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Metroid Rebirth (Worm/Metroid)

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Taymus*looking at the information provided: "Very doable."

Adam: "It will be a milk run Lady."

Taymus: "I am unfamiliar with that term, explain Adam."

Adam: "Going through various elements including entertainment, it describes an easy job."

Taymus: "Makes sense, maybe I should look into those entertainment elements to see how Bounty Hunters are currently portrayed here."

Mid-Job Fighting with Lung
Taymus:"If this is a milk run, it's spoiled milk."

Adam:"I am sorry Lady, further browsing shows that a milk run is never a milk run and trouble will occur."
 
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Restoration 3.3
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    • Restoration 3.3



    Ultimately, devoting time to a bounty that wasn't going to make me any money wasn't something I chose to do lightly, but given it was a request from Emma, I gave it the appropriate attention it deserved. The first issue was the age of the incident. Emma and Uncle Alan had been assaulted around the time that I disappeared from camp. She and Sophia had given me the exact date and a rough description of what had happened at the time. It seemed like Sophia… or rather, the vigilante, Shadow Stalker, had really dealt a lot of damage to the ABB members that had perpetuated the assault. However, given that she didn't stick around, and Uncle Alan seemed to just want to be done with it, it really wasn't clear if any of them had gotten arrested already.

    The second issue then became a matter of specifics. Emma only knew two of her assailants' names, and even then, it was only the names they had called each other. One, a woman, was called Yan, and the other name she knew was Lao, a man who had gotten his eye taken out by Shadow Stalker. The rest of the injuries caused by Stalker similarly would need some sort of medical attention. During her vigilante days, the girl apparently was fairly vicious.

    Of course, even if some of the ABB had been arrested that night, without a victim willing to testify and evidence against them, there was a good chance that none of them had actually been charged. I'd need to verify that, check databases and such, but that was a good place to start.

    If there was any footage of the site, there was every chance it was long gone. I doubted that any of the CC TV footage would still be around from that timeframe.

    I let out a sigh as I jotted things down on the paper next to my terminal. We'd left the house a little after the dinner, promising that we'd do something like that again. I mentioned that Karrin intended on taking me shopping to Emma and Sophia, and Emma had said that I better get more than just jeans and hoodies. I mean, I knew I had the legs to pull off a nice dress, but I rarely had the time or occasion to wear something like that.

    Honestly, when I was on Earth in the Federation, about half my time was spent at a bar, and the other half was me browsing news sites for potential bounties. Here, I wasn't sure whether I would get the chance to do anything formal either.

    It surprised me that Emma didn't want to come with, given how close she had been to me that evening, but Karrin had mentioned that she was intending on having another person with us. I think the other person's name was Jennifer or Jaime or some other J name that I couldn't really remember when I was focusing most of my attention on the request Emma had given.

    It wasn't that I was outright against killing, but I would prefer to take the targets in nonlethally.

    Dad and Karrin had retired for the night into the bedroom, intending on doing what came naturally. I ignored it, of course, because what else would I do? I supposed I could cloak and go in and watch them, but that would be creepy. Who watched their family having sex? Not this bounty hunter.

    I opened the terminal again, and I activated the link to my ship. I set the responses to text only, if only so that what I was planning wouldn't be picked up by those who didn't need to know what was happening.

    "Good evening, Lady," Adam said when he saw my link. "How was dinner?"

    I typed out my response quickly. "Tasty, and only the smallest bit awkward. I informed them about the Chozo, and now they seemed to handle it well."

    "That's good, but some of that might be at least in part because the Chozo are relatively unknown on this version of Earth," Adam said.

    "Relatively?" I asked. "Does that mean that you've found signs of Chozo somewhere on Earth? Ruins, whatever?"'

    "Not quite, but I managed to intercept Armsmaster's paperwork regarding his new upgrade to his halberd. He seems to have incorporated Chozo technology into his tinkertech."

    Well. That was an unexpected yet not entirely unwelcome surprise. If Armsmaster was capable of integrating Chozo technology into his weaponry, it was possible that tinkers would be able to help me build some upgrades for the Gravity Suit. Issues popped up when considering the newly biological nature of my suit, but I suspected that there would be ways around that. As long as I didn't ever activate the full nature of my suit, things would be fine. As long as that side of me didn't express itself fully, I would be fine.

    "Interesting," I said finally. "We'll have to look into that further at a later time."

    "Indeed," Adam said. "Is there anything in particular that you need, Lady?"

    "I was recruited for a bounty," I said. "Emma and Sophia want it done."

    "They are able to afford your services?" Adam asked.

    "Not really, no," I said. "But Emma was my best friend when I lived here. I need to do something about this, for her, at least."

    Then I explained the circumstances surrounding the bounty in detail to him, knowing that his mind operated at speeds far exceeding my own. Benefits of being an AI, I suppose. Between the two of us, we were able to pull up what we could regarding hospital admission records that night.

    In the blocks surrounding the incident, there were approximately seven Asian people who checked into the area hospitals that night. While the records were supposed to be sealed, some of the hospitals in question had shoddy security and the admission records stored on their computers. It didn't take long for the two of us to get in and get some names and basic injury descriptions.

    Two of the seven Asian people were far too old to be a part of the group that attacked Emma, but the rest included a one-eyed man with severe lacerations all over his body, including further ones to his eye socket. Whatever or whoever had poked out this man's eye, likely Shadow Stalker, had not made things easy on him. I looked at the name on the chart. Lao Hu. The man's name matched Emma's description.

    "Pulling records on Lao Hu now," Adam said. "Additionally, Lady, Director Piggot has a bounty that she would like us to accept. This one would be a paying bounty, unlike the one we are helping your friend with now."

    While I got the webcrawler going, I nodded. "What sort of bounty?"

    "Not quite a kill order, as far as I can tell," Adam said. "But highly likely death would be a request in this case. The information that I was given on the potential bounty was that it had to do with the town of Ellisburg in New York."

    "That's maybe ten minutes away by ship at most," I said. "And that's going at our slowest speed."

    "Agreed," Adam said. "The request will likely have something to do with the cape known as Nilbog, the de facto owner of the town of Ellisburg, ruling over a kingdom of his own making."

    "So, kill him, kill anything in the town that stands in our way?" I asked.

    "I am unsure as to the specifics of the request at this time, but it was suggested that we both do research on the town itself."

    What did I remember about Ellisburg, other than it being a quarantine zone, like parts of Canberra now were? The town had been taken over by a cape sometime in the early 2000s. I had been really little that first time around as Taylor, around the age I had been when I went to Zebes, so the memory wasn't exactly something fresh on my mind. I hadn't lost anyone to Ellisburg the way I had on K-2L. Still.

    "Knowing you, you've already started."

    "Indeed." Adam's text paused on screen, and then a dossier showed up, describing the Ellisburg incident in detail. I picked up my earbud and placed it in, allowing Adam's voice to come over it as I read over the dossier.

    "In 2001, Ellisburg had been a small town with a population of around 5000 people, but this changed when Jaime Rinke developed powers. After an initial crime spree of about a week, the entire town of Ellisburg disappeared off of the grid. The PRT initially attempted to send cameras in to find out what had happened, but none of the cameras responded. They then sent a ground team in that was supposed to be backed up by a team of Protectorate Capes. This is what they found."

    I looked over the imagery. The creatures of Ellisburg were no worse than anything I had seen before. They reminded me a little of X-Parasite fusion creatures, and while they were apparently capable of reproduction on their own, they did not take over other creatures in order to reproduce. Nilbog required the protein sources to be brought directly to him in order for his power to work, and then he would produce new creatures.

    "Two members of the PRT strike team made it out of Ellisburg alive. Their Protectorate backup never arrived. The dossiers of the survivors are on the next page."

    Thomas Calvert, currently a contractor for the PRT, was one of the survivors. He apparently owned several businesses in addition to working with the PRT as a contracting consultant. One business built Endbringer shelters, called Diamondback Construction, and he apparently was the CEO of the company that owned Fugly Bob's on the Boardwalk. There were four more locations throughout the Northeast, and they were looking to expand to even more.

    The second survivor was Director Emily Piggot of the PRT. That explained some things that I'd heard about her from Sophia's complaints and what both Dad and Karrin had stated about her. If I had been expecting some backup on a run that never ended up arriving, I would probably have some lingering resentment toward them and those like them. It said a lot that she was able to work as the local director as well as she could. Clearly, she appreciated professional conduct, and thus far, the capes I had met had been rather professional. Being a professional myself, it was no small wonder she was willing to work with me.

    She didn't push for me to join the Protectorate all that hard either, which allotted her another point in my book. I would still do support, but I was too used to being independent to submit myself to the whims of another governmental entity.

    "Any idea how much the bounty is likely to be, Adam?"

    "Unclear at this time," Adam said. "But there are considerations that need to be made about how to handle it. Apparently, there are reasons that the government has not just removed Ellisburg from the map. Rinke has developed countermeasures to be released should the town be eradicated by biological weapons or nuclear weapons. It is estimated that he has a microbiological weapon that he can release if he knows that it is coming."

    I nodded. "What are the odds that it's a dead man's switch?"

    "With initial analysis, approximately 35%. Unless one of his creations releases it on its own, then that would likely increase the chances to 55%," Adam said.

    "Assuming lethal force is authorized, I would have to move quickly through the town," I said. "We would need to get a map and plot out where to go."

    "Agreed. I will see about obtaining recent satellite imagery but note that the images will not account for what the satellites cannot see," Adam said.

    I shrugged. I'd worked with worse before. "Let's keep that in mind when we take the bounty. Now, about Lao Hu."

    "Lao Hu currently works at a bar in the middle of ABB territory as a bartender," Adam said. "Fong's is located on the corner of Eighth and Lord. Other admittances to hospitals that night include one Honda Jiro, Sugita Josuke, Jay Ono, and one Fu Yan."

    "What's the current status on the others?" I asked.

    "I have found a death certificate for Honda, for approximately three months after the incident. It would seem that his body had been identified from dental records as it had been incinerated. Coroner's records indicate that his life was likely taken by the leader of the ABB, likely for some sort of failure."

    A dossier for the cape known as Lung popped up on my terminal's screen. Lung had come to Brockton Bay and united the diaspora of Asian gangs under one banner, using a mixture of his charisma and his flaming steel-scaled fist. The man was a changer that got stronger as the fight went on and he adapted to his enemy, ramping up to meet the threat. His changer power granted him some regeneration, and he apparently had faced the bulk of the local Protectorate, fighting them to a stand-still. He was willing to kill, but he had actively avoided trying to fight and kill the Wards when he encountered them, passing them off as beneath him.

    I shook my head and closed my terminal. Lung wasn't likely to be an issue this evening, but I wanted to get started. I'd use Lao to locate the other three members responsible for the assault, get confessions out of them while having Adam continue to gather the evidence. Odds were there would be other things I could get them jailed on.

    If Lung interfered, I'd deal with him somehow. Probably with overwhelming force right off the bat. If I could get him unconscious before he had the chance to ramp up, then he could be captured.

    I slipped my jacket on and jotted a note down for Dad and Karrin. I needed to go out and do this, as I was getting a little bit restless. In a way, it would help me connect with my past some. Helping Emma get over her stuff would be repayment for what she'd done after my first mother had died. She'd been there for me, and I hadn't had the chance to be there for her. Maybe if I'd never gotten taken to K-2L, things would have been different.

    I'd have been able to help Sophia support Emma, and the three of us would have been good friends. I probably wouldn't have found out about her being Shadow Stalker, but that didn't mean that Emma wouldn't have my support. We'd always been close, after all.

    I grabbed the spare key that Dad had left for me, and I stepped outside the apartment into the hall. I made sure my sidearm was secured under my jacket before continuing down the hallway. Ideally, I wouldn't need my full suit that evening, but one never knew what would happen. As I made my way through the hall toward the elevator, Dad's neighbor stepped out into the hallway, sans baby. I paid her no mind as she fell in step behind me, on the way to the elevator.

    She cleared her throat behind me, and I just continued to walk. I stopped at the elevator and pushed the call button.

    She cleared her throat again, louder this time. I wondered if she just had something in her throat that was being difficult to get out of there. Ultimately, it really didn't matter, as I had something to focus on. Adam did pull up an image of Lao Hu's driver's license, so that I could identify him, thankfully.

    "Excuse me," said the woman.

    "Yes?" I asked, turning to her. What was Dad's neighbor's name again? Kayden? That was what Theo had said, I think. "Can I help you?"

    "You can," Kayden said. "What are you doing on this floor, exactly?"

    "Going out," I said, nodding toward the elevator.

    "I saw you come out of Daniel Hebert's apartment," she said. "Who are you to him?"

    "How is that your business?" I asked.

    "I live here," Kayden said. "He constantly has people coming over, and it's bad for my baby."

    "How is it bad for your baby?" I asked. "Are you able to hear anything from your apartment down the hall?"

    Kayden gave me a sharp look. "He keeps unsavory company. People who don't belong here."

    "Like me?" I asked. "I shouldn't be visiting my uncle? Theo didn't tell you I was visiting?"

    Kayden shook her head. "You're new, but that--"

    I held up a hand. "I don't want to hear it. Whatever your hang-ups are, leave me out of it. He's my family, and you aren't."

    The elevator opened, and both of us went inside.

    "So, you aren't going to talk to him about the company he keeps?" Kayden asked.

    "Have you?" I asked. Honestly, I really wanted to stop dealing with this woman. The sense of entitlement I was getting off of her was absurd. She wanted to control who my father had in his apartment? It wasn't her business at all. As long as Dad wasn't violating the lease or making a large amount of noise, it shouldn't have been a problem.

    "I'll be talking with the landlords," Kayden said. "He shouldn't be having people stay with him that aren't on the lease."

    "Don't worry. I'm just visiting," I said. I'd be getting my own place soon enough if it became necessary. This woman wasn't going to scare me away from spending time with my father. I'm honestly not even sure what she was trying to do.

    "You better be," Kayden said. "I don't want to have to do more. Daniel seemed like such a nice person, but his guests… Not that you are all that bad. You're his family. But that woman that came over earlier today and… some of the others in the past."

    "I don't know what your problem is, but seriously, just leave it," I said. "Probably best if we don't talk to each other at all, really."

    Kayden seemed to come to herself, finally, as the door to the elevator opened up. "Oh. Right. Sorry. You did say that you were his family. What was your name again?"

    "Samus. Samus Aran," I said.

    "That's an unusual name," Kayden said.

    "So is Kayden," I said, stepping into the lobby. "If you'll excuse me, I have some things to do."

    I walked out of the building, ignoring her further. The woman was none of my concern, and I needed to focus on what I really needed to do tonight.

    I would find Lao Hu, see what he knew about where his former companions were, and then I would ensure that the man was punished for his crimes, strung up with the evidence for the police. One of the best things would be if any of them were bail skips. Then I'd be able to turn this bounty into something that actually paid.

    But I'd do this regardless, for my friend. It wouldn't be all too hard, assuming nobody interfered.

    But when have I ever been that lucky?
     
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    • And that chapter pushes me over the NaNo finish line with a total of 51k words written since the start of November. I'm not stopping, btw. This fic will continue to get updates this month, and it will alternate between this and Shards of Shadow for the rest of the year.
     
    why i feel like Samus/Taylor PTSD is showing again? at one point she will need to use her Metroid powers as they are (half) a trump card against Scion.

    also, Kayden is up to a really bad awakening
     
    hakunoX said:
    why i feel like Samus/Taylor PTSD is showing again? at one point she will need to use her Metroid powers as they are (half) a trump card against Scion.

    also, Kayden is up to a really bad awakening
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I mean, the Metroid powers kind of are a Chekov's gun. If I don't use them at all, there may be a problem down the line, after all.

    Also, having Kayden Anders be a Karen was one of the highlights of my writing this.
     
    Ellf said:
    Dad and Karrin had retired for the night into the bedroom, intending on doing what came naturally. I ignored it, of course, because what else would I do? I supposed I could cloak and go in and watch them, but that would be creepy. Who watched their family having sex? Not this bounty hunter.
    Click to expand...
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    This is such a weeeeeird thought to have.

    and Kayden? Kayden, you're the problem sweetie. I realize nothing anyone says will change your mind, but I'm going to try. I say this with peace and love… you're an idiot.

    May the bubble you've trapped yourself in pop in a most spectacular manner, and with minimal collateral damage.
     
    SensibleMalarkey said:
    This is such a weeeeeird thought to have.

    and Kayden? Kayden, you're the problem sweetie. I realize nothing anyone says will change your mind, but I'm going to try. I say this with peace and love… you're an idiot.

    May the bubble you've trapped yourself in pop in a most spectacular manner, and with minimal collateral damage.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Little bit, yeah, but kinda referenced what Aisha did in Canon there.
     
    Restoration 3.4
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    • Restoration 3.4



    As a bar, Fong's really didn't look like much from the outside. Located in the heart of Brockton Bay's Chinatown, it had a neon sign with its name in red, but the n and the apostrophe were burned out. A sign below the English sign had the Chinese character for "fang" written in a green neon, and there were various beer and liquor advertisements, most of which I didn't recognize myself. It actually surprised me that one of the beers there was one I'd drank before in a Federation bar. I didn't expect to find Ninten, of all beers, on Earth Bet.

    If I'd been here for any reason other than a bounty, I'd probably have more than just the single beer I was planning to.

    The interior of Fong's matched its muted exterior. It smelled of a mix of cigarette smoke and some sort of opiate that spread from the back room somewhere. Rock music played over the speakers, crackling a bit as it hit a note that was ever so slightly too loud for the system to handle. A pair of pool tables were set up in the corner with a group of four Asian men with visible tattooed arms playing on them. I couldn't place the ethnicities at this distance, but they were focused on their game anyway. Two more men, Japanese for certain, drank at the bar. Like the tattooed men, they wore torn jeans and wifebeaters, but the ones at the bar had leather jackets with fancy dragon art on the backs. I saw a bulge at the side of one of them indicating a sidearm. Each of them also had some sort of red and green kerchiefs tied to either their arms or legs.

    There were only a few women in the bar, with one dressed similarly to the men, her hair tied back with a streak of red in an otherwise dark head of hair. I spotted the seven knives she carried on her immediately. The other two women were dressed in outfits that emphasized their assets, showing their paler skin off like they were trying to come off as higher class than those they were serving. Of course, given the outfit, it was more likely they were counting on their attractiveness to get them more tips. Or the bar was, anyway.

    Behind the bar was my target, a one-eyed man of Chinese descent. His long hair greasily hung around his neck, and his dark eyepatch over his left eye had the symbol for "demon" in red on it. There was a scar over his right eye as well that extended roughly from his eyelid down to his cheek. The eye itself was a dark brown, and it seemed to be able to focus. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt with a denim vest overtop of it that had a dragon pattern stitched on.

    I felt eyes on me as I approached the bar, something I wasn't unused to, given my height. I took a seat and waited for the man to approach.

    Unfortunately, the first to approach me was not the bartender. It was one of the drinkers at the bar, a man who looked to be barely old enough to drink himself. "Hey there, white lady… ain't you at the wrong place?"

    "No," I said. "I'm exactly where I intend to be."

    "Lady like you, it ain't healthy to be in a place like this," said the man. "Less you're wanting to be someone's pet project…"

    I rolled my eyes. "Thank you for the warning. Barkeep, a Ninten, please."

    The bartender, definitely Lao Hu, came over to me and placed the beer down. "I'd listen to Yotsuba. This kind of place isn't where you want to be."

    I grabbed his arm with my left hand as he made to go away. "Tell me what I want to know, and I'll be gone."

    Lao's eye widened, but he made no sudden moves. "Sorry lady, I'm not into white girls."

    "Could have fooled me," I said, and then I got quieter. "But no, I'm not into men like you either. I'm looking for a few of your friends."

    I let go of his hand and produced a hundred dollar bill. Hookwolf's bounty had paid out some, and I did have some access.

    "Who are you looking for?" Lao asked as I slid the bill toward him.

    "Honda Jiro, Fu Yan, Jay Ono, and Sugita Josuke," I said. "I'm looking for them."

    "Who?" Lao asked, and I simply cocked an eyebrow.

    "You know who," I said simply. "Talk, and I leave."

    "My head's not exactly good anymore," Lao said. He tapped the bar a little. "I might need a bit of a reminder."

    I snorted and produced another bill, a twenty this time.

    "Ah… Yan and her boyfriend," Lao said. "Smart girl. Didn't want to be a whore. Pimps them out instead."

    "Where?" I asked. He didn't mention which one was her boyfriend, but that was a decent start.

    "Check out near Ruby Dreams," Lao said. "Couldn't tell you which corner, but that's a good place to check."

    I downed my beer. "Good. I hope you're telling the truth, Lao Hu." I leaned over the bar, staring him right in the eyes.

    He let out a curse in Mandarin.

    I replied, in the same tongue. "You don't want to have me come back here because you lied."

    "I'm telling you the truth, bitch," Lao said, still in Mandarin. "You know who owns this place, right? You don't want to fuck with him!"

    I tilted my head curiously. "Does he really care about you all that much?" I tapped my right cheek, indicating his scar. I decided to stick with Mandarin for now. "How useful would you be if you were completely blind?"

    "What?" Lao asked.

    "Eye. Ears. Mouth. Nose," I said, indicating each with my finger. "Common threat with you?"

    Lao's eye narrowed. "Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you even talking about?"

    I just smiled at him. He knew exactly what I was talking about, and really, Emma had given me wide berth on how to handle this bounty. Yes, she wanted those who assaulted her either dead or in jail, but there were far worse fates to have for someone like this. If it ended up getting out that he gave away his companions, he wouldn't be seen as trustworthy anymore, and honestly, he'd probably wind up dead anyway. It was only a matter of time.

    Lao's face started changing colors, going into an interesting shade of purple. "You fucking bitch! You really fucking think that you can threaten me?"

    His statements were in English this time, and I doubt it was for my benefit. We'd drawn some onlookers from the rest of the bar patrons, and a few were reaching for their sidearms. Now that I could see the pool players clearly, I could see that they were of a different ethnicity than the ones at the bar and than Lao. I suspected they might have been Korean, but I'll admit that the intricacies of east Asian ethnicities eluded me at times. Unfortunately, Korean wasn't a language I spoke. Mandarin? Sure. Japanese? Definitely. Chozo? Well, of course. Space Pirate? It became necessary. So was English, for that matter.

    It didn't matter, since I doubted Lao spoke many other languages besides Mandarin and English.

    "Should have left when you had the chance, white girl," said one of the Japanese guys.

    I shrugged. "I can leave now. Lao gave me all I need."

    "Oh really?" asked the woman dressed in the gang colors. She looked maybe Japanese herself, and she had one of her seven knives in hand. "Lao's not usually so talkative to white girls."

    "No, he just likes to threaten them instead," I said. "And let his subordinates do the dirty work."

    Each of the gang members bristled, and I stood up, dropping a ten-dollar bill on the bar for the beer. Funnily, all of them were at least a few inches shorter than me, and the shortest was maybe a foot shorter. Of course, I always was used to being one of the tallest humans in the room. Only one or two members of my police squad had been taller than me. Of course, most of the other bounty hunters I knew hadn't even been human.

    "You assholes going to let her say shit like that to you?" Lao asked.

    I stretched out, carefully ignoring the fact that each of the gang members were reaching for a weapon. Surrounded as I was, it wouldn't be easy to deal with them outside my armor. Guns in this day and age fired projectiles at high speeds, and while I was pretty sure my Zero Suit could stand up to small arms fire, the clothing I was wearing overtop would not. That said, I knew I was likely faster than any of them, and I could easily jump over them if I needed to.

    Instead, I casually walked toward the door.

    "Where do you think you're going?" asked one of the Japanese men.

    "Out," I said, lightly pushing through them. "I don't want to mess up the bar with a fight. Surely you understand."

    Lao growled. For a man whose given name meant 'tiger' he sounded much more like a canine. I didn't quite hear what he yelled at the rest of them as I stepped outside, but I calmly kept walking. I walked down the street half a block before I heard the lot of them hastily approaching with weapons drawn.

    I calmly reached through my jacket and slid my Paralyzer into my sleeve. I'd be able to slip it out at a moment's notice.

    "Don't move, white girl!" one of the Japanese men yelled. Deciding to play nice, I stopped moving. I lightly shifted my arms and my Paralyzer slid to my elbow. I heard someone cock their gun in a threatening movement. Really, it was kind of wasteful. Most semiautomatics automatically cocked themselves unless you were reloading. "Now raise your hands! And turn toward us, slowly!"

    I complied, flicking my Paralyzer up to about where my wrist was.

    It was certainly the members from the bar, but now they had their bandanas around their faces, hiding most of them. Given that they thought I was just a normal white person who went into the wrong place at the wrong time and threatened their bartender, I really wasn't all that surprised by this. Honestly, were it not for this bounty, I probably would have been happy to just drink the familiar beer in peace. I wasn't officially one of the heroes, nor was I a member of any police force, which meant that I could easily just let them leave well enough alone, if all they were doing was drinking and playing bar games.

    "Now, you have a choice," said the Japanese man who had spoken before. "We can go back into the bar, where you can talk with Lao some more, and decide what to do with you. Or we can decide out here."

    Situations like this one, however, did necessitate some sort of action. I didn't know any of their names, and while I could give them designations, it felt like it would be a bit insulting to them if I just assumed. For some reason two of the four Korean guys were wielding pool cues in a menacing manner as opposed to whatever weapons they should have had. Knife girl had two of her seven knives in hand now, and really, they were all doing an impressive job of trying to intimidate me. Top notch, I'd say.

    Unfortunately for them, they were trying to intimidate me.

    "How about a third option?" I asked. Now, I'd intended on sounding a little more commanding when I'd said those words, but I'd already been doing a lot of talking this evening. It wasn't something I enjoyed doing most of the time anyway, and now I was having to do it more? Still, I prepared my follow-up, flicking my Paralyzer into my hand.

    And then a tingle in the back of my neck had me wrap the Japanese speaker up with my Paralyzer's whip and tug him toward me just in time to get out the way of a bright white helixing pair of beams of light. I let him go, sending him sprawling past me. The light struck the pavement, exploding some of it upward. An energy blast, on the level of my plasma, judging from the damage done, albeit wider-reaching.

    Shortly after that, another pair of beams came in toward a grouped up portion of the gang, and I swapped Paralyzer modes, meeting it halfway with a shock burst, deflecting the beams into a nearby wall as they expanded further. The struck spots exploded outward into rubble, and the rest of the wall collapsed around it.

    "Shit! Cape!" yelled knife girl. "It's Purity! Run!"

    "Adam," I murmured. "Purity, quick reference."

    "Of course, Lady," Adam said as I scanned the air for where the beams had come from. I spotted a vaguely female shape floating in the air. I say vaguely female because it was hard to look at her, given how brightly the woman glowed. The costume around her emitted a faint white light, unlike the pure bright white light coming out of her skin, and I saw more energy gathering in each of her hands.

    "Purity is… or was… (it really isn't clear) a member of the Empire 88. She has high-speed flight and energy blasts," Adam said. "She glows so brightly that it is difficult to look at her."

    I nodded. That matched with what I saw in the air.

    The rest of the gang members scattered, and I pointed my Paralyzer at Purity, ready to deflect her beams again the moment I saw her use them. The Paralyzer wasn't perfect for this sort of thing, but I had upgraded it myself the last time I was on a Federation station. I'd been inspired by something I'd seen elsewhere.

    "What do you think you're doing?" Purity asked. "You're letting the thugs get away!"

    "Stopping you from killing them!" I said. "What do you think you're doing?"

    "Saving you!" Purity said as she floated closer to me. "They were going to hurt you, maybe rape you or worse!"

    "I had things in hand," I said.

    "Seven against one? Even with your tinkertech gun…." Purity muttered. "Those sla---ABB bastards were going to hurt you! I saved your life!"

    "And I saved theirs," I said. It was my responsibility to do so, even though they were threatening me. I had only intended to rough them up a bit, get them to scatter. "I saved their lives from you."

    "And who will save yours, Purity?" asked a gravelly accented male voice from the nearby alleyway. We both looked, or at least I did, and the vague blob of light turned as well. Standing in the alley was a shirtless man with big bulging muscles, nearly as tall as me. His body was covered in eastern dragon tattoos, and he wore a steel mask vaguely in the shape of a dragon. He wore a pair of jeans and sandals as well. His brown eyes were bloodshot and visible behind his mask.

    "Lung!" Purity spat out, hatred and vitriol present in her voice.

    "Young white girl, you may go," Lung said. "My quarrel is with this Nazi."

    I grimaced, looking around the area. This was not an alien planet. This was downtown Brockton Bay, and two very powerful capes were about to throw down. I needed to figure out how to stop this.

    I needed to get the two of them to deescalate.

    Why did a sense of irony pass through me?
     
  • Threadmarks
    • I wonder if Taylor could suck up the energy from Lung and Purity and maybe use the energy in various ways like various Metroids could. Maybe even modify her suit in various ways.
     
    TJG said:
    I wonder if Taylor could suck up the energy from Lung and Purity and maybe use the energy in various ways like various Metroids could. Maybe even modify her suit in various ways.
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    When word of this leaks out, Parian's going to be a millionaire by making "haunted Samus bean plushes that suck out your energy and arrests you for the bounty"
     
    TJG said:
    I wonder if Taylor could suck up the energy from Lung and Purity and maybe use the energy in various ways like various Metroids could. Maybe even modify her suit in various ways.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    That sounds like a reason for Uber and Leet to attack her while dressed as King Dedede and Mystery Knight.
     
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