Kitsu POV
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Running as fast as I can without over doing it, there becomes a point where the energy to enhancement stops being one to one. It's minor, but it's best to conserve as much as I can. I keep slowing down because Gallant keeps blasting me with a mess of emotion beams. Anger, which makes me wanna turn 'round and fight, fear, which makes me stumble in an attempt to run faster, sorrow made me slow down, want to surrender. And he kept hitting despite me zigzagging, Vista being the biggest pain in this regard.
At least the impact of the beams kept refilling me slightly.
Velocity was mostly just there, trying to corral me in a different direction. I tried to leap over him, only to jump up towards the roof as I fell towards the sky, Vista warping space to make me jump in a loop.
"I'm getting really mad here!" I shout getting back up.
"We just want you to stop! Let us handle this!" Gallant shouts. Shooting a beam at me again I feel an intense anger.
"I WILL NOT LET AMY HURT!" Enhancing everything, I run and stop at the edge of the rooftop we're on. I turn to see Velocity not five feet from me before I tackle/grab his legs. Ever grab cotton candy? It felt like that, anyway I tossed him off the side of the building, a five-story fall, so unless he smacks his head first, he'll be fine, broken and bruised, but breathing.
*CRASH* *RMM* *RMM* *RMM*
Sounds like he hit a parked car.
"ONE DOWN! WHO'S NEXT!" I shout. I see Gallant in front of me and try to conjure a decoy, but I'm too pissed to focus! I just swipe my hand in front of me like I'm backhanding someone, sending a dark, reddish purple, highspeed, shattered triangular pixelated, arc at him. It hits him and I hear metal screech as he gets sent flying off the roof to the alley below. I calm down and think clearly.
'Holy shit I can do that? I'm coining that Distortion Wave, right now! That looked cool as hell. Also is he alright?'
Looking around I spot Vista warping space so that Assault gets here in two steps.
"Kitsu look, I know this looks bad, but-" I cut him off by jumping off the side of the building landing on the sidewalk.
"OW!" It feels like I stubbed a toe, throughout my legs. My fault for straight dropping down instead of rolling or just crouching when I landed.
I see Velocity face down on top a blue Prius. I rip his glove off and see what's up.
'Broken nose, dislocated rib, fractured jaw. He'll be fine.' I fix the dislocated rib, just in case.
There are plenty of civilians down here, just watching, some running, some calling the PRT, some recording me with their phones. So, I calmly walk towards a street sign. As I reach the sign, I make myself invisible. And leave a decoy of myself sitting on the curb adjacent to me. With my enhanced speed and perception this all probably took less than 3 seconds, I'm running on a fourth of what I had this morning, so I needed to end this as quickly as I could.
As I thought, Assault landed on the street by walking, Vista is hard at work here. He stops when spotting me, my decoy that is, sitting on the sidewalk. He walks over to me.
"Kitsu, look, we just want you to stay back and not do anything rash."
My decoy speaks. "I can't just leave Amy alone. I know she can handle herself, but I'm worried."
Assault just got closer and sat next to my decoy. He really does have a soft spot for kids.
"Kitsu, I know, you think you gotta do this. That only you can be trusted to do this. But you need to trust us on this one, leave it to the heroes." He's only half right, I know others can do this. But I want to show those who threaten the few I've come to care for, why doing so is a bad idea.
This time I speak. "You really are a good guy, sucks that you're naïve. I guess Battery just likes the lovable idiot type."
He goes to jump up but I work quickly. I bend and wrap the sign around his torso, up around his left shoulder and left arm.
"What the?! Kitsu let me out!"
"No." I walk away and jump back up to the roof. Spotting Vista two roofs away I wave and smile.
She just raises her hands in surrender and shakes her head. Smart girl.
I then walk over to the edge where Gallant fell over. Jumping down, parachute landing this time. I look around for Gallant, gotta make sure I didn't kill him. When I get hit from above by a beam making me angry.
Looking up I see Gallant on a fire escape two stories above me, the damage to his suit ruining the whole high-tech Lancelot look he had going on. Enraged I throw another Distortion Wave under him, destroying the fire escape under him. He panics and rapid-fire blasts a series of beams at me. They all feel like a punch to the gut and fill my energy stores back up. Making me almost break even in terms of energy in this fight. I'm a bit tired from the rapid shift in mood, but the biggest thing taking my attention was how warm I felt. A weird warmth in my lower gut, and a tingling running along my sides. Combined with a heavy chest. I realize what had happened.
'That bastard hit me with a lust beam!' I think angrily.
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Dean 'Gallant' Stansfield POV
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Getting up from falling two stories I can't help but groan at how all this was going. I had panicked and just shot off a bunch of beams, I don't even know what I launched at her, I just blasted, expended most of my charges, and hoped for the best. Part of my helmet is broken, and the upper right falls off, exposing my eye.
I only have enough to shoot a few more times before I need to rest.
Crawling out of the wreckage of the fire escape, I look over to Kitsu, she's sitting hunched over on all fours, blushing and breathing heavily. And I slightly panic, seeing the aura around her I realize how much I fucked up.
"P-Pervert!" She yells at me. I quickly go to blast her with something else, calm this time, to try salvage as much of this as I can.
*SHATTER*
Only for her to throw up a decoy last second while scooting away backwards.
"Deviant! Pedophile! What is wrong with you, I look like a child!" She shouts while tossing blue green daggers at me.
"I thought you said you were twelve?" I don't know what compelled me to say that but I did.
"I-I am, and you're sixteen! O-or, w-well, that's only four years, right? That's not too bad, in ten years that won't mean anything, right." she says stuttering, blushing and bringing her hands up to hold her face while smiling. He would be lying if he said it didn't make his heart skip a little. She looks like a blushing school girl, and it would honestly be cute. If it wasn't for the fact that he knew it was a lust filled fantasy that HE caused!
"A-and, you're with Vicky, she's pretty shallow, she wouldn't date a guy who was ugly. And y-you're always breaking up! So, it's fine, right? Right!" She looks to me with an eagerness that can only be described as cute. Wait, Vicky wasn't shallow! Though he will take the complement.
'I need to end this before I cause any more damage' I resolved.
Blasting another beam, she gets hit and knocked back. Feeling bad I run over to her, making sure she's okay.
"Kitsu, I am so sorry, I swear I didn't mean-" And all I saw were stars.
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Kitsu POV
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Uppercutting him and knocking him out, I get up and stretch. Upset at how dirty my white clothes are now. I could probably get Parian to rework a wardrobe for me. She tries her best to avoid anything to do with capes, but I'm an exception seeing as no one wants to piss me off, if for no other reason than if Behemoth pops up nearby.
Yeah, I totally hammed up the UWU blushing schoolgirl crush act there, I was horny, not in love. And I may have hit him with my Love Me power to fuck with him. It only works on one person at a time, and I need eye contact, but I was not thinking straight. And he can suffer for that, I know it was an accident, but I'm petty. He can deal with a day or two of being romantically and sexually confused. Which are two days Vicky will suffer her boy toy thinking about another girl!
I probably won't make it last more than a day. He's a genuinely good guy, just got lumped in with shitty people. But I'm letting my mind wander, I need to get going.
Jumping back up to the rooftops, I see Vista had moved to the top the roof going I was just on, going to peek over the edge. She notices me and pales significantly. Throwing her hands up in surrender and looking away she shouts.
"I swear I was just going to check on him! I heard yelling and-"
Hmm, her power is rather good. She just needs a good chance to use it.
"Hey, one, stop yelling, I'm right here not across the street, two, you're coming with me."
"What? HEY!" I grab her and continue my rooftop free run to Medhal with her over my shoulder.
"Come young sidekick, innocents need saving! And bad guys need spanking!" I shout jumping across a rooftop.
"I'm not a sidekick!"
"You meet all the requirements! Short!"
"Hey!"
"Cute! Blonde! And very powerful while still being weaker than me!" I can see Medhal, it's covered in a thin layer of ice, making it shine a little.
"I'm not weak!" She shouts.
"Didn't I ask you to stop shouting? I will drop you!"
"..."
"And I never said you were weak, just weaker than me! Makes no since for my sidekick to be stronger than me! Then I would be the sidekick, I'm gonna call you, Escher, no, Warp? Nah, Vista is good."
"I'm being kidnapped by an incel weebs wet dream. This is my life." Okay, that was funny. But I still took offence.
"But Onee-san! I wanna be with you-desu!" I feel her shiver in disgust. We're here.
"God? Kill me, please. I don't care if I go to-humph!" I dropped her on a rooftop across from the hospital. And surveyed the area.
It appears I got here before the others, there's a junkyard armored 18-wheeler backed through the front door. It looks as if Edd, Ed, and Eddy made a truck after having watched Mad Max and playing Twisted Metal. Rusted, spiked, unsymmetric, and looking as though made from scratch, which it probably was. Impressive in how many laws it probably broke by just existing. There were a few gangbangers around the truck with guns. Good, no civilians, I can have fun.
Turning to Vista, I narrowed my eyes and began.
"Help or don't help, I don't care, but try and stop me from saving Amy, and I'll show you how I leveled Eagleton." I smelled the scent of ammonia as I leapt from the roof to the entrance. Rolling again to avoid the pain of impact. I march to the destroyed door. I'm being pelted with bullets from all sides, and they just squish against me like they did against Superman. Steadily increasing my energy. I march to the truck and jam my trough the cab door. Tearing it off and throwing it against a random mook who was running at me with a barbed wire bat.
Looking back towards the truck I get blasted in the face with a 12-gauge sawed off. Letting the impact knock my head back, keeping it there for dramatic effect before slowly looking back at the driver, a skimpy trailer park wife type girl, Squealer, I narrow my eyes and turn them red. The change burns for a few seconds till it completes, but the way she pisses her overalls was satisfying. The look of surprise and fear is a guilty pleasure.
And one hell of a power trip.
"Tell me, you're with Skidmark right? Are you two married?" I ask sweetly, smiling innocently.
"Th-the fuck you wanna know fox bitch!" She stutters out in a mousey voice. And goes to shakily reload the sawed off. I let her. She then aims it at me again, only this time I grab the end of the barrel and hold it to my forehead and she pauses
"Go, on~." I say slowly. "You can do it~." I give a vulpine grin with my sharper than normal canines.
She pulled the trigger, only this time I don't let it knock my head back. And with my hand keeping it in place the blast went back and blew off the chamber, ruining the gun and blasting her hands to bloody bits.
"AAAaaaagh." She screams, now she's crying, likely in massive pain as her hands just turned to ground beef all over the driver's compartment.
*Crack*
Someone just broke a wooden bat over my head. Turning to them, a scraggily bald man in a tattered coat, I just smack him with a folded glass ball illusion and knock him out. Turning back to Squealer who is now just weeping over her mangled hands.
"Are you and Skidmark married?" I ask in monotonously this time.
"W-why?"
"Because I want to know if I'm about to make a widow today." I reach up and grab her by the throat. She flails and swings her stumps at me, covering me in her blood. As I feel her go slack, I lay her back down and work on healing her hands, trust me when I say she had enough fat in her chest to make up the biomass, I only pulled from the right breast to fuck with her, make buying bras forever a pain.
I wanted to scare the shit out of her, not kill her. And all things considered I get a feeling she is more of a victim than a perpetrator. Amy was my target here, maybe Skidmark for doing all this.
*VRRRM*
'And here comes the cavalry'
A blue light flashes throughout the corner of my vision. Turning I see Battery knocking out and rounding up the half dozen or so guys out here. Aegis flying down and Armsmaster rocking up in the Armscycle, Clockblocker, and Flechette in side cars on either side.
'At that point just make a car.'
"Well~, Looks like backup arrived, what took ya so long? One would think with Vistas ability to shorten distances you would get here in seconds! Oh wait, you sent her to stop me." I say soothingly. "Along with Assault, Gallant, and Velocity." I list off slowly.
Battery goes to speak first. "Kitsu, we're only trying to keep you from escalating things."
"Funny, Assault said almost the same thing, or was it, Gallant?" I cock my head to the side. "Either way, one is wrapped around a stop sign and the other is sleeping in an alleyway next to a wrecked fire escape." She pauses at that.
I take a breath before continuing.
"I'll tell you lot the same thing I told Vista, help me or don't help me, I don't care, but try and stop me from saving Amy, and I'll show you how I leveled Eagleton." I turn towards driver's seat and yank Squealer out and toss her towards Battery who catches the junkyard junkie. After that I punch a hand through the dashboard and grab the steering wheel through it, yanking it out and bending the pole of the steering wheel beyond recognition, effectively rendering the armored truck inoperable.
Unless there's a backup system I don't know about.
Armsmaster hops out after detaching the cars that parked themselves.
'Okay, that's cool,' I admit to myself.
He looks over to me and detaches his halberd from his back. "Kitsu, leave this to us. This is not a job for an Independent."
"Jokes on you Armsy, I'm not independent anymore! I'm apart of New Wave!" I shout proudly before taking in their surprised expressions, or rather just Batterys open mouth and Armsmaster tightening his jaw.
He goes to say something else, but I quickly run inside the building to see a vacant reception room covered in frost. I'm doing decent on energy, less than I would like, but enough to last a fight with a cape or two. Running through the halls, following the destruction, blood, and jumping over the occasional Merchant strewn out on the floor with a needle in their arm. The vast majority of patients likely having fled with only the bed ridden or idiotic having stayed.
In the halls I spot a tanned man covered in spines, like, his hair was needles and he had needles growing out of his forearms, and he had bandoliers full of canisters on him. He turns and spots me, smiling a yellow toothed grin and a gleam in his brown eyes. With a gruff voice that sounds as though he'd been smoking the last twenty years he speaks.
"Well, looks like I found me a cutie." I REALLY don't like how he said that.
'Don't judge, he might just be bad at talking.' I calm myself.
"Um, I don't know if you're trying to sound cool, but that was excessively creepy." I say hopefully.
"And cute voice too, I'll enjoy you-"
"NOPE!" I cut off the creep before he could continue.
I run over to him, grab his spiked wrist, Jump up and over him. At the arc of the jump, I put my free hand on his shoulder, pivoting to put my feet on his upper back. I push and rip his arm off.
"AAAaaRgH! You little cunt!" He shouts. Absolutely screaming bloody murder.
I then take the severed by the shoulder, so that the spines on the forearm act like a mace. And start beating him with his own arm.
"AAArgh, Stop! Stop! Please I surrender just stop!" He pleads.
Looking down at my handiwork, I'm slightly disgusted. Pale from blood loss. His face is a shredded mess, with one of his eyes shredded with a needle stuck in it. His shoulder stump is bleeding profusely, so against all my better judgement I touch him and heal his shoulder. He's still going to be Willy the one-armed, one-eyed wonder. But he can keep the three different STD's, Crohn's disease and gout.
I, almost feel bad. Squealer I just scared the shit out of, while he is going to be handicapped the rest of his life. Again, I almost feel bad.
Leaving him pale, bleeding from the face and passing out. I continue my rush down the hall, I make it to the ICU ward and in a room void of patients I spot Amy being kept hostage with a punch of other doctors by a tall, pale and rotund man in rusted junkyard power armor. With greasy hair and round goggles, I can only assume this is Trainwreck.
I run over and do the same thing to him that I did to Needles. After ripping his arm off, I notice it's just a prosthetic. Looking down at it, then looking up at him.
"I'm sorry, I thought it was real." I can't reattach this.
"Wuzzat s'pose t'mean?!" he says in a deep almost staticky voice.
"I, I just. If it were real, I could just reattach it after I beat, you." I say wincing.
He just regards me with more frustration.
"Yeah, well now I've gotsa r'make m'own arm!"
"I said I was sorry!" I whack him over the head with his robo arm.
"D'oh!" he then collapses in a heap.
"Okay." I say slowly. "Why would he not where a helmet if it was that easy?"
"Because they're all idiots who are so high, they couldn't find their asses if they had a map and a flashlight. Fuck, they'd probably roll up the map into a blunt and hollow out the flashlight into a bong."
Turning I see my favorite grumpy healer. With tears in my eyes, and turning them back to their sea green gemstone color, I rush over jump up to hug her, knocking us both over.
"Hey!" She shouts.
"OH PANPAN! I WAS SO SCARED! YOU FOUL MOUTH MINDED GWUMPY HEALER!"
"Stop yelling and get off of me!" she tries to toss me off.
"NYO! I will nyat let go. I'm gonna hug you and squeeze you and feed you cookies till you are a happy healer at the hospital." Have I ever mentioned I love being extra? Because I do.
"Shouldn't you be out there saving the hospital?" Amy says.
"Nope. I just came here for you and you alone. The PRT are here for the rest."
She sighs and continues. "Kitsu? If you save everyone at the hospital I'll, I'll play Uno with you and Mark." she says defeated.
"Really?!" I get up and look at her with a wide smile.
"Yes." she says.
"DEAL!" I jump up and run out the ICU ward. Running out, I stop and run back.
"Why didn't you call Vicky?" I ask peeking around the corner.
"My phone was charging in the breakroom and they attacked when I was here, now go, I gotta do a round and make sure the back-up generator is keeping everyone alive."
"Do you want me to call her?" I ask.
"You have a phone?" She asks.
I fish out of my back pocket and just hold up my stolen jailbroke smartphone.
She gives me Vickys number and after a voice mail I just send a text.
Running back out I pass a few merchants, breaking all their knees and leaving them screaming on the ground. I looted a few of them for cash. My clothes are ruined with blood and grime at this point and Parian charges me a premium for getting her involved. I have about $400 from all the mooks. Not enough really.
'Meh I'll just bust into a drug house and steal the cash later.'
It's getting colder and colder as I travel through the halls to the employee sections, chilled to the point I can see my breathe. I really hope they don't have a genuine cryomancer. That would suck for me. I absorb energy and ice is formed from the transference of energy leaving something. If I get stuck in ice, all I could do is increase my body temp and hope it melts fast enough.
Running further I see the man of the hour, Skidmark, rail thin and spindly. Dark mocha skin in a blue half mask, blue shirt and black leather pants. The man looks like he didn't know how to shave, but tried anyway. He was breaking into a caged pill cabinet and throwing everything into a trash bag. He already had two filled next to him.
I don't even give him the curtesy of conversation, he is known as an intelligent man, and I have no plans of allowing him to display that intelligence as I run over and punch him in his lower back. Snapping his spine. Folding like a lawn chair he screams, first in surprise, then in pain and panic.
"Holy fuckshit! What the shit is yous doing here!" He shouts through cracked yellow teeth. Splayed in a heap on the ground, his clothes starting to glow.
"Simple, I'm here because you attacked the workplace of one of the few people who I've come to care for." I say calmly.
"The fuck you on about?!"
I just grab his gloved hand, now glowing. And crush it.
"Aaaaeiyaaaa!" He lets out a high pitched wail.
"it means I'm out of patience and you will answer my questions. End of story." I'm running low on energy. I only have enough in me for a single fight.
"Now tell me, who all is here." He punches me in the face. I just turn my eyes red and snap his forearm.
"FUUUCK! Bitch! When my crew gets to me you'll be a pulp and then I let Porcupine have your ass!" Nice knowing he was an actual creep, makes me feel justified in adding him to the ranks of the handy-capable.
"I already took out Squealer, Trainwreck, and I assume Porcupine. Needle headed guy?"
"Yous ain't gots shit on our new gal. She'll freeze your ass off and hand it to you with a fuckin smile"
"Kay, I assume she's the one that froze the place then." I touch his face and reconnect his spinal cord and fix his back before slamming his head into the cabinet, twice, he didn't conk out the first time.
'Now I have to find miss Snow Miser, lovely' Getting up and running further down the halls it gets colder, I normally love the cold, what with how my body heats up the more energy I have. But this just fills me with a sense of unease. Who could be so powerful a cryokinetic that they froze over an entire hospital, and still be rearing to go?
Running further I hear something.
"Mama? Where are you? I don't know what to do. Am I doing the right thing?" A young girl speaks quietly, almost a whisper really. You could hear the calm sadness in her voice. Making a turn I see her.
At the end of the hallway, facing me with widening eyes, a pale, blue skinned girl with white hair.
"Permafrost?"
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BONUS
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Joseph "Scarecrow" Crane
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After his father Jonathan Crane, the original Scarecrow, killed himself when his doctorate was revoked after his identity was revealed when a news reporter broke the unwritten rules after The Marquis was taken down, and the Brockton Bay Brigade unmasked themselves and formed the New Wave movement. He was left to the streets at only 10 years of age. And after surviving in the trainyard for five or so years, under constant fear someone would find him and take the revenge they couldn't get now that his father was dead. Someone finally found him and chased him into a drug lab. After knocking out the cooker holed up in there, he took over the equipment, struggling to remember his father's craft. And after an epiphany that he would later learn was called a trigger event. He managed to concoct his first, and favorite, aerosol drug.
He smiled fondly, after all, you always remember your first. His father was a Focal Tinker. Working with fear. Smoke bombs, rays, and light emitters that all caused fear in others, he was one of The Marguis's main enforcers. When he triggered, he recreated the Fear Smoke, a final connection between him and his father. Something to remember him by till the day he died. he was a Combat Tinker, specializing in aerosols, air-based drugs. Creating hallucinogens, narcotics, amphetamines, phosgene's and more! It was beautiful, it was deadly. And it was what earned him a premier spot in the Merchants.
He loathed these people. These sycophants and ignoramuses. They only care for his ability to give them easy highs. But they gave him all the necessary materials and even test subjects, as long as it was under the pretense of making the next big high, they didn't care. If a random volunteer went raving mad or even melted from the inside out, well, that was just a bad batch. Give them a couple batches of the best narcotics they never had, and they quickly wrote it off as an oopsie.
He couldn't go to the ABB, he wasn't Asian. The E88? He may be a psychopathic emotionally stunted self-proclaimed scientist, but even he had moral standards. The PRT then? No, they wouldn't take him, they told him he would have to get rid of the fear smoke. He refused to get rid of the last connection he had to his father. So the Merchants were all that was left.
And stepping out of one of the offices to see Skidmark get manhandled by a little girl and hear that Squealer was out of commission, as well as the spy Trainwreck and the pedophile Porcupine? Well that was perfect. With enough smarts, and he had plenty, he could escape here unscathed and take over the Merchants. Squealer would be a harsh loss, but if he was honest with himself he knew she would never listen to him unless he was working to get Skidmark out.
Step one. Take over the Merchants.
Step two. Recruit more capes.
Step three. Make New Wave pay for their part in his fathers death.
Seeing the Endstopper Child run down further into the building left him smiling under his gas mask. walking over to the bags of drugs that were on the ground around Skidmark he grabbed what he could and left for the exit.
Life was looking up for him today.