Jasmin Lehtinen (Sähkö)'s Story

Capetown, TX. 09/18/2017, 11:34 AM. 77°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.

---

It was an autumn morning like any other in Capetown, Texas. Even though I think was nearly noon, the sky was dark with clouds, an endless grey expanse with a barely perceptible texture, one side of the sky glowing slightly brighter than the other. Lucas Eklund had spent the better part of the morning fucking around with his power, trying to make cool artistic sculptures that he could sell on "Etsy" without it being suspect that it was power-made. But, like all things, he couldn't keep his commitment to it long enough to finish, and so, he goes, each day, not finishing his "job," if it can be called that. He has sold a few sculptures online, making something out of sticks and clay, then changing it to glass, or plastic, or quartz, and selling it on Etsy. However, most of the time he loses interest. Today was one of those days, as he was more interested in a faster way of making lots of cash.

The sound of clicks and beeps as he dialed a number rang out through his apartment.
"Hey, Jazz, I have a new plan this time."
"No. I already know what it is. You want to turn another sculpture into gold. We've been over this before. No."
"No, this time I have a good idea. I mean, it's nothing special, it's obvious. But here; what if I do it little pieces at a time? A gold pebble sold here, a gold pebble sold there. If I don't do a whole lot, I can't get caught, right? What do you think?"
"I don't know. I'm not a Thinker. I can't see the far-reaching ramifications of this. But I still think it's a really bad idea."
"But you are a Thinker, you've told me that before, I think."
"Well, technically, because I have an extra sense, but I'm not the kinda Thinker that's smart."
"But you're smart." He retorted.
"Lucas, I don't think it's a good idea."
"Look, I know in the past you haven't wanted me to turn things into gold because it's dangerous, but look; if I turn a tiny rock, sell it for $100, who's to say it's not some nugget I found out in the wilderness?"
"Because if you start doing it too much, or make too much money off of it, the Thinkers that watch the economy are going to get suspicious. 'Hmmm. Where did all this gold come from? You know, the stuff world economies are based off of, and suddenly there's a lot more of it!' " She sarcastically imitated.
"Look, babe, just come over and I'll show you. It's fool-proof."
"Okay, first of all, you can't make a fool-proof plan. That's an oxymoron. Second of all, we are not dating." Jasmin stressed, leaving a pause afterwards."I've told you this. Third of all, I'm at work. You know, a job. One of those things you don't have."
"Ouch, you're turning my sarcasm against me."
"You're providing the ammo."
"Okay, okay. When do you get off of work? ...Five? Okay. I guess I can cause some trouble around town until you get off."
"Hey don't do anything that'll get you arrested."
"Jasmin, were villains. That's what we do."
"I'm only a villain because my job can't pay rent."
"Not this again. So you'd be a hero if you got the chance? All the rules and regulations?"
"Yes. No. It's complicated."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll see you at the hangout after five."

After hanging up, he glanced at the time. Ten past noon, got five hours to kill. He thought idly. He looked at the sculpture he he had been working on earlier, but decided on going out on the apartment patio for a smoke. The morning air smelled of rain, and he felt the pinpricks of the cool rain, more like a light sprinkle, on his skin.

"Today's gonna be a good day." Lucas spoke, to no one in particulars.

Capetown, TX. 09/18/2017, 12:57 AM. 79°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.

---

"Fuck, I'm hungry." Lucas Eklund spoke aloud to himself, his voice muffled by his helmet and drowned out by the idle roar of his motorcycle, yet still breaking his train of thought, and curbing his annoyance at the sounds of the city a bit. For a man born and raised in Los Angeles, he sure did hate the hustle and bustle of a big city, with the background drone of talking voices, the beeps, screeches, and hums of traffic, the bass of a truck driving by blaring rap music, the occasional chirp or chortle of birds, it all grated with him when he was in a bad mood. Especially when he was in a bad mood. And that he was, because, as he evidently announced himself; he was hungry. He bent down and picked up a rock, no bigger than a quarter. Then he whipped out his phone, opening up Google, and typed in 'a gram of gold' into the search bar. $41 per gram. He thought. How much is a gram? He clicked on the images tab. Oh, holy shit, that's tiny as fuck. He looked down at the rock. About the size of a quarter in diameter, but it had volume where a quarter would be flat. If he transmuted it to gold, it'd easily be over 100 grams. Maybe 150 grams of gold. Worth it. What harm can one rock do?

Twenty minutes later, after stopping by an expensive jewelery store to "try on" a 24-karat gold ring, which he used to transmute the rock in his pocket with his other, non-ring-wearing, hand in his pocket, he was riding down the street on his motorcycle towards a pawn shop. Now here's the sketchy bit, he anticipated, knowing full well that he wasn't educated on the intricacies of the economy. He doubted it'd be as easy as walking in there and walking out with $500. And he was right, after having to wait an agonizing hour as the pawn shop owner got a "professional" to come look at his golden nugget, he was offered $350 for it.

"Fuck that, I know it's worth way more than that. I want $500 for it." Lucas said, scowling at the man behind the counter.

"Look man, you understand, I have to make a profit with this store. Now you're selling this, not pawning it, the best I can offer is $375." The pawn-broker counter-offered.

Lucas is not good at negotiating, but he is stubborn, and in the end he walked out of the shop with $400 cash. He checked his phone and it was nearly 2 PM. Maybe I'll go to The Ramsay Club, He thought, recalling one of the more expensive restaurants in the city, owned by a Cape-chef with non-combat cooking powers. A Tinker, if he recalled right, with the power to make food more delicious and filling than normal, out of regular or unconventional ingredients. Nah, too expensive, and I can't do this too many times or Jasm-

Scree-eeee-eeech! His thoughts were interrupted as he turned his bike to the right, screeching sideways, almost toppling the bike, coming to a stop inches away from some idiot with a skull tattoo covering his face. "Watch where you're fucking going, esse!" Lucas yelled, his Cali accent thickening his voice, while his hands instinctively made some obscene gestures.

Capetown, TX. 09/18/2017, 2:32 AM. 77°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Lucas Eklund could do little more than watch as a thick black liquid swirled around the man's throat. He's a parahuman. Lucas thought to himself before flinching as the sound of his motorcycle revving loudly emitted from the man's mouth while he returned Lucas' gesture and then ran away, his skin unnaturally jet black, looking like a shadow, but too dark and too easy to make out among the barely-visible shadows cast by the overcast light of the sky. Lucas stood there, confused, for a moment, before dropping back into his usual sarcastic wisecracking demeanor.

"Guess his bark is worse than his bike." Lucas retorted to the 'scream,' before doubling over, fits of laughter overcoming him. If Jasmin were here, she would have sighed and groaned at the pub, but Lucas found himself to be rather hilarious. "With a... With a power like that... What does he call himself... Frog Boy?" He gave a long wheeze before becoming hysterical with laughter once again. Finally, he calmed down, wiping tears from his eyes, his sides hurting with each silent hitch of laughter until he finally stopped all together. He let out a long sigh before - BEEEEEEP - Lucas looked behind him, only to realize he was still in the middle of the street on his bike. The driver in the car behind him had stopped when he did, and had probably been surprised by the parahuman's motorcycle imitation, and waited a minute while he laughed, but now the man was impatient. Without a word, Lucas revved his bike and rode off down the street, returning traffic to normal.

The next two and a half hours went by pretty quickly, as he had gone to a restaurant to eat, and then gone to a club for some entertainment. When five o'clock rolled around, he was driving towards Jasmin's house to meet her there. When he got there, he noticed the big "closed" sign in the windows of the Wich Which next to her apartment. Weird for it to be closed at this time of the day. He though, before shrugging. He walked up the steps to her apartment and knocked on the door.

---

---

Capetown, TX. 09/15/2017, 9:00 PM. 70°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.
Three days ago...

---

Finally, it was nine at night, and his patrol shift was over. He stood on a rooftop, overlooking the traffic below him in the city, the sun having just set so the buildings created dark shadowy night below, but the sky was still lit on one half of the horizon. Red Jet stare down at the ground, ten stories below him. It would be so easy to step off. The thought didn't jolt him anymore, as it used to, as even if he did jump, the concrete below him would be much more damaged than he would. He sighed and rubbed his cheek where his helmet lining ended, and raised his visor to rub his eyes for a moment before lowering it again. He didn't enjoy being out here, on patrol, but now that it was over he couldn't bring himself to go back to the HQ. The beep of his phone indicating he'd received a text snapped him out of it, and he launched himself into the sky in the direction of the HQ.

Ten minutes later, Josh had entered the HLA/THA HQ and taken the elevator downstairs. When it ding'ed open, Josh saw Hydro and immediately cocked a grin. "Yo, I got your text, what's the probl... em...?" He finished, noticing that every member of Capetown's HLA and THA had gathered in the room, twelve people in all. Not a good sign. He noticed Hydro look between their senior members before speaking.

"We're calling a meeting... About the Abhorrents."

Capetown, TX. 09/18/2017, 5:00 PM. 75°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Jasmin Lehtinen had just taken off her shirt and laid down on her futon in her apartment when she heard three quick raps on the door. She groaned, and sat up, her midriff cramping and her body aching from standing all day. "One sec!" She hollered, quickly throwing a tank top on and some short, almost booty-shorts. When she opened the door, she was greeted by Lucas' shit-eating grin and ugly sunglasses.

"I can tell by how you dressed that you were expecting me. We can take a detour on the wa-"
"Ew!" Jasmin exclaimed. "Stop hitting on me. It's creepy."
Lucas only laughed, leaning against the wall just outside the door, before asking, "I thought you were going to go to the hangout tonight, after work?"
"I just got off," She retorted, "And I'm really tired. I don't think I'm gonna go, tonight."
Lucas shook his head, and pulled out his phone. "I got a text from the boss-lady. We're going to meet at the hideout to discuss a new job. She wants you in, this time."

Jasmin's eyes widened. She joined the team a few weeks ago, and so she was the newest member. They had their first job since she'd joined a few night after she had done so, but she opted to stay out of it since she was the newest member. This time, they'd be expecting her to go along. She ran her hand through her hair and gave out a long sigh, blowing the breath through her bubbled-lips, before it switched to coming out of her nose. "I don't..."

"You're going to meet her, this time." At that, Jasmin's head snapped up, locking eyes with Lucas. His face was set, hard, as if he didn't trust her. Since Jasmin had joined the group, named "The Congenial," she had met all of the members except for the boss, always instead receiving information from one of the other members. All she knew about the boss was that she was a female named Recall. No PCRT record, no Parahumans Online mention, nothing. She had learned from the other members that their boss was mysterious, not often showing herself, and never showing her identity,
even if all of the others in the group were on a first name basis. Jasmin knew that the others trusted their leader about as much as she did, but she paid well for their jobs. Or so Jasmin had been told. "Tell me more about her before I meet her, then."

Lucas sighed, and rubbed his cheek, as if it were an unconscious thinking gesture. "Okay, Recall. We don't know a whole lot about her. Ray did some digging, and we can’t say what she does as far as his powers go, but she’s one of the more powerful players in town. She considers herself a chess master. You know, like a master strategist, tactician. She controls more than half of downtown with squads of top notch personnel in the highest end gear. Ex-military from around the world, mercernaries, and she apparently has even bought out many villain groups like ours. If she even has powers, she’s the only one in her main organization who does. But most importantly; she's a ghost. She controls a lot behind the scenes, and people don't even know it. We're pretty certain she has many people in the PCRT and probably even the HLA. But whoever she is, she can afford to just flush thousands down the toilet and give to us for our stupid little jobs."

Jasmin's eyes widened. That was a bombshell of information to drop, though it didn't surprise her a whole lot.
She already knew she was mysterious, and mysterious and powerful aren't an uncommon combination. "So we don't even know if she's a parahuman."
"If she isn't, it's weird that she dresses up in costume. But we don't know what her power is."

Great. Jasmin thought. Ten minutes later, they were at the hideout, which was really less of a hideout, and more of an apartment building that the team had rented, stocked with snacks, a television, several gaming consoles, and two guest rooms if someone ever needed to crash somewhere that wasn't home. Jasmin tried her best to avoid coming here, as she didn't want to get too attached to the team. As Jasmin and Lucas entered the door, they heard the voices of a guy and a girl, making exclaimations, laughing, and the occasional grunt. Walking up the stairs revealed Ray and Mark, the other two members of the team. Mark's cape name was Sandstorm, on account that the PCRT thought he could control sand, when, in fact, he can control any form of powerder, be it big granules or very fine dust, he can control sand, iron shavings, dirt, dust, ash, flour, cornmeal, and more. Ray, on the other hand, had the cape name Seraphim, which Jasmin thought was a really cool name. She could create small portals to other worlds and anchor them to objects. She usually did this to give herself armor and wings made out of portals to hundreds, or thousands, of other worlds, making he look like a walking art mosaic. If something were to hit her portal-armor, it would get slices and distributed across several different universes, or at least that's how Ray described it.

Lucas and Jasmin joined them in the couches surrounding the TV, Lucas joining in the games while Jasmin opted to just watch. There was no discussion of the job, and Jasmin assumed everything would be explained when the boss showed herself. Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the apartment door.

Capetown, TX. 09/18/2017, 5:00 PM. 75°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Just as Jasmin Lehtinen had feared, the knock heralded the arrival of their mysterious contractor. The knock was apparently a courtesy knock, as none of the four had gotten off of the couch to go open the door before they let themselves in. Two bodyguards wearing black Kevlar body suits and black balaclavas flanked her, each holding an assault rifle aimed at the floor. Recall herself, their boss, wore a black costume, with a black helmet a purple visor obscuring her whole face. She had a purple scarf wrapped around her knock, and two swords, one of European descent, and a one a katana, sheathed on her back. She also carried a handgun holstered on her hip, another holstered on her ankle, and several throwing knives holstered on her upper arm and hip. Jasmin's pulse wuickened at the sight of her, but when she spoke, her voice reminded Jasmin of her mother, and immediately put her at ease.

"Ah, ̸ḿy͡ ̕Con̵g͏e̡nial͏.͏ ̀So ni̢ce to̸ f̀in̡al͞ly me̴et al̷l of̡ ̧y̸où t͘o͠ge͢th͞er." Her voice spoke behind the mask, muddled and changed in pitch. Tinker tech? Unlikely, probably just a mundane voice changer in the helmet mixed with other random noises that sounded pretty alien. "Yo͞u҉ ͏f̧o̵u͠r͡ ̀h̕av̧e b̡e̶e͞n ͞cr̕uc̸i̢al͞ ́i̢n̴ the ̛f̵rưi̶ti҉o̷n ͡o͠f͢ ͟my p̷lan̷ş, an̕d̡ ͠al̕ĺ is̷ ne̛a̡ŕl҉y͝ ̕cǫm̛plet̨e͝.̡ ͝I͞ ́h̛ave o͟n̢e͜ ͢l̶as͘t͝ j̀ob f̡or͡ ̡y̶ơu͡, ̧t̨h̡en̴ you wil͞l̛ be ̡f̛ree ͞t̶o͏ ̢d̶o ͝a͞s you w̴ish. T҉he p͝a̴ỳm͞en҉t f̶o͟r ͟the͠ ̢jơb҉ is ͠al̨so lar͠g̨er͘ ̢th̢a͡n̸ ҉t͏h͢e l̵a͏s͏t few̵.͏ ͝A ̡h̵un͢d̨r̸e̢d̷ ́th͘o̶u͞san͟d͡ do҉l҉lar͟s͝,̢ e͠a͡ch̵."

Jasmin's jaw dropped. Had she heard that correctly? $100,000. She could do so much with that. She could move into a better place, she'd be able to afford food, she could even start making a costume for herself. Plus, she said this would be the last job. Her first and last job, one job, for a hundred grand. It seemed almost too good to be true.

Seemingly, Lucas felt the same way. "What's the catch? And drop the voice, it's hard to understand you."

"Well, the job is the catch, naturally." Recall's distorted voice retorted, but it was more clear, with less background static, popping, and alien sounds. "As for the job, I need you to take out a rival of mine, a villain organization that is an annoying pain in my side. After they are gone, I'll be done."

Jasmin tried to think of who the rest of the big players were, the major villain masterminds in Capetown. There was Think Tank, Chaos Skull, White Out, Spidermonkey, Blue, Compulse, Freakshow, Zainy, and the Adept Mages, each with their respective gangs or villain organizations. How could only one of them be a pain in her side?

"Specifically, the Adept Mages." Recall elaborated. "They are allied with an Abhorrent Cult, and they are likely planning to help this cult sabotage me, my allies, and even the HLA. Take care of them tomorrow, and your payment will be delivered afterwards."

---

Jasmin had trouble getting to sleep that night, lying in her bed. She'd have to call in sick to work tomorrow, and it could get her fired, but that wouldn't matter if the finished the job and got paid. But the Adept Mages. That's not an easy job. They were parahumans that believed that their powers aren't science based, but are actually magic, like Harry Potter or something. She'd heard stories about how they were usually grab-bag capes with a lot of versatile powers, that liked to wear cloaks and carry "spell books," and yell cryptic chants. I'm going to fight loonies. Powerful loonies. she fell asleep, and woke up the next morning with a splitting headache.

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 10:10 Am. 57°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Josh McDaniel hated school. He, like most high school students, felt that there was little need for him to learn calculus, trigonometry, or British literature. However, unlike most students, his opinion was mostly fueled by the fact that he was guaranteed a full, government-sponsored, scholarship to virtually any college he wanted, and guaranteed a well-paying, full time job afterwards with the HLA. His hatred for high school was somewhat abated in his Parahumans Ethics and Parahumans Studies classes. Technically electives to other students, they were a required class for him, unbeknownst to his teachers but known to school administration, because he was in the THA. Each class took half of a semester, and combined they gave students an elective point in either Science or Art, but most students joined it because they were mildly interested in parahumans, vainly wanted to learn how to become parahumans, extreme cape geeks, or just thought it'd be a fun class or an easy A. Josh didn't think the college style lectures were fun or that the multi-page essays were easy. Nevertheless, the class was interesting.

Josh enjoyed the class, and so though there were good and bad qualities about it, it was the one class that he ever spoke aloud in, whether to other classmates, or to answer the teacher (who called himself "Professor P" even thought it's not a college class). Josh was quiet, reserved, and had very few friends, though he was not the edgy loner type that many of the school's emos or goths would try to play off. Josh used to be a popular kid, even what some might consider a jock. He was on the school's football team, had multiple girlfriends, lots of friends, and made good grades. Then, when his trigger event came about, Josh became reclused and isolated afterwards, losing most of his friends, dropping the ones that remained with him, leaving the football team, and breaking up with his girlfriend. It left him traumatized, and it only worsened the fact that rumors spread. Josh attempted suicide. He would hear whispers about it in the halls, teachers would act nicer to him, and the world felt a lot more condescending. Things got worse when he joined the THA, and though he started making friends with some of the team, it was a far cry from what it used to be. Annoyed, Josh found himself zoning out in the one class of the day he somewhat enjoyed, and turned his attention back to Professor P's lecture, after hearing a student ask a question he didn't quite catch.

"You know, it's just human nature. Chaos in a system, selfishness, mistakes, stupidity, people doing the wrong things with the tools they have at their disposal. I once met a powerful parahuman, she was an animal biokinetic. She could change any animal's biologies, and she used it to sell hybridized animals to circuses and zoos. I asked her, 'Why don't you make a mosquito that cures malaria?' It was a simple question. She had a fix on the tip of her fingers that could do what scientists have been trying to do with genes for years. She could fix ethical dilemmas by making domesticated cows not have the ability to feel pain, and make their milk contain all sorts of important things like vitamins and antibacterials safe for human consumption. She could make GMO's that seem perfectly natural with no mess ups, no drawbacks. Now, a lot of people trust parahumans even less than they trust scientists doing genetic modification, and some companies wouldn't accept that even if it meant a possible profit turn. But there'd be a company or two that would, and she'd make money off of making things better. So, why didn't she? It's simple. Parahumans are humans, but they are also humans who have had the worst happen to them. About 70% of parahumans, according to studies, have powers related to their trigger events. These powers remind them of the worst aspect, part, or day of their lives, every day. A parahuman who's trigger event was being ignored by everyone, including family, ironically gained the power of self-invisibility. Things like that. Some parahumans repress this, or even better, overcome their trauma and become heroes. But even more chose not to work for the greater good, to instead be rogues, pursue their own small goals or dreams, or instead not use their powers at all. It doesn't always pay to be a people-pleaser, and these parahumans can't be faulted for their choices in life, just as each of you in this class may not be faulted for not wishing to become a doctor, surgeon, or EMT to save lives.

Now, everyone turn in their assignments about a famous parahuman who's faced ethical dilemmas in their careers, and... Mr. Dalton!" Professor P. raised his voice, and Josh turned his head to see one of his classmates, Alexander, jerk his head up as if he'd just been asleep on his desk. "Please don't sleep in my class." Professor P requested, before going back to telling the class to turn in their assignment that was due today. Josh himself had done his assignment on Dr. Charles Manton, the man who "discovered" the Manton Effect, because it made it easy for his assignment to tangent off onto describing the Manton Effect to give a higher word count with less effort. There could have been other choices, like Suit, the Tinker member of the Triumvirate, basically the real-world Iron Man, but better. Or maybe someone like the parahuman villain who's cape identity name was literally "God," but parahumans have done worse than defile religions. In the end, Manton seemed like an easy choice for his assignment, and probably a choice more than a few other students would have chosen as well, causing Professor P to not have too much interest in Josh's own paper.

He passed his paper to the person sitting in the desk in front of him, then turned to Alexander, "Not getting enough sleep last night, man?" He didn't know why he asked, in particular. He and Alex hadn't really communicated much before, maybe if Alexander had been around before Josh's trigger event, Josh might have tried to be his friend just like every one else, but as far as Josh knew, Alexander moved to Capetown High from somewhere else, and he hadn't seen Alexander in middle school. He was startled from his train of thought when his phone buzzed, a group text with a couple dozen numbers attached, saying "Cape bank robbery in progress, PCRT members down, requesting HLA backup. THA members to stay in school." His pulse slowed, and he hadn't even realized that his heart had been pounding in his chest. They were expecting an Abhorrent attack within the week, and that was four days ago. Every text or call he got got him scared that this would be the one. It was inevitable.

---

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 7:00 AM. 54°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Jasmin Lehtinen
woke up with one of the worst headaches she's had in a while. The dull throbbing of her heartbeat wracked her brain constantly, as she struggled to muster the strength to get out of bed, and drew shaky breaths with each movement. At least the quiver in her voice as she was close to tears made her phone call to work believable, and somewhat justified. Now I just have to go fight a bunch of powerful parahumans. No biggie. She sarcastically thought, grabbing her car keys.

When she arrived at the hideout, she was no longer Jasmin, she was now Sähkö, and Mark, or rather Sandstorm, was already there. However, unlike last night, he was now in his costume, a black costume with a sand-tan top, gloves, boots, and a sand-tan cowl-scarf that hung down his back like a small semi-cape. Brown bandoliers were on his belt, and Jasmin could only guess that they were filled with various powders, or a lot of sand. Lucas, or Chrysopoeia, showed up next, in his red armor with scales of various materials, and red sunglasses and bandana. Lastly Ray, or Seraphim, showed up uncostumed, because her power created a costume for her. Sähkö checked the time, and it was ten minutes after ten o' clock. They would be striking the Adept Mages at noon. In every one of their last jobs, the HLA had been occupied elsewhere, Lucas had once told her, so they never met with the HLA and the HLA knew little about The Congenial, so it was usually lone vigilantes The Congenial fought, if there was any fight at all during a job. Lucas had suspected Recall had always set up the other distractions for their jobs, but Sähkö wondered if it was mere coincidence and that today would be their unlucky day.

So, they spent the next hour talking strategy. Sandstorm and Sähkö would take Sandstorm's car, and Chrysopoeia would follow close behind on his motorcycle, Seraphim riding bitch, both vehicles with the licence plates covered. Then they talked about who they'd be fighting. Their leader, Myrlyn (who Sähkö pictured as an old wizard dude until Seraphim mentioned it was spelled fucking weird), was a dressed in intricately blue-runed black armor with a black cloak-like cape and skirt that was open in the front. He also had a nearly-blank white ceramic mask with a hood thrown over it. Sähkö's mental image of it was weird, but Chrysopoeia said he looked like a Lord of the Rings villain or something. Apparently he had telekinetic powers that caused blue flames to appear around whatever he was using the telekinesis on, but the flames were intangible and didn't hurt or burn things. he applied this in many ways, as it was a particularly strong form or telekinesis, able to throw large things, make things float, push or pull people, or even make himself fly. He also had the secondary power of limited precognition, that apparently stemmed from a mental power telling him what people were about to do, or what action they'd take. This combination made him very deadly in a fight, though he didn't have as many powers as some of his underlings. Jeu, apparently second in command of the Adept Mages, wore black armor with red highlights and a black cape with a red inside, he also had a similar ceramic mask to Myrlyn, and a frame that made him look almost like an evil jester. He had many powers such as enhanced timing, enhanced balance, enhanced accuracy, and illusory flames, making him deadly in close quarters melee, and good at battlefield control by tricking people with flames. Third was Drow, named after the dark elves from Dungeons and Dragons, she was a super-pale girl with jet black makeup and snow white hair, wearing the same black armor as the two before her, but with green highlights. Drow was capable of creating constructs of green energy (like green lantern) except it was mostly limited to small constructs, and the energy appeared to be both wispy like smoke, and crackly like green electricity. She mostly made weapons out of the energy, but could sometimes create battlefield obstacles. Alchimyst (who Sähkö was informed also spelled his name retarded) was fourth in command, and didn't share the same theme as the three before him. He wore a drab grey hood, gas mask, and more modern apocalypse-looking gear, and he was a chemical Tinker, who made concoctions of "potions" and poisons with varying affects. Sähkö hated the utility Tinkers brought to a table, as they were usually unpredictable even with simple specialties. There were twelve more, but they didn't have time to go over a strategy to dealing with each and every one, so they tried basic general strategies of dealing with the main four, and hoped that winging it in the heat of battle would help against the rest.

Sähkö, for her part, was pretty nervous. She'd never actually been in a cape fight before, and she wasn't intent on killing anyone, even in self defense. I'm so screwed.

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:03 AM. 61°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Sähkö studied the abandoned warehouse with incredulous awe.
"We're attacking them?" She hissed under her breath to Chrysopoeia, who was crouched next to her.
"Look, they're still villains, alright?" Sandstorm said, prompting Seraphim to shake her head.
"Yeah," Chrysopoeia agreed. "I say we kill the leader fir-"
"Kill!?" Sähkö hissed under her breath once again. "Look at them! They're kids."

Across the street, the Adept Mages were LARP'ing. Several members in either knight-like armor or mage-like robes were running around the warehouse, hitting each other with foam swords, throwing socks or bags filled with what appeared to be flour, based on the puffs of white cloud on contact, and occasionally one or two would throw balls of light that were obviously parahuman powers. Some were dressed in modern or casual wear, while a few even looked slightly post-apocalyptic. Three guys, who looked similar to each other, were shirtless.

"They aren't LARP'ing right." Sähkö said, prompting Seraphim to snort at her.
"What? LARP'ing?" Chrysopoeia looked at Sähkö. "What's that?" He asked, and Sähkö whipped her head around and gave him a confused look.
"LARP. Live Action Role Play... -ing. They're playing pretend medieval battles. What did you think they were doing, dressed up like wizards and knights?"
"Dungeons and Dragons? I think I've heard of that before. Or training for actual battle." Chrysopoeia replied, causing Seraphim to let loose a laugh that she couldn't contain.

"Are... Are they even all parahumans? Half of them look like they aren't even using powers." Seraphim whispered.
"That's because they aren't." Sandstorm replied. "They have a member on the team, a Trump named 'Rethliel' or some shit. He can grant non-parahumans 0-1 rating powers in a single category. Like give a non-parahuman a Brute 0 power or a Shaker 1 power, ect. You see the three shirtless dudes with white hair? They're brothers. Rethliel is the one that doesn't have tattoos down his arm. The one with tattoos is a Breaker with a fire-form named Fernis. And the last brother with the white hair is a Shaker, named Rition, he can manipulate ink, including tattoos."
"LARP'ers and their weird-ass names." Chrysopoeia whispered.

After a few more minutes of talking strategy, or arguing among themselves, the Congenial decided it was time. As a group, the four of them strutted across the street to the Adept Mage's hideout. As they did, many of the LARP'ers began stopping, and staring at the four, unsure what to do. A few parahumans switched to their Breaker forms. A few others had elements or light swirling around them.

Sähkö took a deep breath. Okay Jasmin. She thought uneasily to herself. Just like we planned. Don't mess this up. Don't kill anyone. Don't hurt your team. They're counting on you. They kept walking until they were in the middle of the Adept Mages, surrounded, and everyone was silent. No one had made a move yet, the Adept Mages unsure whether the Congenial were coming on good terms or not. Plus, most of the underlings would get in trouble for attacking first, if the Congenial were here to talk to Myrlyn or another leader.

Then they made their move. Sähkö gave the signal, a simple nod of the head, and Chrysopoeia reached down to touch the dirt. Before anyone could react, the entire dust/dirt ground surrounding the warehouse turned to copper. A second later, Jasmin reached down and touched the copper, and released energy into it. In that moment, multiple things happened. Almost everyone standing on the copper began to convulse, as if being tasered, and dropped down to the ground. Sähkö held her concentration as hard as she could, preventing them from receiving too much of a shock, and trying as hard as she could to prevent her team mates from getting shocked at all. Any excess energy put into the copper was routed back into her for absorption. She felt in her mind every circuit between herself and a person touching copper, every tendril and arc of electricity that zapped through the air where a rock or irregularity in the dirt turned to copper, causing arcs through the air like you'd see between the nodes of a stun gun. Then, overpowering all else, she felt a single line. The line connected her through the copper ground, to wiring under a nearby street light.

Oh shit. She thought. Suddenly her consciousness became fuzzy, as it grew. She felt electricity light up the street light. S\In slow motion, she felt the bulb explode and the arc of plasma in the air around the shattered glass. She felt the electricity run through the underground wires like blood through her veins, as they hit each street light on the block and shattered them. Then she felt more. She felt the lights in the buildings around her, she felt the buildings and street lights a block over, and two blocks. She felt a phone booth three blocks away, and she felt computers in an office building somewhere. She felt street lights, felt the impulses change from the red light to the green light. She felt landlines, telephone wires, internet cables, phone chargers in buildings, coffee-makers, televisions, digital clocks, outlets yet to be plugged into. Her awareness began to expand beyond the office and industrial buildings around her, reaching residential buildings, restaurants, convenience stores, and more. For a fraction of a second, she was aware of a bank, six miles away from her, before the next building entered her consciousness, then the next, then the next. She had a mental map of the city, being built as if pouring blue water coloring into a maze, watching it spread and stain out from a central point, it's radius growing ever larger. Eventually she hit a blindingly bright spot, bright as the sun, somewhere far out from her mental map. It's a power plant. I'm connected to the grid. She thought, dimly aware of anything around her body. Her mind wasn't there, her physical body not hers to control. She was everywhere, and she felt everything. For two or three seconds, she felt powerful, like she controlled the world. She could switch on and off televisions, change the temperatures of an oven, change the time on a clock, all across town. Her powers, for a moment, felt more fine tuned then they had ever been in her life. Her physical body was minuscule compared to the scope of her body now. The city was her body, each appliance feeling like a finger she could twitch, her physical body barely a facial muscle to flex.

Then, it all imploded. She felt darkness, as her consciousness shrunk rapidly, in the span of a second, and she felt the whole of her power not spread out over a section of the city, but in her body. Like water into a drain, all of the electricity in over a quarter of the city, including a power plant, entered her body. Then, she felt blind. She realized that for the last few years, she'd been unconsciously feeling and seeing every current or magnetic field around her, not registering it in her mind, but feeling it like a slight breeze or gust of wind. Now, with the city in a state of blackout, she felt like she was standing in a dark room with no draft. Blind, nothing to see or to feel.

Then she opened her eyes and everything was blurry. Chrysopoeia, Sandstorm, and Seraphim were all back across the street. They had thrown up shields, likely made out of Sandstorm's sand powers, and transmuted by Chrysopoeia. She looked around the warehouse, where people lie on the floor, clothes on fire, twitching and spasming. Then she looked down, and noticed the influx of power towards her had actually melted a path through the copper, drawing several spidery lines around a thick canal of molten metal from her feet towards the nearby street light. Then she realized why everything was blurry. The air around her shimmered with the heat of molten copper, and was ionizing from the amount of electricity in her body. There was a limit to how much electricity she could safely hold without it leaking out and zapping people who came too close accidentally. She was far beyond that limit, and the electricity in her body was leaking out enough to turn the air around her to plasma. She couldn't breathe, and she felt like she were standing in a stove. Finally, conscious thought returned to her, and she said to herself;

What the fuck.

Followed immediately by, How can I safely discharge all of this?!?!

---

The sun hung high in the sky, a quick glance at his phone quickly reminded him of the time. So far his little patrol hadn’t turned up anything worthwhile. He had come across a few drug deals already, but strolled past them. The moment he did something as his alter ego, the news that he was currently in the district would spread like wildfire and any bigger game would either go to ground or immediately start hunting him. As his sneakers hit the pavement of the sidewalk, trash floating in the wind across a nearly deserted street as a single rusted pinto coughed and wheezed by him, Kayle’s mind drifted to work for the next day. He had another morning routine, hopefully it wouldn’t stretch into the evening again. Honestly, his nightly excursions were sometimes the only thing that kept him sane. Block after block, nothing popped up to warrant his intervention. There was one incident where a couple of guys were beating up another dude in plain sight, but a very quick inspection showed that the ‘victim’ had nearly beaten one of their friends to death. No need for him to intervene on behalf of someone like that.

He approached an intersection, where the lights were set on a timer and rotated between green, yellow and red despite there not being a single vehicle in any direction. A couple of guys stood near the corner, and before Kayle got there, a woman of...dubious repute joined them and they all enjoyed a few smokes. Kayle got to the corner, earning a couple of looks but in his current get up he looked like he belonged in the area and they didn’t really pay him any mind. They continued their conversation, something about how drunk they got and where their next windfall was going to come from. Neither topics turned into something that Kayle could see himself jumping on, and was about to cross the street to continue his patrol when the hairs on his arms and neck stood on end. He wasn’t the only one to notice it either as the three other people on the corner stopped talking just in time to have the street lights all burst into shards around them. The men swore and the woman screamed slightly, even Kayle ducked slightly.

“The fuck..?” One of them asked, looking around as Kayle looked at the lights to see all their bulbs had burst.

“What was that? I still feel it...electric?” The woman asked, looking at her two companions.

“I didn’t think E-Lec still wandered around here…”

“Don’t joke, if he was still here and if that was him, we’d be dead.”

As they bickered, Kayle noticed that the feeling of his hairs standing on end hadn’t gone away. He was still within the electromagnetic field. He took out his phone, and while it remained largely unaffected, the screen stuttered as he turned. Finally, as he turned a certain direction, the screen flipped out and nearly filled with static. Whoever had done that hadn’t been concerned for collateral damage, which means it couldn’t have been a cape that had done it, at least on purpose. Kayle started movingin the direction that his phone seemed to indicate was the origin of the pulse.

---

It wasn’t a far jog to the scene as the feeling of electricity in the air seemed to die down rather quickly. Luckily Kayle already had a heading before his phone stopped being affected, and managed to stumble upon what could only be a full on showdown. Still a block away and poking his head around the corner of the building, Kayle managed to see what had caused the electrical disturbances, or at the very least, the most likely person. She stood in the center of what could only be called a lightning minefield as the heat from the melted copper made her form wavy. A number of people around her were unconscious, on fire, crying from pain, or possibly even dead. He couldn’t tell from here, but he was completely certain that they were no cape. On the same side of the street he was on, about a block away, were a number of other people hiding behind some type of shield or obstruction. He couldn’t get a good look at them, but he could tell there were three of them there. Assuming the person in the middle of that hellstorm was one of theirs, that would make four. The people who had been attacked, upon closer inspection, matched the description of the Adept Mages.

Kayle had known about them for awhile, but largely left them alone. They were annoying and...well childish to be perfectly honest. Most of the time they were content to recruit and play their games, and when they did step out of line there were plenty of others who could waste their time on their antics. Not to say that they didn’t have power, only that they didn’t use it to the full extent they possibly could. Kayle could recollect about two or three times he tangoed with them, each time an exercise in patience as they insisted on yelling their abilities like some kind of anime or Harry Potter film.

It was obvious they were fighting each other, but they appeared to be two opposing villain organizations. Sure, the unknown group could be vigilantes, but they were either stupid or careless to allow that kind of damage and exposure to happen. After all, Kayle had felt the pulse a number of blocks away, and while harmless to him and the others on the streets, how many people had she just hurt by overloading electronics? One way or the other, both groups were a threat now, especially since the Mages had just had their noses bloodied. What was the unknown group’s goal? Considering the location, it appeared like they had gone looking for the fight. Maybe focus on the new group first? Take them out of the equation before anyone’s the wiser? He currently had the element of surprise, no one knew he was here or even who he was for that matter. He looked up at the sky with a frown. It was the middle of the day though, and a couple of his abilities would be locked out or useless if he couldn’t figure out a way to cast a ray of darkness on them.

As he looked back down, he caught sight of one of the Mages approaching the electrical demon girl and get zapped without her conscious effort. Some kind of electrical field surrounding her? He couldn’t get close, or at the very least, shouldn’t get close. The rest were a bunch of unknowns for the most part, maybe it would be best to wait a bit and get more knowledge before heading in? How far would he go though? Not only did he have an opportunity to remove several villains from the board in one go, how badly would this battle start bleeding over into neighboring districts. He didn’t much care for the people who lived near this area, already having made life choices that nearly put them on Kayle’s hit list, but if their homes were destroyed they’d be forced to move to places where the ones that Kayle actually did try to protect would be. There were going to be ramifications for this regardless, especially for the Advent Mages, but ultimately it came down to whether Kayle wanted to control the situation or simply take advantage. Before he could make up his mind, he saw several vial looking things soar through the air towards the electric user, only for her bolts of lightning to strike out on their own and zap them without her input in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the end of it, as doing so seemed to cause some kind of reaction as they exploded and purple mist started expelling over the area.

This seemed to put her on edge as she retreated from the smoke, it was then things started to get a little hectic as the Mages recovered from the initial fight. The bigger guns of the Mages started filtering out of the warehouse as a group, their leader surrounded by blue flames and floating above the rest as they flanked his sides. The leader, Myrlyn if he was remembering the name correctly, seemed to shout some things before picking several railroad pieces from the grounds and hurling it at the group. The electric user made it to the shielded friends of hers before they hit however, and the shield changed color and...type? It went from a brownish hue to some other type of metal, and the railroad tracks either indented into the shield or bounced off into the distance. Kayle watched those fly into the air and go far enough so as to threaten the living area of this particular hunk of city. Even as Kayle pondered his involvement, not necessarily if but when, he saw the mages launch themselves at the group, including the few who hadn’t been incapacitated by the initial attack.

Immediately the area was a flurry of action as both sides engaged and Kayle could tell that this wasn’t going to be contained for much longer. Besides, they were all distracted with each other, he could sneak in and cripple a couple of members from both sides, then get out of dodge. Kayle took a moment to ready himself, breathing a bit as he felt the dark shroud cover his face to hide his identity. With that, he darted around the corner and started running towards the fight. It wasn’t that far from his location, and it wasn’t long before a couple of Mages turned and saw him heading into the fray. At first they were confused, who was this random person running towards them? Then the chains appeared, sprouting from his back like spider legs, 8 in total as they wavered over his form. As the adrenaline started sprinting through his blood, he couldn’t control his smile as it pierced through the darkness currently enveloping his head. A couple of the Mages seemed to recognize this trademark, shouting back to the others to get their attention, but even as they did so the chains were launching forward intent on catching some worthy prey.

Already on high alert and in the middle of a battle, a number of the Mages managed to avoid the blows, but the slower ones were sent flying from the impact of his attack. While he attacked with what was essentially a ‘gauging’ assault, Kayle propelled himself forward with the use of the chains, using them as an extension of his own body. Flipping himself into the air, Kayle attached two chains to the ground and launched himself like a cannonball, enveloping his legs in his protective shadow constructs and landing with enough concussive force to send a few of the lower level Mages stumbling and even falling backwards. Still, he had to even the playing field a little, make sure this was as chaotic as he needed it to be in order to get in and out with little issue. With that thought in mind, he launched several chains towards the unknown group, gripping the shield they had formed for themselves, and with no small amount of effort, completely crushed it. Throwing it away and revealing them for everyone to see, he flashed them a smile before his chains retreated to protect his more fragile self as several Mages moved to engage him.

Yesterday had been a rather slow day by all accounts almost as if all the villains, crooks and natural disasters decided it was their day off. Of course that was a good thing in a sense, and the lack of the constant chattering over the emergency services radio lines was rather refreshing, but to Devon it just meant one thing. The silence before the storm, something somewhere was stirring and that just didn't sit well with him.

One place that was a constant hotbed for all sorts of trouble big and small was one of the older industrial parks. It was far from any police stations, plenty of derelict lots and few prying eyes, if it was something illegal it probably happened there. As he recalled there was even a couple black market tinkers that operated out of one of these warehouses, until some villain decided it wasn't okay for them to supply to villains, vigilantes and heroes. The place was wrecked and the tinkers were found barely alive beaten to a bloody pulp.

The one thing that Devon really missed in the area was a good vantage point. Most of the buildings in the area were factory halls at most 3-4 stories high, and trying to climb and sit on one of the few smokestacks would be way more effective at taking down a smokestack than in getting a vantage point. Luckily he had found the next best alternative, a large warehouse with a couple fire escapes on opposite sides and a roof that didn't look like it could cave any second. From his vantage point he could see a couple of the main roads in the area, even if it required him to move from one end of the building to the other to really have a look at what was happening on the road.

For now things seemed to be quiet aside from the trucks driving all around the place, a lot of which were probably going quite a bit over the speed limit. Devon sat himself down on one of the more solid stone outcrops on the roof and looked around a bit trying to spot any prying eyes. Seemed nobody was watching him, with that reassurance he opened the thermos flask he had brought with him and took off the lower part of his mask revealing the lower part of his face up to the underside of his nose. He poured himself a cup out of the flask and then looked a moment at the steaming black liquid that had been poured out of the flask. If there was one thing that was absolutely annoying about his weak ass powers then it was the fact that he had to hide public identity or he'd be an easy target for a villain wanting some revenge or just one out to kill heroes. Something a lot of the heroes he worked with didn't have to worry about as much. If he were ever to be caught without his costume that'd be very bad news for him, the others would still be able to use their powers just fine. He took a sip of his coffee and skimmed through the emergency frequencies on his radio searching for any event that'd signal the coming of the storm.

It had only been a couple hours when the radio livened up with the oh so common chatter of the police. Apparently there was a bank robbery going on with some kind of changer who turned an inky black while changing. Devon had an idea of who this changer could be, likely the same one he had dealt with in that sandwich shop. Though at that point in time it didn't seem like it was going to step up from stealing grub to robbing banks in a matter of days. He really wanted to go to confirm his suspicions, but with traffic between him and the bank likely more jammed than the rusted machinery in the warehouse below him that wasn't an option. In fact with the tall buildings in the vicinity of the bank and the high density of civilians outside of the bank he couldn't even provide indirect fire support, well maybe a smoke shot, but that wasn't going to help the situation at all.

Not much later the situation in the bank had apparently changed into a hostage situation as the changer was blocking all exits of the building. Which seemed excessively strange for a creature that just three days ago ignored potential aggressors, avoided a very advantageous fight and generally took a peaceful approach to the situation. Now it really felt like a mistake to do a stakeout here in the industrial area, if he had stuck to his usual route he'd been there in a matter of minutes, now it'd take a couple hours.

---

Another half an hour passed but his patience had been rewarded as he spied a couple capes in costume on a motorcycle following a car with people overdressed to be working in this area sitting in it. Devon ran down the fire escape keeping an eye on where the two vehicles went. When the vehicles went out of his sight he jumped down the last few flights of stairs sticking the landing as he impacted the dusty concrete below causing some of the yellowish dust to fly up in response. He quickly ran to the street he lost the vehicles on and noticed the two vehicles parked halfway in an alley nearby. Quietly he inched closer to the vehicles picking up small fragments of the conversation held by the four people, from what he gathered they were going to attack a couple larpers, which given the area could only mean they were going to attack the adept mages. Even if you didn't count the members without powers they were still outnumbered, so either they'd have an ace up their sleeves or they were walking towards a one way ticket to a vacation in the hospital.

The four stopped their tactical discussions and walked their way to the adept mages hideout, it was only when the sound of the footsteps had faded that Devon dared to look around the corner only to see the four capes walk themselves into a position where they were completely surrounded. What happened next he would have called insanity if he hadn't seen it himself, one of the four touched the ground causing it to turn into what appeared to be copper. Then another member appeared to send a current through the copper ground tazing all the adept mages members without hitting her allies. Seemed they either had taken precautions or she was just that good at controlling the flow of electricity.

Well before he could attempt to analyse which of the two it was the answer was given loud and clear as the street lights around exploded lit up with violent arcs of plasma. It seemed the girl had lost control as the electricity started arc paths through the copper, ignite the clothes of the adept mages and fry the wearers. If it all stopped there then that wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the current started to melt paths into the copper and the radio frequency that had until now been dominated with status updates of what was happening at the bank had been flooded with police cars mentioning blackouts throughout the city.

For now Devon had to make a plan of attack, the three others had moved away from the girl back toward the vehicles and there was no way they hadn't seen him by now. He looked back at the girl and noticed she was practically glowing with a plasma layer covering her top to bottom. Whatever was going to happen from now on was likely to be a mess, but first things first, that layer of plasma and that look on her face told him she was holding on to more juice than she could handle. Devon ran near to the rest of her group figuring since they weren't getting fired that it'd be far away enough. He quickly scanned his surroundings and found exactly what he had hoped to find, a smokestack with a lightning rod. "Hey! There's a lightning rod at your 3 o'clock, on the steel smokestack! Aim for it!" His distorted voice yelled through his mask as he pointed at the barely visible strip of metal sticking up from the smokestack.

It wasn't even a second after speaking up that the fight erupted properly as vials flew out of the warehouse and a couple railroad tie flew in his general direction. Well, he'd been waiting for a fight and now here it was. From the corner of his eyes he noticed some shadowy figure with some kind of shadow chains engaging with some adept mage members, seemed this battle just got a whole lot more complex than anyone could have hoped for. Devon Sighed and grabbed his sniper and assault rifle from his back, the hardest target would be Myrlyn he apparently had some kind of pregoc and that was friggin annoying as far as he was concerned. He immediately engaged his overdrive began unleashing a volley of mixed rubber bullets and taser shots from both guns in the direction of Myrlyin who like any good telekinetic took to the back of the fight. It would be a fight between Myrlyn's precog and Devons homing projectiles and overcharged reflexes.

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:18 AM. 61°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Sähkö blinked, in a daze. So much had happened, it was hard to comprehend, especially with her concentration being slammed against by her over-capacity storage of energy. The plan hadn't gone as, well, planned. Chrysopoeia was supposed to transmute the terrain, Sähkö was to shock and disable everyone immediately after, when the leaders came out of the warehouse, Sandstorm was to kick up a sandstorm, and Sähkö would manipulate the charges from the friction in the resulting cloud, and use it to shock and disable the blinded Adept Mages. It was supposed to last ten minutes, maximum. Instead, something went wrong, and she had tapped into the grid without realizing it, and lost control of her power as it blitz'd this half of the city. It would act as an EMP, frying and ruining circuitry, shattering light bulbs, and draining batteries and capacitors. Even backup generators within range would have failed.

The hospital... She thought dimly. Capetown Memorial Hospital and West Tex were both within two miles, in opposite directions. So was the Capetown Police Department, and so was Fire Station 1. How many lives would be affected in the coming days by the electronics that had just been ruined?

She was dimly aware of an Adept Mage member who had gotten up and stumbled towards her. As soon as he touched the shimmering ionized air around her, a connection between the two flashed blindingly for a second, and he was on the floor. She understood that she no longer sensed his bio-electrical processes, and she hoped it was because of the amount of energy around her dimming her senses, like looking for a flashlight against the glare of the sun. Still, she felt doubt that he was alive.

She felt far away, with little control of her body. She felt super-heated air enter her lungs like breathing straight out of an oven. Isn't the air poisonous now that it's ionized? She wondered internally, not even registering the fact that her skin was reddening and blistering from the heat, and her lungs weren't likely to fair better.

Milliseconds went by as aeons as she was alone with her thoughts, her perception increased by adrenaline and her innate ability to focus at literal lightning speeds as each arc of electricity flowed through the air in coils around her. She watched and counted individual grains of iron, or tiny flakes or rust, as they were pulled out of the dirt and dust below her and atomized by plasma. Soon she had belts of metallic sand orbiting her. Is that something I can control? She wondered. She flexed her power, and suddenly her head exploded with pain.

She heard a voice as if far away. She recognized it. A team mate? No, not that familiar. Some one she had met before, been close enough to talk to. Who was it? What did they say? She couldn't think; couldn't focus.

Then she watched something else happen. She felt several connections as glass exploded in the sky, gushing out clouds of purple. She felt and watched the sky fragment, triangular shards reflecting blue and white, and watched as cracks of cool hues slowly burned through reality. She was losing it, losing her grip on herself.

Her body moved on it's own, as if some other force were controlling her, something subconscious, or even instinctual. It wasn't a bond, it wasn't healthy. It was parasitic, controlling her, forcing her to go somewhere when she couldn't tell herself. She almost felt violated, but it was causing her to back up and retreat to safety, away from the purple mist. Then she forgot about that, as something told her to. Many things were telling her to forget other things. Some things told her to forget themselves. Neurons fired in her brain, electrical impulses, and she suddenly realized her memory had been altered. What did that? Then, quick as it came, it went, and she forgot. Where did that come from? Glass, then purple clouds. Vials? Potions? Who made potions? What caused that to happen? Chemical reactions, movement of electrons from one atom to another as they bonded, changes, stole energy, or changed levels. Chemistry was physics on a smaller fundamental level, and she almost understood it.

How could she understand the movement of non-physical charges through a spacial field, but not comprehend the bigger picture? A name jumped to mind. Recall. What did she have to do with it? Did she control her? Something told her that wasn't it. What was her significance?

Recall sent her on a mission. To where? Why? What had happened during it? When did it even happen, how long ago?

Was it happening right now?

Another name, then. The Congenial. Who was that? Weird name. The Adept Mages. Ah, the target. She remembered. She felt a tiny spark inside her head as neurons connected. She was part of the Congenial, and they were going after the Adept Mages. Who was the leader of the team? Merlin? Myrlyn. Leader of the Adept Mages. She hadn't seen him yet. Who made the purple mist? Alchimyst did, he was a chemical Tinker, he threw the concoctions. She was in battle, she had hurt people.

Oh. She killed someone. That jolted her, and reality came back all at once, in a wave. She looked around. Mere seconds had gone by, and to her it had felt like hours, days, weeks. The Adept Mage who had walked up to her and gotten zapped hadn't even hit the floor. neither had the glass shards. Then, they did. Time had resumed normally. What was she supposed to do? Her body was still moving, as her first step backwards completed. Only one step? She took another. Then another. Her fingers twitched. He chest moved as another breath entered her lungs. Had she been holding it? No, she was hyperventilating, breathing really fast. Her perception had just slowed enough to make that last breath feel like an eternity ago.

"-lightning rod at your 3 o'clock, on the steel smokestack! Aim for it!" The familiar voice said. The same one as earlier. Did he repeat himself? No. Speaking took longer than breathing, and he was still in his sentence. She understood him, and looked to her right.

Woah! She was startled. The connection was so easy. All connections were easy. She had so much power in her that drawing a path through rubber right now would probably feel like drawing a path through copper or gold before. Nothing resisted her power in this state. Electromagnetism, movement of electrons, it was physics. Matter bows to physics, and right now, she was Lord of it. She felt every conceivable connection. She could zap people's hearts, melt the chain link fence, explode that car. No, what had he said? Lightning rod? What lightning rod? EVERYTHING IS A LIGHTNING ROD RIGHT NOW! Ah, there it is. She felt it. The path of least resistance. It was what her power was based off of, one of her fundamental abilities is altering the path of least resistance to allow her lightning to go where she willed. But the natural path was there, if she didn't think about it. Right to that lightning rod on the smokestack where he had pointed her. She'd almost lost her senses again.

She cracked the world in half. Then, nothingness. For a moment, the world was white, like looking at the screen of a computer monitor, every pixel pure white. Then, she could see. Lightning never blinded her, even if it could permanently blind others. She felt the vibrations rock her cranium and her whole skeleton as thunder shook the buildings around her. She gaped, her jaw would have hit the floor if it were physically possible, as the glow of the ionized plasma where the air had been destroyed to the lightning rod. The glow extended around the rod, and the rod were melting like a stick of butter upright in an oven.

And she could think. I'm back to normal. Oof, even when she snapped out of the trance, she didn't have complete control of her mind, body, and abilities. Like looking through your eyes covered in tissue paper with earmuffs on and moving through molasses, her senses and mind had been muddled. Now, she was clear once again. Back to the fight.

Myrlin, Jeu and Drow followed Alchimyst out of the warehouse, each flexing their respective powers on the battlefield. The congenial flew into the fray, Sandstorm and Chrysopoeia collaborating to make solid obstacles in front of people, Seraphim acting as a personal force field, jumping in front of attacks and dissolving them across countless dimensions.

Jasmin tried her powers. Iron sand clung her her face through magnetism, forming the same spikey iron-filing mask she wore in this cape identity of Sähkö. A tiny arc jumped between her fingers, the air snapping and crating the startling crackling sound of a taser. She wasn't drained, she still had tons of energy, but not enough to leak out. She felt good.

An Adept Mage wearing a red cloak with black cloud pattern blew flames from his mouth, Sähkö sidestepped and punched him in the side. He convulsed and dropped to the ground crying out. Her taser hands worked, and she had enough control to not kill. Just as before. Good, she had been worried that maybe her control over her power had been damaged. She saw a man with jet-black chains walking around like Doctor Octopus with them, throwing people with sweeping motions, and tying others up. Then he darted through the battlefield, propelling himself with the chains like a slingshot, before grabbing one of Chrysopoeia's transmuted shield-structures and crumpling it with the shadowy limbs. His power is very similar to Tendril's. Jasmin thought. And he doesn't appear to be a friend. She kept in mind.

Meanwhile, she watched as rubber bullets flew through the sky, blue flames enveloping them as they altered trajectories. A few made it closer, but Myrlyn dodged them in ways a teenager shouldn't be able to. Right, he was a precog. Maybe she should go after him. She looked around again, to see Jeu doing acrobatics, back flips, handsprings, and more as he dodged attacks flying through the air, heat-less flames exploding around him. Another part of the battlefield looked like the jizz of a Green Lantern, with Drow's green energy constructs everywhere. Besides that, most of the other Adept Mage members were down and out of the fight, already having been dispatched easily, or taken out with Sähkö's initial attack. She decided to go after Drow. Myrlyn had too many attacks aimed at him, and Jeu was out of her league in close combat. If she could zap Drow's energy constructs, she was powerless against Sähkö.

---

A full on battle.

Kayle hadn’t been in one of these in a long time, in fact this was not normally his go to method. He could count the rumbles he had gotten into on one hand, usually finding isolated targets and making them regret their life decisions that way. As several Mages ran at him, different powers in tow, his eyes darted every which way to assess the situation. There were plenty of people here, but due to the three way battle of things, no one could present a unified front which worked for him. As a solo agent, he needed the chaos in order to prevent being ganged up on and inevitably outnumbered. His chains lashed out with the speed of a whip, smashing into the ground hard enough to cause small fissures in the surface, throwing dust and rubble into the air with every smash. The Mages who weren’t fast enough to avoid the chains were nearly crushed or thrown aside from the kinetic force, while those who managed to get inside Kayle’s guard found him no mere easy prey either.

One such Mage managed to duck and weave his way to Kayle, which admittedly wasn’t all that hard considering the amount of people he was attempting to fight at the same time. When he got close to Kayle, he could see that his hands, specifically his palms were glowing red. The air rippled in front of them and confirmed Kayle’s suspicion. Some kind of heat power associated to his limbs, something Kayle took into account as the man swung first. His strike was wild, driven by instinct and adrenaline rather than any form of training. “SMOKING PALM!” He yelled as his attack went wide. Kayle had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as he dart to the side, delivering three quick blows to the man’s kidneys. The Mage doubled over as Kayle took that moment to roll over his back, landing, and backflipping. His feet connected with the man’s face as he was doubled over and carried enough force to the Mage’s chin that it forced him up and landed him squarely on his back. A moment later, a couple of chains were bound around his arm, and a second later a sickening crack was heard as he screamed in pain and agony.

Just stay out of the fight dimwit. Kayle thought to himself as he turned towards the others who were either trying to get past his chains, or fighting the chains themselves. Idiots, they wouldn’t be able to do anything against them, but honestly Kayle wanted to focus on the big fishes in the pond at the moment. With a tiny flex, the number of chains sprouting from his body doubled and a few moments later had overwhelmed the lesser class of Mages that had been attempting to take him down. Now, who should he go for next? There were still a number of people in the fight, any of which would be decent targets. Kayle took a step forward, only to hear a slight ‘whoosh’ behind him. He ducked, but it still wasn’t enough as he felt a blade carve through his sweater followed by a kick to his side that sent him tumbling. It was a weird sight as the chains seemed to convulse, shaking with Kayle as he rolled with the dirt. He quickly stood, feeling the burn from the wound now seeming to pulse on his back with his heartbeat. He grimaced, it hurt but it wasn’t something that was unknown to him.

He looked at his attacker, covered from head to toe in black garb and a ceramic mask covering his face. One of the leaders? Jeu, if Kayle’s recollection was correct, although his powers were somewhat up for debate. Enhanced battlefield cognition? Maybe some athletic boosting abilities? Didn’t he have fire or something? Kayle couldn’t spend time trying to remember everything about the man as Jeu launched forward, his speed pretty impressive as he ducked and weaved between Kayle’s shadow constructs. Kayle took two steps backwards, buying himself exactly one extra second as Jeu lashed forward with his blade. Kayle palmed it to the side, spinning and ducking to deliver a leg sweep which Jeu spiral rolled over in what seemed to be an impossible maneuver . When he landed, his blade was already lashing at Kayle’s face, forcing him backwards and into an unstable footing. Jeu pressed the advantage, slashing away at Kayle and landing a couple of blows as his sweater was torn and blood started to stain the blue material.

Kayle summoned chains from his chest, pushing outwards to keep Jeu at bay but was dismayed as he front flipped onto the chains rather than being pushed outwards, jumping over his head and lashing out with fire. Kayle instinctively went prone, falling on his back as the blade missed his head by mere inches, rolling backwards to hopefully land on his back. The moment he did, he heard the subtle crunch of Jeu landing behind him and threw up a wall of chains. The moment he did, he heard the ‘clang’ of the blade ringing off of them. Kayle snarled before balling his fists and feeling the darkness expel from everywhere at once.

Like an explosion, chains launched from Kayle with varying effects as they landed several yards away and impacted with anyone and anything that got in there way. There were easily a couple dozen chains of differing sizes strewn about the battlefield. Kayle looked back and was surprised to see that not only had Jeu avoided getting hit, he was moving on the chains with precision and expertise, getting closer to Kayle through the maze that was his power. Kayle gave a smile as he collapsed the chains in on his opponent, who once again displayed his skill as he jumped and weaved through the moving chains with supernatural ability. Flipping out the top like a ninja, Jeu landed a few yards away in a crouch, his blade held at the ready as Kayle retracted his chains back into his person. Once again utilizing a manageable number, Kayle stared at his target. A worthy foe, if nothing else, but he wasn’t going to win this way. Kayle was learning and it wouldn’t be long before all of Jeu’s tricks were used up. Kayle raised his hands into a fighting stance, but was dismayed to find that they were actually covered in fire. He probably hadn’t felt it due to the adrenaline, but immediately went about trying to put them out. In that moment of surprise, Jeu closed the distance quickly, throwing his blade ahead of him.

It only took a couple of seconds, but Kayle’s mind processed it as minutes. The fire was still burning, but it was secondary as the blade that was clearly aimed for his heart made it’s way to him. He started falling to throw off the trajectory, but it wouldn’t be enough. His chains were too slow to summon from the front and wouldn’t put up a satisfactory shield. He brought his arm in front of him and felt the white hot pain as the blade embedded itself up to the hilt in his forearm. As Kayle’s back hit the ground, he felt Jeu reach the blade and violently rip it from where it had impaled Kayle, earning a grunt of pain as Kayle did his best to suppress the instinct to scream. With yet another feat of acrobatics, Jeu jumped over Kayle and slashed for his neck, but was met with yet another clang as chains formed into a choker for Kayle, preventing the lethal injury.

Kayle was on the defensive, he was not used to this. Enough of this kind of game, he was done trying to play on his field. Jeu landed with a slide backwards, his hand gripping the dirt and his feet attempting to move forward even as he himself moved backwards. He was trying to finish this quickly. Kayle rolled to his feet, staring at Jeu as he started to close the distance rapidly. Despite the blood that now pooled beneath him, Kayle gave a smile that stood out against the darkness enveloping his head.

“Panic.” He whispered as he summoned a vast amount of strength and sent out an Empath pulse that affected everyone within range. He didn’t want Jeu overcoming it so he put more juice into the attack than what was probably necessary. It must have hit Jeu like a ton of bricks because he stumbled, barely keeping his footing but it was enough. With that moment of hesitation and now that Kayle could properly think about his moves, chains surrounded the battlefield master, encompassing his limbs and held him in the air for everyone to see. Jeu seemed, well, panicked by this change in battle, and next thing Kayle knew he was completely encapsulated by fire. Kayle held his breath for a moment, before quickly realizing that, aside from his previous injuries, the flames didn’t actually burn him. He gave a smile and a small laugh, realizing how much of an idiot he had been before looking up at his hostage.

“For what it’s worth, you gave it a good shot.” Twisted Smile stated, before squeezing the chains and hearing the telltale sound of bones being shattered followed by Jeu’s screams of terror and pain. With what looked like barely a thought, Kayle tossed him aside, letting him land in a heap of tears, blood, sweat and screams. Fucker, could barely think with him launching himself at me like that. Kayle thought to himself as he checked his wounds. All of them had dark red blood flowing out of them, but that was a good thing. None of them had hit an artery, so he would be fine for awhile. In the meantime, he looked to the other combatants.

Who was left, who else could he take out?

Devon watched as the girl launched a bolt of electricity at the lightning rod. While it was clear that she had overcharged quite a bit given her previous state, the severity of her overcharge only became apparent when the bolt hit the rod and turned it and part of the top of the smokestack it was attached to into a mess of molten metals. But what followed was much more interesting to him as metal flakes collected themselves on the face of the girl, very much like the mask he had seen in the sandwich shop a few days back. Now he had even more questions to ask her when this fight was over.

Then there was the more pressing matter at hand, the floating candlewick. From the bullets he had fired at him a large percentage had been forced onto alternate paths and the ones he hadn't taken control of he had managed to dodge either being able to react on the rather slow bullets or his precog being the driving force behind his matrix moves. Well what were the chances that a spray and pray attack would work on a precog with telekinetic powers, but it was mostly to keep him on the defensive and unable to hurl more crap, which it apparently did do splendidly. Seeing as dual wielding an assault rifle and a sniper rifle wasn't exactly an effective fighting method as it didn't play to either weapons strengths, he slung his sniper rifle onto his back figuring that volume of fire might give him the edge, making it harder to avoid and advert all of the projectiles.

He aimed his assault rifle at Myrlyn and unleashed a large stream of sandbag ammunition, not only did this ammo type fire with a much greater speed and have more mass behind it, with the properly aimed fire the homing properties of the rifle kicked in. However it was not to be, as Myrlyn quickly diverted many of the projectiles again whilst avoiding remaining projectiles that he didn't manage to control in time or didn't feel the need for. It even seemed he was aware of the homing properties of the projectiles as the projectiles he had initially dodged were dodged once more on their return flight. But with how he was still holding a grip over the bullets he had diverted instead of slamming them into the ground or something else solid, it seemed he didn't have all the answers. The thought of it being a ruse ran through Devon's head, but the likelihood that a brat with little real combat experience would concoct something like that on the fly seemed slim at best. The fact that he hadn't tried to launch the bullets back in Devon's direction showed that he felt that it was some sort of risk, what exactly that risk was he couldn't tell at this point, but slowly the cracks in the precogs defenses started to appear.

With a devilish grin hidden under his mask he looked at Myrlyn up in the sky, the homing strength of a single of those bullets wasn't all too great, but with the distance to the ground and the open air around him given the chance every single one of those bullets would find it's way back to their target time after time. However there was one weapon in his possession that excelled at homing. With his left hand Devon pulled the revolver from his holster and trained it on Myrlyn who was still battling the other bullets in the air. With a sharp crack similar to the lightning that had roared prior a bullet was released from the gun and as expected Myrlyn's attention had shifted to this new projectile releasing his grip over some of the others to try and divert this new threat. However he immediately found out this one wasn't going to let the telekinetic bend it's route as his powers failed to make the bullet veer off course before he had to dodge the bullet, and even then barely managed to as the bullet ripped a new hole in the robe on his back

As the first bullet passed Devon took aim for another shot only to notice Myrlyn making a twitchy move as he was pulling the trigger, one that would have been impossible to react to in time had his opponent been just a regular gunman, but with fortune being on Devon's side his overdrive improved his reaction speed quite a bit beyond that of a normal human. With a half pulled trigger Devon watched what must have been panic situation for the precog as Myrlyn realized that Devon could keep up with his preemptive dodges, and not only that he could do it faster than Myrlyn could react upon what his precognition was telling him. A feeling of glee passed through Devon as he now understood the limitations of his opponents precognition, and with that new knowledge he fired his shot just as Myrlyn was in the middle of another preemptive dodge. The bullet connected and sent a wave of electrical energy through Myrlyn, causing him to lose control of his muscles and more importantly his powers for a moment.

He managed to save himself from injury as he regained control over his power just in time to slow his descent from a bone breaking drop to one that would only leave one sore for a couple of days. But his problems weren't over yet, there was still the swarm of homing bullets to content with. The mage hadn't even gotten the time to get his bearings before the bullets had come too close to dodge. In a blind panic he diverted as many as he could, causing the bullets to slam into the ground hard enough to leave small craters in the copper below, and hoped the left over ones wouldn't kill him. At the same time however another shot sounded and Myrlyn flew a few feet backwards as if someone had just thrown a medicine ball at him with full force, allowing the remaining bullets to burrow themselves harmlessly into the ground. Well not completely harmlessly as some of the others on the copper may have noticed with a slight tingle of electricity passing through their feet as the first revolver shot hit the ground.

The mage wasn't exactly in the best of shape, quite a few sore spots to attent to and perhaps a few bruised ribs. The sudden strike to the chest seemed to have knocked the wind out of him as he lay there unmoving, but quite clearly still breathing.

---

He then turned his attention to the others on the battlefield, it was hard to not notice the mangled man left behind by the shadow chain wielding entity. While some injury during battle wasn't uncommon, this seemed more like mere brutality and cruelty. Devon gritted his teeth in anger and frustration as he felt forced to let the man operate for now as at this point securing the metal faced girl for some question was the prime objective. And she seemed to be intent on tangling with the one female among the adept mages leadership. He holstered his revolver and in a fluid motion slung his assault rifle to his back while taking his sniper rifle back into his arms. At this point the rag tag team had a solid upper hand and he wanted to see a bit of miss 9volt in action, he'd just keep an eye on anyone trying to butt into that fight or step in to protect her if she had bitten off more than she could chew.

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:25 AM. 61°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Sähkö bent down, hands supporting herself on her knees, panting and slightly wheezing. Damn, she thought, they sit out here every day and fight each other, while I work as a cash register at a convinience store. I'm not fat, but they're in waaaaay better shape than me. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, dropping onto the rough dirt-textured copper below. She felt tingles in her feet, the telltale sign of electricity, as her beads of sweat were likely carrying charges. She wiped her forehead and ran her fingers through her short hair, flinging wetness to the floor, before straightening and taking in a huge breath, her back cold from moisture and the shirt clinging to it.

In front of her, Drow, looking like an overdone highschool goth chick with jet black makeup and lipstick and dyed-white hair, smirked with a hand on her hip. Arrows of green energy slowly floated around her, trained on Sähkö. Sähkö had been on the defensive,
despite attacking Drow first, using her bolts to destroy the green constructs, but not able to get close enough to tag Drow.

Suddenly, Sähkö broke into a run, charging her opponent. Drow stood her ground until Sähkö was a foot away, and as Sähkö threw a punch, she felt her arm yank, as it was tethered to the ground by a green strand of energy. Pain flared in her thigh as Drow swung with a green cackling mace, and Sähkö dropped to avoid a second hit, kicking at Drow's legs, only for her to take a few steps back. Sähkö discharged energy and the green thether tying her wrist to the ground dissipated into green mist.

This has been going on for the last five minutes. She loathed the fact she didn't trust her powers enough to just shock the creepy goth chick at range. She stole some glances, taking her attention off of her opponent, to survey the battlefield. Ten meters away, the guy with the shadow-chains fought Jeu, and both looked like professional martial artists in a movie scene, dodging attacks with reflexes much higher than Sähkö's. Across the lot, the HLA member she had met a few days ago, the one with the german name she couldn't remember nor pronounce, was firing round after round at Myrlyn, who was redirecting flaming blue projectiles. Chrysopoeia and Sandstorm fought some of the non-parahuman members who had been given temporary powers by Rethliel, and the pair fought like a left and right arm, obviously used to each other's synergy, with Chrysopoeia transmuting different sections of the floor into various materials that Sandstorm could manipulate. Around them, a small localized storm of sand, dirt, a white powdery substance, and even shiny shard that looked like glass dust to Sähkö's horror, swirled. Sandstorm would keep the substances out of his mouth and lungs and away from their skin, and Chrysopoeia wore a bandanna and sunglasses just because he was so used to fighting alongside Sandstorm. Seraphim war off by herself, virtually untouchable with armor made of portals, throwing up windows to other dimensions and using them as force-fields.

Sähkö looked back to Drow just in time to see a baton of green whack her across the bridge of her nose, and across her eyes. Nerves screamed white-hot as Sähkö stumbled, grabbing her face. Unconsciously, as a reflex, an arc jumped between Sähkö and Drow, and a loud crackling sound louder than a taser made Sähkö jump as the area was bathed in a glow of white and blue for a fraction of a second. Drow dropped straight down like a rag doll, and bounced at an angle as her legs stiffened from the muscles contracting. Upon landing, she relaxed again, breathing heavily, and groaning as she tried to turn over. Sähkö reached down with one hand, still holding her face with the other, and tagged Drow. She spasm'ed, and went limp, unconscious.

Sähkö then watched in utter horror as the shadow-chain-guy lifted Jeu in the air with the chains like Dr. Octopus, and crushed his arms and legs before flinging him aside into the floor in a mangled heap. Holy shit, is that even legal? She ironically asked herself in disbelief. He could die. He's just a kid. She thought again, unaware she had just taken a life minutes ago. The shadow-chain guy then stopped to survey the battlefield, as if looking for his next target, when both of them watched Myrlyn plummet from the sky, slow his fall, and plop against the ground. The mage regained his senses and forced the swarm of projectiles out in a spherical telekinetic explosion before he was knocked off of the ground and several feet back, landing and laying flat out, breathing but otherwise unmoving.

The batllefield went still for a moment as Sähkö, Freischütz, and The Twisted Smile watched each other in a triangle. Chrysopoeia and Sandstorm were also done fighting, and the localized storm around them began slowing down. Seraphim had also dispatched some of the mooks, trapping them in prisons of portals that would slice them if they tried to escape. There were only a few non-powered individuals left, and they were on their knees with their hands up in surrender. Sähkö noted that Alchimyst had also surrendered laying on the floor after a stray projectile from Freischütz's fight with Myrlyn had knocked the wind out of him. She looked between the two other parties. A hero and another villain. Her pulse quickened even more than it had during the fight at the thought of being taken in by the HLA. Sähkö glimpsed back down at Drow, to make sure she was fine, and then looked back at the other two parties. What now?

---

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:30:25 Am. 57°F,
Partly Cloudy (Sprinkling). Arc 2: Confluence.

---

Josh's phone had been going off for the last hour, group-chat texts about several different fights around the city, including a parahuman-induced blackout, according to PCRT Thinkers. He didn't particularly care about going and helping, he'd do a job if told but not go out of his way to do more than required. But it did make him anxious. Five days ago, Capetown's HLA team had informed the THA that they were expecting an Abhorrent attack within the week. Red Jet had seen the carnage on tv, cities destroyed, mass evacuation impossible due to the natural disasters caused by each Abhorrent, and the Abhorrents killing indiscriminately, both cape and normal people. He himself was a regular on Parahumans Online, and every time there's an attack, hundreds of posts crop up, alongside megathreads for the disaster. Everyone knows about them. But unlike most people who haven't experienced an Abhorrent attack and may feel detached, he's been in cape fights and can imagine it scaled up to 11. It scares him.

As the end of the school day neared and arrived, Josh wondered what he'd do with his day. He had patrol at nine, but that was nearly five hours away. He sighed and picked up his red backpack, slinging it over a shoulder. At fifty pounds, most high schoolers would have trouble carrying it around all day, but Josh's powers made it light as a feather in his hands. As he strolled through the halls towards the front of the school, followed by a sea of clothes, backpacks, perfume, and heads of hair, on in particular caught his attention, way ahead of the crowd. Alex. What caught his attention specifically was Alex knocking over two students, and not swaying or moving against their force, as most would when colliding with another body. It's something so normal, that whenever it doesn't happen, it strikes Josh as weird every time. Alex had been in Josh's head all day, as he pondered whether or not to approach him.

After leaving the school and crossing the street, Alex put in headphones and seemed occupied by his phone. He was walking a different direction home than the HLA HQ, but he was walking nonetheless. After some internal debate, Josh decided to follow him, if for no other reason than to learn where he lived. Eventually, they reached his house, Josh almost missing him from half a block away as he climbed towards the roof of his house. Doesn't want to alert his parents. Josh realized. He understood the sentiment, because Josh had done the same at his parents house before joining the THA and living at the HQ. Josh decided to take his moment of knowing where Alex was and knowing he'd be there for at least a few minutes, to blast himself into the sky, and towards the HQ. The trip took five minutes, changing into his costume took a little more. In the end, he was back at Alex's house with time to spare, on the roof of a nearby building, watching the place Alex had used to enter the house.

A little while later, he was watching the unnamed... hero? Vigilante? Villain? Cape. He watched the unnamed cape that was Alex in disguise stall across rooftops, after some of the non-powered members of Splatterblood's Crew. He shook his head sullenly. Poor sods knew Splatterblood was a parahuman, and a scary one at that, and would do anything to get on his good side, but he didn't care for the lives of the unpowered. Red Jet thought about interrupting Alex, confronting him, stopping him from attacking. But who knew how that would turn out? He didn't feel like having a fight on his hands tonight, especially against someone he kinda knew. An idea burst into his head, then.

Red Jet was on the roof of a building three over from the one Alex was on. He launched himself at an angle, not towards Alex, but off to the side. After a few seconds of flying in that direction, he abruptly changed course, straight for the roof of the building Alex was on.

He landed with a resounding crunch, the asphalt on the rooftop buckling under the force of his fall, echoing like a gunshot. He wasn't facing Alex, instead he appeared to be oblivious of Alex, instead looking down from the edge of the roof, over a little section of the city. He'd just pretend to be on patrol and 'run into' Alex.

---

It seemed like the battle itself had wrapped up fairly quickly, with the Adept Mages taking the brunt of the damage. It seemed their leadership was either incapacitated or in the process of surrendering, and even then Kayle liked the thought of breaking the Alchimyst in half. He was a villain after all, and had done his fair share of things that put him on Kayle’s list. Unfortunately, as the blood dripped off him like a faulty faucet, he recognized that he was at a disadvantage. He could still fight, but the others didn’t look like they had taken any injuries worth noting, or at the very least, they were good at hiding them. Kayle looked between them, but it obvious just from Freischütz’s stance that he would side with the group that had actually instigated the fight and had shocked the entire city into a standstill.

Typical hero, thinking to the short term. Kayle thought to himself as he relented and realized that he couldn’t take all five of them in an engagement, especially wounded the way he was. He also couldn’t inflict more casualties on the Mages without the Cape stepping in to stop him either, so there was only one avenue of approach left to him. With nothing but a smile, the chains launched out of him and impacted the ground. With a quick movement, Kayle was thrown through the air past them, the chains lashing out every so often to keep his momentum going but in moments he had removed himself from the situation.

When he did finally land, he was several blocks away, and noticing that there didn’t seem to be any kind of pursual, took a moment to catch his breath. His blue hoodie had been dyed red by this point as the shadow fell away from his face. His hood was still up, making it nearly impossible for someone to get a good look at his face, since he didn’t want to be caught off guard once again, but he was starting to feel the effects of the blood loss. He had to get himself patched up...luckily he had a guy.

---

Kayle pulled up to a walk in clinic on his bike, doing his best to hide his injuries but it was getting harder with every passing second. His breathing was ragged and sweat had started to bead on his brow. His eyes had been getting heavy and he had noticed that his body temperature was starting to drop. He would last a few minutes longer, maybe. As he managed to park his bike, somehow not toppling over and not letting the bike crash on it’s side, he stole a glance at several people who stared at him and whispered among themselves. They were unsure what to do, he could be an injured cape or villain, and no one wanted to risk getting put in the same boat as a ‘bad guy’. Cowards, one and all, too self absorbed to help those around them without worrying about their own benefit or risk.

Bypassing all of them, he pushed open the door to the walk in clinic with his shoulder. Inside he was greeted with one of the lower ends of a doctor’s workplace. The walls were painted a weird shade of green with chipped pieces falling off at irregular intervals. The chairs were cheap and plastic, deliberately made red to avoid the blood coming off of some of the patients here from staining any of the furniture. A couple of magazine stands were set off at regular intervals, filled with all the latest literature from 1960. All of this would be visible from the window that covered the entire front of the clinic, save that the window itself was tinted black with the letters ‘Southside Clinic’ printed in red ink, with ‘Dr. Lucio Corvax’ written underneath. At the far end of the front door sat a circular desk with a young, somewhat pretty secretary sitting there staring off into space. A couple of people sat in the chairs, either absorbed in their own little world or taking enough time from their busy lives to stare at Kayle as he stumbled in.

Kayle wandered past all of them, including the secretary who finally noticed him after he was already half past the desk. “Hey wait, you need to check in and wait your turn!”

“Make me.” Kayle uttered as he continued to walk past her, the words enough to make her stop in her path as she wondered what to do next. Her hand hovered over the phone, but something made her switch ideas and instead ran after Kayle as he walked down the hallway, opening doors until finally he found the one he was looking for. In the room at the far end of the hallway, Kayle opened the door to find your standard looking clinic room. There was a counter and sink off to the side with cabinets filled with all sorts of medical looking crap. A desk with a computer sat next to it on the adjacent wall, and opposite of these necessary components was fold up patient table that currently had a middle aged man sitting on it with his shoes and socks removed.

The doctor looked up from his inspection of the man’s foot. The man seemed to be of spanish descent, older but definitely not refined looking. His hair, a mixture of grey and black, wasn’t so much distinguished as it was all over the place. Yes, his hair was gelled back to avoid looking like a cartoon Einstein, but gray streaks ran through his hair at random intervals. Wrinkles and creases smothered his face, indicating age and his eyes had the look of someone who was simply looking forward to retirement. His coat was open, revealing a rather unprofessional t-shirt that was a reference to some soap opera that Kayle couldn’t be bothered to remember or comment on, which also happened to be covered in some sort of stain...most likely spaghetti. Lucio, the doctor, stood up and looked at Kayle. He was fairly tall, at least 6’2, but he never carried with him any air of authority or pride, if anything his size made him seem even more done with this life than anything else.

There was a brief moment where no one said anything, including the secretary who was standing behind Kayle. Finally, Lucio looked to his patient and slowly blinked. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“But I’ve already been waiting two hours to see you!” The man retorted angrily, trying to grab Lucio’s arm. Lucio shrugged it off.

“Yes and a few more minutes won’t kill you.” Lucio made a note to bend over one more time to look at the man’s foot, which Kayle was just now noticing had a weird growth on it. “Hopefully...maybe...try not to breathe too fast.” The man looked incredulous, then scared, then started holding his breath. Lucio rolled his eyes as he stepped into the hallway.

“I tried to stop him Dr. Corvax, he just barged right th-”

“If you had truly tried to stop him Grace, I doubt you would be conscious enough to even explain.” Lucio stated, motioning towards another one of the rooms, which Kayle entered. “Just go back to your desk and deal with the other incoming patients.” She gave a brief nod, stealing a glance over at Kayle before speed walking back to her spot. Lucio walked into the room after kayle, slowly closing the door as he did so and giving a slight sigh. “You could try to be a bit more personable when you come here.”

“Kind of hard to do when every time I come here I’m in enough pain to rip the tongues out of everyone who looks at me wrong.”

“Pleasant.” Lucio stated as he motioned at Kayle’s clothes. Kayle started taking them off, but required aid from the good doctor about halfway as the pain forced Kayle to grit his teeth to the point of crushing them. Once the clothes were off and Doctor Corvax could see what was going on, he let a couple of spanish swears roll off his tongue as naturally as water flows through a river. “Looks like you had a fun time.”

“As much as I generally enjoy your apathy, I’ve been bleeding for a great deal of time now and everything’s starting to get sleepy and cold.”

“Yes yes yes, one moment.” Lucio made his way back to the door, ensuring that it was securely locked. After that, he pressed another button and there was a slight ‘chunk’ as some other precautions were put in place. With that, Lucio cracked a couple of his knuckles and rolled his neck slightly. “Alright, first thing’s first.” Lucio walked over to the cabinets, pulling out a collapsible bag holder and a package of plasma. Putting the cords into place, he stuck it into Kayle’s arm and made sure it was good to go. Once that was done, he took Kayle’s arm first, giving it a good once over. “You got lucky, this looks like it was inches from puncturing an artery.”

“Time of the essence Doc.” Kayle stated, looking over at him. Lucio gave a sigh, holding his hand over the wound. There was a brief tingle, like all the hairs on Kayle’s hand were standing on edge, but as Lucio pulled his hand back Kayle could see that the wound was starting to close. Lucio then moved to the other wounds even as that one was closing. His hand passed briefly over each of the wounds, and in turn that slowly started closing. As Lucio finished with the last one, he wandered back to the cabinet and pulled out several towels. He threw them to Kayle, who plucked them out of the air and started wiping away the blood. Another quick search later and Lucio was throwing Kayle another shirt along with a hat.

“Might I suggest you invest in some actual armor?” Lucio stated, leaning against the counter. Kayle shrugged.

“Harder to wander around incognito if I’m decked out like a power ranger.”

“Not saying power ranger, but there are such things as ballistic vests, or even some metal padding under your hoodie?”

“They slow me down.”

“Oh right, wouldn’t want to get stabbed cause you were too slow.”

“I’d be dead right now if I had been even half a second slower.” Lucio gave a shrug.

“Whatever, just saying, you could stop visiting me so often if you did something to protect yourself.” Lucio reached to the wall this time, instead of the cabinet and slid back a hidden compartment. Inside were a number of pictures, which he retrieved and flipped through. He settled on one, and put the rest of them back into the compartment before sliding it shut. As Kayle continued to wipe himself up, Lucio placed the picture beside him.

Inside was a semi-blurry photo of a white man in his mid twenties, skinny and looking very much like an addict with sunken eyes and a hunched back, not to mention his clothes were not exactly top of the line and he looked to be walking through an alley. “Story?” Kayle asked as he continued to wipe up.

“Asshole robbed me, took about a month of pharmaceuticals. Don’t even think he needed it all, was probably looking for something specific but rather than spend the time to read the labels, just jammed it all into a grab bag.”

“Were you around when it happened?” Kayle asked, picking up the photo and inspecting it more carefully.

“No, he came after hours.”

“So how do you know it’s him?” Kayle asked, looking up at the Doctor.

“I have more ‘Special Care’ patients than just yourself Smile.” Lucio stated, narrowing his eyes slightly. “They got me the information, but that’s as close as they could get...the guy is slippery but it doesn’t seem like he’s a paranormal.”

“So why not have them just deal with him.” Lucio gave an exasperated sigh.

“Because their abilities weren’t geared for combat, because he’s surrounded by a gang of some sort or at the very least seems to hang around them a lot, because I knew that someone like you would show up eventually who would be better suited to the task.” Kayle paused for a moment.

“You don’t care about the drugs or money.”

“That part has already been taken care of, but I don’t like the idea of someone robbing me and getting away with it.” Lucio grabbed the picture out of Kayle’s hand and held it up. “Find him, hurt him and make sure that he, and anyone else who thinks they can rob me thinks twice about doing it.”

“Be scary, seems easy.”

“Don’t care if it is or isn’t, get it done. That’s your payment.” Kayle slipped on the shirt and hat, unplugging the plasma long enough to do so, and put his bloodied clothes into a bag that Lucio grabbed from the cabinet once more.

“I’ll be sure to notify you when the job’s done.” Lucio shrugged.

“Do it when you can, but no more special care until it’s done.”

“I know the rules Doc.” Kayle stated as he pocketed the picture for later use. After that conversation was done, they sat in amicable silence for several minutes as the plasma worked its magic and replaced Kayle’s bodily fluids. Once that was done, Lucio unlocked the room and opened the door. Kayle gave a nod as Lucio let him pass, moving back to his previous room while Kayle made his way back out the front door. A couple of people, including the secretary stared at him as he left, but they all wisely kept to themselves as Kayle exited the building. Kayle didn’t like being indebted to Corvax, often times having to target people who were well below his ‘worth it’ radar, but his ability made him a perfect doctor...to those who knew and could afford his price.

Whatever, he had done some work today and earned a meal. Maybe some lasagna? Oh he could go for some lasagna.

The battlefield lay silent for a moment as the Adept mages that were still standing surrendered to the quite clearly superior forces of the three parties combined, however most had experienced that force first hand and were no longer in any shape to resist. Devon had scratched his head mentally as he pondered for a moment whether the shot Myrlyn forced away and as a result hit Alchimyst would be considered a hit or friendly fire, not that it did matter as a philosophical conundrum. There were things that did matter though, there was the matter of the shadow cloaked villain who by all standards had overdone things. His victims had truly been brutalized, Jeu in particular who been reduced to abstract art. While they were villains and criminals, they were also just kids and didn't actually have any severe crimes on their names, not some rampaging group of violent criminals. If the situation had left him a chance to engage he'd gone after him, but it seemed he wisely chose to just leave as the chains carried him into the sky in a fashion that made it look like he was being flung by the chains every time they lashed out at the ground. Without a shadow of a doubt he'd have to report him to the PCRT, if only to keep tabs on him. Also Tendril would be just thrilled to know his villain twin was in town.

As Tendril's evil twin made his exit Devon walked to the body of the adept mage that he watched get zapped by miss 9volt in her supercharged state. It was pretty clear to him that he was just going to be checking vitals on the charred remains of some pour soul, but unless the head is at least 2 feet away from the torso you have to check for vitals first. As he leaned in to check the pulse it was clear the boy wasn't breathing, and there wasn't a pulse either. With the time that had passed and the fact that he had been hit with a charge of electricity strong enough to melt a lightning rod there wasn't any use in trying reanimation either. He got back up and radio'd in: "Freischütz requesting PCRT assistance at the adept mages HQ, industrial lot 207. I need medical assistance for 14, a few in critical condition, one confirmed death."

With a sigh he turned to the four that had caused the whole situation to begin with. Things are simpler when it's just some idiot rampaging through the streets. "Well then, would you mind following me for a bit. I'd love to have a little chat to clear up the situation here." Devon said pointing at miss 9volt. "As for you three, I know she has no criminal record, but I'm not too certain about you lot. And given that PCRT will be here in about 10 minutes, I'd suggest you make yourselves scarce." He said to the other three. While the girl was only tense for the most part the other three showed some hints of hostility towards him, which meant it was probably better to have them make a clean get away before PCRT showed up rather than having that turn into a hot mess as well. In any case he wanted some answers this didn't seem like a random attack on a hostile faction, he was sure there was something behind it, some bigger picture he just couldn't figure out yet.

Capetown, TX. 09/19/2017, 11:37 AM. 61°F,
Overcast. Arc 2: Confluence.

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Sähkö looked to her teammates on either side of her as they took defensive poses, after Freischütz suggested she follow him and her teammates abandon her. She half-expected them too, too. She was, after all, a very new addition to the team, with this being her first job with them, and being new to the villain scene, she had no idea how much camaraderie they might have. The other Congenial's body language proved her doubts wrong. Then, she caught it, the faintest of movements, as Seraphim and Sandtsorm locked eyes and nodded briefly. An unspoken agreement, instincts that only came from being teammates for a long time. The same way Chrysopoeia and Sandstorm had had a sort of battle-synergy, Sandstorm and Seraphim have the same sort of thinking symmetry. None of them were Thinkers, but as human beings they were exceptionally smart and tactful, Sähkö realized.

Then, hundreds of circles in reality appeared, looking like green-screened photoshop over a video, foot-wide portals to different realities began opening and closing all around them, looking like windows in a wall, showing scenery on the other side. Jungles, oceans, snow, buildings, and more, as portals opened and closed less than a second later, only giving her a glimpse of the other realities. Then one stayed open, as the rest flashed in and out of existence. Then another, then another. She's keeping specific ones. Sähkö realized, impressed. She may not be able to control what realities her portals open to, but she can cycle through random ones until she has desirable ones. All the portals that were staying open had one thing in common; they were opened to deserts. Sähkö also realized that she was smartly opening all of the portals in between them and Freischütz, so he couldn't rush them and try to stop them without decapitating or otherwise dismembering himself on the portals. Portal-cutting was as dangerous as tele-fragging.

Then, Sandstorm displayed his titular power; control over sand. His power, like post powers, didn't extend into the other realities across the portal barrier, but several of the portal's deserts had ongoing sandstorms when the portals were open, and sandy or dusty air began to flow into this reality, some fine and light, like powdery flour floating in the air, but some granular and large,
with force that looked like it'd sting to get hit by. Regardless, the sand flowing through was enough for Sandstorm to start making a vortex out of sand, causing the low-pressure system to suck even more sand out of all of the portals. The sandstorm swirled around them violently like the walls of a hurricane, and Sähkö knew touching it would not feel good at all. Before long, there was a sandstorm so thick covering the block that it looked like it was night time out, now. Sandstrom created a small sphere, a safe-zone like the eye of a storm, around the Congenial. Outside of the storm's walls, Sähkö couldn't even make out the silhouette of Freischütz.

Then, they began to leave, taking their vehicles, Sandstorm managing to keep them working by not allowing the sandstorm to come to close to the vehicles. First a blackout of a quarter of the city, then a multi-block-spanning sandstorm. The Congenial were making a mark today, for sure.

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[Home] [Wiki] [Forum] [Chat] [Search... ][ShortiaShocking (2653) |[▣(11)]| Profile | Logout]

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(↑644↓) ♦New studies at CERN reveal Parahumans are more dangerous than you may think.
In: Boards ► Discussion ► Parahumans ► Articles
Posted on September 19th, 2017, 6:23 PM by Slant-Index:

Link to the full article: https://home.cern/about/physics/parahuman-studies/
"Quantum physicist Karl Moore at CERN has expressed deep concerns about Parahumans possibly being the key ingredient to causing physics to reach a new energy level in a process known as vacuum decay. Before the advent of parahumans, the main worry about vacuum decay was that it could happen at any moment due to quantum tunneling of a particle in a metastable vacuum to a true vaccuum, which doesn't exist in physics at the moment. Currently, the fear is that parahumans, with their entropy-defying, thermodynamics-defying, fundamental force-defying, etc. abilities, could accidentally cause a reaction lethal to not just life on earth, but chemistry itself. All physics in the observable universe would change drastically, and earth would cease to exist as this new true vacuum spread out at the speed of light.

All parahumans studied today have limits and blockers to their abilities that are not fully understood where they come from. Some scientists are studying these for the purposes of removing limitations. A few years ago, a big focal point was Tinker Tech, and trying to come up with ways to remove the need for owner-maintenance on Tinker constructs, a limitation that around 75% of Tinkers have, so that Tinker-build creations could help make the world better, technologically. After the explosion in Lavrentiya, Russia caused by a Russian (civilian) Tinker-made Antimatter Bomb killed everyone in Lavrentiya and Loriono, Russia, gave people in Diomede, Alaska, first-degree burns, and the heat was felt as far as Wales, Alaska, people are thinking twice about removing parahuman restrictions.

Another cause for concern is that it is known that parahumans are able to fight off Abhorrents, who kill thousands of people each year. Yet, despite this, there has never been released footage of parahumans fighting off the Abhorrents. Putting aside all of the crazier conspiracy theories this has caused, it is widely regarded that parahumans are much more dangerous than publicly shown."

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ShortiaShocking [M] [Cape] (↑547↓) points 1 hour ago
Thank you for sharing this article. Very interesting indeed, though there seems to be some strong opinions by the article-writer. For any commenters, please remember to keep posting according the the community guidelines.

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hotr0d (↑-16↓) points 1 hour ago
haha great now parahumans are a threat to the universe, insead of just the world
[User reports: 4. [show]]

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bigBOat5 [|||] (↑-7↓) points 1 hour ago
"there has never been released footage of parahumans fighting off the Abhorrents"

say all you want about conspiracy theorists being nutjobs and such, but ive said it before, ill say it again, parahumans caused the abhorrents. they didnt exist before capes did. think about it, the first parahuman recorded was in 1979, the first abhorrent attack in the history of mankind was in 1988, almost ten years later.
[User reports: 6. [show]]

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ShortiaShocking [M] [Cape] (↑51↓) points 1 hour ago
/u/hotr0d, please keep the discussion on topic. My comment before yours literally just linked to the community guidelines. As for /u/bigBOat5, your account already has one strike against it, so I'd be careful. Your post here is technically on topic, even if everyone disagrees with it, you're entitled to your opinion.

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Krombopulos_Michael [CCC] (↑142↓) points 43 minutes ago
Wow, lots of cape-hate in here. How about we discuss the actual science of the article, shall we? Current measurements of the Higgs boson’s mass estimates, around 125 giga-electron-volts, imply a borderline possibility that the Universe exists in a metastable state. It is of interest, therefore, to refine the theoretical calculations and the associated predictions. State-of-the-art analysis—arguably the most reliable to date, have calculated the Higgs potential using very precise approximations. Their conclusion is that the best theoretical fit to measured parameters, including the Higgs and top-quark masses, points to a metastable Universe. However, their analysis also concludes that values of parameters are closer to a region of absolute stability than suggested by previous studies: it is possible for the Universe to be fully stable (and for the standard model to work all the way up to the Planck scale), if the true values of measured parameters are only 1.3 standard deviations away from the current best estimates.

TL;DR: New studies and math (which I consider more important than the scientific method) shows that the universe is probably-most-likely stable, and that we aren't going to all die due to vacuum decay, parahuman-caused or not.

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MightyFallenOne (↑14↓) points 26 minutes ago (edited)
Wow, /u/Krombopulos_Michael, not only do I love your nickname, but that was impressive!

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mlekk [Cape] (↑1↓) points 15 minutes ago
/mlekk oozes in
mlekk thinks that capes try their hardest against abhorrents
mlekk thinks they lose lives and family to abhorrents like everyone else
mlekk thinks about accusing capes for causing something they didnt
mlekk decides BAD IDEA
/mlekk oozes out

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End of Thread.

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(↑24↓) ♦Question about black hole generating capes.
In: Boards ► Discussion ► Parahumans ► Powers
Posted on September 19th, 2017, 6:44 PM by calamari87:

Okay, so I saw a video about a cape, wasn't able to find her on the wiki, but her power was to create small black holes that could suck in and destroy thing around it, including buildings or even the ground. The black hole looked about the size of a coin, but could destroy things up to ten meters away. After seeing this video about black holes the size of a coin, where it was answered that a black hole with the mass of a nickel would evaporate explosively with the energy of a nuclear bomb, and a black hole with the radius of a nickel would essentially rearrange the earth, I have a few questions;

1.) HOW do the black holes made by this cape not, y'know, destroy the planet?
2.) How do they NOT decay from Hawking Radiation, and basically act as nuclear explosions?
3.) Are they even actually black holes, or her power simulating her vision of black holes?
4.) If she learned that this is not, in fact, how black holes behave, would her power fundamentally change?
5.) Has her power struck some intermediary black hole mass that is safe for a planet and only dangerous a few meters around it or something?

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Biofiziks (↑4↓) points 32 minutes ago
I'm unaware of this cape as well. There's been very few capes with black-hole generation, and all known ones (excepting Wiki:Novakid) didn't actually generate true black holes. And in Novakid's example, it's only theorized his power was making black holes, he could only generate them miles away, and they would decay instantly into nuclear-like explosions. Anyways, do you have a link to the video? Sounds like a nice find.

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Ki113rCr0c|< (↑3↓) points 24 minutes ago
To answer your questions:
1.) We don't know.
2.) See number 1.
3.) Most probably not, like you said, her power is probably simulating black holes, as we've never had PROOF of a cape capable of generating black holes, and how you described her power is not how black holes work.
4.) There is no evidence to support the claim that changing a parahuman's world views or perception on reality will affect their powers. In fact, in cases where parahumans' minds are inhibited, by drugs or alcohol, they usually lose finer control over powers just like they do over their motor skills. However, hallucinogenics like LSD do nothing to change a capes' powers.
5.)There is no process that would make a black hole smaller than a few kilometers in radius, or a few solar masses. There is no scientific inquiry into nickel or human size black holes, that question was just for fun. The answer is basically the same whether it's a person or a nickel: if you're talking about volume then it will destroy the planet, if you're talking about mass then it will fuck up a localized portion of it.

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calamari87 (↑1↓) points 20 minutes ago
I'm not talking about the size or mass of a human as a black hole; I'm curious if any black holes could theoretically exist or even be stable that wouldn't mean instant death for Joe Average standing a few meters away when it appears or travels past. If a parahuman generated a black hole, it would still follow physics just like how most parahumans that generate fire have fire that adheres to physics. So if it's possible to have a black hole safe for humans, a parahuman could theoretically have that as a power, right?
For example, in the other question, a very nickel's mass would be expected to evaporate explosively, while a nickel's radius would have the mass of many earths. What about a black hole with the mass of say, a dump truck? Ocean liner? Large building? Could the macroscopic effects be less than catastrophic, even relatively safe for an observer in the same area?

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Ki113rCr0c|< (↑1↓) points 13 minutes ago
Some basic equations for calculating the power from a black hole as a function of mass can be found on the Wikipedia page on Hawking radiation, but plugging in values it appears things start to get catastrophic below about 100 billion tons, which is the mass of a cube of lead two kilometers wide (however the black hole would have a smaller radius than an atom). This itself without emitting heat would be pretty catastrophic. Things much smaller than this would emit much, much more radiation. So, a parahuman with black hole generation would have to have tons of secondary powers modifying it so heavily, that it'd barely be recognizable as a black hole by physics. At 100 billion metric tons the power output is only a few kilowatts, but the effective surface temperature is still 1.2 billion Kelvin. On the bright side you're not instantly on fire, but on the other side it is so hot it is giving off quite a lot of x-rays from temperature alone. To get the effective surface temperature to a relatively eyeball-safe 5,778 K (same as the sun) it needs to weigh about as much as Pluto. Small black holes are (unsurprisingly) just inherently not very human-friendly. Or planet-friendly, for that matter.

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. . .

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Capetown, TX. 09/20/2017, 9:00 AM. 72°F,
Partly Cloudy. Arc 3: Obsolescence.

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BEEP // BEEP // BEEP // BEEP
Jasmin Lehtinen jumped, her whole body jolting, as she was startled awake by the sound of her alarm clock. With a loud slap, he hand stung after hitting the snooze button. She threw her covers back over her face, her breath heating her face against the cloth. Mmmmmmmmmmm..... She groaned, muffled by her blankets. Then suddenly, she fumbled around in her sheets on her futon before finding her phone among them, and clicked the home button. Dead. Had she drained it...? No, she remembered now, she fell asleep browsing Parahumans Online. She glanced at her alarm clock instead. Nine o' clock. She hadn't slept in that late, in fact she woke up surprisingly early. She had work at noon, so she could go back to sleep. Or she could go grab breakfast. She grabbed her phone and plugged it into the charger, and watched the screen light up pure white after a few seconds. I hope one day I have enough control to charge my phone without frying it. She thought, unamused. She got out of 'bed,' stretched her arms up high, pulling her shoulder-blades along her ribs under her armpits, granting her a satisfying feeling, as a 'Nnnng!' emanated from her chest. "Ahhhh." She sighed, feeling better.

She pulled on some gym shorts over her panties, and threw on a too-large-for-herself tee shirt, so low it almost obscured her shorts. Then, she held her thumb against the home button, unlocking her phone with her fingerprint, before doing the same in her bank's app to check her balance.

"Wha-.." Her voice betrayed her lips, high pitched. "What!??!" She squealed, before realizing what Recall had said the day before.

The payment for the job is also larger than the last few. A hundred thousand dollars each.

She stared at her phone, and the tiny number indicating her bank account balance. $100,142 She hadn't even given Recall her bank account info, even her number. How had she known to even route it to her? She shook her head in shock and awe.

I am definitely going out for breakfast.

Jericho's phone sat at his side, headphones plugged into it and his ears. The Changer sat at a lonely table in the restaurant, IHOP, to be specific. He had spent the night binging and eating food by the market full. Literally. Having thousands of dollars to spend made it awfully easy to buy out an entire isle of food from the local Walmart. He had saved some money by placing it in an account, or at least, that's what the people at the bank (not prosperity, that would've been too good.) had said. He didn't remember going to a bank, but... Hey. 'Pekah' saved him the trouble at least!

Either way, he was sat at a table in IHOP, scarfing pancakes and omelettes down like there was no tomorrow. He was focused on his (almost twelfth, Jesus) meal, so much so he almost missed the Ding! Ding! of the entrance doors. However, even with music rolling from the headphones hanging from around his neck, he heard the electronic bell. Igorrr was paused, and the silence from around his neck gave Jericho pause. A glance of his surroundings gave him the impression that perhaps, maybe, people were intimidated by the guy with the face tattoo. All around him were empty tables and booths, yet he could hear people chatting and eating across 'the way' in the restaurant. Oh well! Who cares anyways? Not him, that's who!

Jericho snorted at his own thoughts, amused by the blatant rambling that he found himself doing more often than not. Finally, after a few seconds of distraction, he turned his attention to the front door and– Oh he knew that smell! Ink swelled under his skin, and the scent (stench) of ozone punched him in the face. Ahhh yeah, he knew that smell alright. And the chick it wafted off of was familiar too! Sandy brown hair, hazel eyes, pale skin... She was there at the sandwich shop too! The other girl, the one who walked in with her wasn't, but she was!

"Oh man I probably really stressed her out..." The boy mumbled aloud, rubbing his face with a small laugh at himself. He watched them a moment longer, promptly turning around and going back to his food when they began walking to his part of the restaurant; choosing a table far enough away that they weren't seated right next to him. He lifted his head, taking in the small pile of licked-clean plates in front of him, before his eyes roved over to the girl's. Eye contact was made, sparks flew... Hah! Sparks... there wasn't any sparking. Jericho stood up without much fanfare, withholding on the dramatic pushing of his chair, settling for just sliding out casually. He looked over his shoulder for a moment, a quick assurance that no one was looking, before he turned back and smiled at the two. The pale brunette stank of ozone to Jericho, but the smell wasn't entirely unpleasant.

"Hey!" He chirped out, pulling a chair over and sitting in it backwards, "Aren't you the chick who was at the sandwich shop?" With the question asked, Jericho laughed at the sudden surprise that flew over her face. "Heh... could say you're... shocked, to realize I recognize ya huh?" Oh god that was bad. Why did he do this, why were puns something he used? ... Why didn't he use them on the windy-Cape from yesterday? Fuck! "Yeah...?" came her response.

This was good! She wasn't panicking or anything at least, and wasn't demanding he turn himself in. She looked paranoid, glancing around like that. Her friend was glaring at him, but eh... Anyways! "Are you okay? Like, I didn't cause a huge problem for you or something did I? D'you want me to pay for your meal or something?" Goddamit mouth, that's not what he wanted to say. Oh well- oh she's talking back. "Yeah I'm fine, nothing happened anyways. I like that shop, and I didn't want the owner to lose money or anything. It's a small enough shop as it is."

The Changer's face pulled into a concerned frown, words spilling out of his mouth before he could stop them. "You're sure? I didn't honestly think it would be that big of a deal! Eheh, you were pretty cool though! Smelled like ozone! Still do... Is that your power thing? Lightning or somethin'?"

Oops. Wrong thing to say apparently. Her friend stiffened, turning to look at Jericho with an emotion he couldn't really place. The girl in question blanched, looking around the room again before settling her gaze back on the tattooed guy. "Uh yeah... that's kinda... a secret." Huh! That was interesting, he knew that most people with powers didn't flaunt them or use them as constantly as he did, but for it to be a secret like she was saying... "Huh... Why? Did you rob a store or somethin'? Have a bolt go awry?" Her response was quick this time around, a simple 'something like those'. Leaving her lips.

Jericho laughed- cackled really- quietly enough not to draw attention, but loud enough to be obvious as what it was. Well, at least she was honest! The other chick was still staring at him, so Jericho gave her a quick wave and a smile; friendliness was key! And went back to his table, chuckling to himself quietly.

He sat again, digging back into his food like he hadn't just stopped to eat, facing away from the girls this time. His music returned to life, Igorrr's "Opus Brain" chattering out of his headphones, while a server came by to take the order of the two behind him. He waited for a moment, keeping his eyes on his food before he reached out and tapped that same sever on the arm, smiling politely and telling the guy that whatever bill came for the two, Jericho'd pay for it... Buuut they wouldn't be to know. He also gave the guy a $20 because hey why the fuck not. He had the money now, and he was maybe spending it a tad gregariously, but hey, whatcha gonna do?

Some passing thought was given to the night before, a tiny frown creasing Jericho's lips as he focused on one event in particular. He had gone to see Vic and her band play at that club the windy-Cape had mentioned, and it was a great time honestly! Granted you tend to get free admission when you slink in as a dog, "really need to choose a different form...", scamper to the bathroom; change into human shape and come back on out. The music was great, and actually hearing their band play a song for an audience was electrifying. Afterwards was... less than fun.

Capetown, TX. 09/20/2017, 10:04 AM. 74°F,
Partly Cloudy. Arc 3: Obsolescence.

---

Ray Green narrowed her eyes at Jasmin Lehtinen, jutting her head forwards and raising an eyebrow in a really strange combination that made Ray's signature look of suspicion. "Who or what was that?" She asked. Right as Jasmin went to open her mouth, Ray reared back, her hand over her mouth. "Don't tell me you're cheating on Lucas!"

"I am not dating Lucas, and you know it!" Jasmin practically screeched as Ray sniggered. She was one of the few people who could actually snigger in real life. "And no.. We uh, met two nights ago at the Which Wich next to my apartment. He robbed the place, and I was about to stop him, but Freischütz showed up."

Ray nodded understanding. Ray gave her response, Jasmin took a bite of her pancakes, and somewhere in the restaurant, a baby began to cry. Jasmin gulped down her mouthfull, and responded, "What was that? I misse-" Jasmin was cut off by the look on Ray's face. Fear. "Wha...?" Then it registered. A whining noise, a low 'wwwwaaaaaaaaaaa' that slowly rose into a cresendo before lowering again, in a cycle. It was sirens. Air raid sirens. Seconds later, three long gutteral buzzes followed by a prolonged beep marking the signature gut-wrenching noise of an Emergency Alert System sounded from every phone in the IHOP. Jasmin looked to Ray, fear plastered plainly over the faces of both girls.
"This is real, isn't it...?" Jasmin asked, a dark suspicion at the back of her mind. The weekly tests hadn't been going on for no reason.
"Looks like it," Ray responded, her voice suddenly sullen. An expression came across her face, one Jasmin hadn't seen before. Ray had always been tough, especially for a girl. In the fight against the Adept Mages, she had been fearless, and as far as Jasmin had heard, she'd always been headstrong. Now, there was no trace of her usual confidence, but there was uncertainty. Then came a one words reply; "Abhorrents."
"Shit!" Jasmin stood up, her chair sliding across the floor away from her. Already many of the patrons of the shop were panicked, filtering out through the glass doors at the front of the IHOP. "I may not like them, but I have family here in Capetown-"
"They'll evacuate or get to a shelter like every one else. Look Jasmin, you haven't been part of the team for a particularly long time, and so you missed the conversation, but me, Lucas, and Mark have agreed that if an Abhorrent ever attacks... Well, we'd help. You missed the conversation, you never signed up for it, so I'd understand-"
"No," Jasmin interruped. "I'll go."

Jericho's attention was ripped away from his meal and his music by the sound of sirens wailing away. His head jerked up, and for a moment he froze with indecision. He didn't know where he was supposed to go, or if he even should go... Wherever he needed to go. The confusion was dispelled upon the realization that some people might not even have the ability to evacuate, as most were expected to when the walking apocalypses showed up to a city.

A safe choice could be made here, and was. The Changer stood, easing himself out of his seat as he stood up and stretched, a frown pulling over his face as he forced calm to his troubled mind. This evidentially wasn't a drill, as the two girls and the rapid exit of the IHOP proved. Jericho's attention roved over to the two again, feet padding over to them rapidly as his voice rose out of his mouth without his bidding. "Hey. What're you two going to do? I doubt I can really prove an apt combatant against...," Jericho gave a nervous flap of his hands, shuddering just enough to be visible, "One of them. I can help with evacuation though, or if you two need, I can get you to wherever they have Capes go?" His voice slowly rose in pitch, trailing off and rising as if he were questioning them and expecting answers. He himself had no clue as to where to go, but giving any help where he could would ease him. Or at least, Jericho figured it would.

"I don't have any family in town, and I ain't exactly in position to worry about a house, all things considered. So! Whatever y'all need from me, I wouldn't mind helpin' out."

Ray stared at Jericho hard for about five seconds before coming to a conclusion. "Fine, you and Jasmin come with me. We're going to round up the rest of the group, then head to the HLA Headquarters. We will be under the protection of the Unspoken Rules, since an Abhorrent is about to attack." Jasmin nodded, and she caught Jericho nodding also.

Jasmin, Jericho, and Ray stepped out of the IHOP, and chaos had ensued. Traffic was backed up on even the simplest of roads, and people ran en masse by foot to the nearest Abhorrent Shelters. Jasmin listened, but she heard no telltale explosions of a cape fight, nor the distant rumble of buildings being destroyed. Is he even here yet, or were they able to start the sirens ahead of time? She wondered internally. Overhead an explosive sound concussed as a cape broke the sound barrier, a trail of flames and smoke following him as he flew towards downtown Capetown. She noticed a few people in costumes going against the grain of the civilians fleeing. The crush of bodies was hard to fight, like pushing through a deep river, the current of people fought against them. Jasmin raised her hand in a gun-shape above her head, pointing at the sky. Suddenly, lightning struck her fingers and thunder reverberated throughout the area louder than even the air raid sirens, causing the civilians around them to pause and give them room. People parted as they made their way downtown, towards Jasmin's appartment, next door to the Which Wich.

---

That happened multiple times in the ten or so minutes it took to reach Jasmin's house, as the crowd was thoughtless in panic, rarely giving pause to the occasional costumed cape. When they reached Jasmin's appartment (as it was the closest meet-up point to the HLA headquarters between the Congenial), Lucas and Mark, in-costume as Chrysopoeia and Sandstorm, were already waiting on Mark's motorcycle, bands of sand swirling around them like personal asteroid fields, leaving them personal space against the panicked civilians. Jasmin looked down the street and took a moment of pity for the police officers established at the intersections, attempting to route the traffic, both automobiles and people on foot, towards the nearest shelter. Everyone knew where to go, though, as everyone was always informed. Pamphlets came in the mail, billboards would have locations marked on city maps, students in school would be taught during drills. People weren't supposed to use vehicles, too easy to cause an accident in the resulting panic, but people did nonetheless.

All the while, the air raid sirens blared in the background, piercing the ears and embedding itself in the mind, sounds engineered specifically to strike fear into humans, to tell you something is wrong.

None of this helped the fact that people were inherently stupid, one of the biggest faults of modern society. In the panicked crowds, every rule was broken as people pushed and shoved and tripped, shouted and cursed, pulling luggage on wheels, hitting people with cars. Everyone was driven by the primal desire to save themselves over others. Capes were no different, as was evident by Sandstom using his power to keep people at a distance, or Jasmin using it to part the sea that was the crowds. One of the cops at the intersection noticed the group of villains that was The Congenial, plus Jericho, and was about to say something. The cop nearest rested his hand on the shoulder of his fellow cop, and shook his head, and they went back to corralling the crowd.

As they reached the blocks around the Heroes League of America Headquarters, the crowd thinned and yellow police tape blocked off intersections heading towards it, and police cars stopped traffic. The cops were there to stop people from trying to seek shelter with the capes, and stop civilians from inhibiting the capes from gathering and strategizing before the attack. The cops let the group through, and Jasmin gawked at what lay ahead.

A crowd of roughly two hundred capes stand infront of the building, with more appearing every second, being teleported or flown in. The group reached the edge of the crowd, careful not to straggle lest they be in the way of incoming teleporters. Capes of all kinds, costumed in bright colors or dark colors, or not costumed at all, were present.

"Everyone is coming together." Jasmin realized aloud, almost in awe.

Jericho was awestruck at the sheer amount of people that had gathered in front of the HLA building, laughing under his breath out of overwhelming shock. The two, Jasmin and Ray- he learned their names along the way- had two others who joined up with them. Two guys who had swirling streams of sand keeping the crowd from crushing them as they had made their way to the HLA. Mark and Lucas, the latter being incredibly familiar... Oh right. Motorcycle dude.

Now that they were here, and yet more people were either flying in- Hey! It was Vic! Instinct said to go over and talk-
Oh wait. Almost immediately after Nobody arrived, Jericho locked his sight on the flying 'motorcycle' and its rider as they touched down beside a group of teenagers and other costumed heroes. That guy too, mister trench-coat-creepy-mask-mctriggerhappy-pants. He stopped to talk with a teen, leaving Jericho glaring across the way before his attention was grabbed by the appearance of a blinding rip of light.

From it stepped another duo of presumed capes; a faintly familiar head of purple-tinted brown hair stepped out, with a shorter girl stepping out with the former female. The portal closed behind them, taking its all too blinding light away with it.
The space that had formed for the two girls was immediately swallowed up by other people; again. Everyone here was crowding together and man if that didn't make the Changer vaguely uncomfortable. He was then made even MORE uncomfortable by another cape bumping into him roughly, seemingly to get out of the way of ANOTHER cape who was stalking into the crowd. Jericho turned to make a comment, before stopping and staring at the man who melded into the crowd of parahumans.

The Changer stepped up to the guy, sliding to his side as casually as he could and looking over and just so slightly upward. There was a ... mask? One that seemed to be made of shadows that covered up his face. Hell, maybe the guy couldn't even speak! Oh well, a little conversation didn't hurt anyone right? "Hey! You've got a pretty scary ensemble goin' on there... You one of the HLA? They always seem to have some intimidatin' shit goin' on with their costumes and shit." Jericho popped the question off cheerily, smiling politely at the other cape.

The man turned to him then, sorta; his shoulders shifted just a bit but hey, Jericho would take that as acknowledgement any day, usually. "What? Part of the egomaniacs? No." Ehehehe, that was rude. "Then who are ya with? A villain group? Wait am I not supposed to ask that?" The teen quipped off another question, tilting his head curiously as he found ink pooling around his ankle and feet, chitin building there before suddenly stopping as his focus returned to his appearance. Concentrating on keeping a human appearance was difficult sometimes, especially when Jericho was stressed, or distracted, or anxious. Oop the guy's talking again! "I'm not a hero, I'm not a villain."

How delightfully vague. Ugh, that wasn't a clear answer even if it gave one! "So a vigilante? Huh... Never met one of you before! Are you all so posh? Nice suit- Oh! What're your powers? I mean, people seem to be upset with ya bein' here or sommat, was' with that?" Jericho waited for an answer, blinking and smiling widely when the man turned around entirely and spoke to him directly. "What is your name?" Oh that was odd? The changer could feel the guy sizing him up, or at least taking in his appearance. Huh. "Oh! 'M name is Jericho! Nice to meet'cha~!"

Oh wait, there was stuff going on right? They were here for a reason, so, without even so much as a second thought to appearances; Jericho shifted some of his mass. His skull was briefly, for all of two seconds maybe, wreathed in ink as two more pairs of eyes appeared. Two pointed towards the sky and taking in all they could, two pointed at the crowd directly behind him. The changer gave a quick giggle at the sudden scramble that the cape behind him gave to get away. A man in a vaguely knight-like armor suit thing. Surprise Sir Gawain! Ehehehe. The teen focused again on the cape in front of him, blinking his 'original' eyes in surprise when the guy spoke 'Wendigo'. Weird- "If this were any other time, I would enjoy breaking you."

Whoa whoa whoa! What?! And he smiled while saying that?! Did he dispel some of his weird face fuckery just to say that?! Jesus kringle-fucking christ. "Whoa! Uh? Soooo... You know me? I mean, jeez man, I ain't done anythin' to you have I?" Reflexively, Jericho's ink swelled around his hands; turning them into blunt clubs of bone and what looked like some amount of oily sinew. "Bank robbery, sandwhich shop... Not much in the overall scheme but in the short amount of time that your name has been present, it has been attached to bad things." Oh sweet creepy Christ, he was still smiling, what the fuck? "I'm the guy that shows up when you've done one bad thing too many."

Oh. Sweet fucking christ. He was one of those. "Ohhh so you're one of those huh? Batman style vigilante? Or maybe Dexter? So you've probably really really hurt people too huh? Killed someone with some 'non-lethal' takedown? ... Maybe I went overboard, I probably really did but... Jeez man." Jericho felt it too, some guilt that welled up and spilled out just ever so slightly over his lips. A quick guilty glance from one pair of eyes towards Vic... "Give me every morality argument you can think of, I've heard them all. And the comparison to batman is overdone to the point of being cute. I know who you are now, and that's all that matters." The capes stance had shifted throughout his speaking, turning to face Jericho entirely and relaxing to the point that the Changer felt as if the other guy didn't find him a threat!

So maybe the guy was a huge asshole, who cares! Everyone's different right? And so what if he had the most bullshit excuse for a fucking- Yeah no. Jericho was pissed, and just who the fuck did this guy think he was? "Okay first off, who the fuck are you? Actually no wait, excuse me if you're acting like a hardass and tryin' to 'break' people based on your assumptions! Bleh, y' can't get upset over the batman comparison if y'er gonna be actin' like the guy too! What if I've gone and done more shit than just what you've heard about? Eh?" He gave a quiet growl, throat and chest splitting open and swirling with ink as the classical batman cowl formed on his body; a full face underneath the chitin that glossed metallic. "I know who you are now, and that's all that matters. Bleh bleh bleh."

Okay... That was pretty childish, but c'mon what was he supposed to do? You can't argue with people like that in actuality right? "The mind of a child trapped in playdough. Unless you intend to fight me, I have nothing more to say to you." And with that lovely bit of ending statement, the guy just turned the fuck back around. What the fuck. Well fuck him too then, Jesus.

Jericho gave a silent sigh, turning away and ducking back into the crowd as his form returned to semi-normalcy, his skin was beginning to swim with tattoos and wriggling bits of 'art' that began to bleed out onto his actual physical form. Tendrils of flesh and muscle pulsed their way off his wrists and ankles, the nape of his neck sprouting some that were lined with viciously curved hooks. Fangs and claws sprouted at random on his fingers, face, and toes; the rest of his body covering itself on and off with fur, feathers, scales, chitin... And any mixture of the four. Ugh. He was in a mood now, and trying to keep still was becoming impossible. He couldn't even bring himself to even try and cheer up. Luckily, it seemed that no-one wanted to talk with the cape who's body was doin'... Whatever Jericho's was.

---

---

---

---

Alex was about halfway to the pizza parlor now. His music blasting loud enough for some of the people he walked passed to hear. Given how durable his physiology was now he didn't really have to care about hearing loss. At least not from his commercial bought headphones. The last song faded out only to be replaced with Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. He grinned and reflexively tried turning the volume up. Full blast though, which he was a little annoyed by. Maybe now that he bought those pieces of Tinker tech he can buy something higher quality then his store bought wrap arounds. A sudden buzzing on his thigh made him pulled out his phone. Dean again. Might as well humor him.

Bro, so level with me. Do you have an Cape crushes? Like for real cause I swear I'm in love right now

This is getting old. Last week you were obsessed with Laser Hawk.

Dude Can you blame me??! The woman is DDG

If you say extra thick you can forget pizza.

I wasn't going to say such a thing, you wound me sir

So then, who's the "Lucky" lady?

Ranch Hand my dude.

. . . . . . -__-

What???

Oh god you're serious

The woman is a muscle bound goddess, can you blame me man?

Its good to dream big . . . .But i think if you even tried to make a move you might actually die.

I'm not that dumb, but way to go shattering dreams my dude

I Try ^^

Still didn't say who you're crush is bro ;)

And I never will ~

You ass XP

Alex snorted and was about to send another text back when a whining sound cut through his music. and suddenly, the whole world seemed to stand still for a moment. It was like a fog horn, a low whining cycle. It was the air raid sirens. Alex yanked down his headphones and looked around frantically.

Everyone was momentarily frozen. some from shock, other disbelief. most out of fear though. Seconds passed and the signature Emergency Alert System could be heard coming from about every house and store ringing out across the entire city. Alex felt his stomach drop. The sudden urge to empty out what little was in his stomach trying to override his brain. He chocked it all back down as people began to panic. some tried denying it. most though instantly started to run. over the sound of the sirens, one word rang out from the crowd as it began to surge. "Abhorrents!!!"

Almost instinctively, Alex ducked into the closest side street. He ripped open his bag and grasped at his helmet. Only then did he realize he was shacking almost violently, causing his helmet to be dropped on the ground. His breathing was fast and uneven. He was scared, everyone was. The world around them was about to become a war zone. Attempts to try and steady his breathing weren't going so well, and he just wouldn't stop shacking. Alex was about to go straight into full blown panic when the sudden rhythmic vibrating at his thigh snapped him away from himself.

He fumbled for the phone. it was his grandpa calling him.
"Hello?"

"Alex where are you? Are you safe?"

"Yeah, I'm safe. I'm about halfway to Tom's right now. How are you and grandma??" Worry flooded His voice. He was so far away from them, would they both be able to get help and be in a shelter in time? Alex began to stutter, trying to figure out what to do. it was his grandpa that snapped him back.

"Alexander! I need you to listen okay? Your grandmother and me are fine and being helped escorted to a shelter. Calm yourself, and just breath. Here count and breath with me like we used to, can you do that for me?"
The man's voice was not as steady as it usually was, but still strong as ever. Alex followed along, feeling himself steady and regain composure. This was happening. But his family was being taken care of.

Now boy, you don't need to explain anything to me. But I Know what you have been up to for the past few months. I've seen you're costume when you weren't at home. I'm not sure how long it has been going on, but I've known for a while. Hard to miss when I cant even lift my own grandson.
The words seemed to rewind and play back in Alex's mind a few times before the gravity of what his grandpa had just said came to him. Grandpa knows I'm parahuman.
" Now i want you to answer me this. Are you going to go out there and help?

It took another minute before he said anything, a lump the size of a softball seemingly wedging itself in his throat. Then he finally spoke. "Yes. I am,"

" . . . . Ok. There was yet another pause after. "You come back to us son, don't you go and get yourself killed. What was he going to expect from a former soldier? He must have his grandpa's sense of duty.
Remember what i told you about courage?

Alex sniffed, holding back tears. "It's not the absence of fear, its the ability to act in spite of it."

"That's my boy, Now go out there and show some courage. Don't worry about me and grandma. We love you." He could hear pride in the mans voice.

Hanging up. Alex picked up his helmet. Time to go face the apocalypse.

"I love you too."

---

---

Alex flew through the air. Riding a disk shaped barrier. he looked down below to see the police officers established at the intersections, attempting to route the traffic and prevent any chaos as they lead civilians towards the nearest shelters. All the while, the air raid sirens blared in the background, drowning out the sounds of panic and confusion bellow. As Alex flew on he soon noticed that there were other capes flying near him. Some were in thrown together costumes, others in plain civilian cloths but wrapped in some variety of power and or energy. Nobody said anything but a nod was shared between the small group. They all knew what was about to happen. Whether any of them were prepared or not.

As they reached the blocks around the Heroes League of America Headquarters, The "Air traffic" got a bit too thick, forcing most of the fliers to touch down and brave through the crowd of people trying to take refuge in the building. The crowd had been thinned and yellow police tape blocked off intersections heading towards the HQ. When Alex was able to finally wiggle his way in and was taken aback by the sight. There had to be a few hundred capes stand in front of the building, with more appearing every passing second. Alex was careful to avoid the larger open spaces that were made to allow teleporters easy entry.A quick look around revealed capes of all kinds were present. Their costumes ranging from bright colors or dark colors, to no costume at all. Villains, heroes, and vigilantes were all present.

The atmosphere was thick with a slew of emotions. some were excited, others nervous. The shacking feeling that they all were about to go to war with what many considered to be a god. Many were speculating on what abhorrent was going to show. from the sound of it people had it narrowed down to three. Behemoth, Giant, or Tangle. Others were psyching each other up and trying to keep moral. Alex stayed reasonably quiet. Wondering both when they would be given their orders and if he might know anybody in the crowd. Which given how many people were here wasn't unlikely. Best to focus anyway. it looked like things were starting.