v

Joseph's car was at least thirty years old, and it looked it. It might have once been some sort of green color, but the color of gray primer now covered most of the car.

It was a mid-sized sedan, although I couldn't tell the make. I didn't really know much about cars, other than they made excellent weapons.

It was clean on the inside, at least, although Joseph had made me wait inside for ten minutes before coming out. Presumably he'd been tidying up.

"I got it for six hundred dollars," he said enthusiastically. "It was a steal."

He'd been robbed, from what I could see, but I didn't say anything. I just nodded, and waited for him to let me inside.

The seats were covered in duct tape, and I sat down gingerly, not wanting to damage my uniform on an exposed piece of wire. He gallantly closed the door behind me, and then he walked around the car.

He slid into the driver's seat.

"I'm stoked that you decided to come," he said. "Most girls aren't into this kind of thing."

I shrugged. "I'm not most girls."

"I could tell that when I met you," he said. "You were so focused; it was like you tuned everything else out."

I had; it had been easy to go on autopilot and go over plans in my head for the hours I'd been washing dishes. The fact that the heat hadn't bothered me had made it easier.

"I'm focused," I agreed.

He turned the key, and the car backfired. The engine started, and while it was loud enough that I wondered if it even had a muffler, at least it kept me from having to make small talk with Joseph.

I was fairly sure that he was at least mildly racist, and it was possible that he was even a member of the Empire, or at least a prospective member.

I couldn't afford to get too close to anyone I might have to kill. That wasn't the kind of moral dilemma I could afford.

The ride was made in silence, with the windows down. He played music on the radio, turned up as loud as it would go, which barely made it audible over the engines.

I was surprised to realize that I liked his taste in music. My parents had raised me on music from the sixties through the eighties, and I liked a power ballad as much as anyone.

However, ten minutes into the ride, we began turning into sketchier neighborhoods.

He pulled us into an unlit alley, and I tensed.

"We aren't allowed to park nearby," he said. "And the main streets a couple of blocks away are usually full of cars. I'm not sure why they bother; they've got the Boston Bay PD paid off. I guess it's optics?"

There was enough room for me to open my door, and I slid out. He did the same, and he gestured for me to follow him. I kept him in front of me, in case he was planning some sort of an attack.

However, as we turned the corner, I saw that both sides of the streets were indeed filled with cars. Parking would have been difficult.

"That alley is supposed to be closed off on the other end," he said. "But Hookwolf knocked down the fence one day when he was chasing somebody. The city hasn't bothered to replace it, and nobody else seems to have noticed what a great parking place it is."

It had been a very short alley.

"Aren't you afraid of being towed?"

He shrugged.

"As long as I'm out before the city cleaners get there at five in the morning, I'm golden. I've done it tons of times, and I just saved us three blocks of walking."

I nodded.

Despite his assurance, we still had to walk two blocks before we reached the venue.

It looked like another nondescript warehouse, except for the two massive men standing outside the doorway. They looked like they were over six and a half feet each, and they had to weigh over three hundred pounds, most of it solid muscle.

"Let me do the talking," Joseph said.

I nodded.

"Hey guys," Joseph said.

"Who's the girl?" the bald man on the left said.

"New girl at Whites," Joseph said. "I'm showing her the ropes."

"You vouch for her?"

"She won't be any trouble," he said.

"Fine," the man on the left said.

Money exchanged hands, and the doors opened.

I was surprised at the size of the crowd. There had to be at least five hundred people here, all crowded together. There was a large raised ring in the center of the room.

The ring was surrounded by some sort of chain link fence. Barbed wire had been wrapped around the links, making being pushed against the wire painful and perhaps deadly.

The noise inside hadn't been apparent from the outside. Looking at the walls, I could see some sort of insulation had been plastered against the bare metal.

That probably wasn't healthy for anyone's lungs, but the capes had Othala to help them with anything important, and they likely didn't care about the non-capes.

"You didn't get dinner, did you?" Joseph shouted in my ear. "The fights don't start for twenty minutes, so there's time to get something."

He gestured, and I saw four different concession stands set up, one in each corner of the room.

I was surprised that anyone would want food here, but I quickly saw that most of what was being sold was beer in red solo cups. They likely didn't want glass, both in the event of a brawl and because people sometimes dropped glass bottles even when they weren't fighting.

Joseph brought me a hot dog and some freshly made fries, and to my surprise they were actually really good. He held my drink, some sort of juice until I was able to finish.

I managed to eat it without dropping anything on my uniform. Stains were the one thing my inventory couldn't help me with.

"Do you want to bet?" he asked. "Minimum bet is ten bucks. The first challenger is a new guy, and he's fighting an old pit fighter. Odds are five to one, but you might be throwing away your money."

"I'll just watch," I said.

Even if I knew anything about pit fighting, the last thing I needed was for him to think that I had a lot of money. He'd start wondering why I was presenting myself as a poor girl.

"I'm going to bet," he said. There was a gleam in his eye that suggested that maybe the reason he was poor wasn't his salary. He'd been here often enough that the guards had known him. It was possible that a lot of his salary went to gambling.

I was left alone on the edge of the crowd.

"I haven't seen you here before," a voice behind me said.

I turned around, and I was shocked to see a big man who wasn't wearing a shirt. He was hairy, with long, greasy blonde hair. On one arm he had an E88, and on the other a wolf superimposed on a swastika.

He wore a metal wolf's mask.

Hookwolf.

"I'm the new dishwasher at White's," I said, keeping my eyes down. I was afraid that he'd notice the hatred in my eyes, and the desire to put my knife in his throat.

He was one of the important capes in the Empire, and he very well might have been the one to order my father murdered.

I felt an urge to simply drop a car on him and see what happened.

Unfortunately, that would out me to the world, and likely lead to my death, even if I did manage to kill him. With my luck, he'd manage to dodge. He'd been in the villain business for a long time.

Other than the one car, I didn't have any other real offensive weapons other than my knife. I'd have to remedy that.

Maybe I should steal fifty cars. That'd give me an excellent combat potential, and looking at the crowd around me, I couldn't think of better people to do it to.

It would also undermine the Empire's reputation as protectors.

"It's always good to have new blood, sister!" he said. "The new generation is falling into foolish, liberal ideologies about a world that doesn't exist."

I was silent, and I nodded.

He probably thought I was afraid of him, and I was. Mostly, I was trying to keep my knife from appearing in my hand.

"The fights tonight will be excellent," he said. "Enjoy the show."

He left, and I finally relaxed.

"Were you talking to Hookwolf?" Joseph asked. He looked star struck.

"He was just being nice," I said. "Did you bet?"

"I bet twenty on the new guy," he said. "I know it's stupid, but I could use a hundred right now."

I had a sudden certainty that he'd be broke by the end of the evening.

"We need to find a good spot," Joseph said. "You don't want to be standing too far away, or you'll miss he action, and you don't want to be in the front, because people can push you up against the wire."

I'd have expected them to have a barrier to prevent that, but apparently, they were Darwinists.

"I only made that mistake once, and I had to get tetanus shots," Joseph said. He grimaced. "I didn't have any money to come here for three weeks."

That was what he was upset about?

We worked our way around the crowd until we found ourselves near the gambling box. It looked like an old timey bank teller, with bars on the windows, and ten tellers behind the desk.

I was startled to see a pair in costume step out of a back room. One was a teenaged girl in a red bodysuit.

Othala.

She was the one who kept the Empire able to go back over and over again in fight. She was their healer, and she could grant other powers, including invulnerability, if only for a short period.

Losing her would be a terrible blow to the Empire.

Beside her was a man in a breastplate painted black over a red shirt. He was wearing a mask.

He was Victor, the skill thief. In some ways, his power resembled mine in that he could acquire skills without training for them.

Rumor had it that he could steal your skills just by looking at you, and I noticed that everyone was avoiding his gaze. Unfortunately, his mask made it harder to tell who he was looking at.

The entire building suddenly shuddered, and the entrance suddenly exploded outward, sending the door flying and killing several people.

People started screaming as a massive figure stepped through the door.

"I'll kill roo!"

It took me a moment to register what was happening. Lung was apparently attacking, which meant that Oni Lee wouldn't be far behind.

I saw a figure blinking in and out and a moment later the explosions began. I was pushed to the floor as people began to scream and run.

-5 hit points

I managed to stagger to my feet after being trampled a bit, and I couldn't see Joseph or Oni Lee.

Othala was crouched nearby, and Victor was running forward, presumably made invulnerable to try to deal with Oni Lee.

There were explosions as Oni Lee began teleporting around and around Victor. His invulnerability wasn't going to last long, and Hookwolf was already fighting Lung.

Othala was left undefended.

I released smoke from my inventory, five times over, hoping that people would assume it was from some of the fires created by the grenades.

Then I switched costumes and I lunged forward.

Othala wasn't a fighter, but she put up her best effort, trying to run as I leapt on her back and brought my knife across her throat. It was still thirty seconds before I could inventory her, and I reached down to inventory the puddle of blood.

NEW POWER CREATED!

HEALING TOUCH: GIVE OTHERS A HELPING HAND! HEALS 8 HIT POINTS. ONE HEALING PER CUSTOMER PER TWO MINUTES. LEVEL ONE.

GAIN NEW POWERS AND ABILITIES FROM THE BLOOD AND FLESH OF DEFEATED MONSTERS AND INTERESTING ENEMIES. POWERS WILL BE RELATED TO THOSE OF THE ENEMY BUT NOT THE SAME.

I stared at the popup.

Pain across my back cost me ten hit points and made me realize I was still in danger.

My damage reduction went up a point though.

I pushed my way through to the doorway Othala had originally come through, but it was locked.

I crawled over to one of the concessions stands and I stole some of the food, eating it as quickly as I could while I looked for a way out.

A grenade landed next to me, and I grabbed for it, inventorying it before it could explode.

I then released it thirty feet away, against a wall. Although I still couldn't see due to the smoke, I could feel a sudden breeze that told me I'd made a hole. Hopefully it would be big enough for me to get out.

There were dead patrons everywhere. Bodies littered the floor, and I suspected that they'd have trouble getting the fights up again, even if Hookwolf survived Lung.

I ran over to where I thought the hole was.

I saw Joseph lying on the ground; it looked like he was unconscious, since he didn't have the corpse label I was seeing on everyone else.

I reached down and touched him. I had to see if this healing thing was real.

+8 hit points.

He gasped suddenly, and I added more smoke as I stepped back. I made my way through to the hole, where I slipped through with some difficulty. The jagged edges caused me another four hit points in damage, but I did not bleed.

On consideration, I turned and pulled Othala's body from inventory. Hopefully they'd think Oni Lee had done it, and it would intensify the gang war that was about to start.

I ran, then.

At least some people had managed to escape; I saw some of them fleeing through other holes in the walls, presumably created by the grenades.

The explosions were still occurring inside.

I had to wonder what the Empire had done to set Lung off to the point that he'd attack a place deep inside Empire territory. He'd shattered the illusion that the Empire could provide safety, but only at the cost of a war that he might not win.

After all, the ABB only had two capes, while the Empire had many. That meant that they could simultaneously attack on multiple fronts, killing the rank and file while Lung sat by helplessly.

Lung's only recourse would be to target as many of the Empire parahumans as possible.

I could gain powers from parahumans. That changed everything.

Before I was little more than a sort of jumped up Victor with an inventory. That was kind of low tier. But if I could gain powers from the capes I killed, that meant that I should be targeting Capes before the rank and file, because they would be what made me stronger.

What kind of powers would I get from Rune or Stormtiger? I needed some sort or ranged attack.

Better yet, Othala's power meant that I would never again face a situation like the one where I desperately tried to save two people and had to leave one to die.

With this power I could be a hero.

Even if I could only cure injuries and not diseases, I could be a sort of Panacea Light. That meant that I could stabilize heroes during Endbringer fights, or maybe more if I was to level up the power.

Could I?

Sneaking into the hospital would risk me being seen. It would give me exposure that I didn't need in return for leveling up a power that wouldn't help me in my main quest.

What if I healed stray dogs and homeless people while they slept? Would animals even count for that? It would be worth trying.

A quick check of that quest showed that the Empire was down twenty members, while my kill count had gone up by one.

Despite the terrors of the evening, I had dealt a blow to the Empire. Without their healer, people were going to die as they clashed with the ABB. The ABB would be able to bleed them with a thousand cuts, and they wouldn't be able to bounce back.

As I ran through the night, I couldn't keep a grin off my face.