehow restrain him long enough to tie him up.

Which appeared to be Oni-Lee's strategy as well as he was jumping in around cover sending in living after images while trying to avoid the functionally unkillable man's very normal but very lethal bullets.

Overall the whole thing was probably the deadliest game of tag I'd ever seen. Oni Lee had to close enough to give his clones a chance to close in before being cut down, as a knife wasn't practical against Alabaster and grenades weren't much better for getting enough of him close to restrain the pale man. Alabaster had to time his shot perfectly to take out the real Lee before he ran out of ammunition.

I also realized that in Either or maybe even both cases they might just be trying to tie up the other to keep them from interfering somewhere else.

It was a bad match up for me. Even worse then Hookwolf and Lung. Against one I'd have problems. Against both I had pretty much no chance.

...But if I ignored the other and just focused on one my odds suddenly became a lot better.

Right, that made the choice simple.

Darting up from my hiding spot I closed in from around the car getting closer to the fight as I quickly hashed out a plan to take my target.