Startup 1.2

[April 11th 2011 ; 01:23 PM]

Um... I may have fucked up?

You see, I thought that my gun would work on Lung, I mean he bleeds, right? He has a brain and a nervous system. He is a fleshbag like all of us normies, 8 feet tall rage dragon or not.

Now, Lung is the most infamous cape in the bay, he is known for sinking the island of Kyushu as a consequence of his fight against Leviathan (He lost, of course). When he first came to the city, he singlehandedly fought and beat all the local members of the Protectorate together, causing significant amounts of collateral damage. 

[Picture of Lung]

In fact, he is the only reason the ABB is still standing, what with them having a measly 2 capes in all and being the second or most powerful Gang within Brockton Bay.

What is his power? He Escalates, whenever he thinks he is in danger or going to a fight (or his power? They say he can do this even when asleep) he grows stronger and stronger, exhibiting qualities reminiscent of fantasy dragons. Silver scales that get tougher the bigger he is, pyrokinetic powers that get more and more potent, speed, strength, senses, regeneration, all the wazooo, everything gets an upgrade the longer the fight goes on. 

At one point he even gets wings!

The issue is, the stronger the danger, the faster he grows. So that means when you hit him with a gun that bypasses his normal defense? That means the fucker who shot me and broke my arm is a new threat, that's a new Danger! So he gets even bigger even faster.

The Stun shot? It only made him pause for a bit, and in a short span of a couple of seconds, his hand completely regenerated and went from a scary as fuck 8 feet tall dragonkin cosplayer, to an even scarier 10 feet tall abomination of scales and fire.

"'I 'ill -ill oo!" He said.

Of course, he threatens to kill the person who destroyed his hand.

"Drone, direction to closest empty space."

"[53 meters, 14 degrees west of current position]"

I unconsciously nodded back to the drone.

"Good, standby mode." Wouldn't want it to turn into scrap.

"[Affirmative]" Echoed the drone while distancing itself from the scene.

Meanwhile, Lung is suddenly blanketing his body in flames for some unknown reason, my sixth sense is showing insects in close proximity biting the space between his scales, even when getting incinerated, they don't let up.

Ah, must be the previous cape. I turned in their direction, only to see a lanky tall girl in a badass black and grey suit staring back, it was not readily apparent, but they were clearly a girl due to slight curves here and there. 

[Picture of the Parahuman]

"Distance yourself as much as possible and keep a lookout for reinforcements!" I shout. "And keep annoying him like that!"

I can't see clearly in the dark, but I can sense her slightly nodding, so I turn to the wildly charging demon dragon coming towards me.

He tries to swipe a flaming clawed hand almost as big as his body to my side, but instead of simply redirecting it and causing more collateral damage, I enhance my jump and aim straight for center mass.

I didn't want to use too much power, so I didn't go supersonic just yet, and when I came close to his chest I simply touched it with the palm of my hand, redirecting his forward momentum along with mine.

I took into account his growing size and weight, along with a bevy of other factors, and adjusted/enhanced the resulting vector just enough so that he'll land into the previously stated empty region.

My calculations seem to be slightly wrong, as Lung starts slowly growing wings while in midair, which kinda added additional weight and surface area to the draconic cape.

I super jump across to him into an abandoned warehouse, it was almost completely ruined, with 4-5 feet diameter holes in its walls indicative of a previous altercation.

While midair, I noticed several civilian cars and running people redirecting their trajectory to Lung's destination, most of them featuring typical ABB colors/symbols.

I hope the other girl hid somewhere safe, she didn't seem the type of cape particularly effective at direct confrontation.

I land to the sight of an enraged dragon fighting a swarm of bugs, the bugs were clearly losing, but they did some damage. How big is that chick's range? This was on the next block!

I join into the fun, shooting him consecutively with my gun as I approach, both the venom and the laser bolts seem to have slowed his regeneration, good. 

If I want to incapacitate him we need to slow his regeneration enough for the Stun Gun to work, so either injure him badly enough so that his healing factor gets "stretched thin" so to say, or fill him up with so much insect venom and laser blasts for the same result.

I say both.

I unstrap the axe from my leg and charge towards him.

Imma maim the motherfucker.

His senses are much more advanced than this time, and he turns with superhuman speed toward me, flaring his flame aura to kill more insects.

"'Ooo 'ill DIE!" He screams, a flaring pillar of flames surging from his mouth, right toward me.

Dragon breath? Really?

I charge right through the fire, my field taking care of it, and jump out of the blaze sending a chop with the axe straight through his left shoulder.

I obviously used my power to enlarge the impact area and strengthened the kinetic energy enough to penetrate through his tougher-than-steel scales.

His screams of agony are music to my ear as his left arm falls out of its socket, already visibly healing.

The fire aura lets up for a second, and the swarm of insects takes advantage by going straight for his healing stump, black widows, wasps, fire ants, and many, many other types either burrowing inside or biting into his exposed flesh.

  I also see a lot of them clumping around between his legs, Ouch. Did you have to go there, Bug girl?

I don't show my grimace as I begin just peppering the motherfucker with bolts, each one of them sending him into longer and longer periods of stillness, his arm growing slower as more venom and lasers fuck with his regeneration.

At one point, his growth slowly ceases in favor of his regeneration, and he even begins to slowly shrink, he obviously attempts to hit me and burn the insects, but nothing works on me and Bug Girl seems to have an inexhaustible supply of those buggers, how dirty can you be, Brockton Bay?

Just as I was about to sigh in relief, the reinforcements arrived, and I sensed gunshots going through the doors, someone probably saw what was happening through the holes and was trying to help their boss.

Guns won't work on me, and I don't think Bug Girl is close enough to get hit by them, but I don't want to kill anyone by reflecting them so I consciously stop the bullets instead of sending them back.

I use my senses to shoot lasers through the available holes, hitting most of my targets, who fall unconscious into a heap.

Bug Girl probably noticed that any more bugs were going to be either useless or very dangerous on the still-struggling Lung, so she redirected her swarm into the countless mooks outside.

She can probably deal with most of them, so I turned my attention back to Lung, shooting even more bolts into center mass.

Some dumbasses tried to charge inside to save their boss, but I just shot them or they fell in agonizing pain from bug bites. 

Lung was already lying on the floor, back to his normal human yakuza look. He still has most of his basic abilities even in his basic form, so he is still regenerating, although at a glacial rate. He is still conscious -if delirious- from pain, so I shoot him a couple of times to finally knock him out.

I go out from the front door, shooting gangbangers left and right, and it doesn't take long for me and the other girl to incapacitate most of them, the rest of them flee, but that is alright.

I hear shuffling, as the previously costumed girl climbs down the fire escape from another building, and then slowly, gingerly walking towards me.

For all her intimidating looks and scary as fuck powers, I can feel her heartbeat elevated and her stopping her limbs awkwardly flinching. She is clearly shy so I wave at her and smile.

That seems to embolden her, as she approaches more quickly, I use that pause to press a button on my belt buckle, feeling comfort at the sound of my speeding drone.

I extend my hand towards the girl.

"Ah, hi. I'm Amel, but you can call me Accelerator." I Begin.

She gingerly finishes the handshake.

"Ah, um. I haven't picked a name yet." She answers.

"Oh, that's fine, mine too. But you have an amazing costume by the way, I almost thought you were a villain!"

She slightly flinches. "That... was not intentional." She responded defensively. "I was more than halfway done putting the costume together when I realized it was already looking edgier than I'd intended, and I couldn't do anything about it by then. I made it out of spider silk"

I whistle. "That's actually better than the Protectorate issued costumes, plus with your power it is better to wear a dark suit so you can hide better, it's not exactly made for direct fights."

We keep staring at each other as I keep waiting for a visible reaction, she seems to forget that her facial expression is hidden for a while before she shyly nods.

Awwkwaaard.

"What happened by the way?" I point to the drone. "My little buddy here just informed me that Lung has been doing his thing so I didn't see the beginning."

She awkwardly scratches the back of her head. "I was... scouting the area for a while, then I overheard Lung telling his men to shoot some kids, I couldn't let that happen so I set my bugs on him."

I nod. "Very honorable, although probably wrong. Lung is a monster, but it is more about Pride than Cruelty for the man, he won't attack kids for no reason, so it was probably a figure of speech." I grab my chin. "The only people I can think he is talking about are the Undersiders, rumors in PHO say that they robbed his biggest Casino."

"The Undersiders?"

"A teenage group of capes that specialize in thievery and such, they usually hit the Gangs, but sometimes they get a jewelry store or something like that."

Her shoulders droop at the news. "So I did that for nothing."

I chuckle. "Chin up, the Undersiders are no angels, but they're still teenagers who didn't deserve to die, you may not have saved children, but you saved some people who didn't deserve to die."

She looks up at me abruptly, but whatever she is going to say is interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle.

Her hand edges toward one of her pockets, I look at it from my peripherical vision to see a can of pepper spray.

"Don't worry, it's probably Armsmaster."

"Eeep!" She yelps at the mention of the hero.

And rightly so, a sleek beautiful beast of a motorcycle drives up to the duo, the iconic power armor of the leader of the Protectorate piloting the thing.

The largest superhero organization in the world was the Protectorate, spanning Canada and the States, with ongoing talks about including Mexico in the deal.  It was a government-sponsored league of superheroes with a base in each 'cape city'.  That is, they had a team set up in each city with a sizable population of heroes and villains.  Brockton Bay's team was officially called 'The Protectorate East-North-East', and was headquartered in the floating, forcefield-shrouded island that you could see from the Boardwalk. 

This guy, Armsmaster, was the guy in charge of the local team.  When the core group of the top Protectorate members from around Canada and the States assembled in that classic 'v' formation for the photo shoots, Armsmaster was one of the guys in the wings.  This was a guy who had his own action figures. Poseable Armsmaster with interchangeable Halberd parts.

[Image of Armsmaster.]

The man smoothly gets out of the vehicle, his six feet long halberd in his hands, his eyes land on Bug Girl first, shifting slowly to me, upon which he lightly tilts his head in confusion.

"You gonna fight me?" He says.

While the girl sputters out of indignation, I slowly chuckle.

"She does look like a villain, doesn't she? And I'm probably somewhere neither here nor there." A pause. "But no, we are not going to fight you." I point to myself. "You can call me Accelerator, even though I'm planning to be a public cape."

"Amel Hanover." The man interrupts.

"Heads up display?" 

"Yes, but I also recognize from your paper on Keypoint Detection and Description through Deep Learning in Unstructured Environments, fascinating stuff."

I give him a genuine smile, it seems that he isn't just a meat puppet for his power after all.

"Ah... Thank you, anyways, this unnamed parahuman is someone I met for the first time, and we both managed to incapacitate Lung over there." You point backward into the dilapidated warehouse.

He pauses. "I see, is he safely contained?" He asks.

"Not necessarily, but just in case you were going to inject him with something, you need to be aware of the fact that his regeneration is still dealing with the aftermath of our friend's" I gesture with my head towards bug girl."Bugs, all sorts of venom and stuff."

Armsmaster turns towards the girl. "Can you identify which insects did so?" 

She nods. "Wasp and bee stings, fire ants and spider bites, and pepper spray." She says.

"That is... good information, thank you;" He then heads out towards the unconscious Gang boss.

You turn back towards the girl. "You did a good job here, can you help me search and move all the unconscious men?" She nods, again. "We want to separate people incapacitated by me and those who were affected by your insect for better triage, and if you can, try to confiscate any weapons, guns, and such from them. Can you do that?"

"Yes." Look! She talks!

"Alright, tomorrow is a school day, so to get this done over with quickly I want you to point out people whom you bit with your bugs, we can do this faster if I support the work with my power."

While moving people, I tried to keep up a conversation with Bug Girl.

"So, what names did you think up?" I asked, a floating body of a gangbanger on my hand.

Thank the lord for gravity negation.

"Well, many, but all of them are either villainous or childish."

"Yeah, I'd be equally frustrated, your power doesn't have a lot of mature, heroic connotations." I chuckle. "I would HATE to be called Lady Bug."

She nods, pointing her finger at another unconscious dude.

"Well, your suit is made of spider silk?" She nods. "Then why not go with that, Weaver sounds nice."

He can sense through her mask that she's mouthing the word.

"Yeah, Weaver sounds fine, at least as a temporary name." She hesitated for a second. "What about you?" 

"Hm?" 

"Why did you choose your name."

"Well, to be honest, I'm quite proud of my name." I smile. "It's very deceiving since it alludes to the fact that my power has something to do with acceleration, but while that is true, acceleration is just a very small aspect of it."

You throw a body over a car into the pile, you focus and make sure the guy drops slowly without getting hurt.

"But it is actually named after an important aspect of my Thinker power." Weaver tilts her head in question. "It's a power classification, like that popular poem you know."

She tilts her head back in recognition.

"Yeah, so my power gives me kind of a sixth sense that allows me to sense my surroundings, and a side aspect to it is the ability to practically get a better understanding of physical reality." I wave at Armsmaster as he comes out of the warehouse, a drugged and handcuffed Lung over his shoulder.

He gives you a nod and puts the Villain next to his motorcycle.

"Anyway, the name was a reference to a Particle Accelerator, since they are used to analyze physics through particle acceleration."

"So, yeah. That's my reason."

After we finished, Armsmaster stood in front of his kick-ass motorcycle, talking to someone through his visor.

"The PRT are 5 minutes out, and BBPD are 10 minutes." He turns to us.

"Let's talk."