Do you know the absolute worst thing about this shitty setting? It wasn't the Endbringers, or the looming end of civilization, or the roaming bands of murder hobos-
No wait, it was definitively the murder hobos. Not because they were horrific monsters that left a trail of misery and death in their wake so unfathomable that on this world it was orders of magnitude more distressing than the holocaust - although that did suck. No, it was the fact that they had handily laid claim to the title of 'Murder Hobo'.
Iliterally had powers based on Dungeons Dragons. My power had a rough approximation of a leveling system. 'Murder Hobo' was my go-to Cape name. But because of Jack freaking Slash, under no circumstances could I actually use it,which wasfrustrating.
A light swat to the back of my head reminded me of where I was and what I was doing.
"Pay attention. You see anything?" Sophia asked me from where she was crouched on the rooftop next to me.
It had been two days since we had gone to the fish packaging plant for target practice the first time. We had gone back for more practice after that, and, at my insistence, to make sure that the Mercy Pistol didn't interfere in some way with Sophia's shadow form.
It didn't, and in fact, the nonlethal properties of the gun combined with Sophia's phasing resulted in a really interesting effect.
The beams from the weapon looked like they phased with her. So instead of stopping at the first solid object the beam hit, the white lance of pure pain appeared to continue on for the entire twenty-foot range it was designed to be effective at.
But John, you might ask, if the beam phases, does it still hurt people?
I'm glad you asked John! You see, I was wondering pretty much the exact same thing, and, knowing the weapon literally couldn't maim me, had opted to test it by stick my hand behind a paper target and letting Soph shoot at it.
On a completely unrelated note, some of the side effects of feeling like your hand has just been blown to pieces include, pissing yourself, screaming like a banshee, and blacking out from the pain.
That one experience was nearly enough to make me rethink my stance on using the gun at all - until I remembered that I was a black dude in a city full of Nazis. Then I just reminded myself that Police Officers back home have to let themselves be tased and pepper sprayed once each before graduating from the academy, so they know what it feels like. This was... kind of like that. Right? Right.
"Nope," I replied, covering my nervousness and anxiety over being three stories straight up, in a suit of coppery armor made of literal garbage, looking for thugs - who would probably have guns - to fight. This was my first patrol, and I had to consciously not think about the fact that, statistically, it was likely to be my last.
Sophia grumbled at that but quickly returned to scouting the area around us while I continued my slow and ponderous way across the rooftops along the route she had prescribed for us.
I eyed the lip of the rooftop in front of me, resisting the urge to lift my balaclava to scratch my ear. It wasn't honestly a very wide gap to the next building. It was four or five feet tops, with a slight drop onto the shorter building across from me. On a normal day, I'd feel totally confident making that jump. It was the equivalent of leaping from the curb to the opposite side of the sidewalk. Just... if the sidewalk was a thirty-foot drop to the street below. IknewI was being a baby about this. I had made similar jumps to this multiple timesto get to where I was currently standing. But it still scared the shit out of me every time. Taking a deep breath I stepped back to give myself a run-up, then sprinted at the ledge of the rooftop, jumping at the last second and landing with somewhat loud clunking noise as my Armor - which was made entirely of metal - slapped into the rooftop.
Junk Armor was weird. There was a lot about it that the game rules either left vague or didn't fully explain. For one, the aforementioned fact that the armor was entirely made of metal. I had actually had to shuck the entire thing off when I first cast the spell because it had started to immediately pinch and poke at me through the t-shirt and shorts I had been wearing at the time. Consequently, the underside of my 'costume' was a thick sweatshirt and sweatpants layered on top of a t-shirt and shorts. It was hot as hell to wear, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that the armor should be able to take a few bullets, which was all I wanted out of the thing.
That was the second thing about Junk Armor that threw me off. It was Power Armor but it also wasn't. By some esoteric process that even my Tinker power couldn't fully explain, Junk Armor somehow managed to have exactly enough electronics and support to mitigate its own weight without increasing my strength in any way whatsoever. This was the only reason I could feasibly make a jump like the one I had just made while simultaneously being weighed down by twenty pounds of metal.
Inwardly, I silently prayed for the day I could make actual Power Armor, before sighing and standing up from the crouch I had landed in. As silently as someone wearing as much armor as I was could manage, I crept to the edge of the rooftop to scan the streets nearby.
I had the feeling that this method of patrolling wasn't likely to be very effective for me. Sophia's power made her a perfect ambush fighter. Her mass changed when she used her power, so she could take a flying leap, become intangible, and sail meters in any given direction before landing silently, which meant she could cover huge swathes of land traveling by rooftop. I, on the other hand, was limited to a fairly slow pace that I could tell was irritating the girl, who felt compelled to stay close enough that I could see her on a rooftop several buildings away, but who was constantly ranging around me like a hungry animal.
Five more buildings and two more check-ins with Sophia later I was ready to call it quits.
"This isn't working," I told her eventually, stopping her from turning to sprint away from me the second I had reported seeing nothing again.
"You just need to move faster." She told me with barely restrained anger.
"I'm trying. I don't think roof hopping like this is going to work for me until I can build myself a jetpack or something." I continued, reaching out to grab her shoulder so she wouldn't end the conversation by walking away.
"Then go home." Sophia hissed at me with more venom than I was expecting. Jesus this girl had a serious hard-on for beating the shit out of gangsters.
"No, listen. I'm not going to pussy out on you. I'm just thinking we change it up. Look, what I just take the sidewalk at a jog and you can shadow me up above. We'll make better time, and I can be like, a distraction. If we find something everyone will focus on me so you can line up a shot on them." I offered, even as Sophia used her power to escape my grip.
"...Fine." She grumbled eventually after considering the plan for a minute.
And thank god for that. I had only managed to get one more spell into my Spell Core since yesterday. The spell was called 'Flight' and could be cast at a variety of levels. Contrary to what you might expect from a spell literally called Flight, it did not allow me to fly.Yet. At first level the Flight spell basically just made you fall slowly. I had learned it explicitly for today, knowing that I was going to end up on a rooftop at some point, and wanting to have insurance against falling to my death. The problem was, Flight was a first-level spell. My Spell Core could handle castingexactlytwo different first-level spells in a day before I had to let it cool down. If I pushed past that point the crystals that made up the CPU for the thing would shatter at best, and explode at worst. First-level spells were an order of magnitude more power-intensive than Zero level ones, which was why I could cast a functionally infinite number of Zero level ones, but only the two First level ones. I could improve that limit by upgrading the Core, but because of the stupid level limitations my power had imposed on me, I wouldn't be able to address that for a while.
Since I had cast Junk Armor before leaving on this patrol - another First-level spell - I had one more available spell to cast, which I promptly used to cast Flight, then stepped bodily over the edge of the rooftop.
"Shit!" Sophia yelled above me suddenly, trying and failing to lurch forward and grab me before I could jump. I ended up staring stupidly up at her as I drifted to the ground, eventually touching down with a gentle metallic 'tink'.
"My bad, shoulda warned you. I can only do that once so..." I opened up before my cousin pointed an angry finger at me.
"Shut up. Let's go!" She yelled down at me with all the fury of an embarrassed teenager.
I have never in my life encountered someone so angry about caring about another human being. It honestly boggled my mind how Sophia could switch from being worried about me to acting like she wanted to strangle me for breathing her air.
Rolling my eyes at her antics, I turned in the direction we had originally been traveling and started jogging onward. I wasn't as fast as Sophia normally, but the added benefit of not needing to navigate the rooftops gave me enough of a speed advantage to keep pace with her. Not that I could easily tell she was even there. Her black outfit was basically invisible against the backdrop of the night sky, and her shadow form doubled down on that near-invisibility when she was jumping from building to building. I only had the barest hint that she was present because I knew what to look for, and knew she wouldn't just leave me for no reason.
Our pace picked up considerably after that, and maybe twenty minutes later, wonder of wonders, we actually found some crime to stop.
A little-known fact about Brockton Bay. There were areas of the city where neither the Nazis, the Asian Bad Boys nor the Merchants held territory. When I first got here, I was under the distinct impression that was untrue. I had assumed - wrongfully - that if turf wasn't claimed by the gangs, it was claimed by the PRT - who might as well be a gang.
I guess it made sense though. Since the two biggest gangs in the city were essentially racist hate groups, the cities sizable, non-Asian,ethnic population had to livesomewhere.That 'somewhere' existed as pockets of space that ringed, but were not directly part of, what you could loosely consider PRT turf - which was really just the gated communities for rich people and what few economic centers the city had left after the riots that created the boat graveyard. Like peasants huddling outside the castle walls for safety, areas like the one me and Sophia lived in could theoretically expect law enforcement and cape support if something happened.
In practice, not so much.
The crime in question was actually sort of disappointing. For very obvious reasons, I had a mental image of what my first night out would be like. There would be Nazis everywhere, a damsel in distress, and all that good stuff. Then after I had saved the day, she'd ask me who I was and I would proudly proclaim 'I don't know'.
I deflated as I watched the three shit heads with nothing better to do with their time, scream at the cashier for the gas station in front of me. The fact that none of them had noticed me lumbering up to place in the dead of night was a testament to their incompetence.
That or they were too high to think straight. I guess the Merchants did exist, even if they weren't particularly threatening prior to Leviathan making all their Mad Max dreams come true.
Gesturing up at the rooftops across the street, I made sure to get Sophia's attention before gesturing at what was going on in the gas station.
I had hidden behind one of the gas pumps when it became obvious no one had noticed me yet and waited patiently for Sophia to alight next to me at the end of a long jump from the opposite end of the building. Nervous anticipation building inside of me the whole while.
"What's the plan? One of them has a gun pointed at the cashier so-" I started, ducking my head out from around cover to check the situation only to return and find Sophia gone.
Here's an important thing to understand about me. I had DD powers. From my point of view, I could handily break down most Parahuman abilities and situations into scenarios that fit handily into my understanding of that game. On an intellectual level, I had a firm grasp of things like maintaining tactical advantage, flanking, sneak attacks, and the like.
But in DD, when the fight starts, you get to look around at your friends and spend twenty minutes coming up with a plan before you do anything in the game. You aren't supposed to. But I have yet to encounter a group that actually used a six-second timer to limit out-of-character planning.
So I hadn't actually been expecting to talk for twenty minutes about what to do next, but thirty seconds might have been nice.
Whipping my head around again, I saw Sophia had sprinted past me to come down in a crouch just outside the gas station, shadow form activated and pistol raised, pointing straight at two of the three bad guys through the glass facade of the building.
I knew what was going to happen next, but seeing it still nearly made my jaw drop when she pulled the trigger and the beam from the Mercy Pistol went straight through the wall and both men, sending them sprawling to the ground wracked with pain.
Shaking my head groggily, I dashed forward to help just in time for Sophia to ghost through the wall, descending on the two moaning thugs she had taken out with two more blasts from her gun, even as the third cussed and sprinted out the front door.
Right into me.
I want to say he ran 'right into my fist' because rearing back to punch the guy would have been the obvious solution to this problem. Unfortunately, in my mind, I was a Wizard,which meant the mere idea of a melee attack felt inefficient and stupid to me.
Jokes on me though, because I and the thug went sprawling in a heap that I wasnotprepared for.
Evidently, he was, or at least, was panicked enough to fake it, because before I could do much more than cuss and start trying to get back up, he had rolled to his feet, pulled a pistol on me, and plugged me straight in the chest.
It fucking hurt.My armor stopped me fromimmediately dying,but the kinetic energy from the shot had to go somewhere which meant that itstillfelt like I had been kicked in the chest by a mule. I had no doubt that I was going to have a huge bruise there tomorrow.
More importantly, I went from being as clinical as could be about the situation to apocalyptically mad in two seconds flat.
This piece of shit had just tried tokill me.
Me!
I barely even considered what happened next. My Spell Core was already warmed up, so with utmost ease, I plugged the dude in the face with an Elemental Ray set for ice damage.
In retrospect, flash freezing someone's face might have been an overreaction.
I stared in horror as the dude not only immediately stopped moving but screamed wordlessly as part of his upper lip just sort of broke off. Like a chipped tooth. It was grotesque and despite my nascent anger at being nearly killed I quickly rushed forward - careful to kick the gun the guy had dropped away - to try to do... something. Anything really. The problem was, I didn't have a way to melt the frost without killing the guy with a ray of fire.
I mean. I did but...
"Shadow Stalker!" I yelled for Sophia, waving her away from the men she was swiftly zip-tying to the ground.
"What?" She asked sharply, no doubt responding to the panic in my voice.
"I fucked up. I need you to melt the ice on this guy's face with your gun." I quickly explained, gesturing wildly behind me at the downed criminal.
She didn't even think twice about it. Shit, she didn't even take a closer look. One second I was explaining, the next she had turned wispy and blasted the guy in the head with her fucking pain gun.
I gulped. I loved my cousin, but holy shit was she stone-cold sometimes. More so than that, I was having serious regrets about putting that kind of firepower in her hands. She seemed entirely too gleeful about its use.
"Uh..." I uttered dumbly, before shaking off the sensation of confusion and turning to look at the cashier.
"You should... call the cops, maybe?" I offered lamely, waving my hand around the area. The cash guy looked at me like I was an idiot, but nodded his head and did so anyway.
No use antagonizing a random cape I guess.
Turning back to Sophia I realized... that she was gone. Again.
Irked, I left the gas station, jogging a ways out while scanning the rooftops for Sophia. Once I was maybe a block away, I stopped in an alleyway.
In the heat of the moment I had just sort of responded but in retrospect-
Holy shit I nearly died. I nearly died, and horrifically maimed that guy. No freaking wonder Sophia got booked for excessive force, I barely even had to try to mess that guy up.
Breathing heavily I scrambled to get the lower half of my mask up just in time to vomit on the ground in front of me. I was shaking. Why the hell was I shaking? I wasn't cold or anything so-
"Give it a minute." Sophia's voice echoed behind me.
I jerked slightly in surprise, turning around and wiping my mouth with one hand.
"It doesn't last that long the first time." She told me awkwardly, shrugging at me from under her jury-rigged cloak and hockey mask.
"That dude's face-" I started, trying to explainwhythat was so terrible, but she cut me off.
"Fuck him. He fucking shot you." She growled at me in sudden irritation.
"But-" I stammered out.
"Drink." She ordered, cutting me off and holding a bottle of water from the gas station out towards me. I stared at it suspiciously.
"Did you pay for that?" I asked.
"Yes.Drink." She ordered me again.
I scowled at her but acquiesced, snagging the bottle from her and drinking deeply from it.
Of course, I then vomited it back up nearly immediately.
We stayed silently in the alley for a few more minutes, idly watching as a police cruiser finally went blaring past in the direction we had come from.
"Thanks," I stated tiredly when I finally started to feel less nauseous.
No answer came, so I turned to look at my cousin only to find her gone again.
Holy shit, she's actually going to keep pulling that Batman shit on me. Is this what Robin felt like until I figured out the trick for himself? This sucked.
...am I a sidekick?
No. No way. I was way too powerful to be a sidekick. Right? Right.
"Wait up!" I yelled up at the rooftops, catching the fluttering edge of Sophia's cape, and chasing after her, deep into the night.