Energy: 6
Current Training: None
As much as your team would have probably liked to choose which entrance to enter through, Victoria has largely made the element of surprise a moot point. While Taylor slows down enough that she arrives with the team instead of alone, Victoria held no such reservation, and by the time you reach the building the aluminum roll up door at the front of the building has a distinctly Victoria shaped hole in its upper section.
You can hear the momentary confusion from the people inside as your own team arrives, with Trainwreck taking the lead and slamming through the door with his bulky frame, leaving a gap for Aspirant and your Master to slip through.
Only they don't because all of them are brutes, and consequently, each make their own person shaped hole in the blockage. You would find that deeply hilarious if you were already busy orienting yourself towards the animal kennel in the corner of the warehouse. You can see Stormtiger drop out of his hiding spot and strafe past Vicky, waving his hands at her in a way you gather is supposed to have some kind of effect but, for the few seconds before Vicky notices him, appears to do nothing. Then the younger hero begins to juke left and right, evading something you can't quite see. She doesn't seem very good at it though, and it shows in the way she can't quite reach the enemy combatant in the midst of her evasions.
You can hear the screech of tearing metal as the man in the metal mask who had been yelling from the top of the stairs to the upper office begins to bound downwards, swelling with each step, but your attention is quickly taken up by other concerns.
Namely, the two rather large groups of people to either side of the large central cage, many of whom have drawn firearms and begun to use them. Your Master responds first, charging the group to the left of the door and driving them to their knees with her aura, Trainwreck goes right, and unlike your Master's elegant handling of the problem, merely starts punching people hard enough to send them flying backwards into their allies.
"Not so superior now are yah fuckers!?" The hulking tinker begins to laugh, steam pouring off him in jets that occasionally blind his attackers.
You take the opportunity to slip past him as he rampages, using your intangible form to cut through the cage in the center of the room, and luckily avoid the falling brickwork that Vicky creates when she shoots past overhead and plows into the wall above an emergency exit, narrowly missing Stormtiger who takes the opportunity to switch places with her, all the while peppering her with blast of something, further shredding that wall.
You ignore that for the moment, appearing in front of the dog cage that the woman you saw earlier has been forcibly crammed into. You can tell right away that she's going to need healing. Aside from the fact that she's naked - which you don't really want to think about - her entire body is covered in lacerations and bruises, as though someone had dropped an entire tool department on her and forced her to crawl her way out of the resulting pile of metal and sharp edges.
More than merely, enraged, you are sickened by this. But you don't really have the time to ruminate on the topic. You quickly set to healing the poor girl, trying not to be fascinated by how much of her is merely put back together as though time is reversing as the golden energy of your Chi washes over her.
Energy: -1
Unfortunately, you don't get the time to bask in the glow of helping someone, or the calming influence of Chi usage. Instead, almost at the same time, you hear Trainwreck and your Master cry out, and you whirl around to find Trainwreck clutching the side of his head with one hand while warding off his attackers with the other. Your Master, who is on the opposite side of the room from you, has temporarily stopped using her power to suppress the nearby gangsters, and the reason for her yell quickly becomes apparent as she reaches up to grasp the lithe woman wielding two kamas who had apparently sprung onto her back and attempted to slit her throat, and hurls her in a high arc into the cage that even now still has two dogs angrily barking and scrabbling at each other.
You frown and consider running towards your Master to support her, but you already know that she wouldn't want you to abandon an unconscious girl in the middle of a melee like this.
'I'm fine!' She yells at you hurriedly over your link, apparently having sensed your linger doubt and anger.
Begrudgingly, you begin to turn away, only to be shocked out of your acceptance as a giant roiling mass of hooks and blades crashes into your Master, who has already withdrawn her sword and braced herself against is best as she can as it carries her backward off her feet and into the far wall.
'Still fine!' She shoots you as you get ready to go punch the stupid out of the thing. You note, with some grim satisfaction, that the group of people Taylor had been suppressing was largely scattered, if not destroyed by the hulking creature as it passed through them.
Above you, an explosion rocks out, and you look up to find Aspirant using one hand to shield his face from the invisible detonation while Vicky shakily drops to a stop next to him, grasping him to maintain there balance and nearly taking both of them to the ground. You're momentarily proud of the kid. Even without being told you can see that he's already begun to take advantage of his terrain, just like Monkey would.
The momentary peace caused by the explosion doesn't last, unfortunately, as Vicky shakes her head and flies fist first at Stormtiger, who happens to be directly above you at the moment. He dodges out of the way with the same preternatural agility as the first time, only to be struck from above as Aspirant leapfrogs over him, using a too long limb to strike him in the temple and send him falling to the ground a few feet away from you.
You want, so badly to jog over and put him out of his misery, but are forced to instead use yet more of your precious energy to flow through the falling sections of wall that Victoria's charge caused, your fists glowing with power as you wave them about with enough force to disperse the debris before it can slam into your unconscious charge.
Energy: -1
Because you are looking up, you notice, just in the corner of your eye, a man with sterling white skin stumble out of the upper office of the building, take in the ongoing melee, and then withdraw a pistol larger than you think is really practical, leveling it to your left and firing. The thunderous roar of the literal hand cannon temporarily deafens you, but doesn't stop you from noticing Trainwreck hiss in pain and then begin venting a cloud of steam around himself so hot and dense that what few attackers of his remain begin to scream in agony.
This isn't going how you would have expected it too. Not at all. However, when you think about it, with the exception of Vicky, no one in your group is really experienced in Cape fights. Your Master and Aspirant have mostly fought one on one battles or simple thugs respectively, Trainwreck might not have fought much at all since waking up as a Case 53, and even Vicky is slowly demonstrating that she isn't the most tactically inclined. More so than that, none of them are really working together, which is quickly showing itself to be a fatal mistake when this many enemies are around.
"Shit!" Vicky yelps suddenly, drawing your gaze upward once more, even as you refocus yourself, picking up the girl and beginning to move towards the exit. To where Cricket, while yelling inarticulately has climbed to the lip of the Cage, and used it as a springboard to reach Aspirant up in the rafters. You can almost immediately tell why Vicky is cursing. As much as the rest of the guy is fairly heavily armored, and his telekinetic field reduces the damage he takes even further, your pretty sure having his eyes pierced by the psychotic woman's weapons is the limit of what a teenage boy could tolerate. She doesn't get to follow up though, because as soon as Aspirants pained screams draw Vicky's attention, she flies through the woman, blurring forward and into her in such a viciously strong and fast clothesline that your almost positive the woman is dead or going to die without immediate medical attention.
"Boss this ain't working!" Trainwreck calls in a slight panic, stumbling backward out of his own steam cloud amidst a steady rush of heavy gunfire from the unidentified Cape near the office. He needn't have bothered. From the second she heard her teammate call out, your Master's drive to be as 'heroic' as possible fled her, and she quickly turned the tables on the slippery foe grappling her.
Namely, by slamming her sword through it's middle and into the concrete beneath it until only a small section of it remained unburied.
'Emmy get Aspirant!' Taylor orders you in a panic, sprinting away from the writhing - and now screaming - ball of metal as it flails against the floor, a single tendril of hooks lashing across your Masters back as she escapes it, causing her to grit her teeth against the pain.
"Vicky! We're going!" She yells up at the blond who looks intent on charging the cape with the hand cannon that has now turned his attention towards you.
"But-"
"Vicky!" Taylor screams as her long legs eat up the distance between the two of you, swiftly taking the girl off your hands and freeing you to rush to a flailing Aspirant.
You make sure to kick Stormtiger in the head on your way there.
"I got you, buddy." You say as you reach down to him, energy flowing through you and too him in a well-practiced pattern, pulling to his feet.
Energy: -1
"Thanks." He says through gritted teeth, and all his hair immediately falls from his head to be replaced by a bone-like helmet of the same pearlescent material the rest of him is covered in.
"You gonna be okay?" You as him as you slide past him, kicking a brick into the air and using it to deflect the heavy caliber shot that was clearly aimed at his head.
"Yeah." He answers, sprinting away to follow your Master and Trainwreck, who are in the process of making an exit.
Unwilling to make this a complete waste of time, you make sure to yank Stormtiger up and over one shoulder as you pass him.
You're pretty sure you can justify breaking his arms and legs on the way back to the PRT Headquarters. It isn't like you know how his powers work.
When your team arrives back to the PRT Headquarters - you had to nerve pinch Stormtiger at some point to knock him out, and then showed Taylor how to nerve pinch him when he somehow kept waking back up - you are surprised to find that nearly no one is present. Battery is the only cape that was left behind to defend, ostensibly because she has a significant vulnerability to small arms fire when not working with her partner, Assault.
Along the way, you found that Trainwreck's injuries were nasty but not life-threatening, and your Master - possibly recalling your comment about nearly being done with the current 'You' willfully refuses your offer of immediate healing, regardless of how badly she is actually injured.
The girl you rescued never woke up, and is now resting in the infirmary of the building.
That was the sum total of the good news. The bad news was much more prevalent. Apparently, in the absence of any significant force of Capes besides New Wave, the family team had decided that staying in the PRT Headquarters and keeping the environs immediately around it safe was the best course of action. Never mind the fact that this meant no action was really being taken against the actual Empire, they also chose to split into two groups, in order to make sure Amy could continue to heal at the hospital, which the Empire had largely left unmolested.
Possibly because hurting Panacea was a fantastic way to call down holy hell on themselves from every cape she had every healed.
The Undersiders, whom Piggot had eventually begrudgingly allowed to leave their cells, had dealt with Victor, who was now in a cell beneath the building along with Stormtiger. However, they also had opted to escape before being readmitted to those cells themselves. You don't find that surprising. Overall, for a villain group to help at all, you should think that freedom would be the obvious reward they would choose.
Not that this has stopped your Master from being so angry about it that she nearly gave Vicky a heart attack when her aura splashed against her.
Which takes you to now. Having generously accepted the PRT's offer to keep the team housed for the duration of the crisis (left unsaid was 'and protect your father'), your Master is now silently stewing in her feelings of failure, while liberally taking out her distress on an innocent punching bag that is supposedly rated for Brute ratings significantly above your Masters. Despite her fervent wish to go back out and prove she can do better in her next encounter with the Empire, Danny managed to convince her to wait until Panacea could come to the base and heal Trainwreck. Taylor too was in need of some healing for the scouring blow against her back, but it doesn't appear to be slowing her down. In fact, she barely acknowledges its presence.
Which is not to say that she isn't bleeding through her stitches and onto the back of her shirt as she furiously moves about but...
"Taylor I think you should- we should go to sleep." You offer helplessly from the side, beckoning your Master into your arms.
She ignores you, continuing to steadily punch her target with a single-minded fury.
"Master?" You try again, slowly approaching her.
"Don't call me that!" She shouts, landing a blow against the bag that sends it flying across the room and into the wall, leaving your Master breathing heavily.
"Sorry. Look let's go to sleep okay? We can go back out tomorrow." You offer again.
"Can we train instead?" She asks desperately, taking you aback slightly.
"You need sleep." You say slowly. The events of the day were trying, and between debriefing with Piggot, getting the rest of the team checked in for healing and sleeping, and decompressing from everything else, you wouldn't have expected there would be time to train during this crisis.
"I need to be better! I thought I was strong enough that the rest didn't matter but I'm not! I thought because you beat Lung that I was a Hero but I'm not! I had no idea what was going on Emmy! I just focused on what was in front of me, struggling with someone who wasn't having any effect on the fight besides stopping me! Aspirant was- and Trainwreck..." She trails off, hiccuping slightly and beginning to sniffle as she fought off tears.