Pathogen 4.2

My Aura flared again, and I scattered out of the way of another purple laser originating from the roof. I reformed, now holding Crescent Rose in her collapsed form, the extended her out to her sniper mode. Armsmaster kept telling me that the hard lightning blade was still in development, but I was honestly starting to have my doubts. I did still have the electrified blade attachment, though it wouldn't do me much good here.

I snapped off a shot toward the origin of that laser, even though I already knew what was about to happen. The round landed, and the duplicate exploded into white powder. My aura flared again, warning me of a second shot from a rooftop behind me just in time to dodge, but the shot fired in that direction had the same result. On the third try, I managed to react fast enough that the laser hadn't had time to fire, but I still only hit a duplicate: he must have been waiting to fire until after he'd teleported away.

This was frustrating, and even more so was the fact that the ABB gangers were starting to move in now that the soldiers were gone, giving me additional targets to have to worry about. Half a dozen of them raised guns in support of their boss as I scattered to avoid the fourth shot, and the rest held up baseball bats, crowbars, and even an antique-looking broadsword as they began slowly moving toward me.

I almost turned to deal with them first, since I hadn't come up with an idea for dealing with Oni Lee yet, but then saw Gallant rounding the corner behind them and what looked like the barrel of a gun poking out from the alleyway - Ms. Militia, aiming something that looked like a rifle with a joint in the middle to let her shoot around corners. She fired a small canister that arced through the air and landed directly in front of the largest group of gun-wielders, drawing their attention just in time for the flashbang to go off and blind them. Militia emerged from the corner, a black-and-green flicker marking her switching to something like a shotgun as she ran forward almost to point-blank range. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a fabric bag hitting the gangsters without significantly hurting them, but each of them in turn shouted in pain and dropped their weapon.

Huh. She had mentioned using rubber bullets before, but I hadn't caught on to what that implied until I saw the beanbag rounds in action. If she could copy different types of ammunition as well as different guns… that opened up some interesting possibilities.

Time for that later, though, Oni Lee, apparently realizing that he wasn't having any luck with shooting me from the rooftops, apparently decided on a different tack. He appeared behind Miss Militia, a taser already beginning to stab toward her back, only for her to roll forward out of the way in the nick of time. I launched myself at him, extending Crescent Rose to her full size and smashing him into powder with the blunted blade. Now that I'd seen him appear, though, I was able to spin around and track where he'd been looking. After a moment, I caught him looking back at us from a gap in the curtains over a window two buildings down, and raised my rifle to shoot.

I didn't pull the trigger that time - after all, that could have been some civilian's apartment for all I knew, but Lee didn't think that far ahead. He appeared on the street behind me, and I brought Crescent Rose around. I had moved quickly enough taht I hoped for a second I'd gotten him - but the sparking blade was once again covered in white powder.

I noticed the powder settling into my costume, and spared a moment to despair at how much of a nightmare it was going to be getting all of this out of Crescent Rose's internal workings.

Meanwhile, Gallant began engaging the remaining gangsters, with Militia covering him in case any of them grabbed one of the fallen guns. As they began to charge him, apparently hoping to overwhelm him with sheer numbers, Gallant raised both of his hands to head-level, formed an orb of light between them, and stepped forward to roll it across the ground like a bowling ball. A few of the gangsters jumped back as it moved toward them, but were nonetheless caught in the blast as it hit a stray chunk of wreckage and expanded rapidly, diminishing into a flash of light after a couple of seconds. When the blast cleared, a half-dozen of the gangsters were sitting on the ground, having been knocked over but otherwise unharmed. One or two were sobbing, most of the rest shaking with the effort of holding in sobs of their own, and the last launching himself back to his feet in a fit of rage.

He grabbed an aluminum baseball bat from where his friend had dropped it as he stormed by, walked up to Gallant as the knight walked toward him, rose the bat high into the air above his head, then brought it down as hard as he could with a scream. He was crying too, I saw, but apparently, the depression bomb had set off something else in him. At the last possible moment, Gallant raised his right arm to allow the bat to clang loudly off his power armor, used the same hand to grab the bat and wrench it out of the man's hand, and simultaneously fired another blast from the other hand which smacked the gangster in the face and knocked him off his feet. The gangster hit the ground, a smile that seemed not to fit his face contrasting the tears even harder, and stayed down.

I'd initially wondered exactly how Gallant's power worked; concussive emotion blasts hadn't seemed all that effective compared to most of the other capes I'd heard of so far. What set him apart, which most of the civilian population didn't know, was his flexibility. He could fire anything from pencil-thin beams of light to shapeless blobs to the foot-wide ball with the area-of-effect explosion he'd just used. That last one was new - near the end of a game of capture-the-flag on one of our training fights the week before last, he'd managed it by accident after the rest of his team was knocked out of the fight. We'd trained it hard ever since. I wouldn't have suggested using it in public this early - better to keep it hidden until you needed it so nobody knew to expect it - but there weren't any civilians around to record him doing it so it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

I turned back from my teammates, confident that they had their situation handled, and tried to figure out where Lee had gotten off to. My aura flared again, from a much broader attack, and I shot forward to escape the blast radius of the grenade he'd just dropped next to me. I whirled around to make sure he wasn't trying something different on my team and ducked in the process of doing it as a knife slashed through the space that my neck had just occupied. I stabbed Crescent Rose into him and again felt as if I was stabbing a snowdrift rather than a person.

The situation didn't change much over the next couple of minutes, with Lee alternately shooting at me with a stolen weapon, dropping a grenade next to me, or lashing out with a knife. Miss Militia and Gallant disappeared after a few moments, telling me on the radio that they'd be repositioning to try and get a better shot on Lee, but it was going to take them a bit. I, meanwhile, didn't have any real counter to this guy. Thankfully he seemed to be focused on me, but I wasn't able to hit him back and the stalemate was getting frustrating. If he'd just attack a little bit faster, this would have already been over, but he was being careful to teleport away before his clone started trying to hit me, and by the time my aura warned me about what was coming he was already gone.

It occurred to me that I had probably gotten a little too reliant on that particular ability. It worked wonders against most opponents, but this was the second or third time I'd run into somebody here who had a way around it. These people's powers were so much more varied and versatile than most of the Semblances I'd heard about and fought against, and sooner or later my treating these people like huntsmen was going to come back to bite me.

Finally, I heard a gunshot go off from a building behind me and to my left. I whirled around to spot a scope on the roof of an upper-story building on the next street over, then spun again to see Oni Lee ducking behind a curtain in a second-story window down the block, holding his broken, badly-bleeding arm against his chest, and an abandoned laser rifle falling to the ground from that same spot. His head popped out, looking in the direction of Militia's sniping position, and I raised Crescent Rose again just in time to see several flashes of Gallant's light catch him from across the street before he could draw back.

I thought we were safe at first, and that we could safely bring him into custody, but then I saw the second wave of flashes, and then a third. Why wasn't it working yet? That had to have been a dozen beams at once - the emotional whiplash from half that many blasts should have left him on the ground.

I scattered, flying across the street, up the side of the building directly in front of me, then reformed long enough to plant my foot on the roof's edge and push off, jumping across the street in the middle while aiming Crescent Rose behind and beneath me in case I needed extra height. In doing so, I caught a moment's glimpse of Militia on the ground, and Gallant standing defensively over her going head-to-head with Oni Lee. He'd teleported, and apparently caught them off-guard.

Gallant caught a wild, off-handed overhead stab, his forearm meeting Oni Lee's in the air, and followed it up with another blast to the face which carried a metal-plated fist behind it. The one-two punch sent Oni Lee reeling, but he still managed to teleport behind Gallant and stab forward, his knife coming very close to finding one of the few gaps in Gallant's armor before Gallant rolled forward out of the way, another glowing blast smashing the duplicate into powder. The real one appeared over Miss Militia, who went from apparently unconscious to an active participant in maybe a quarter-second the moment she saw her chance. She was either a really good actor or had some really impressive reaction times. One leg caught him by the thighs, the other behind his knees, and she pivoted to bring him to the ground before bringing a taser down on top of him.

Oni Lee escaped the shock by teleporting back to his feet, saw me coming through the window, and teleported back down to ground level, probably just trying to get out of my way but accidentally ending up almost directly in Crescent Rose's sights. I adjusted the angle a bit, pulled the trigger and put a bullet through his foot while simultaneously launching myself up to the rooftop.

Miss Militia, running to the window and absolutely caked in white powder, saw what I was aiming at before her greenish blur transformed back into a sniper rifle and aimed with me. Gallant stood behind us, hands raised and glowing spheres floating just above his hands, but lowered them and stepped back out of sight at an order from Militia. I wasn't sure I liked that, we could have used the extra firepower. It's not like he could run away from a teleporter. She was in charge though, no point in arguing right now. Oni Lee, favoring his right leg even as that arm hung limp at his side, looked up at us from ground level and snarled furiously.

This guy just wasn't going down. What was his deal? Anybody else would have run or surrendered by this point. He crouched, readying to teleport again, and I came very close to shooting him again in the hopes it would change his mind until I heard a familiar sound, just on the edge of my perception but rapidly getting louder. At almost the same moment Militia reacted to it, Oni Lee burst into white powder without warning. I tensed, whirling around to try and spot where he'd gone, but couldn't find a trace of him, and my aura failed to warn me about any incoming attacks. As Armsmaster's motorcycle pulled around the corner and onto the main road, I decided it was probably safe to relax.

I surveyed the mess from above before going down to talk with Armsmaster. The street was… not in good shape. Windows were shattered in most of the buildings, cars were in pieces, and a bunch of concerningly large bloodstains were dotted around the areas where the gangsters had been fighting. None of them were left though. If there were fatalities, their buddies had brought them with them anyway. Armsmaster dismounted and looked around the scene for himself before looking up to where I was standing. I waved at him from above, but he didn't return it. Even from three stories up, I could tell he wasn't happy.

I looked back to Gallant and Militia. "Want some help getting back down?" I jumped down when they both nodded, and they each took a hand and I scattered the group of us, gliding down as gently as I could to avoid the motion sickness that people sometimes picked up when riding in my Semblance. Once we hit the ground level, we reformed to the sound of approaching sirens as the first of several emergency vehicles pulled onto the street.

"Well. This looks like quite the mess." Armsmaster said, grinning. Armsmaster, making a joke? Huh.

I was saved by Miss Militia speaking up. "Sir. Oni Lee has retreated, but he gave the ABB members time to get away. Coil's men were on the other side - Scatter disarmed them, but they ducked out too."

Armsmaster replied, "This was just the first fight to kick off. Coil's troops have started picking fights from here to the Docks, though thankfully this was the only one with any powered individuals. That gang war we expected seems to have finally kicked off."

Well, it was bound to happen pretty soon. I piped in, "Where's the nearest fight? Maybe we can stop it before things get too crazy?"

"It's a quarter-mile south-southwest, but I need you escorting Gallant back toward the PRTHQ. We're spread out across the city, and the plan is to send the Wards back, then gather together before entering any engagements. No powers are involved, so it's not technically our job to get involved anyway." He caught my expression and chuckled. "Don't worry, we'll still be going in, we'll just be taking precautions first."

Who was this guy, and what had he done with Armsmaster? Militia and Gallant didn't seem confused, so I tried to hide my surprise at his laughter. I wasn't surprised that the Wards were being kept out of it - they could handle themselves pretty well nowadays, but the Protectorate didn't know that. I shot Gallant a look to head off his complaint while asking, "Where can I meet you after we reach the HQ?"

"I'll need you to stay there for the moment - you're our fastest responder by far, and the rest of the team will be pairing off - Militia and I, Assault and Battery, and Dauntless and Challenger. If anybody gets into trouble, I want you somewhere centralized so you can get there and pull them out of the fire."

…Well, that was odd, and a side-glance from Militia confirmed it. Probably not a good move to confront him about it, at least not right now in front of the police and paramedics who had started running around, but I'd been starting to piece a few things together over the last few weeks. Maybe I'd ask the Director. "...Yes, sir. I'll keep in contact via the Console. Gallant, want to scatter back?"

Gallant nodded and took my hand again. We scattered, and I launched us down the street and up a building before reforming on the roof to get a sense of where we needed to go. Before I could set off again, Gallant spoke up, "Are you really planning on staying back at the HQ?'

I scattered us again, using the time it took us to move three blocks down to think through my answer. When I'd been Gallant's age, I wouldn't even have gone back in the first place until somebody caught me and made me. Nowadays though… "Until I'm needed, yep. Armsmaster's right that I'm the best choice for quick-response, and there's always a chance that another villain will pop up elsewhere in the city and I'll get to go stop them."

Gallant responded the next time we came up for light. "And the Wards? Would you bring us with you?"

"Nope, afraid not." Gallant's disappointment was visible through body language alone. "I haven't been teaching you all of this stuff so you can run out and fight gangsters. If you get into a fight, it'll be important stuff for you to know, and it's a good outlet, but that's all."

That wasn't technically a lie. I didn't want them running around picking fights with supervillains, though I knew I had no room to throw stones there. I genuinely didn't want the Wards to get into fights that they wouldn't be able to handle. The problem was that, with them being superpowered kids, they'd totally end up doing it anyway. I certainly did it enough at their age. That didn't mean I was about to endorse the attempt, but I'd prefer that they live through the attempt when they tried it.

Gallant responded the next time we appeared, "You know we could handle it, though."

"You're right, I do know that. Nobody else does though, and from what I've seen I'm not sure most of them would believe it." At least not until they saw it. "Besides, you'd all probably get in trouble, and I'd definitely get in trouble, so let's save it until it's needed, huh?"

"...Alright."

A few minutes later, we arrived at the entrance to the HQ, meeting Aegis at the door. He spoke up as Gallant held the door open for us. "What's going on? All they told me was that we'd been called back to HQ."

Gallant got to work on catching him up while we walked to the elevator. Seconds later, we were at the console in the Wards HQ alongside the entire rest of the team except Clockblocker and Shadow Stalker, both of whom were still in transit. The Wards kept chatting in the background, but I mostly tuned them out as I joined Vista at the Console, tuned into security cameras in the vicinity of the three pairs out in the field.

Vista spoke up. "How bad is this gonna be?"

I responded, almost without thinking, "I'm not expecting anything too serious. The Protectorate can handle a bunch of unpowered gangsters." After thinking about it for a second, that was definitely true, but it also didn't really answer her question. She didn't say anything further, and we settled in to keep an eye on things.

So far, nobody had been hurt - Assault and Battery had just gotten to their fight , and Challenger and Dauntless looked to be wrapping up already. The trackers on Armsmaster and Miss Militia's cycles quickly reached the last of the three battles that were ongoing, and within a couple of minutes one side had been taken down and the other was in retreat. By that point, the Wards had quieted down and joined me around the console. As Assault and Battery wrapped up the last of the three battles, a treacherous thought occurred to me: that maybe things would stop there.

Seconds later, a tiny alarm started blaring, informing us that a local police station had new information for us. As Vista muttered something under her breath and reached for the hard-line to the police, I took over the computer's controller - I think the term was 'mouse' - and zoomed out the map of the city that had the trackers for the active team members. Red lights began flickering on, one by one, across the entire city. After a moment, one or two of them began lighting up in purple instead - the symbol for supervillain activity. I reached over Vista's shoulder and, once she gave me a nod for permission, switched the police hardline to speakerphone.

"Lake and Dixwell, we've got ABB fighting Empire remnants, supported by Krieg, requesting parahuman backup."

"Orange and Clark, we've got ABB over here as well, busting up storefronts. No capes in sight yet."

"Nash and Lord, I'm looking at a… tank? With electricity arcing off it and a flamethrower turret? Cape backup would be helpfu- agh!"

Before the first message had finished speaking, I had my mask back on and was standing at the elevator shaft. I stopped for just long enough to turn around, see that the Wards were all looking at me expectantly, and say "Don't do anything dumb, please," before scattering up the shaft, out the door, and toward the fight.

Hello again!

Glad to see y'all are still interested in reading a fic from half a decade ago. That said, now that I've re-engaged, these fandoms have changed a ton in the last few years, haven't they? Not to mention the completion of Ward and like 3 more seasons of RWBY. I'm glad I stayed caught up to the degree I did.

Regarding the posting schedule, I've ended up basically starting over on chapter 4.3 like three times, but I think I've finally got it to a position I like it in. As such, I'm saying it's going to go up by the end of February. As always, if I deserve yelling-at for any big errors, feel free to do so. I got a great PM full of typos a couple of weeks ago. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next time!