Changed my mind on the interlude thing.
Super short chapter and one that takes place right before the last one.
Armsmaster absentmindedly observed the woman with a cast-wrapped arm babbling endlessly, only occasionally reined back in by his visor flashing accordingly with her words.
She went on for minutes at a time, letting endless lies spill from her lips just to get to one half-truth already corroborated by another source in one way or another. But as it stood, this woman was the least dirty shirt of the group, getting off with injuries that would heal in a few short months and not potentially in intensive care for the rest of their lives.
Most parahumans tended to have less violent débuts than this. Even if they involved criminal activity, they hardly involved a body count. Their own Shadow Stalker had even begun more reserved, only leaving behind E88 members with non-lethal puncture wounds and broken bones before she started stacking shaved heads in alleys.
As the questioning came to a close, he vacated the other side of the two-way mirror, making his way to the entrance of the police station, ignoring the glances thrown his way as he filed information gathered to the greater investigation with the slightest micromovements only his suit could detect.
He noticed Miss Militia had already visited the suspected site for the trigger event of this new parahuman: Brockton Bay General Hospital.
He scrolled through the pictures of the flooded bathroom and the ruptured pipes at the center of it all.
Witness statements mostly lined up with what he expected given the blurry camera footage provided by Dragon of a woman sprinting through the streets in nothing but a hospital gown.
They clocked just under forty miles an hour in a dead sprint toward the Docks. Not enough to break any records, but still enough that he'd be spending the rest of the night tuning his bike for sharper turns.
Speaking of his bike, it was currently parked at the curb and had someone getting a little too close to the exhaust. With a twitch of a finger, the vehicle burst to life, causing the citizen to practically leap away as it roared with an engine more at home in a multi-million dollar supercar than a motorcycle.
However, the engine was quickly suppressed to a dull hum the moment they stepped away, displaying one of the first modifications he made to the vehicle. It wouldn't do for villains to get a five-minute warning before he arrived.
Armsmaster hardly spared a glance toward the loudly panting civilian with a hand clamped over their chest as he moved past. A quick scan eliminated the potential for heart complications in the immediate future and he mounted his vehicle without pause.
It wasn't long before he was speeding down empty streets while he waited to receive the completed police report to file next to his own. While it wasn't likely to be used outside of the court of law, it was a necessary addition to the trove of information he'd already gathered.
Patient confidentiality was a wall Dragon refused to pierce, meaning they'd come to a standstill in their investigation outside of the cameras that had captured glimpses of their subject of interest.
He'd already begun narrowing down the parameters of his search quite easily even with the scarce information provided.
A tall, young woman with long black curly hair and a slim yet muscular build. In a city with a population of 350,000, half of that being women, and less than half of that being adult to middle-aged, he was still left with over 50,000 who merely fit within the gender and estimated age descriptors.
Height and weight were next on his list, but with only traffic cameras to go by he predicted it would take longer than he'd like. He'd probably end up leaning on Dragon for more a fine-toothed comb of the city's population database.
The rig's translucent barrier was as welcoming as always, especially so if you were one of the people who happened to do weekly maintenance on it.
But having been running without a single complication for the last two years, it wasn't likely to show any faults if he were to skip a week or two to focus on finding the newest Parahuman residing in Brockton Bay.
And if not to recruit them, then to see them charged with murder in the third degree.
Merry Christmas.