The FIRST OUTING of a Paparazzi

It wasn't long after Jon crossed the street that he realized he was far from being alone. There are always movements in the corner of his eye that matches his movements and speeds rather suspiciously, and yet the aura of those that followed him are distinctly strange and...inhuman.

Weird.

Jon accelerated as he dashed forward and turned sharply around the corners a few of the tailing objects did the same and even matched with his own speed. Scanning the around within a split second, Jon jumped high up into the air, kicking against the sides of the walls before propelling him through the open third floor window of the seemingly abandoned building.

Landing gracefully without nothing more than a light tap, Jon knelt down and waited by the side of the windows for his pursuers. However, none of them actually followed him.

He thought this is a paparazzi business? What is the deal with this?

This couldn't have been some iteration of certain police droids, or they would have acted right away.....heck they would have gotten the hero on the job too. This has to be something else.

Heck.....it felt rather...personal.

The pro hero's footsteps are the only sounds echoing inside what appeared to be an old abandoned warehouse, and she whistles happily with every step she is taken as she hopped around dozens of abandoned boxes. Jon matched her stride from overhead while carefully looking out for any other things or people that is following him.

Instead, all of those aura seemed to have dissipated greatly with time.

'Eyes as sharp as a string of atoms....' Jon murmured lowly and took a single deep breath. Then, he became far more attune to the environments all around him than he was before. As he poured his energy and attention into his sensory systems, something came to his realization.

Those little auras did not dissipate. Instead, they were relocated. The reason that the general annoyance he felt from the auras of those beings disappeared is because they reorganized themselves and formed into a single entity with an aura much much fainter than the sum of the individual ones.

Jon isn't particularly afraid of a superhuman possessing specially strong information gathering and presence concealing powers. Instead, he is just afraid whatever this individual is planning is going to mess up today's test.

'James?' The professional hero spoke up, 'where are you~?

Her voice echoed through the abandoned warehouse before a wind suddenly began to blow in the middle of the enclosed area. Rather, a vortex of dust and dirt began to form before the figurine of a human is shone. A human male full of scars appeared in front of the professional hero and she sprinted to hug him.

'How are you doing, Alex?' He said, his voice sounding weak as he wrapped his arms around her. With his every movements, grains of dust seemed to fall off his body.

'I got what you wanted!' Alex said, handing over the cappuccino cup towards the male. He nodded and grabbed onto it with two hands before peeling the cap off and pouring it on the ground.

A small package flopped onto the ground, and James pointed a finger up into the air, constructing a column from the ground, raising the package up to his chest level.

The steam from the heat of the coffee is still rising off the surface of the package, though he made a hole with it with a single piece of paper before taking out a red tablet and tossing it into his mouth.

Jon was filming all of it, and he can feel his body tense up when he saw the tiny red tablet.

Sparks of light flashed from underneath, and James lets out some painful low grunts as energy pulses all throughout his body. His initial shape appeared to be crumbling and easily broken like an age-old statue in the corner of a local park, yet now he appeared to have been reinforced and rejuvenated. The brown color now appeared more golden, and there was a glow of life now coming out of the man.

'Thanks for this.....' James said, scratching his head, 'I...don't know what I can do to repay you.'

'Just do what it says here, and all of your past debts are repaid.' Alex said with a sly smile before handing a rolled up piece of paper to James, 'this will be last one from me, but if you wanted more, you'd better carry it through.'

'....I understand.' James said before dissipating his body into the ground as Alex turned around and started heading away.

That was probably all that Jon needed to film for the assignment, but he simultaneously wanted to figure out what the note Alex handed to James entails as well as what the red tablet was. He hoped that it wasn't some version of either the RED compound or the RED BLOB, but.....

He heard a slithering sound behind him, and without looking, Jon dashed away to precisely two meters to his three o'clock, stopping by the edge of the elevated railing and avoiding the attack that would have pierced through his back and damaged the camera strap he had.

'Who are you?' The voice of James came from behind him, and his face changed when Jon turned around, 'Paparazzi?'

'.....please....I didn't want to be one either...' Jon said, putting down his camera and letting it hang, 'what was the tablet that you just took, and what was the task that Alex wanted you to do?'

'None of your business, mate.' James said, raising on hand in front before twisting his fingers in a variety of unnatural directions and configurations. Spikes made out of dirt and dust jetted out from all around Jon and attacked him from all angles at the same time.

Maintaining action of his eyes as sharp as a string of atoms, Jon easily avoided the constructs created by James in the exact sequence that he created them. Then, with every evasion, he got ever closer to him.

He can see visible frustration on the face of the superhuman in front of him, as he suddenly dissipated his body into a storm of dusts before surrounding Jon.

'Die, mate.'

Spikes shot out from the body of the tornado around Jon's body inwards as he reshaped his body into a container of death and destruction. Jon had to close his eyes due to the the shear number of dust going into his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. He can feel the spikes piercing through his clothes and skin, and he tried to dash away from this attack only to see James following him like the shadow.

'No matter how fast you are, you will not be able to get away from this!' James said, 'COLUMN OF DEATH!'

'Tsk.' Jon chuckled before suddenly he felt an aura coming directly through the window towards him, and he dropped into a high athletic stance before puncturing his fist through the spikes and layers of dirts and dusts cutting into his hands.

He felt his knuckles colliding against something metallic, and his knuckles won out easily in the durability department as the one that clashed fish with him on the other side of Jame's tornado body was sent flying away with the screeching sound of deformed metal.

Then, Jon spun around yet again and reached into the body of James, once again ignoring all of the injuries inflicted onto his skin and he grabbed the piece of paper handed to him by Alex straight from him.

'GIVE IT BACK!' James screamed and rushed to collaspe inward with the intent of killing Jon with a single blow.

'Footwork as quick as shooting stars.' Jon said, spinning in the opposite direction of Jame's tornados three times and creating enough air pressure to dispel him in the process. Then, he unrolled the piece of paper and took a picture of it without even viewing the contents.

Far out on the other end of the railing, a metallic figure was smashed into the wall like a grotesque artwork. It struggled to move as parts of its body were pinned underneath cracks that embraced its shape perfectly.

Appearing in front of the figure, Jon turned on the flashlight from his camera and saw the clear outlines of an android...no.....a humanoid robot.

But what is a robot doing here?

Using his eyes as sharp as a string of atoms, he examined the robot quickly before suddenly turning around and parrying an attack from an identical robot behind him.

The metallic fist of the robot collided against his forearm and the force of the impact completely snapped the robot's wrist in half, leading the fist to dangle helplessly and hanging on thanks to literally a handful of thin wires. Ignoring the injury, the robot continued with a barrage of attacks before sending out a huge blast of energy which Jon avoided with his footwork as quick as shooting stars.

Reappearing behind the robot, Jon reached out with his hand and punched a hole through it's body.

The head of the robot turned around 180 degrees to face him, and Jon realized that both of his eyes are camera lens, and that's not it. There are various tiny reflective black dots positioned all throughout the robots body that looked exactly like lenses.

'So you are from United Networks...' Jon said understandably, 'I don't know what your deal is, but stay out of my way.'

He felt the interior of the robot slowly to heat up as a sign of a self destruction sequence going into effect, and he dashed through the windows to avoid the blast. As he walked along the alleyway outside of the abandoned warehouse, he heard the metallic screams of the collapsing railings.

If anything.....James can probably take care of those.

Feeling for the piece of paper that he snatched away from James in his pocket only to find nothing, Jon cursed underneath his breath and started going through his photos like a true paparazzi.